Chapter 4
From the moment Valeska Dubois stepped through the door to her Parisian townhouse, she was in full-blown Queen Marie Antoinette mode. Or at least liable to get her head chopped off if any of the French servants decided to revolt against her.
Yet she had an amicable relationship with them, especially the ones who could speak English. Because nothing sent Valeska over the edge faster than returning from her thrice-weekly French tutoring only to be lost when her servants spoke to her in their native language.
Three years of intensive French tutoring and I still don’t know shit. Valeska stared blankly at the head maid Celeste, a thirty-something woman with enough proper training to work in the main Dubois manor. But Valeska’s mother-in-law had “gifted” the servant as a first anniversary present, citing Valeska’s need to have more ladylike friends her age.
Did she send a German-speaking servant? Nooooo. Of course not.
“This arrangement is all wrong,” Valeska announced as she swept through the dining room. “You know André hates irises. Get rid of it. Everything must be perfect before he gets home.”
Celeste relayed the orders in French to the rest of the staff. A young man darted out of the townhouse to get a new floral arrangement from the neighborhood florist. I hate being such a queen bitch, but today is such a big day… André was coming home from his business trip to Melbourne. The other side of the fucking world! It wasn’t bad enough the man often traveled all around Europe. He often stopped in Asia, Oceania, and the damned Americas. That’s what Valeska signed up for when she married the only son of one of France’s biggest investment families. The Dubois clan would never make international news for their antics, but they were hotshots in the banking and insurance worlds. When André wasn’t in Hong Kong overseeing a CEO’s assets, he was in New York City inspecting the vaults at Tiffany’s. His trips were often slammed back to back. It wasn’t unusual for two weeks to go by before Valeska saw her husband again.
He sent her letters, though. Oh, and he called her, of course, but the letters were from another universe.
The latest one awaited her on her desk in the master suite. Celeste had kindly placed it in a conspicuous spot and placed one of Valeska’s favorite Swiss chocolates next to it. Such a ritual of eating chocolate and perusing her husband’s French letters would have to wait today, however. Not only could Valeska barely make out a damned thing her husband wrote on the stationary, but she had to get ready for their intimate dinner that night.
It was their second anniversary. André had originally planned to be home from Melbourne the day before so they could go to the opera and dinner for their anniversary, but a storm had kept them grounded in Australia. Only now was the private Dubois plane landing at the airport outside of Paris.
André would be too tired to do anything but have a nice dinner at home, but Valeska would make sure it was the nicest dinner he ever fucking had, complete with the best champagne reserves and a live violinist playing in the other room. She didn’t want anyone else in the dining room while they ate and caught up. Because there was much to discuss.
The grace period was over.
For two years Valeska had acclimated to the title of Madame Dubois. She had moved to Paris full-time, although she took monthly trips to her family’s Austrian estates. She managed André’s home and attempted to cultivate a social life worthy of a Parisian lady. Except Valeska had never managed to fit in with the local gossip queens and their snobbery. Every stereotype about the French – especially the wealthy Parisians – was true, as far as her humble Austrian viewpoint was concerned. They often chastised her rough, Germanic accent and her inability to latch onto any Romance language. Those who deigned to be seen with her only did so because of the Dubois name. The closest thing Valeska had to a friend was Celeste and country-based madams who liked to make fun of the Parisian mentality.
Nothing lambasted her anxiety more than knowing her husband continued to fancy other women, however.
André was a terrible romantic, and while that extended to his wife, it did not bring her comfort when he openly flirted with other women in front of her. Parisians told her that was the French way, but could a young wife who was infatuated with her handsome husband truly feel comfortable with him kissing prettier women on the cheek and whispering whatever the fuck he always said into their ears?
The grace period is over tonight. He’ll want to open our marriage. I know it.
He probably was already having covetous affairs around the globe. The man spent so much time abroad, that he could have ten girlfriends and Valeska would never be the wiser. They could be escorts for all she knew. Guess I’ll find out if I ever get a STD. She slammed her makeup down on her vanity and tried to not give herself a stroke with these anxious thoughts.
