Second Chance Sister

by Linda Kepner

  “Yes, President Lanthier.”

  “Who told him if he could snag Bishou Howard for his staff, do it. He suggested, too, that you might be willing to move into Administration, that you thought like an administrator, and had helped him a great deal.”

  Louis laughed heartily. He told them about the tobacco genetics bet he had made with other World Tobacco Conference attendees in Virginia. Bat, who had not heard this tale, grinned broadly as Louis described setting up Bishou for a talk about phenotypes and genotypes, and the thousands of dollars she netted for the college scholarship fund. Bishou blushed, while the Prefect roared with laughter.

  “My dear girl, don’t be embarrassed while these men sing your praises. A husband who brags about you, and the President of your last educational institution advising us to hang on to you! You are a fortunate woman.” The Prefect glanced at Bat. “And your twin as well. I am ahead of the game. I don’t think the others have met your twin brother, or even know you have one.”

  “Most of the time, we are on opposite sides of the world,” said Bat.

  “And still, you are sympathetique, n’est-ce pas?”

  “Well, somewhat,” said Bishou. Hard to explain, on the spot, that they weren’t birth-twins, they just thought alike.

  “We have worked well together,” said Bat. “Now it’s Louis’s turn.”

  Louis shook his head. “Non, non, Sergeant-Major, I never take your place, I merely supplement it.”

  “We’ll see in five years,” Bat said agreeably.

  “Sergeant-major,” said the Ambassador alertly. “Marines?”

  “Veteran, sir,” said Bat. “Vietnam.”

  “And you won’t be staying here. Reserves?”

  “No, sir, retired. My family needed me.”

  “Hm,” said the Ambassador, in a tone sounding suspiciously like “we’ll see.” A Marine who spoke native French, Bishou reflected, would be a desirable acquisition.

  Mme. Masson returned with Nadine, who asked Bishou to stand up and show off her dress. Bishou obliged, while the two women talked fabrics and styles. Something about her dress, Bishou wasn’t exactly sure what, was cutting-edge fashion. Bishou modeled, while other women came over to join the fashion group.

  Then there were presents to unwrap. Bishou kept Louis’s photograph near her. Bettina and Madeleine got the unwrapped gifts indoors, for later sorting and thanks.

  Bishou realized in surprise that the caterers were beginning to pack up, and the sun was setting. The Prefect and his guests took their leave. Bat gathered up the boys and left for Rue Calaincourt. Other guests said their goodbyes and also left.

  Denise and Etien were the last to go. Louis shook his friend’s hand. “Much different this time, eh, mon ami?”

  “Much different,” Etien confirmed, clapping Louis’s shoulder. “Great happiness to you both.” He kissed Bishou. Denise kissed them both. Then they, too, left.

  The caterers were taking down the last of the tablecloths, and folding up the tables and chairs. Louis took his wife’s hand and entered the house.

  The brandy and a few little silver things were in the living room. Most likely, the rest were back in the kitchen and pantry area, at least until tomorrow. There was room to sit down. Bishou moved to enter the room, but Louis caught her arm.

  “Let’s go upstairs,” he said, in a husky voice.

  “All right,” she answered docilely. She was conscious of him behind her as she climbed the first flight of stairs, then the second. He reached past her to open the door of their bedroom. The taste of champagne stayed with Bishou. They had their own little bathroom, just like the room below; quickly she rinsed away the champagne taste.

  Louis turned on the lamp near the bed and closed the door. He opened a wardrobe door and nodded approvingly at his clothes. Bishou unpinned her hat and set it on top of her armoire, and turned to watch him pull out his nightclothes, conventional husbandly pajamas.

  “Don’t wear the pajama top,” she suggested.

  Louis glanced at her. “As you wish.” He removed his black-and-whites, hanging them up in the wardrobe. He flashed a quick smile at her. “You cannot unhook that by yourself, can you?”

  “Probably, if I struggle with it.”

  “Don’t struggle. I will unhook it. Give me a moment to change and wash up.”

  Bishou moved to the window. The view here was pleasant. Long shadows fell across the land as evening arrived. The full moon, too, had risen.

