The Last Dress from Paris(60)
Alice feels her breath still.
“I knew he was dead the second he hit the ground. It was going so fast. It was like I watched the life be knocked out of him. My perfect brother who had conquered so much was lying lifeless in the road, an impossible tangle of limbs.”
He leans an elbow against the mantelpiece, needing the support.
“He looked so pale, Alice, and so still . . . but he was still smiling.”
Alice raises a hand to Antoine’s chest and lets it sit there. After a moment, he places his hand over hers and holds it to his heart.
“When he returned from the war, he never spoke of the things he’d seen, other than to say he had no regrets about going, that he felt he had done his duty and learned skills he never would have in the classroom. He planned to go straight back to school, to graduate and specialize in surgery. He wanted to help people. He was going to get married.”
“It was a horrible accident, Antoine, how can you possibly believe it was your fault?” More than anything, Alice wants to make him see it wasn’t.
“I’ll never forget the look on my father’s face that night. The sense of irony that the one son who might have been some use in this situation was the one lying broken on the ground. In the seconds that counted most, I cried over his body. I didn’t know what else to do. I’m not sure my father ever recovered from telling Estelle. To this day I have no idea if he told her that Thomas had planned to propose. But honestly, all I cared about was that I had lost my brother, my champion. In a split second his life was gone. It was only later I realized that with it, I’d lost any chance I stood of my parents ever being content with the son they still had. It’s why I finally agreed to enroll in the politics course.”
“How did that help?”
“It hasn’t, but at the time it was the one sacrifice I could make that I thought might bring them some comfort. It was the only form of an apology I could think of. That I would try every day to be the son they wanted, even though it went against all my own wishes. Now it just feels like an insult to them—and Thomas—to pretend I ever could. Being reminded of my failure to make them proud, in every look, every sigh, every slump of their shoulders, feels like an eternal grief I’ll never overcome.”
“Have you told them any of this, Antoine?”
“No, I’ve never discussed it with anyone, until you.” He places a light kiss on the palm of Alice’s hand. “I feel closer to him every time I pick up a pencil. Your reaction to my sketches is the only thing that has come close to the way he encouraged me.”
“I think you are very brave, far more than you give yourself credit for. I hope one day your parents will see that too. Thank you for trusting me.”
“Thank you for understanding.” He seems visibly lighter now after talking about Thomas. “Let’s have a glass of wine.”
He grabs the bottle from the bedside table and a couple of glasses from the windowsill by his desk. Then he is standing in front of her, handing her the glass, and she can see the urgency there in his face again. Isn’t this exactly what she wanted? To be taken out of her world?
“I want to undress you.”
Alice feels her heart rate immediately spike. The nerves shudder up her legs, and she instinctively raises the glass to her lips, saying nothing.
He allows her to take two large mouthfuls of the red wine before he takes the glass from her hand and places both of them on the mantelpiece. Then he pushes the fur from her shoulders and allows it to drop to the floor. Turning her so she is facing the fire, he traces his fingers across her smooth skin, sweeping across her collarbone, and allowing his fingers to dip just beneath the bodice. Her back is to him, but their bodies are so close they feel joined. He unties the stiff navy ribbon that is fixed at her waist, and Alice can feel the dress give a little next to her skin. She knows the number of buttons and hooks that run down the back of this dress and how far he will get before it falls from her body. She knows how naked she is underneath, just a pair of blush silk knickers edged in soft satin that sit low beneath her hip bones, and her Dior heels. Nothing else. With every unfastening that his fingers expertly make, she allows her head to collapse backward onto him, a feeling of total surrender swimming through her.
“My God. You are even more beautiful than I believed.”
And it’s as if every touch, every kiss from this point on is designed to right that fault. She can feel how much he wants to please her. How important it is. As he lays her gently down onto her fur, there isn’t an inch of her body that he doesn’t explore. And every second he’s connected to her scorches every doubt she ever had. Alice doesn’t care what he does to her or what the consequences might be; she couldn’t stop him now even if she wanted to.
She’s lost.
15
Lucille
THURSDAY
PARIS
It came to me on the journey back to the hotel from Bettina last night, where I had seen the carousel from the Jardin du Luxembourg before.
It’s an image that accompanied a thousand of my bedtime stories at Granny’s house. The first and last thing I saw as a child when she lifted the storybook from her bedside table and replaced it back there twenty minutes later as my eyelids were heavy and closing. The dog-eared and weathered postcard, its glossy image detaching from the paper behind it, that she used as a bookmark. It was always the same, whatever book she was reading to me. Some nights Granddad would join us, sit on the end of the bed while she read. I don’t think it mattered to him that it was the Famous Five or The Wind in the Willows, it was just another opportunity to be in her company. He’d gently prod her if she nodded off, exhausted from running around after an eight-year-old all weekend while Mum worked again. He knew she’d insist on finishing the story. I bet if I look through the pile of books that sit on her ottoman at home by the fire, that bookmark will be there somewhere. All these years later.