“Madame!” Celeste cried from the hallway. “Monsieur Dubois has arrived!”
Valeska hurried to finish her makeup and readjust the dress she bought for their anniversary dinner – a midnight lavender wrap-dress with enough cosmic sparkles to remind any man of the night they married. Maybe, if I look my best every time he comes home, I will remind him that I am the best woman for him. She kept an impeccable home and had never embarrassed his family – accented gaffes aside. To her credit, André’s mother always played them off as part of her Germanic charm. A novelty, as opposed to a liability.
“Tres délicieux!” Valeska steeled herself on the staircase the moment she heard her husband’s voice in the dining room. The aroma of venison and rosemary potatoes filled the air. Their personal chef had outdone himself yet again. “Merci beucoup, Celeste.”
Valeska couldn’t understand what else her husband said to the maid. Celeste smiled at her mistress before leaving the married pair in the dining room. When Valeska reached her husband, it was with the usual level of unrestrained desire she usually felt around him.
For all the passion he showed other people, André gave her double. That much Valeska could admit.
“Ah!” She was dipped over a dining chair and kissed with the last of a travel-haggard man’s strength. Valeska popped up again only to brace herself against the chair. Her hair had become mussed in the process. “Welcome home?”
“I must be home, because my beautiful wife is here.”
His English was better than usual. Not strange, considering he had spent a week in Melbourne. Before that? I think it was Tokyo. André didn’t speak a word of Japanese, so they must’ve conversed in English. The man spoke so much English for his work that it wasn’t difficult for him to switch to it around his wife. Which, unfortunately, did not help her French practice. Thus far, the only sizable amount of French Valeska fluently learned were basic commands to the servants and how to announce how hard she was about to come during sex.
“Why are you blushing? Is it hot in Paris recently?”
Valeska couldn’t bear to look her husband in the face after that. She insisted they sit down and have dinner, which gave André plenty of time to regale her with tales of his trip and present her with the souvenir he procured in Melbourne.
“It’s kangaroo jerky,” he announced, placing the small bag in his wife’s hand. The venison had barely begun to cool when another stack of meat came into her life. “I sampled it. Delicious. You’ll love it.”
“Danke.” Valeska handed it to Celeste the next time she entered the room with more drinks. “I hope you enjoy the dinner. I planned it for our anniversary.”
André lifted his glass of champagne for a toast. “Oui, oui, to two happy years.”
Valeska paused before clinking her glass against his. “Have they been happy for you?”
“Of course?” André removed his suit jacket. His dress shirt was wrinkled from travel, and his tie askew, but he looked as handsome as the day of their wedding. Valeska could no longer count how many times she had seen her husband naked, but every time he kissed her – clothes on or off – she felt like a silly girl again. Damn her for catching feelings in an arranged marriage. It was going to make his insistence that they open things up to other lovers all the more unbearable. “I am a happy man. Good home, good career, and a great wife. Why? Are you not happy, Madame Dubois?”
Valeska picked at her dinner. Not even the seasoned vegetables called to her, and they were usually her favorite. “Yes. I am mostly happy. Especially when you are home.”
André had to look at her twice. “I’m so sorry. I am not home enough. I must work hard for my family.”
“I know.”
“My father doesn’t understand that I need to be home with my wife. I tell him that we are still getting to know each other, but he doesn’t understand why it’s important. He acts like you are a… how do you say… ornament.”
Valeska didn’t respond. She knew what her place in the family was, as far as the Dubois clan was concerned. Her in-laws saw her as a home-minder and grandchildren handler first and foremost. The primary Madame Dubois, when she stopped in to visit with Valeska a week ago, did not hold back her opinion that it was time for her daughter-in-law to be with child. “You young women have so many medications these days, but you should stop taking them. If you need money for treatments, ask. It is not shameful.” Valeska had never been so embarrassed around her mother-in-law before.