  “Now. Come here,” said Louis.

  Bishou came and turned her back to him. He unhooked the dress and slid it up over her head. He tossed it on the bedroom chair. Immediately, he unhooked her brassiere as well, and tossed it with the dress. Then he sat on the bed and drew her toward him.

  Bishou felt her pulse race and her breath change as he kissed her breasts and stomach. She made a small noise.

  “What do you say?” he prompted, in a low voice.

  “Ah, oui,” she gasped, and he smiled.

  It was the beginning of a night of loving and learning. Louis knew exactly what he wanted, and what she should feel. He proved beyond doubt that he had been the husband of an extremely sexually advanced woman, and that she had taught him well. He turned Bishou inside-out. He taught her what sounds to make, how to move her body, what to say and do, as they made love. The fireworks did not diminish. He moaned and whispered in her ear. He kissed and bit her body. Bishou had never felt anything like this. She couldn’t have imagined it.

  Finally, both were satisfied. She gasped when their bodies separated and Louis slid over beside her. “Sleep, ma femme,” he said softly.

  “Oui, mon mari,” she responded, and closed her eyes.

  Chapter 8

  The sun shone on Bishou’s face and woke her up. She felt Louis’s hand on her chest before she opened her eyes. Louis was lying beside her, also naked, a sheet covering his hips and hers. He was propped on his right elbow, looking down at her. His left hand stroked a line down the middle of her chest. He wore his new wedding band on his ring finger, but also her class ring with the blue stone on his smallest finger.

  Bishou heard the horn of the Mauritius Pride in the distance. “Mm. The ferry. I am so used to hearing that every morning, now.”

  “That is a sound of Île de La Réunion,” he murmured, smiling. “You are réunionnaise, Madame.” He stroked her. “I am sorry I was a little — rough on you last night. I was fou d’amour.” Mad with love.

  “I would have wondered if you weren’t, mon mari,” Bishou replied.

  Louis did not laugh. His half-smile remained. He’s peaceful, she realized. He’s contented.

  “Are you happy, mon amour?” she asked him gently.

  “Oui. A little afraid to be so happy.”

  Bishou smiled in understanding. “Because it cannot possibly last?” He was silent; his fingers stroked a line down her chest and stomach again and again.

  At last Louis said, “I watched you sleep, and thought, how can I even bear to leave this room?”

  “We will leave it together,” she replied. “When you go to work, I will be here when you get home, or you will know where to find me. Always. I promise.”

  Louis bent down to kiss her lips, realizing that she understood his fear of desertion. Carola, the false wife, ditched him when she got her name on the bank accounts, and left with his fortune. Bishou returned his kisses. They lay in the bed, holding and stroking each other.

  Louis murmured, “It is Saturday. No work awaits us. We have the day to waste as we wish.”

  “I know,” she said. He smiled and kissed her again.

  • • •

  Bishou took a leisurely bath in the tub downstairs, while Louis slept in bed. He started his penance, too, for the packet the priest had given him was open on the bed when she came back up a flight to dress. He examined its contents.

  The sun shone in the balcony window, lighting up the bedroom. While Bishou brushed her hair at the bureau, she turned to regard her
husband, still in bed. He lay on his stomach, propped up on his elbows to read the little book. His chest, back and arms were bare, his shoulder muscles very visible at this angle. The cotton bedspread covered him from the hips down. My God, she thought, what a beautiful man. To think that Carola wasted this.

  “Hm?” His head turned as she sat on the edge of the bed.

  She slid the bedspread down to bare his back and hips. Bishou reached for the oil. “Lie down.” He obeyed, looking a little wary. She poured a little of the oil from Mama Jo on her hands, and rubbed it into the smooth, warm skin of his back.

  Louis closed his eyes and half-moaned, half-sighed. “That feels so good.”

  “It does to me, too, to my hands.”

  He said nothing. There was a smile on his lips. Yes, he was seductive.

  She kissed his neck. Softly, he said her name. “Oui?” she said equally softly.

  “What are you doing to me?” he murmured.

  “Stroking you. You have a beautiful body.” She still spoke softly in his ear, then kissed his neck and shoulders.

