Chapter Twenty-five
“You’re trembling. Are you cold?”
“A little.”
Xavier shrugs out of his jacket and wraps it around my shoulders before I can answer. We had dinner with the mayor, his wife, and their family—a lovely, convivial gathering under a wisteria-covered pergola in the garden—and now we are walking back to our suite.
I am not cold. I am terrified. My anxieties about our wedding night started during the marriage toast, when the mayor dropped a small piece of toast into a double-handled glass filled with champagne, an ancient French custom symbolizing health and fertility, and wished us a home filled with laughter and the happy patter of many little feet.
The unnaturally fast pace and out-of-sequence order of our courtship means we haven’t had the usual progression. We haven’t had time to ease into each other; we are jumping in, feetfirst, without testing the waters.
By the time Xavier slips the key to our suite into the lock, I am a bundle of nerves in an expensive, borrowed vintage gown and high heels.
“After you, ma bichette,” he says, pushing the door open and standing back.
The scent of melted wax and fresh flowers greets me the moment I step over the threshold into the sitting room. The room is aglow with the light of dozens of candles. A bottle of champagne and a massive bouquet of flowers have been positioned on a table near the balcony. A fire is crackling and hissing in the log fireplace. Through the open bedroom doors I spy a trail of oleander petals strewn over the floor and bed.
Xavier follows me into the room, closing the door behind him with a decisive click. I jump at the sound. Xavier comes up behind me. His hands on my hips. His lips against my ear.
“Finally,” he murmurs, his voice low and thick with desire. “I have wanted to be back in this room, just the two of us, since the moment I saw you walk onto the terrace, looking so beautiful in your gown I thought I would die if I didn’t take you in my arms and make you mine.”
I let my head fall back, resting it against his solid shoulder. I wish I could match his ease, but I am a novice when it comes to seduction, a trembling, terrified novice. He pulls his jacket off my shoulders and it falls in a pool of expensive fabric at my feet. My legs shake and I have to grab Xavier’s wrists so I don’t fall.
“Don’t be afraid, ma bichette,” he whispers, turning me in his arms, looking deep into my eyes. “I would sooner die than hurt you.”
He kisses me and then takes my hand, leading me to the sofa facing the fire. I sit, stiff as a Carolina reed, while Xavier walks over to the table and pulls the wine bottle out of the silver bucket. He opens the bottle with a nerve-rattling pop and fills two glasses with light pink liquid. He carries the glasses over to me.
“Rosé”—he hands me a glass–“because champagne gives mon amour a headache.”
“Thank you,” I say, taking the glass.
He sits beside me and we sip our wine in the orange light of the fire. We don’t talk. We don’t touch. We just sip our wine and savor the heady effects of our desire for each other. I am certain he can feel it, taste it, my desire for him.
I drain the contents of my wineglass and set the empty vessel on the table in front of us. I am not a drinker, so the glass of rosé—my third of the evening—has transported me to a warm, safe place. I am not intoxicated, but I am skating on the edge of coherency. Aware of my surroundings, but happily disconnected. I kick my heels off and rest my head on the back of the couch, closing my eyes and stretching my legs. It doesn’t take long before I am floating on a warm sea, soft, sensual waves washing over my body. I am floating, floating, floating away from all cares, all fears.
I am vaguely aware of Xavier lifting me in his arms, carrying me. I open my eyes and see his handsome face, his angled jaw that makes me want to run my finger over it, feel the stubbly beard on my skin, those unreadable blue eyes that make me want to dive into them, again and again, until I solve the mystery hidden in their depths.
“I love you, Xavier,” I say, speaking from my heart, my throat clogging with emotion. “I know it is too soon for me to say it, but I do. I love you so much my heart hurts when I look at you because I don’t think you love me half as much as I love you.”
“Merci.” He bends his head and presses his lips to mine. “That is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
We are on the bed, sinking into the mattress, surrounded by oleander blossoms. Xavier is on top of me, kissing me, touching me, grinding the proof of his arousal against my thigh.
