There was nothing she could do to prevent Teresa from marrying a man she barely knew in a religious ceremony in front of her entire family with Princess Grace gloriously, unbelievably, conferring her unspoken blessing on the whole hasty, misbegotten procedure. But Teresa wasn’t going to be allowed to have absolutely everything she wanted. Someone would be missing, someone whose absence would be noted. Maggie wasn’t going to be part of this … this … sacrilege.
12
Promise me it’s over,” Tessa demanded faintly, out of her haze of exhaustion as she and Luke drove up the Moyenne Corniche on their way to Luke’s farmhouse just below the high-perched town of Èze-Village, where they were going to spend their honeymoon. “Promise me we never have to do that again.”
Luke glanced at her profile. Tessa’s splendid head was thrown back on the leather seat. Her eyes were closed, and the faint mauve shadows that he could glimpse on the tender skin under her lower lashes were infinitely touching. Her lips, so ardently, alluringly prominent, were parted slightly in fatigue. Only Tessa’s flashing waves of hair, liberated from their elaborate wedding updo and taken by the wind, still seemed to possess any spirit. In the light of the approaching sunset, he thought he could see an occasional red glint in the darkness of its strands.
“Not unless you insist on repeating our vows on our tenth anniversary,” he answered her tenderly. “In which case I’d have to agree. Of course I’d try to talk you out of it. I’ll say ‘paparazzi’ over and over again until you’ve changed your mind.”
“You’d just have to say it once,” Tessa sighed, thinking of the outrageous mobs of photographers and journalists who had only been held in check by Monaco’s formidable police force. “We should have eloped, Princess Grace or no Princess Grace. I’ve learned my lesson. Never let anyone give you a wedding no matter how generous she is. No, make that, especially if she’s generous. I couldn’t have taken one more minute of being a bride. Is a person supposed to enjoy her own wedding?”
“Oh, I shouldn’t think so, darling, I’ve never heard of anyone who did.”
“Then why did we do it?”
“It’s a rite of passage or something.”
Or something, Tessa silently agreed. Something she should have had the imagination and good sense to have avoided. And most of it was her fault. The wedding itself, this morning, had been a dreamlike blaze of white: clustered garlands of white flowers spilling down from large baskets suspended under dozens of splendid crystal chandeliers, high banks of white flowers and tall white candles at the altar. Her progress down the center aisle of the vast stone cathedral had seemed like a promenade in a garden, a slow, proud promenade toward her beloved. Oh, the wedding was a dream and the only details she could remember about it were the times she’d peeked at Luke’s face as he knelt on his prie-dieu during the ceremony and the joyful strength of his voice when he answered that he took Teresa for his lawful wife, according to the rite of their Holy Mother the Church.
If she hadn’t had the idea of inviting all her family, every last aunt, uncle, and cousin, maybe the three days preceding the wedding might have been delightful. Maybe they could have been just a question of being responsive to everybody, of thanking people over and over again for their good wishes, unconcerned about what they were really thinking or feeling—since brides only had to be suitably bridal to fulfill their role. But no, she’d been greedy, she’d wanted them all to witness her happiness, and that’s where she’d gone so very wrong.
It had never occurred to her that her relatives would feel utterly out of place from the minute they arrived in the Principality of Monaco. Her concept of family gatherings were those of a child or a teenager, memories of a relaxed clan of giggling, gossipy, warm-hearted women and beer-drinking, joking men, all good-natured and feeling at home in their skins. But during the entire time in Monaco they’d been on their best behavior, as stiff as if they’d been stuffed, wretchedly self-conscious in their obviously new clothes, afraid to make any kind of gaffe, and solemn and careful of speech in a manner more suitable to a funeral than to a wedding.
They’d all but turned to stone in the presence of the prince and princess at the rehearsal dinner Luke had given at the International Sporting Club; they’d danced so sedately at the wedding luncheon in the palace itself that it was hard to remember them pulling up the rugs at home and showing off their prowess. They hadn’t even dared to have one glass too many of the champagne. She and Luke and even Princess Grace had worked hard to jolly them up, but it was her own small Hollywood contingent and Luke’s executives and their wives, almost all of them Australian and not burdened with awestruck preoccupation with the icon of Grace Kelly, who managed to rescue the rehearsal dinner and wedding reception and provide some suitable note of joie de vivre.
