Page 79 of Frankly, My Dear

“No, no, no. I can see what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong. James has told me on numerous occasions how unattractive he finds me, how unwomanly and shrewish my speech is, how…how I’m just a bother to him. And, besides, I’m not blonde.”

Mrs. Baptiste laughed, a soft tinkling sound of delight. “Blonde? Oh, my dear, blonde? But, oui, I can see how you would think that. Giselle was blonde, and—”

“Giselle was blonde?” Selene interrupted, her heart sinking further.

“You didn’t know?”

“No, I’ve just noticed that James’s eyes always home in on blondes, no matter where he is. Haven’t you heard about the blonde jokes I keep telling him?”

“Blonde jokes? Non.” She slanted Selene a look of mischief then, tapping her hand with her folded fan. “But I demand you tell me one. Now.”

Despite her misgivings, Selene asked, “What does a blonde call her pet zebra?”

“What?”

“Spot.”

It took a moment for Mrs. Baptiste to understand the joke. Then she laughed merrily, clapping her hands together in glee. “A riddle. Now I see.”

“How does a blonde kill a bird?”

Mrs. Baptiste frowned with concentration. “How?”

“She throws it off a cliff.”

Smiling girlishly, Mrs. Baptiste demanded, “Another.”

“Well, this one is rather risqué.”

“So?”

“What’s the difference between a blonde and the Grand Old Duke of York?”

“What?”

“The Grand Old Duke only had ten thousand men.”

Mrs. Baptiste giggled behind her hand. “Oh, that was scandalous, but so deliciously wicked. Of course, I understand your point completely. Jean-Paul’s wife is blonde, you know,” she confided with a grimace. Taking a final sip of her coffee, she pushed the cup and saucer away. “You are amazing, my child. No wonder I have been hearing so much merriment about the plantation since your arrival. Non, I do not think my son will be able to let you go so soon.”

Before Selene could answer, Mrs. Baptiste, looking suddenly tired, rang a small bell on the table. When Iris came in, she told her she wanted to return to her rooms. Then she patted Selene’s hand. “You will come to visit me tomorrow and we will continue our conversation. Perhaps we can have tea after our therapy group…that is what you called it, is it not?”

Selene groaned inwardly. The therapy thing again! “Oh, no, Mrs. Baptiste. I don’t think it would be wise for me, an unprofessional, to conduct counseling sessions. Absolutely not. Now, the tea, that would be nice, but no way on the group therapy. No way.”

Mrs. Baptiste and Iris just smiled, blocking out her protests with their silence. Wincing, Selene accepted the fact that she had somehow maneuvered herself into not only providing aerobics instructions on a nineteenth-century Southern plantation, but into becoming a psychologist, as well.

What was her world coming to?

And did she really want to know?

Selene took a bath after dinner and brought a book up from the library to read in her bedroom. She hadn’t read Jane Eyre since high school.

Sitting in a wingback chair next to a table, Selene soon realized why people in this century went to bed so early. Even with a many-branched candelabra, the lighting was abysmal.

The grandfather clock chimed nine o’clock before Selene heard James finally come up from the kitchen where he must have grabbed a bite to eat from the tray Blossom had left for him. Soon she heard water splashing into the tub, the sounds of bathing, and then the rustling sounds of clothing being donned again. Once she heard a swear word when James presumably knocked over the stool.

She waited, her book lying in her lap, her heart thudding wildly as his steps took him past her room. Instead of going to his bedchamber in the front, however, she heard him go back downstairs. By the direction of the footsteps, it sounded as if he’d entered the library.

Should she stay in her room, or should she go down and talk to James?