With a lithe movement he got to his feet, walked to the opposite side of the table and held out her chair. As she sat he dropped a light kiss on the top of her head. ‘Good morning, Melissa.’
‘Bonjour, Charles.’
With a chuckle, he resumed his seat. ‘Coffee?’
‘Please.’
As with Jean-Marc, it was a ritual to be gone through. He poured the hot milk into her cup, with just a dash of coffee. Fresh warm croissants were piled in a snowy napkin in a basket in the centre of the table. There was butter, a selection of confitures, marmalade and honey. Charles reached for her plate, selected a croissant for her and placed it together with butter and honey in front of her. ‘Bon appétit.’
‘Merci. You had a successful evening?’
‘Mm, so-so. Not many in last night.’
‘You played?’
‘No, I wasn’t feeling lucky. I mingled, talked to some people, listened to gossip,’ and, for a moment, his generous mouth firmed. Not tightened; Charles’s expressions were never excessive. He generally appeared relaxed, smiling, contented. It wasn’t true that he was, of course—no one was ever that amiable—but if he had any dark thoughts, emotions, he hid them very well. Which was no doubt why he was such a good poker player. ‘I’ve decided to move the horses to another haras.’
‘But why?’ she asked, puzzled. ‘I thought you were quite happy with the way they were being trained. Heaven knows, you fought hard enough to get them into that particular stable!’
‘Ye-es, but oh, I don’t know, I have a feeling all is not well.’
Knowing better than to mock his ‘feelings’, she asked instead, ‘Where will you place them?’
‘Don’t know; I’ll have to give it more thought.’ With the swift change of subject that was so characteristic of him, he smiled. ‘I also saw Fabienne; she’s invited us to dine tonight. Yes? I accepted for us both. You don’t get out enough—and don’t turn down your mouth, my darling, it’s time you got over this reluctance you have to meet people.’
‘I’m not reluctant to meet people, just...’
‘Just those people who constitute my friends.’
‘No,’ she denied with a frown, ‘that’s not true; it’s just that some of them...’
‘Like Fabienne...’
‘Yes, like Fabienne, make me feel—oh, I don’t know, gauche, unsophisticated. I never know what to say to them.’ Looking up, holding his grey eyes with her own, she added, ‘You’ll be much happier on your own.’
‘Will I?’ he asked with a quizzical smile.
‘Yes. You won’t need to worry about me, make sure I have someone to talk to, understand what’s being said...’ With a little smile and a shrug that was nowhere near as eloquent as Jean-Marc’s, she left her sentence unfinished. But it was true: without her, he would thoroughly enjoy himself. Very gregarious was Charles. He liked meeting people, talking, exchanging ideas, and, although he had never by look or deed intimated that she was a drag on his enjoyment, she suspected he felt restricted by her presence. She had tried to overcome her not dislike, exactly, but discomfort with his smart friends, but she always got the feeling that they were sneering at her. Maybe she was being over-sensitive because of the circumstances of their marriage, but she could never feel quite at ease at these little dinner parties that everyone seemed to give.
‘Nevertheless,’ he said with a subtly different smile that meant he would expect her to go along with his wishes, ‘I would like you to come. David will be there. You like David.’
Yes, she liked David; it was his wife she couldn’t stand, mostly, she admitted, because the wretched Fabienne would persist in drooling all over Charles at every given opportunity. Touching, smiling, stroking, pressing herself against him as though she were irresistible, which she wasn’t, not by any means. She was forty if she was a day and persisted in behaving as though she were sixteen. She seemed to be the violent exception to the rule that French woman were elegant, chic, sexy. Most older women that she had met were far more attractive than the younger set, having achieved that certain confidence and sophistication that wisdom brought, but not the wretched Fabienne, and, for all his perspicacity, Charles didn’t seem to see what other women saw. That she was a troublemaker.
If Melly flatly refused he would still go, and he would say nothing more about it, but the smile would be cooler, the warmth that she needed withdrawn. She didn’t think he knew that he did it, and maybe someone who did not know him very well would not notice. But she would. Forcing herself to smile, she nodded. ‘All right, I’ll come. What time?’
‘Eightish. Thank you. I know it is not easy for you, Melly, but if you do not ever try you will not know...’
‘What I’m missing,’ she finished for him. ‘I know, and I am trying; it’s just that it’s such a different lifestyle to the one I’ve been used to.’
‘British understatement at its best,’ he laughed. ‘Beckford was hardly the Mecca of sophistication.’ Leaning back in his chair, he steepled his fingers under his chin, a smile playing about his mouth. ‘I would dearly love to know what they made of our marriage,’ he mused.
‘Oh, probably that I deserved all I got,’ she said lightly. ‘I mean, what else could one expect, marrying an adventurer?’
‘Is that what they call me? An adventurer?’
‘Mm.’ A no-good adventurer, but she wasn’t about to tell him that. Besides, it wasn’t true.
With every appearance of enjoying the notoriety, he leaned forward and propped his chin in his hand. ‘What else? Black sheep? Rogue? I bet they said, “Ah, that one, he’ll come to no good. Meet a sticky end one day.” Mm, I see by your face that I’m right. Well, it’s possible I will one day fulfil their prophecies, but hopefully not drag you down with me. You deserve better, Melly.’
‘No!’ she said more sharply than she had intended. ‘No,’ she repeated more moderately.
‘Yes,’ he contradicted. ‘If you had not come to Deauville to find your grandfather’s grave; if—’
‘If wishes were horses, beggars would ride,’ she cut in firmly, because they both knew that wasn’t why she had come. Charles might, for the sake of harmony, pretend to believe it, but she had always thought that he suspected otherwise. Always suspected that he was treading carefully, as she was, in order to make the marriage work. Holding his eyes, she forced herself to smile. ‘You didn’t coerce me. I didn’t have to—comfort you that day. And if I had denied your paternity...’
‘Ah, but you didn’t, God knows why. Anyone less worthy to be a father would be hard to find. Anyone less worthy to be a husband... And yet, if you hadn’t admitted it, if I had found out later that you were carrying my child...’
He would have been angry? Yes, she knew he would have been, and was sometimes very surprised by how responsible he seemed to feel. She desperately wished they could have spoken about it, discussed it, but because of her own feelings of guilt it always seemed impossible. And yet perhaps, after all, it was safer not to.
‘How would you have found out?’ she queried with a lightness she did not feel. ‘You no longer had ties with Beckford, and as far as you knew I could have had any number of boyfriends, any one of whom could have been the father...’
‘Maybe; water under the bridge now...’ With an odd laugh, he straightened. ‘Not exactly your normal run-of-the-mill husband, am I?’
‘No,’ she agreed with a forced smile, ‘but then, run-of-the-mill might be a bit boring, don’t you think?’
‘And wouldn’t you, if you were honest, not wish for boring now and again?’