And even the wedding lunch wasn’t the worst of it, Tessa reflected, too frazzled to open her eyes and look at one of the world’s most thrilling views of the Mediterranean as Luke drove skillfully up the steep, twisting mountain road to Èze. The single worst thing of all was the way her aunts had treated her mother. It had started when her parents had arrived without Maggie, on a different plane than the one that had brought the rest of the family. Maybe if little Maggie, sick at home, had been there, too, her humanity would have made her aunts realize that their sister Agnes had not been transformed into the Queen Mother.
Much of Tessa’s time had been spent at the Hôtel de Paris with her mother and her aunts, and it had grown more and more painful to watch the … reverence, there was no other word … with which her mother’s sisters surrounded her. Her mother had been elevated beyond any sisterly relationship.
Agnes Horvath had become the closest thing to a Grace Kelly that the Riley family possessed, and oh, how her mother had rubbed it in. She’d taken every chance to glorify herself, to position herself on a different level from the others, to indicate in a dozen ways, both verbally and with her dignified body language, that she was, quite simply, better than they were. More successful, more sophisticated, and infinitely more blessed, not by God, but by her own hand, her own will, her own vision. She had somehow, over the years, caused this entire event to take place, she was responsible for this grandness-beyond-anyone’s-dreams. She, Agnes Horvath, was the center of the wedding as far as her sisters were concerned.
She wouldn’t have begrudged her mother a second of her glory, Tessa thought, if she hadn’t known how she really felt. Luke, in the unenviable position of a man who was marrying a much younger bride, had made a special effort with her parents, and she could see her father taking his measure and judging her choice a wise one, in the same dry, suspicious way he had finally approved of her agent and her business manager. Her mother had not so much warmed up to Luke as she had cooled down from the anger of their phone conversation. He was different from what she had expected, so unpretentious, so charming and friendly, so attentive to her, that Agnes had finally whispered to Tessa, “Well, I must say I can see why you made this foolish, hasty decision.” Those words were as close to a blessing as she was likely to ever receive from her mother, Tessa realized.
As for her cousins, the very same cousins she used to have so much fun with, they hadn’t managed to feel any comfort with her, Tessa realized. It wasn’t as if they treated her as someone who was better than they were, it was as if she had become so different from anybody they could possibly have a conversation with that there was absolutely no common ground, no way to be human together.
And all their little children! The ones she’d so grandly insisted on including—was that the way kids acted now? Constant squabbles, whining, teasing, talking back to their parents, showing no signs of manners?
There had been too many occasions when she’d been ashamed of her family, Tessa admitted to herself, ashamed of having been ashamed.
She’d always been the petted baby of the family, but now her cousins and their spouses and their children looked at her with eyes big with wonder and awe and too much admiration to be com
fortable for them and certainly for her.
Is that what winning an Oscar did to you, she wondered? Did it happen in the families of everybody who’d won? Or was it because of Princess Grace giving the wedding? Or was it her engagement ring, which none of the women would try on, no matter how much she tried to get them to? Was it the visible difference between the Teresa they’d known when she was fourteen, before she’d moved to California, and the way she looked now, six years later, Tessa Kent grown up, after all, and the product of the constant polishing process that is professionally imposed on any working actress?
Families, she thought, families. They remained the same in your mind, but you yourself weren’t allowed to change more than some predetermined amount or you didn’t belong to them anymore. They cast you out once you’d left their unspoken but clearly defined frame of reference, once you’d gone too far up or too far down.
Yet, on the other land, Tessa reflected, Tyler and Madison Webster had taken her in with ease and pleasure, delighted to see Luke so happy. Luke’s stepbrother and his wife, a handsome young couple from Essex County in the New Jersey hunt country, had been the only guests at the wedding who’d been perfectly natural with everybody, from her father to Prince Rainier, from a shy wife of one of Luke’s executives to the youngest of her badly behaved second cousins. They had the kind of bred-in-the-bone manners that were unobtrusively the same for one and all.
