Glitter Baby (Wynette, Texas #3)(25)

Fleur could see that she looked older and more sophisticated than sixteen, but she felt weird, as if she’d dressed up in Belinda’s clothes.

Fleur took her place at the center of the long, silent dinner table with Belinda sitting at one end and Alexi at the other. Everything was white. White linen, white candles, heavy alabaster vases holding dozens of full-blown white roses. Even the food was white—a cream soup, white asparagus, and pale scallops whose smell mixed with the cloying fragrance of the white roses. The three of them dressed in black looked like ravens perched around a funeral bier, with Belinda’s blood-red fingernails the only spot of color. Even Michel’s absence didn’t make the awful meal bearable.

Fleur wished her mother would stop drinking, but Belinda consumed one glass of wine after another while only toying with her food. When her mother ground out a cigarette on her dinner plate, a servant whisked it away. Alexi’s voice penetrated the silence. “I will take you to view your grandmother now.”

Wine sloshed over the rim of Belinda’s glass. “For God’s sake, Alexi. Fleur didn’t even know her. There’s no need for this.”

Fleur couldn’t bear the twisted, frightened expression on her mother’s face. “It’s okay. I’m not afraid.” A servant pulled back Fleur’s chair while Belinda sat frozen, her skin as pale as the white roses in front of her.

Fleur followed Alexi into the hallway. Their footsteps echoed off a vaulted ceiling, with violent frescoes of women in breastplates and men stabbing each other. They reached the gilded doors that marked the entrance to the main salon. He opened one of them and gestured for her to enter.

The room held only a shiny black casket banked in white roses and a small ebony chair. Fleur tried to act as though she saw corpses all the time, but the only dead body she’d seen had belonged to Sister Madeleine, and that had only been a glimpse. Solange Savagar’s wrinkled face looked as if it had been molded from old candle wax.

“Kiss your grandmother’s lips as a sign of respect.”

“You’re not serious.” She nearly laughed, but then she looked at him, and the expression on his face stopped her cold. He didn’t care about Fleur showing respect. He was testing her courage. This was a dare, un defi. And he didn’t believe for one moment she could meet it.

“Oh, but I’m very serious,” he said.

She locked her knees so they didn’t tremble. “I’ve been facing bullies all my life.”

His mouth curled unpleasantly. “Is that what you think I am? A bully?”

“No.” She forced her own mouth to form the same unpleasant sneer. “I think you’re a monster.”

“You are such a child.”

She’d never imagined she could hate anyone so much. Slowly she took a step, and then another. She moved across the polished floor toward the casket, and as she came closer, she fought the urge to run from this silent house, run from the Street of Charity, run from Alexi Savagar back to the safe, suffocating comfort of the nuns. But she couldn’t run. Not until she showed him what he’d tossed away.

She reached the casket and sucked in her breath. Then she bent forward and touched her lips to the cold, still ones of her grandmother.

She heard a sudden, sharp hiss. For one horrifying moment, she thought it was coming from the corpse, but then Alexi grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back from the coffin.

“Sale garce!” He uttered a vicious curse and shook her. “You’re just like him. You’ll do anything to save your pride!” Her hair came loose and tumbled down her back. He shoved her into the small black chair next to the casket. “Nothing is too vile when your pride is at stake.” He wiped away the kiss with his bare hand, smearing her lipstick across her cheek.

She tried to push his arm away. “Don’t touch me! I hate you. Don’t ever touch me.”

His grip loosened on her arm. He said something so softly she almost missed it.

“Pur sang.”

She stopped struggling.

He stroked her mouth with his fingers, his touch gentle. He traced the line where her lips came together. And then, unexpectedly, his finger slid inside her mouth and moved gently along the barrier of her teeth.

“Enfant. Pauvre enfant.”

She sat there stunned, spellbound, mesmerized. He crooned as if he were singing her a lullaby. “You have been caught in something you don’t understand. Pauvre enfant.”

His touch was so tender. Was this the way fathers treated daughters they loved?

“You are extraordinary,” he murmured. “The photograph in the newspaper didn’t prepare me.” He gently tangled his fingers in the tendril of hair that had fallen over her cheek. “I’ve always loved beautiful things. Clothing. Women. Automobiles.” He brushed his thumb over her jawline. She smelled his cologne, faintly spicy. “At first I loved indiscriminately, but I’ve learned better.”

She didn’t know what he was talking about.

He touched her chin. “Now I have only one obsession. The Bugatti. Do you know the Bugatti?”

Why was he talking about a car? She remembered what she’d seen in the garage, but she shook her head.

“Ettore Bugatti called his cars pur sang, pure blood, like a Thoroughbred horse.” The tips of his fingers brushed the polished onyx drops in her earlobes and pulled gently. “I have the finest collection of pur sang Bugattis in the world, all but the crown jewel—the Bugatti Royale.” His voice was soft, loving…hypnotic. She felt as if he’d cast a spell over her. “He built only six of them. During the war, one Royale was left in Paris. Three of us hid it from the Germans in the sewers beneath the city. That car has become a legend, and I’m determined to own it. I must own it because it is the very best. Pur sang, do you understand me, enfant? Not to possess the best is unthinkable.” He stroked her cheek.