“Because I was afraid that I should feel insignificant in Paris. Everything I had heard about it was so overwhelming that I expected just to slip into the corner like a little country mouse and go completely unnoticed.”
“And instead?” he questioned.
“I find myself dining with the most talked-about gentleman in Haute Société,” Yola replied.
She meant to be provocative. She meant, if possible, to needle him a little but, to her surprise, he threw back his head and laughed.
“Marvellous!” he exclaimed. “I am sure you thought all that out in your bath!”
To her annoyance, Yola felt herself flush because that was exactly what she had done.
“Now that you have said your piece,” the Marquis went on, “let me tell you that you are very lovely and it is positively a crime that I am taking you somewhere where for want of a larger audience you will have to shine only for me.”
“You warned me,” Yola replied, “and I suppose if I had insisted you would have taken me to the Café Anglais.”
“There is still time for you to change your mind,” he answered.
She had the feeling that as he spoke he was quite certain that she should not do so and it irritated her to think that he should be so sure of himself.
He was too complacently aware that most women would prefer to be alone with him rather than to receive the plaudits of a crowd.
“Aimée tells me that the food at the Grand Vefour is superlative and actually I am rather hungry,” Yola said.
She turned towards the door as she spoke and she heard him laugh softly behind her as if he was not deceived.
There was a closed carriage waiting outside – there were two men on the box wearing the Montereau livery and again the horses were superb.
It suddenly struck Yola that the Marquis’s way of life must be a very expensive one. In which case, she asked herself, who was paying for it?
Her grandmother had said that the Montereau family was impoverished after the Revolution and she had heard her father say that the Marquis’s father and mother had lived in a frugal way in a small house on the outskirts of Paris.
She was certain that the reason the Marquis had as a boy stayed at Beauharnais Castle was that after his father died his mother was left penniless and her grandfather had been sorry for her.
At The Castle there had been horses to ride and Tutors to teach the boy Marquis, which could not otherwise have been afforded.
So where did this opulence come from now? Yola wondered and thought contemptuously that the Marquis must be financed by the women who loved him.
The idea revolted her and she thought that even to eat a dinner that had been paid for by another woman was too degrading to contemplate.
As if he sensed her sudden stiffness and withdrawal into herself, the Marquis leaned back in a corner of the carriage and regarded her with twinkling eyes.
“What is upsetting you?”
“How do you know there is anything?” Yola enquired coldly.
“You have very expressive eyes,” he answered. “I have always been told that the eyes mirror the soul, but yours reveal your thoughts, your feelings and the impulses of your heart.”
“If you are trying to make me afraid that you are reading my thoughts,” Yola replied, “let me inform you, monsieur, that nevertheless I shall keep my secrets.”
“I refuse to allow you to call me monsieur,” the Marquis retorted. “I am Leo to you, as you are Yola to me. Shall I tell you why?”
“Yes,” Yola replied, trying not to sound curious.
“Because we are starting out on a voyage of discovery,” he answered. “We are going to learn a great deal about each other, you and I, and the first step is to clear the decks of anything that is superfluous or inhibitive.”
Yola looked startled.
It was strange to hear that he should want to find out about her as she did about him.
Then she told herself that it was the sort of flirtatious comment that any man in the Marquis’s position would make to a woman who was dining alone with him.
She only wished she had more experience of other men to judge him by.
Having known so few men and certainly never having dined unchaperoned with one, it was hard, she thought, to determine when the Marquis was speaking the truth and when he was merely using his fabled charm on her in the same way he used it on other women.
The Grand Vefour was certainly conducive to intimacy.
It was very small and the walls and ceiling were painted with the same design of flowers and fruit as they had been when it first opened.
There were only a few red plush sofas in each of the two rooms and they were set so discreetly apart from the other diners that it was impossible for a low-voiced conversation to be overheard.
Yola looked around with delight.
This place was a part of history and she wondered how many of the great persons who had figured in the Revolution had seen their reflections in the mirrors as she could see hers or had eaten a good meal before they went either to their own deaths or to the deaths of their enemies.
The Marquis was obviously a very welcome guest and they were shown with much bowing and scraping to a table in the corner of the room.
Yola was presented with a large hand-written menu, but she merely closed it and said to the Marquis,
“Will you choose for me? I would like, please, to eat one of their specialties.”
It was inevitable that there should be a long discussion about the various dishes and then the wine and Yola waited until the Marquis, having finished, turned sideways to look at her,
“Well?” he asked.
“Well what?” she queried in reply.
“What is your conclusion about me? I have seen in your eyes a variety of expressions, most of them critical.”
“Why should you think I am critical?” Yola parried.
“It is not only what I see but what I feel,” he said. “When we first talked for a brief moment last night, I had the feeling that you were fencing with me.”
Yola looked away across the room so that he would not see the startled expression in her eyes.
