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“I’ve already told you I was sorry,” snapped Martine Muret. “What more do you want?”
“I want you to behave responsibly, to show some consideration for my feelings, Lucie’s feelings, instead of thinking only of yourself.” He wasn’t really shouting, but his voice was cold and hard and carried clearly. “Do you realize what can happen to a child, alone at night? Do you?”
“Of course I do,” she shot back. “What do you think, Armand, that I wasn’t worried myself? That I wasn’t sick with fear when I realized she was missing? Is that what you think?”
“I think you were too occupied with other things to notice she was gone. Which one was it, this time?” he asked her. “The German or the Englishman? Or have you grown bored with them already, and found someone else?”
“I don’t see that my private life is any of your business.”
“When it affects my daughter, it’s my business. My God, Martine, what were you thinking of? We buried him today, or have you forgotten this?”
A silence followed, stung by the echo of those words. “I forget nothing,” said Martine, at last, in a calm and quiet voice. “And how dare you judge my feelings, Armand. What do you know of love?”
I heard her cross the foyer and start up the staircase, her footsteps treading lightly over my head. Still, I waited until those footsteps were completely out of earshot, until I’d heard the click of Armand Valcourt’s cigarette lighter, before I decided it was safe to emerge.
He was standing at the foot of the stairs, his expression quite relaxed and natural. Only the jerking movement of the hand that held the cigarette betrayed his anger. By the time I reached him, even that small action had been brought under control. His eyes, on mine, were normal. “Ready?” he asked me. “Yes? Then let us go.” And handing me my jacket, he ushered me out into the waiting night.
Chapter 10
…the Graces, group’d in threes,
Enring’d a billowing fountain…
He drove a Porsche. That didn’t surprise me overmuch—the flashy red sports car rather suited him—but it did set me wondering. If Armand Valcourt owned a car, why had he taken a taxi from the station yesterday morning? Come to think of it, why had he taken the train? I only wondered for a moment, then I asked him.
He shrugged. “I always take the train when I go to Paris. Martine might need the car, you see, if there were some emergency with Lucie. And anyway, I’d be a fool to drive the Porsche in Paris.” He shot a sideways glance at me. “Why the smile?”
“Was I smiling? Sorry. It’s only that I used to live in Paris, so I understand completely. My father once backed into a Mercedes. The owner wasn’t very… understanding.”
Armand laughed. “No, I don’t suppose he would have been.” I felt again the flashing glance. “How long were you in Paris?”
“Five years. But it was ages ago. I was only twelve when we left.”
He smiled and swung the Porsche round the hairpin bend that plunged toward the river. “I had wondered,” he confided, “where you learned to speak your French.”
It took a minute for his words to hit their mark. I’d spoken French to little Lucie, when I’d first approached her in the fountain square, and then… well, I suppose I’d simply gone on speaking it. In all the confusion, I hadn’t really noticed. I shrugged now, suddenly self-conscious. “My father’s in the foreign service,” I explained. “He wanted me to have a second language.”
“You have one. Your French is very beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
He didn’t ask me what I did for a living, but then the French didn’t ask such things, as a rule. It was considered impolite, a means of pigeonholing people be
fore one really got to know them. Since the Revolution, everyone was meant to be equal anyway. Almost equal, I amended, leaning back against the glove-soft leather of the Porsche.
Armand Valcourt had missed the Revolution. There was a certain feudal gallantry about the way he dropped me at my hotel door, coming round to help me out of the car as if I were royalty. His handshake lingered, by design, and his smile was deliberately charming. “You have your key?” he asked me.
“Yes.” I rummaged for it in my handbag, pushing aside a stiff white card with printing on it. “Oh,” I said. I’d quite forgotten, in all the confusion, about my mysterious invitation to taste wine at the Clos des Cloches. “This was from you, then, I presume?” I held it up to show him. “It was left for me this morning.”
“Was it?” The charming smile broadened, refusing to take responsibility.
“Yes.”
“Ah. That is very curious, you know, because we don’t give tours this time of year.” Taking the card from my hand, he assumed a mock-serious expression. “Still, it appears quite genuine. I am sure,” he said, as he gave it back, “that we would honor it.”
“So you did send it, then.”
His dark eyes held a deep amusement. “Well, if I did, I could have saved myself the trouble.”