Of all the guests who’d known her before she’d started making films, Mimi alone had remained herself, as devilish and free-spirited as ever, totally unaffected by Agnes’s darting looks of incredulous disgust at her presence. Fiona, heaven-sent Fiona, was bossily preoccupied with the amazing number of details that accompanied the wedding dress and her own maid-of-honor dress (which she and Tessa had purchased at Harrods’ Wedding Salon on a flying trip to London), as well as everything else Fiona had, in obvious delight, deemed necessary for her trousseau. Mimi, unimpressed by Fiona’s earnestness, waltzed around in Tessa’s suite wearing nothing but the green diamond, lace bikini underpants, and high heels. She was as irrepressible as ever, relating scandalous gossip about the post-school adventures of their classmates at Sacred Heart, detailing the pros and cons of her long train of boyfriends at college, demanding that Luke provide her with an Aussie exactly like him, ordering improbable things at improbable hours from room service just to prove that it could be done—only Mimi, and Tessa’s small group of Hollywood guests, had the fun that she’d wanted them all to have.
Oh well, her intentions had been good, Tessa told herself. She felt the solid wedge of tension between her shoulders begin to disappear as the wedding memories stopped occupying her mind. She could feel the light of the late-afternoon sun grow dimmer on her eyelids. Maybe … maybe, she’d just take a little nap until Luke stopped the car … they should be there soon …
Tessa woke up slowly, with the feeling she normally associated with a particularly good night’s sleep. Oh, she thought, without opening her eyes, why weren’t naps more appreciated? A nap was the only form of sleep that didn’t have any concept of duty attached to it. A nap wasn’t something you “needed” or “shouldn’t miss” or “had to have” to perform the following day. It was a divine treat, a brief blessing, in which you had no dreams but only a deep, luscious blankness that wiped away whatever had been bothering you before you fell into it. Churchill took naps, she remembered, every day. Would she become like him if she followed his example, or would she have to add brandy and the cigars to the mix? She must ask Luke, he knew things like that. Luke!
She sat up abruptly. She was still wearing the dress she’d put on after the reception, and there was a warm quilt covering her, but she seemed to have been napping right in the middle of a large bed in a room she’d never seen before. Luke must have carried her in from the car. There were heavy beams overhead and arched windows were cut into the thick stone walls. Tessa hurried over to the nearest window and looked out. A long field of still unharvested lavender, its spiky, concentric clusters planted in strict rows; olive trees; cypress trees; vines that crept around the outside of the window—nothing unexpected for a farmhouse in Provence. Not if you ignored the color of the light … light the clear color of dawn, not of sunset.
I must have slept at least thirteen hours, maybe more, Tessa thought, wrapping the quilt around her shoulders, and my God I need to pee more than I need to find my bridegroom.
Fortunately the first door she opened was that of a perfectly appointed bathroom. After her urgent quest had been satisfied, Tessa discovered that her cosmetics bag had been placed, unopened, by the side of the sink. She hastily splashed her face with water, brushed her teeth, took off her crushed dress, and decided to take a quick shower since there was no sight or sound of Luke in the bedroom.
Once she had had her shower, she realized that traces of makeup were still on her face. She removed it expertly, brushed her hair until it fairly stood up and saluted, and, looking in the mirror, pronounced herself ready to meet the day. Now, all she needed was something to wear and a husband, in that order. She searched the closets for her suitcases without success. Wrapped in a large bath towel big enough to fasten into a sarong, Tessa opened the other door in the room and almost fell over Luke. He lay there, fully clothed, like the faithful bodyguard of some paranoid empress, sleeping on a runner in the corridor, huddled in a nest of pillows and covered by another quilt.