“Where I am concerned,” the Marquis went on, “there is really no need for you to say anything. I find that I know what you are thinking and feeling and this intrigues me as I have never before been so intrigued.”
“I don’t – think that is – true,” Yola said, finding it hard to know how to reply.
“It’s a waste of time to protest against something which you know as well as I do is completely true,” the Marquis retorted. “So, I repeat my question of last night – who are you and where do you come from?”
“As you are so perceptive, there should be no need for me to answer you in words,” Yola countered.
“How shall I try to hold a piece of quicksilver in my hand?” the Marquis asked. “But let me tell you this. Before I met you I would have been prepared to wager quite a considerable sum of money that it would be impossible for me not to know within a few hours of her acquaintance a great deal about a woman – any woman.”
He paused before he went on in a lower voice,
“With you it is quite different. There is something I don’t understand, something to which I cannot put a name and yet it is unquestionably there.”
“Then perhaps your ‘voyage of discovery’ will take a little longer than you anticipated.”
“It can take as long as you permit. I am in no hurry.”
“But I am,” Yola answered. “I intend to spend a very short time in Paris.”
“Then you think your problem will soon be answered – to marry, or not to marry?”
“I was almost certain I had the answer before I arrived.”
The Marquis looked at her for a long moment before he said,
“And now you are uncertain, why?”
Because she was afraid that he was being too intuitive, Yola merely shrugged her shoulders and replied,
“Perhaps A
imée has made me envious.”
The Marquis was silent for a moment before he said,
“Could you really contemplate joining les expertes des sciences galantes – les grandes cocottes of Paris, who are undoubtedly one of the showpieces of the City?”
Yola quickly told herself that she must not be insulted by his question or by the fact that his view of Aimée’s position was rather different from how she herself visualised it.
She tried to find words to reply to him, but then she heard him laugh softly to himself as he said,
“I may be wrong, but something tells me that you have no intention of entering the half-world I have spoken about. If this is so, why are you dressed as you are? And why the quite unnecessary crimson on your lips?”
Yola drew in her breath.
She was afraid that the Marquis with his obvious uncanny perception could penetrate her disguise, but then she told herself that such fears were ridiculous.
Even if he suspected that she was not as sophisticated as she was trying to appear, he could have no idea that he was talking to the girl who might in the future become his wife.
“I told you that I was afraid I would appear as a country mouse in the glittering splendour of Paris,” she said.
“Country mice do not look like you!” the Marquis answered. “But, like a little mouse, Yola, you are trying to evade me, to slip away and prevent me from capturing you. Your efforts to escape, let me tell you, will be quite useless.”
Yola was saved from replying, because at that moment the first course he had ordered arrived.
It was delicious, but somehow her hunger had gone and instead she had a strange feeling in her throat that made it hard to swallow.
She drank a little champagne and thought it gave her a gaiety that made their conversation sparkle like the wine itself.
While they were eating, the Marquis made her laugh, but, although he was occasionally scathing about the people he knew, he was also witty with his turns of phrases that would have amused her father.
‘I can understand why Papa liked him,’ she thought. ‘At the same time Papa could not have known that the Marquis had become such a socialite.’
Her father had never cared for City life and had been content to stay at The Castle, except when occasionally he travelled, usually, Yola knew, so that he could be with Madame Renazé. But seeing the Marquis so smartly and meticulously dressed and, knowing that the wit which made her laugh was what endeared him to the people who had applauded him last night, she could not imagine him in the quiet of The Castle.
‘No,’ she thought, ‘here he has his own niche in which he glitters almost as if he was a leading actor upon a stage and he would hate to be overshadowed by The Castle, which through the years has seen a thousand men like him come and go.’
At the same time, she had to admit, although she hated to do so, that he had a fascination that was unmistakable.
When the meal was over and there was only their coffee left in front of them, the Marquis sat back with a glass of brandy in his hand and said,
“Now, let us continue our conversation where we left off. Too much seriousness at mealtimes is conducive to indigestion.”
“I have not come to Paris to be serious,” Yola flashed in reply.
“As you are making a decision that will affect your whole life, nothing could be more serious or more fundamentally important,” the Marquis contradicted. “Tell me about this man – is he in love with you?”
He did not wait for Yola’s reply but added,
“Of course he is! He is wildly, crazily, head-over-heels in love and you are everything that he has ever looked for and longed to find in the woman he would marry.”
There was a note in his voice that made Yola feel that he was being too intimate, but before she could answer, the Marquis went on,
“Are you in love with him?”
Yola shook her head.
“Then there is your answer!”
“Why?”
“Because a marriage without love can be a hell on earth!”
“Most young people in France have their marriages arranged for them,” Yola replied.
“Most women are not as sensitive as you are,” he answered. “Could you really contemplate living with a man if you did not care for him, if he did not mean something very special that no other man could mean?”