  “Ah, oui,” he sighed in pleasure.

  “Ah, oui?”

  “Ah, oui, ma femme.”

  She rubbed oil into his lower back, his hips, then along his inner leg. He was startled by her touch. He rolled onto his back, naked, and reached out to her.

  “Viens.”

  She slipped off her robe and lay down. He wrapped her in his arms. They kissed and kissed. This was her siren, her man to pet and love. She abandoned any plans she might have made for the day, just to love him.

  Bishou fell asleep, and woke hungry. Her movement, still in his arms, woke him. “Hm?”

  “We need breakfast. Or lunch. Or, at this rate, dinner.”

  “I suppose so.” Louis stroked her and sighed. “But I don’t want to leave this island. It’s peaceful.”

  Bishou understood that he meant the island of this bed, but she replied, “It is your island.”

  Louis smiled at the reference to Dessant Cigarettes, and sat up. She changed into day clothes as he did. They climbed downstairs, knowing their footsteps would be heard in the kitchen.

  Sure enough, Bettina and Madeleine were quickly setting the table as they reached the bottom floor. “You have more warning, you two, with us on the top floor,” Louis joked.

  “Oui, but it is your honeymoon,” the women replied, laughing, “take as long as you like, Madame et Monsieur.”

  “Our honeymoon. It is, isn’t it?” Bishou mused, seating herself and pouring coffee for Louis, as the women went back into the kitchen for the food. “Strange. I had been so focused on the wedding, I hadn’t even thought about the honeymoon.”

  “Even though I gave you that nightgown, and you bought sexy underwear?” Louis’s brown eyes twinkled over the top of his coffee cup.

  “Even though.”

  “On dit, they say, that honeymoons started out when a man seized a woman and carried her away from her family, then only fed her drugged honey for a month. Until she submitted willingly, or was carrying a child.”

  “Look.” Bishou glanced at the coffee setting. “Honey. Do you want some in your coffee?”

  “Oh, get away,” Louis chuckled. “And I am already drugged, to feel this good.”

  “Well — if this is our honeymoon — ” she began tentatively.

  “Oui?”

  “A ride on the coast road? That fisherman’s café again?”

  “A blanket in the grass?” he bargained in return. “You in a sundress?”

  “We’re guaranteed to run into the tour bus.”

  “Or Bat,” Louis sighed. “I took him to that café. He said no wonder you liked it. You are twins, a year notwithstanding. Twins in thought and action.”

  “Pretty obvious, isn’t it?” she agreed. “But that just makes him easy to please. We know what to expect.”

  “He needs a woman,” said Louis.

  “I know. He’ll find one. Heaven knows who, or how, but Bat is resourceful.”

  “So are you.” Louis paused. “He told me about the letter you sent him. Last spring. I don’t think he expected to see tears in my eyes — because there were tears in his, too. Two grown men, sitting in a café, talking about a letter that wasn’t even a love letter. A list of all the reasons why you dare not love me.” He lifted her hand and kissed it.

  “A real waste of ink, wasn’t it?” Bishou said softly. “Bat knew at once that I’d fallen in love.”

  Gently, Louis kissed her hand again. “With a man growling at larves de tabac.”

  “With a working, thinking man who also happened to be very attractive — and a bit of a mystery,” Bishou admitted.

  “Am I still a mystery?”

  “Parts of you.”

  Louis smiled, and stroked her hand. “And, of course, you are not.”

  “I’m pretty straightforward, I guess.” They released hands to return to the coffee. Bettina reappeared with food. “I think I’d be afraid to keep a secret from you, Louis.”

  “How do you mean? Because of Carola?”

  There was a clack as Bettina recovered a dish she almost dropped. How could she help but overhear such things discussed in this house?

  “Oui, because of Carola. I know you said you don’t like surprises. Now I know why. It will be difficult even getting you a Christmas present. You would be in a sweat of fear that I was buying a secret ticket to Japan.”

  Louis laughed. Without meaning to, Bettina giggled, too. Bishou turned and clasped her hand for just a moment. Bettina squeezed it, and went back to the kitchen.

