beads. The dress had the uneven hem that was becoming Michel’s trademark, knee-high on one side, dipping to mid-calf on the other, with beadwork emphasizing the diagonal. She’d put her hair up for the evening, arranging it more elaborately than usual, and added garnet earrings that winked through the tendrils fanning her ears. At sixteen she might have thought it wise to appear at Alexi’s door in casual dress, but at twenty-six she knew differently.
A young man in a three-piece suit answered the door. One of the henchmen Belinda had referred to? He looked like a mortician who just happened to have a degree from Harvard Business School. “Your father has been expecting you.”
“This way please.”
She followed him into the front salon. The room stood cold and empty, its only ornamentation a display of white roses that fanned the mantelpiece like a funeral spray. She shivered.
“Dinner will be ready momentarily,” the mortician said. “Would you like a drink first? Some champagne perhaps?”
“I’d like to see my mother.”
He turned as if she hadn’t spoken and disappeared down the hallway. She hugged herself against the cryptlike chill of the room. The wall sconces cast grotesque shadows on the gruesome ceiling frescoes.
Enough of this. Just because the mortician had closed the door to seal her in didn’t mean she had to stay here. The heels of her pumps clicked against the marble as she slipped out into the hallway. Head held high against invisible eyes, she walked past the priceless Gobelin tapestries on her way toward the grand staircase. When she reached the top, another mortician with neat hair and a dark suit stepped out to block her from going farther. “You have lost your way, mademoiselle.”
It was a statement, not a question, and she knew she’d made her first mistake. He wasn’t going to let her pass, and she couldn’t afford an early defeat when she needed to conserve all her strength for her battle with Alexi. She cut her losses. “It’s been so long since I was here that I’d forgotten how large the house is.” She retreated to the salon, where the first mortician waited to lead her to the dining room.
Another spray of white roses and a single china place setting adorned the long mahogany banquet table. Alexi had launched a war of nerves, carefully orchestrating everything to make her feel powerless. She glanced at the diamond watch Jake had sent her and pretended to stifle a yawn. “I hope the food is decent tonight. I’m hungry.”
Surprise flickered across his face before he nodded and excused himself. Who were these men with their dark suits and officious manner? And where was Belinda? For that matter, where was Alexi?
A liveried servant appeared to attend her. She sat alone in her wine velvet gown at the end of the vast, gleaming table, her garnets and beads winking in the candlelight, and concentrated on eating her dinner with every appearance of relish. She even asked for a small second helping of chestnut souffle. At the end, she ordered a cup of tea and a brandy. Alexi could dictate how he played his portion of their game. She would determine how she played hers.
The mortician appeared again while she toyed with the brandy. “If Mademoiselle would please come with me…”
She took another sip, then dipped into her purse for compact and lipstick. The mortician made his impatience known. “Your father is waiting.”
“I came here to see my mother.” She snapped the compact open. “I have no business with Monsieur Savagar until after I’ve spoken with her. If he won’t permit that, I’ll leave immediately.”
The mortician hadn’t anticipated this. He hesitated and then nodded. “Very well, I’ll take you to her.”
“I’ll find my own way.” She returned the compact to her purse, swept past him into the hallway, and headed back up the grand staircase. The man she’d encountered earlier appeared at the top, but this time he made no effort to stop her, and she walked past him as if he were invisible.
Almost seven years had gone by since she’d last been in the house on the Rue de la Bienfaisance, but nothing had changed. The Persian carpets still muffled her footsteps, and the fifteenth-century Madonnas continued to roll their eyes heavenward from their gilded frames. In this house, time was measured in centuries, while decades slipped by unnoticed.
As she walked the opulent, silent hallways, she thought of the house she wanted to share with Jake-a big, rambling home, with doors that banged and floorboards that squeaked and banisters children could slide down. A house that measured time in noisy decades. Jake as the father of her children…their children. Unlike Alexi, Jake would yell at them when he got mad. He’d also hug them and kiss them and fight the whole world if necessary to keep them safe.
Why was she hesitating? Marrying him was what she wanted more than anything. If it meant she had to accept both sides of him-well, she was wise to his tricks by now, and he wouldn’t find it so easy to shut her out when something bothered him. He also wasn’t exactly getting a bargain. She wouldn’t give up her career, and nothing would ever make her work up any real interest in housekeeping. Besides, he wasn’t the only one who’d gotten good at shutting people out.
In the cryptlike chill of the house, her doubts fell away. There was no other man on earth she’d trust to be the father of her children, and she was going to call him that night and tell him so.
She’d reached Belinda’s room, so she pulled her thoughts away from the future to deal with the present. A few moments passed after she knocked before she heard movement. The door eased open, and Belinda’s face peered through the crack. “Baby?” Her voice quivered as if she hadn’t used it for some time. “Is it really you? I-I’m a mess, baby. I didn’t think-” Her fingers fluttered like a captive bird as her hand went to her cheek.
“You didn’t think I’d come.”
Belinda pushed aside a rumpled lock of hair that had tumbled over her eye. “I-I didn’t want to count on it. I know I shouldn’t have asked you.”
“Are you going to let me in?”
“Oh…Yes. Yes.” She moved out of the way. As the door shut behind her, Fleur noticed that her mother smelled like stale cigarettes instead of Shalimar. She remembered the bright bird of paradise who used to arrive at the
Belinda’s makeup had faded, leaving only an oily trace of blue shadow in her eyelid creases. Her face was too pale to hold its own against the saffron silk of her rumpled Chinese robe. Fleur noticed a stain on the bodice, and the saggy front pocket looked as if it had been forced to hold one too many cigarette lighters. Belinda’s hand once again went to her cheek. “Let me go wash my face. I always liked to be pretty for you. You always thought I was so pretty.”
Fleur caught her mother’s hand. It felt as small as a child’s. “Sit down and tell me what’s happened.”
Belinda did as she was ordered, an obedient child bowing to a stronger force. She lit a cigarette, and in her breathless, young woman’s voice, she told Fleur about Alexi’s threats to put her in a sanitarium. “I haven’t been drinking, baby. He knows that, but he uses the past like a sword over my head to threaten me whenever I upset him.” She blew a puff of smoke. “He didn’t like what happened when I went to New York. He thought I’d try harder to be with you. He expected me to embarrass you, but all I did was embarrass him.”
“You had an affair with Shawn Howell.”
She flicked her ash into a porcelain ashtray. “He left me for an older woman, did you know that? Funny, isn’t it? Alexi closed off my accounts, and the other woman was rich.”
“Shawn Howell is a cretin.”
“He’s a star, baby. It’s just a matter of time before he makes a comeback.” She looked at Fleur with her old reproach. “You could have helped him, you know. Now that you’re a big agent, you could have helped an old friend.”
Fleur saw the displeasure in her mother’s eyes and waited for the old guilt to wash over her, but it didn’t come. Instead she experienced the exasperation of a mother confronting an unreasonable child. “I’m sure I could have helped him, but I didn’t want to. He doesn’t have any talent, and I don’t like him.”
Belinda set her cigarette in the ashtray, and her lips formed a pout. “I don’t understand you at all.” She scanned Fleur’s dress. “Michel designed that, didn’t he? I never dreamed he was so talented. Everyone in New York