“Make love to me, Xavier. Please, make love to me. I want to be yours.”
“You are mine,” he says, kissing my lips, nibbling my neck, biting my shoulder. “Till death us do part.”
The hiss of a zipper. Silky fabric moving lightly against my skin like a whisper. The taste of strawberries and currants dipped in honey on his lips, tongue, on my mouth, tongue. The scent of citrusy cologne and heated skin. The sound of his heavy breathing against my breast, neck.
“Mon Dieu,” he growls against my lips. “I have never wanted someone as much as I want you right now.”
“Prove it,” I gasp, emboldened by my desire and the wine. “Make love to me. Now.”
A pained moan. Mine or his?
Lacy fabric scratching my thighs, calves. Cool air blowing over my breasts, teasing my hardened nipples, coaxing goosebumps on my legs. Buttons being unbuttoned, zipper unzipped. Fabric tearing. The warmth of Xavier’s naked body pressing me into the mattress.
“Look at me, ma bichette.”
I open my eyes and a swell of emotion has me biting my lip, blinking back tears. Xavier pushes into me, his long, thick member parting my gentle folds, pushing deep, deeper inside me, claiming my soul as his rightful possession.
I am Manderley Grace de Maloret.
Madame de Maloret.
Truly loved and claimed by Girard Fortune Xavier de Maloret. I float along on the current of drugged desire until the motion becomes overwhelming, the feelings aroused too powerful, and then the compulsion to move, to touch, to taste, is too strong to ignore. I arch my back, move my hips around and around, thrusting, inviting him deeper, deeper into me.
I blink until the fog of desire clears enough for me to make out shapes: the carved wooden poles of the four-poster bed, the angels frolicking on the ceiling over our heads, the small indentation of Xavier’s throat, the splinters of silver radiating from his pupils.
He notices me watching him and groans, thrusting his hips harder, pushing deeper into me. I wrap my legs around his lean waist and squeeze. He slides his hand under my bottom, cupping my cheek, lifting me against him.
The clumsiness, the awkwardness I felt when we stepped into the suite is a distant memory, barely recognizable traits of the woman I was before I became Manderley de Maloret. Madame de Maloret.
Xavier looks into my eyes and my heart aches with emotions I can’t articulate. He tenses. A fine sheen of perspiration covers his skin. He grows thicker, harder inside me. I cry out. He groans, convulses inside me, thrusts one last time, and then collapses on top me, heaving, drawing jagged breaths against my ear, murmuring incomprehensible words in French.
Finally, when I feel my lungs incapable of inflating enough to draw life-sustaining breath, Xavier rolls off of me and we lie side by side, staring up at the Pietro Liberi fresco.
Xavier pulls me closer and I rest my head on his shoulder. We lie together, our breath syncopated, our limbs entwined so that I cannot tell where my body begins and Xavier’s ends.
“Thank you for the oleander blossoms,” I say, holding one of the bruised petals to my nose, inhaling the sweet scent.
“You said they were the scent of heaven.” He kisses my forehead. “I want you to feel as if you are in heaven when you are with me.”
“Xavier?” I say, curling against his side. “Why do you call me bichette?”
He pulls the blanket over us and kisses my forehead.
“Do you remember the first time we met? You looked so frightened, so hunted, it stirred in me a fierce desire to protect you.” He holds me tighter. “Then, when I learned you had an equally protective nature, I thought you reminded me of a doe, a wide-eyed, graceful doe.”
I close my eyes and press my hand to the place on his chest where his heart is thudding, thudding, thudding. The strong, empowered woman in me should rebel against the notion of a man wanting to protect me, but the soft, slightly wounded girl who just lost her father yearns to be held close and shielded from life’s sharper edges.
I look at the small crescent-shaped scar barely visible beneath the stubble on his jaw and my heart swells. I trace the white mark with my fingertip.
“How did you get this scar?”
He chuckles. “You don’t really want to hear about that, do you?”