The sad thing? She wanted children. Sometimes it was all she could think about, especially when she sat in her lonely townhouse, unable to understand a single thing her servants said. Did she want to have a child with André if their marriage went in a direction she couldn’t bear?
“I hope you don’t think I am a mere ornament.”
“Non, bien sur que non.”
Valeska was pretty sure that meant Of course not!
“Why? Do I make you feel that you are not beyond a mere ornament?”
It was too difficult to look at him. Valeska would rather stare at her venison and the half-drunk champagne that begged her to finish it. “I worry…”
André leaned in closer, his gentle knuckles brushing her hair from her cheek. Why do you have to be so considerate when I worry? It only served to make that tear really fall. “Why do you worry? Is it something wrong with Paris? Because I am gone so much?”
“Many things, I suppose.” This was not how Valeska wanted to celebrate their two years of marriage. I wanted food and romance. Even better if we could have both at the same time. “French is so difficult for me to understand. My accent is not better even after moving to Paris.”
“Who says? I have noticed incredible improvement. I can’t tell you apart from a Parisian woman.”
“You’re just saying that.”
“Ah, well…” André didn’t try to hide his embarrassment. “It has improved. Don’t think it hasn’t.” He wrapped his arm around the back of her chair. “I have an idea. For one of my gifts to you, I will hire you a German lady-in-waiting. Like a real princess deserves.”
Valeska blushed again. “Oh, stop. Celeste is more than capable of helping me run this house.”
“I don’t mean a maid. I mean a professional friend, because a princess should have her court.”
“That’s so…” Romantically archaic? That sounded weird to say in English. There was a perfectly good German word, but it was ten syllables long and would go right over André’s blond head. “I cannot ask you to do that.”
“Even better. Tomorrow, you will call your mother in Vienna and tell her to recommend you some suitable colleagues. We will fly the best candidate out here to live with you while I am gone. My wife will not be alienated while I am gone.”
“André…” Valeska wouldn’t disagree that it sounded like a wonderful idea, but it was so excessive! What kind of sensitive girl was she if she needed a lady-in-waiting? Even if they cut costs by claiming it would be a good experience for a young Austrian woman looking to become more cultured, it sounded like the kind of thing that would raise her in-laws’ ire.
“I worry too, Leska.” Where did this serious tone come from? He shouldn’t sound so serious on their anniversary, let alone after traveling for so long! “If my wife is so lonely while I am gone that she runs out of thoughts about me, then my heart is black.”
“What?”
“Ah… forget I said anything.”
André had such a faraway look on his countenance that Valeska likewise retreated into her own thoughts. Maybe he’s not with other women… maybe he really does love me… They had exchanged I love yous many times since marrying, but how was Valeska to know if they were real or hollow?
“Besides!” André’s hand was on her thigh, inching up beneath her skirt and testing the heat of her skin. It’s the first time he’s truly touched me in weeks. Has he been as true as I have been? “Perhaps we find a nice Austrian woman who can also be a nanny, non?”
“A nanny?”
“Yes, it is what I will tell my mother. We have hired an Austrian nanny whom is also your companion. To help you raise our children.”
Valeska finally raised her eyes to meet her husband’s gaze. “I suppose that’s one of many things we should discuss two years into our marriage.”
“You want les enfants, oui?”
Damnit! If Valeska didn’t stop blushing, she would embarrass herself beyond what was acceptable in these situations!
André pulled his hand out of her skirt and snatched her fingers off the table. “Two years means the grace period is fin. You and I, we will start a new phase of our marriage.”
“I thought grace period meant we would be exclusive and then discuss otherwise.”
André’s eyes widened. “You say that you want to have another man?”
“No! Why? Are there… other women?”
His hand tightened around hers. “When I think of the best woman to have a marriage and children with, I still think of Madame Dubois.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do not say things I do not mean.”
“You want to have children with me?”
“I want to have children and make you the happiest Madame Dubois in the history of my family. We can trace our lineage back to the 1400s, you know. That is many happy Dubois.”