She knelt by his side and scratched the back of his hand gently. He slept on. She kissed his earlobe lingeringly. Nothing. She pulled gently and then less gently on various short tufts of his hair. His breathing didn’t even change. Tessa sat back on her heels and contemplated the sleeping man. He might as well be in a coma. She didn’t want to shock him awake, but on the other hand she didn’t want him to keep on sleeping now that she was up. Who knew when he’d fallen asleep? He could have been up half the night keeping watch over her before he’d mysteriously chosen to settle on the floor. But if she allowed him to keep on sleeping now, they’d be out of sync; one of them would always be sleeping when the other was awake, and that was no way to begin a marriage. Anyway, she was chilly in the morning air.
With determination Tessa removed her towel and crept under the quilt stark naked. At first it was enough just to be warm again. A man who could be counted on for body heat, was Luke Blake, she thought, light-headed at being naked next to a sleeping man. Surely he’d feel that she was there and wake up … wouldn’t a person know when someone had joined him under his quilt? Some bodyguard he’d make … a troop of rape-minded Cossacks could have stepped over him in the night, and it had been, officially, her wedding night, at that.
Tessa indignantly unbuttoned Luke’s shirt. At least he’d taken off his tie in the car, so she didn’t have to deal with that. She put her head next to his chest and puffed all over it, thinking to wake him with her breath. Luke slept on. Tessa reflected. She could poke him in the ribs, she could tickle him under his arms—but she didn’t know if he was ticklish. She could shake him, but he was too big to shake. Or she could unbuckle his belt. Yes, that would be the next logical thing to do, now that she had his shirt open. It would give her a wider field of operation. She unbuckled his belt easily and unzipped his fly easily, considering that she’d never done either of those things before except on a pair of her own jeans. Luke rolled his head away from her, but otherwise there was no change in his sleep. Tessa followed the line of hair on his chest down past his waistline, pulling firmly on it at every step. Wouldn’t you think that if somebody pulled your stomach hair, you’d wake up? She certainly would, but there was no hair on her stomach.
Eventually her exploring fingers found a thicker growth of wiry hair and Tessa stopped abruptly. You couldn’t, you simply couldn’t pull a man’s pubic hair. That must come under the heading of things not done. Particularly with a man whose penis you’d never seen. But, on the other hand, an unseen penis was not in the same category as pubic hair. It was a definite invitation. An irresistible invitat
ion, which came under the heading of things you could investigate if you were so inclined. Squirming until she could reach lower, Tessa took Luke’s penis in her hand and cuddled it, without moving. It felt … friendly, she thought, not at all frightening, like a soft, warm, agreeable, oddly shaped little animal, a sort of household pet. A pet with potential, a pet more responsive than its owner, since he continued to sleep while his penis showed signs of acknowledging her touch. Fascinated, she continued to hold it as it grew larger and longer and harder, losing its pet qualities by the second, although it still, to her way of thinking, remained definitely friendly. Soon it was so big that the only way she could take its measure was to move her hand up and down its length. It had all sort of interesting parts and subdivisions to it, she thought, breathlessly. It would reward further exploration.
“Hey! What the hell!”
So that was the secret of waking him up.
“You were sleeping,” she said accusingly, not letting go, in case he thought this was a particularly vivid dream.
“Stop that!”
“Aren’t you supposed to like it?”
“I do, but let go!”
Reluctantly, Tessa abandoned her discovery and raised her head to a level with Luke’s. “Good morning,” she said demurely.
He snorted with laughter at her tone. “What convent did they teach you that in?”
“I was merely following my natural instincts.”
“Oh, darling,” he said, covering her face with kisses, “I hate to repress your instincts, but not on this floor.”
“What are you doing out here, anyway?”
“I brought you in from the car and put you in the middle of the bed because I was afraid that if you woke up on the side of a mattress in a strange bed you’d fall off, trying to find out where you were. Then, when you didn’t wake up for hours, I didn’t want to move you, because obviously you needed the sleep. I thought about going to sleep on the rug next to the bed, but I was afraid you’d wake up in the middle on the night and fall over me in the dark. So this seemed like the best place to wait, where you’d find me when you woke.”
The Jewels of Tessa Kent Page 13