  Louis had seen the hand-clasp, and said, “I’m glad you get along well with my domestiques. Don’t try to keep secrets from them, either. And as for me — there may be things I forget to tell you, but I promise you, no secrets.”

  She nodded. “At least, no unpleasant ones.”

  • • •

  Louis and Bishou went for a drive, along the coast road. As he drove, Louis asked her, “Are you all right?”

  “Me? Yes, I’m fine.”

  “You don’t hurt, ma Bishou?”

  “Well, un peu. Mama Jo gave me cream she said I would need. It is soothing. She also gave me the massage oil I used on your back.”

  “They say Mama Jo is a witch-woman.”

  “Maybe she is. Maybe we need one.”

  Louis grinned. “You sound so réunionnais.”

  “My husband is réunionnais. I follow him.”

  The expression on his face changed. Louis drove in silence for some time. Then he asked, “Are you ready for church tomorrow?”

  “Why not?”

  “Does it bother you that I am a convicted felon?”

  Bishou glanced at him in surprise. “Louis! Did you think this was news to me? I seem to recall reading a newspaper article about you.” Now there was an understatement. That inflammatory Paris Gazette article had started all of this, in Virginia.

  “Non, non. That is not what I meant.”

  “What did you mean, then?”

  Louis pulled the car over on a grassy inland margin, shut off the engine, and turned to her. “I meant — I have lost many privileges. I cannot vote or partake in local politics. I cannot travel without permission. I can’t even touch a gun. I must pay a lawyer to sign legal papers for the business, or ask Etien to do it alone. And — when articles like that Gazette one, about my fall, are reprinted — I pay for my crimes all over again.”

  “Louis.” Bishou shook her head. “Neither of us can change that. It is part of being Louis Dessant. I am sorry that it bothers you. But I know that the Prefect also sees that it bothers you, and that you are contrite. Père Reynaud now knows, too. You learned from your mistakes, and now you value your friends and acquaintances more. Very few friends complain about being valued. And the réunionnaises I meet consider you part of them. Some of them have made some bad mistakes, too.”

  Louis smiled at the turn of phrase, aware that she must have heard it from someone acqu
ainted with prison. “And you are willing to take me as I am.”

  “Why not? You were willing to take me as I am.”

  “Oh, no,” he said. “I have done my best to make you into my wife and mistress.”

  “Well, are you not my husband and master?”

  Louis shook his head. “You are a modern Americaine. A female leader. A role model for female students. And yet you kneel to me? Can you blame me for wondering why?”

  Bishou gazed at him for a long moment. Then, quietly, she asked, “Is that what you see first when you look at me?”

  Suddenly, Louis smiled. “Non. That is what I see on the second look. The first is a beautiful woman who miraculously loves me.”

  Bishou slid over and put her arms around his neck. “What I see is a man who miraculously allows me to love him.” She kissed him.

  After the kiss, he observed, “Carola used to kiss me to divert me from whatever question or doubt I had. You, Bishou — you use a kiss to seal the deal, don’t you?”

  Bishou chuckled. “I never really thought of it like that.”

  “I must get used to this — a kiss that means ‘I promise,’ not ‘Don’t pay attention to that other thing.’ Because I still ask myself what is being sneaked by me.” Louis sighed. “I cannot trust everything you do, and I am trying so hard. I am sorry.”

  “Louis, that’s like a burn victim saying ‘Please excuse my bandages,’” Bishou protested, stroking his neck and throat. “Of course you are cautious. If you were not cautious, I would wonder if you had any brains at all. Don’t stop asking because you’re afraid of hurting my feelings. Remember, I grew up with boys. My feelings don’t get bruised easily.”

  “And I know you say less rather than more, when we are in company,” he admitted.

  “That’s the academic world. It’s small and gossipy. I think La Réunion is the same — and also, you were born here. You’re family.” She kissed him again. “You know how I look at the people around someone, and judge from their reactions. The people of La Réunion were happy to take you back, and they are proud of your business. Riding the buses, I have never heard one harsh word about you or Etien, even before anyone knew I came here to see you. That’s a tremendous testimonial.”