Where Passion Leads (Berkeley-Faulkner #1)(34)

“Rose,” he sighed, doggedly trying to ignore a persistent yearning as he turned from the portrait.

“Reveling in my absence, no doubt. Enjoy it. for I won’t leave you again.”

Rosalie had never dreamed that time could drag so slowly. She did not know why or how everything had changed. All that was obvious to her was that each minute of solitude had once been a treasure. Now she bade the minutes fly, her heart full of impatience, her mind in need of something more stimulating than ink and paper or serene landscapes. The guest list at the inn changed at a laconic pace, and when the colonial girls and their parents left, there were no more prospects of even mildly entertaining conversation. The Lothaire was as quiet as the green, slumbering fields nearby. Safe? Rosalie fumed occasionally, remembering what Rand had said to her. She couldn’t have been safer if he had hidden her in a monastery.

She read over the few books he had brought to France—a few volumes of Shakespeare, some political analyses, an album of poems inscribed in a female hand. It was obvious from the inscription on the inside of the morocco cover that the snatches of sonnets and Byronic verse had been collected for Rand by a former mistress. At some point the giver’s name had been blotted out, whether by accident or intention it was not clear.

One day passed, two days, three days . . . It could not be much longer, could it? She pored over the French newspapers, which came out only three times a week, unlike the English ones, which were printed in daily editions. Taking pity on her boredom, the innkeeper’s wife, Madame Queneau, took Rosalie out on her daily excursion to the marketplace. Shopping began quite early in the morning, and they took a break from purchasing vegetables, ripe fruit, eggs, and meat in order to have breakfast at nine o’clock. As they sat in an open-air cafe and ate pain au chocolat, chocolate-filled bread dusted with sugar, they watched the activities of the inhabitants of Havre. The retail stores, which had opened at six in the morning, were beginning to swarm with customers. The streets were filled with peasantdriven carts, housewives, and housemaids, all engaging in the sharp, fluid bickering of buying and selling. There was even a fortune-teller on the street corner, doing profitable business as a result of the current popularity of Spiritualism.

“You would like to have your fortune told?” Madame Queneau inquired in friendly curiosity, noticing Rosalie’s eyes on the woman. Rosalie laughed and shook her head. Since Madame Queneau could not speak English well, they carried on a conversation entirely in French. For a few minutes it almost seemed to Rosalie that she was speaking to Amille, so familiar were the wise eyes of the older woman and the perfectly intoned language. “No . . . I do not have the money, and even if I did, I don’t believe she knows my future.”

“How can one be certain?” Madame Queneau asked prosaically, her delightfully round face wearing a whimsical expression.

“Because men . . . and women . . . choose their own fate.” Rosalie smiled a little sadly. “Because I have made choices that have changed the direction of my entire life from what it was supposed to be. It was not my original destiny to be here in France, madame, nor to be with . . .” As Rosalie’s voice trailed away to nothing, Madame Queneau’s delicately set wrinkles deepened in curiosity, then lightened in sudden understanding.

“No matter what brought you together, I do not believe monsieur regrets it.”

“I don’t know what he feels,” Rosalie admitted. “It is not easy to read him.”

“This I agree with,” Madame Queneau said, taking a deep sip of cafe au lait. “He does not play the fashionable man.”

It was in style for the French bucks to imitate Byron, to sigh constantly with passion and disappointment, to go about with long hair, pale skin, to hint of longings and of weary souls. Rosalie almost smiled at the thought of Rand compared with them. He had no patience for such affectations.

“Madame . . . I would be frank if it pleases you—” “Certainement! I enjoy frankness most of the time.” “You have not remarked upon my relationship with Monsieur de Berkeley. Do you think very badly of me for the kind of woman I appear to be?”

“Mais, non!” Madame Queneau appeared to be surprised. “Not at all. In France, the aristocrats like him cannot find love in anything besides the kind of arrangement you two have.”

“But even knowing he won’t marry me—” “Here, young men have manages de covenance all the time. After the first year, the husband and wife spend little or no time together. They have different friends, different activities, sometimes different homes. No, your kind of love is respected by most, and cherished, for the human needs are met not in the exchanging of rings, but of hearts.”

Rosalie absorbed the statement in silence, and then she could not resist a question.

“But what of morality?”

“Morality . . .” Madame Queneau mused out loud.”I make a pact with morality, mademoiselle: I never take it to bed with me.”

What she said made sense. But, Rosalie wondered unhappily, is that all I’ll ever be able to expect of love? Am I destined to be the third in a triangle, kept by a man, hated by his wife, sneered at by his friends? She wanted her own husband, her own life . . . but what kind of man would settle for a ruined housemaid?

Five

You have been mine before How long ago I may not know: But just when at that swallow’s soar Your neck turned so, Some veil did fall, —J knew it all of you . . .