“That is what I – thought – myself,” Yola said, almost as if the words were forced from her. “At the same time, what is the – alternative?”
“Not what you are pretending to contemplate,” the Marquis replied sharply. “You should wait until you fall in love.”
“And suppose that never happens? After all, it’s only in story books that there is the inevitable happy ending.”
The Marquis reached out and took her hand.
“Shall I tell your fortune?” he asked. “Shall I tell you that you are like the Sleeping Beauty, unawakened, unaware as yet of what love can mean? One day you will know and then you will realise that nothing else in the whole world is of any consequence.”
Yola was so startled at the serious way the Marquis was speaking that she stared at him. Then, as his eyes held hers, she hastily glanced away, afraid of what he might read in her expression.
With a tremendous effort she forced herself to say,
“How do you know that I have not – already been in – love – or am not – in love at this – moment?”
“You could not deceive me,” the Marquis replied.
“I am not trying to do so. I am merely saying that you are assuming a great many things I am not prepared to agree with.”
“Look at me, Yola.”
She wanted to refuse, but somehow without her conscious volition she found herself looking into his eyes and his face was close to hers.
“I could swear,” he said very quickly, “swear on everything that I hold holy that you have not only never been in love but that no man has ever touched you.”
His words were a shock to Yola and she felt her fingers quiver as he still held her hand in his and it was impossible to prevent the colour from rising into her pale cheeks.
“I knew I was not mistaken,” the Marquis asserted and there was a note of triumph in his voice.
Yola snatched her hand away from his.
“I think it is time we left.”
“Of course,” the Marquis agreed.
He called for the bill. Then, as he put over her shoulders the green velvet wrap that matched her gown, he asked,
“Where would you like to go?”
She was just about to reply that she did not know, when a man came from the inner room and walked towards their table.
As he reached them, she looked up and realised that it was the Prince Napoleon.
“Mademoiselle Lefleur,” he said, “I am enchanted to see you again.”
He kissed her hand and then said to the Marquis,
“I might have guessed, Leo, that you would be one step ahead of me. In fact, I asked the adorable Aimée last night if Mademoiselle was free to dine with me, but she said that she was engaged.”
The Prince threw out his hands with a theatrical gesture.
“Leo – it is always Leo!” he turned to Yola. “One night I, or some other frustrated gentleman, will drown him in the Seine!”
“Could you be so cruel?” Yola asked.
“To him? Certainly!” the Prince replied. “To you? Never!”
“We were just leaving,” the Marquis said.
“Then I will tell you what I will do,” the Prince suggested. “I will take you both to a party being given by a friend of mine. It will amuse Mademoiselle Lefleur and, of course, Leo, she will be exceedingly pleased to welcome you.”
“Who are you talking about?” the Marquis enquired.
“Who else but the entrancing La Païva?” the Prince replied.
Despite herself Yola stiffened.
She had learnt from the girls at school, the names of the fam
ous courtesans of Paris and she knew that La Païva was the most important of them all.
Her jewels were described and acclaimed in every newspaper and her house in the Champs Élysées, which had been built by her millionaire German lover, was so fantastic that the reporters almost ran out of superlatives to describe it.
Yola had read of La Païva’s solid onyx bath with its sculptured gilt taps set with jewels.
Yola knew of the opulent glory in which she appeared at Longchamps races, at first nights and at the opera and that her box in the Théâtre des Italiens faced the Imperial Box.
Whatever else was left unrecorded in the French newspapers, La Païva had columns written about her day after day, week after week, and in this year of the International Exhibition more than one writer had asked who in fact could be more magnificent and more entrancingly Parisian than La Païva.
At the same time Yola was well aware that La Païva symbolised the demi-mondaines, of whom Madame Renazé and Aimée had spoken so scathing As Madame had said, both she and Aimée were a true second wife to a man and they would not soil their lips with that ordinary name which described La Païva and her type.
Yola was about to tell the Prince that she had no intention of going to a party given by such a woman, but the Marquis said it for her.
“Your Imperial Highness is very gracious,” he replied, “and I thank you, sir, for thinking of us, but unfortunately Mademoiselle and I have a previous engagement.”
“You have?” the Prince enquired. “Where?”
“With some friends, sir, who are expecting us after dinner. We have promised to join them and we would not wish them to be disappointed.”
The Prince gave a shrug of his shoulders as if he accepted defeat and then he said,
“If they don’t keep you late, come and join me, even if only for half an hour.”
He did not wait for the Marquis’s reply, but took Yola’s hand in both of his and said,
“I want you to come. I want to see you again and there is so much I want to say to you.”
He was speaking in a manner which no one, however young or innocent, could misunderstand and, as Yola looked at him uncertainly, the Prince said softly,
“Last night I lost my heart. You cannot be so cruel as not to allow me to tell you about it.”
64 The Castle Made for Love Page 9