“Yes, I do.”
Xavier’s voice rumbling in his chest reminds me of summer nights I spent sleeping on our porch, listening to distant thunder rolling over the dunes. I close my eyes and listen as he tells me about being ten years old and standing on the deck of his father’s sailboat, the salty spray on his cheeks, and the sun on his head.
“My father and uncles went sailing every other Saturday from May until September. This was the first time they let me join them and I wanted to show them all, but especially my father, that I could be a capable deckhand.” He presses his hand against the small of my back, making slow, lazy circles with his thumb, lost in his memories. “My father called out, but I wasn’t paying proper attention. The boom swung around, cracked against my skull, and I woke up in the car on the way to the hospital. I was so ashamed, I bit my lip when the doctor was stitching my face. Didn’t shed a single tear.”
“Your father must have been proud of your courage.”
“If he was, he never said. My father didn’t share his feelings freely. He believed emotions were best kept secured in a cask, somewhere deep inside. He would say Boys feel, men act. Crying about a crack to the skull was pointless. It was more important I should learn not to repeat the same mistake that caused the crack in the first place. ”
Boys feel, men act. I remember Xavier’s response when I told him I was leaving Cannes early. He didn’t take me in his arms and tell me how sad he was that our love affair was ending sooner than we had hoped, nor did he smother my face with kisses while declaring his consuming love for me. He took action by asking me to marry him.
How much we reveal about ourselves, our inner workings and motivations, just in sharing a single memory.
It suddenly occurs to me this man lying next to me, this wonderful, complex, naked man holding me in his arms, was once another woman’s husband.
Marine.
Did he tell her he loved her when he asked her to marry him? Did he get down on one knee and proclaim his passion for her, vow that he would die if she didn’t agree to become his wife? Or did he keep his feelings for her as tightly secured as he has kept his feelings for me?
Crying is pointless. It is more important that you should learn not to make the same mistake.that you
Did he grow up with Marine? Did they play together as children, share their first kiss at a school dance? Was she the love of his life?
Could that be why he asked me to elope with him after dating such a short time? He had a great love with Marine and it ended. Is he making sure he doesn’t repeat his mistake by marrying someone he hardly knows, someone he does not love?
A chill trickles down my spine. I want to move closer to my husband, to benefit from the warmth of his solid body, but that awkwardness has returned. I feel myself stiffening, pulling away mentally and physically.
Xavier’s hand has fallen off the small of my back. His breathing is slow and shallow.
“Xavier?”
“Mmm?” His voice is thick with sleep. “What is it, ma bichette?”
“Why did you marry me?”
He chuckles softly.
“I am serious.”
He lifts his head, his eyes flutter open, and a drowsy smile curls the corners of his mouth. “I married you because I am a sailor and a sailor could always use another life preserver.”
His eyelids flutter shut and his head falls back on the pillow. He is asleep within seconds, his muscular chest and flat abdomen slowly rising and falling with each breath.
My throat clogs with emotion. Xavier didn’t marry me because I stoked a raging inferno of passion within him. He didn’t marry me because he found himself so attracted to my magnetic personality he couldn’t imagine pulling away. He didn’t marry me because he thinks I am exciting, sexy, and charming. He married me because he thinks I am responsible, sensible, and dependable.
What a fool I am! Imagining myself to be as glamorous as Rita Hayworth or Ava Gardner, capturing the heart of a handsome man while on holiday in the South of France, making him fall so deeply in love with me that he begs me to run off with him. I am not a Rita or an Ava. I am a plain, dependable June Allyson. I am an average, reliable Joan Fontaine.
There’s a reason June Allyson starred in movies like Little Women and The Glenn Miller Story instead of Carmen or Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
Rita Hayworth, Ava Gardner, Betty Grable, they were World War II pinup girls, every GI’s fantasy girl. June Allyson and Joan Fontaine, they were women the GIs went home to marry.
Just once, I wanted to be the fantasy girl.