Danielle Steel
Summer’s End
© 1979
1
Deanna Duras opened one eye to look at the clock as the first light stole in beneath the shades. It was 6:45. If she got up now, she would still have almost an hour to herself, perhaps more. Quiet moments in which Pilar could not attack, or harass; when there would be no phone calls for Marc-Edouard from Brussels or London or Rome. Moments in which she could breathe and think and be alone. She slipped out quietly from beneath the sheets, glancing at Marc-Edouard, still asleep on the far side of the bed. The very far side. For years now, their bed could have slept three or four, the way she and Marc kept to their sides. It wasn’t that they never joined in the middle anymore, they still did… sometimes. When he was in town, when he wasn’t tired, or didn’t come home so very, very late. They still did-once in a while.
Silently she reached into the closet for the long, ivory, silk robe. She looked young and delicate in the early morning light, her dark hair falling softly over her shoulders like a sable shawl. She stooped for a moment looking for her slippers. Gone. Pilar must have them again. Nothing was sacred, not even slippers, least of all Deanna. She smiled to herself as she padded barefoot and silent across the thick carpeting and stole another glance at Marc, still asleep, so peaceful there. When he slept, he still looked terribly young, almost like the man she had met nineteen years before. She watched him as she stood in the doorway, wanting him to stir, to wake, to hold his arms out to her sleepily with a smile, whispering the words of so long ago,
She hadn’t been that to him in a thousand years or more. She was simply Deanna to him now, as to everyone else: “Deanna, can you come to dinner on Tuesday? Deanna, did you know that the garage door isn’t properly closed? Deanna, the cashmere jacket I just bought in London got badly mauled at the cleaner. Deanna, I’m leaving for Lisbon tonight (Or Paris. Or Rome).” She sometimes wondered if he even remembered the days of
“In a minute, I’m almost through.”
“May I have a look?” He would make as though to peek around the easel, waiting for her to jump up and protest, as she always did, until she saw the teasing in his eyes.
“Stop that! You know you can’t see it till I’m through.”
“Why not? Are you painting a shocking nude?” Laughter lighting those dazzling blue eyes.
“Perhaps I am, monsieur. Would that upset you very much?”
“Absolutely. You’re much too young to paint shocking nudes.”
“Am I?” Her big green eyes would open wide, sometimes taken in by the seeming seriousness of his words. He had replaced her father in so many ways. Marc had become the voice of authority, the strength on which she relied. She had been so overwhelmed when her father had died. It had been a godsend when suddenly Marc-Edouard Duras had appeared. She had lived with a series of aunts and uncles after her father’s death, none of whom had welcomed Deanna’s presence in their midst. And then finally, at the age of eighteen, after a year of vagabonding among her mother’s relatives, she had gone off on her own, working in a boutique in the daytime, going to art school at night. It was the art classes that kept her spirit alive. She lived only for that. She had been seventeen