Kingfisher Tide
Page 16
They spoke again of Flore. Saint-Guy said, "If Marie-Claire can spare any concern for her father's future, I think she can be sure he won't be a widower for long, now she has removed herself."
"You think Flore—?"
He nodded. "I do. I imagine Odet and I have always been in rather delicate balance—his greater wealth against the snob value of my name; my freedom from entanglement against the encumbrance
of Marie-Claire; cork against perfume as a social background. Little enough to choose between us for a woman who has never learned to love. So I think we may hear she is engaged to Odet very soon."
Then with guilt they remembered Marie-Claire, patient and 'gooseberry' in the kitchen. And a few minutes after they had gone together to fetch her, there were sounds of arrival—Sylvie and Blaise.
At which Saint-Guy said, "Tableau, I think—it should save a lot of explanation," and was ready with his arm round Rose when the other two came in.
But Sylvie, full of her own happiness, was blind to everything else. "Oh, Rose, what do you think? Blaise and I— But of course you sent him to find me, so you know, don't you? That he has got a job and we've made it up, and we— !" She broke off as Blaise tweaked her arm and pointed.
"Seems we're not the only ones !" he grinned. "These others too—" And to Saint-Guy, "It worked, mon vieux?"
"It—worked." Adroitly Saint-Guy avoided the pitfall of Sylvie's curiosity as to what had 'worked' by turning Rose to him and kissing her with unmistakable meaning upon the lips. He said to Sylvie, "You see, ma petite, what has been going on beneath your pretty nose ?"
Sylvie stared, open-mouthed. "I don't believe it ! Rose would have told me!"
"So she might, if she had known the kind of magic
she was working on me while she kept me at arm's
length on the far side of her typewriter," he replied.
"You mean you kept her at arm's length. She has
never known how to take you! Besides, I thought—We all did—" But as Sylvie stopped short of the tactlessness of mentioning Flore, Rose said,
"You could say, dear, that we sort of fell in love with each other by remote control and only found it out tonight. But you're glad for me, aren't you? Say you are !"
"Glad ! Oh, Rose, darling, need you ask? But you— ! The Château ! Why, you'll be a Saint-Guy ! I just can't take it in—" Sylvie turned to accuse Blaise, "Did you know about it?" and then Marie-Claire, "Did you ?"
They both denied it, but the question turned everyone's attention to Marie-Claire, and while she told her story to Sylvie and Blaise, Rose thought the moment called for a bottle of wine.
Over it they gaily toasted each other and Marie-Claire's future, and Saint-Guy reminded Sylvie mock-gravely that Blaise must get his sanction to marry her. Then suddenly he was serious with Blaise.
"You are already committed to this job up the Rhône ?" he asked.
Blaise said, "Not completely. I've been given the option of it. But I shall take it. Why?"
"You wouldn't consider an alternative I could offer you ?"
"An alternative?" Blaise's echo was guarded. "What?" -
"A working partnership with a business acquaintance of mine who is opening a motel in an English beauty-spot—the valley of the River Wye, to be exact. I looked into the potentials of the thing while I was last in England, and if you want it, it's yours."
"If I want it !" Blaise exploded. "What do you think? Man— !"
Saint-Guy said drily, "Understood—you accept. But perhaps the point should be—does Sylvie want it too?"
Sylvie's fingers flew doubtfully to her lips. "Do I? It means—England again ? Not staying over here after all? Oh, but Rose will be staying—"
As she looked first at Blaise, then at Rose and back again her inward struggle was almost visible. But though she took Rose's hand in mute appeal for understanding, she said firmly, "Oh, England, please —I can hardly wait !"—deliberately choosing Blaise and snapping the cord of her childish dependence on Rose for ever.
Soon after that Saint-Guy looked at his watch and said, "If I don't keep it very soon, I'm going to be guilty of a broken promise to look in at the Durand wedding-party. What do you say to our all going along to wish Clotilde luck of her day before the day turns it into tomorrow?"
The suggestion being greeted by the girls' acclaim of, "Oh yes, do let's !" and by Blaise's mock-cynical, "Don't you mean—console young Benoit with the news that the trap's jaws will be opening for us too very soon ?" they were ready to set out.
Outside Blaise prepared to lead the little cavalcade in his car. Marie-Claire took her own. But Saint-Guy did not follow at once.
"Odd," he mused, "the queer distorted satisfaction I got from pulling strings for Blaise in England, telling myself I was doing it for you !"
"You mean you believed then that you were
smoothing the way for him to marry me?" suggested Rose.
"Just that—a gesture of love of which you would never know." He smiled. "But as it has turned out, Sylvie seems happy enough to play proxy for you. And you, beloved, you aren't going to regret England too much? It's your own country, after all."
"But France was my mother's, and since I came back I've often thought what a pity it is there's no proper word for 'home' in French."
"No word for—? We have plenty ! What's wrong with logis, foyer, domicile?" he wanted to know.
"They all sound like items on a housing project, that's what. And if you want to say 'Home is where the heart is,' home' is the only possible word to use," declared Rose.
"Ah— ! You are saying, my sweet, that for all its disenchantments, Maurinaire has won your heart?"
Her smile for him was very tender. "Not only Maurmaire. Its tyrant of a seigneur too," she said.