“If you really want to make me happy, you could try being home a little more often.”
“I will speak with my father. If he knows that we are trying to have children and that I need to be a good father myself, maybe he will be more lenient on my duties. He will understand. There are duties to a wife, he always says.”
“Does he?”
“When he’s drunk on wine, he tells me that my number one duty as a husband is to make money. The second one is to make you come.”
“André!”
“I think I am lacking at number two because I am gone so much. Even though I call you and try to have fun half a world away.”
“I can’t understand you on the phone when you speak French!”
“I am such a bad tutor. How can my wife know that I want to make love on the phone if she cannot understand me?”
“How can you be so forward?”
“I am only so forward with my wife.”
That was one of those phrases that would haunt Valeska for years to come, but that night, on the second anniversary of her marriage to André Dubois, she found it so terribly romantic that she cut their dinner short and allowed her husband to take her upstairs for the rest of the evening. They ate their dessert of tiramisu near midnight, when they were naked in bed and André teased her that she should pick a homely female companion, so she would not be tempted to bed her when he was away.
“I think you want to imagine it, but I am not like that,” she chided.
He lightly tapped her bare skin with the dessert fork they shared. “I will do my best to not be away so much that you become that way. I want my wife to myself.”
While the tantalizing touch of sharp metal against her skin infused her with more energy, Valeska placed her hand against her husband’s naked chest and said, “I want my husband too. For me only, yes?”
“More reasons for me to come home more often. My wife is so wonderful that I must make love to her every day.”
“Every day?”
“For now I will say it’s because we will make a baby. Later, I will say it’s because I am addicted to you.”
“You’re not already?”
He grinned. “You should read my letters, Madame Dubois.”
***
This is it. No turning back…
Luckily, Valeska did not have to suffer from a last-minute bout of anxiety before she and her husband reached the point of no return. André had timed his thrusts and the moment of his climax to include his wife’s own orgasmic escape. She would not be able to think about a damn thing – besides how wonderful it felt, of course – as he came inside of her.
That’s how it usually ended, but this time was different. Not only had Valeska stopped taking her birth control a week ago, but according to the calendar, she was ovulating. While it was no guarantee that conception would occur within the next few days, she had been anticipating this night with anxious dread.
There. That was it. No turning back. Good thing her orgasm had eased her nerves so well that she was nothing but smiles and sighs when her husband kissed her and continued to gently thrust his hips against thighs.
“You didn’t say it,” his tired voice said into her ear.
Valeska almost forgot what he meant. “Je jouis,” she muttered.
“Close enough.” He chuckled into the crook of her neck. “I think it’s nice when you say it in German too.”
“Do I?”
“Often.”
He offered one last kiss before pulling out. Valeska was content to lay in their bed and think of nothing but pleasant things, but her husband had done too much reading into purposeful pregnancies on his last business trip and decided to help his wife “concentrate” on more important matters.
“What are you…” Valeska gripped the headboard behind her and bit her bottom lip. There was something delightfully dirty about her husband shoving his fingers inside of her after having just marked his marital territory. “We have words for this fetish in German.”
“I’m sure it sounds very silly. Lift your hips, Madame Dubois.”
What was this, yoga class? Valeska played along, but only because she adored that mischievous glint in her husband’s eyes. “What else did you read in that book of yours?”
“Dr. Plant assured me that my wife’s orgasmic state would make conception more likely to occur. Would you like another one?”
“Another what? Biscuit?”
“No crumbs in the bed, please.”
Valeska often wondered if they could say such silly things in either German or French. Or did English simply lend itself to such pillow talk? “Is this going to be every time we have sex from now on?”
“Why? Do you hate it?”
What? Hate having multiple orgasms before shoving her hips up in the air and feeling her husband shove every finger he could into her pussy so none of his seed escaped? Well, they had done weirder things, honestly.
As it turned out, they only needed to do such nonsense for the next few weeks, until Valeska returned from the doctor with the good news… and a whole new set of anxieties her mother never prepared her for.