Chapter Twenty-seven
What a strange place was this home on the strand. This forlorn pile of stones clinging desperately to the falaise. How much longer will it hold against the unrelenting waves threatening to sweep it into the sea? How long before a seeker of truth ventures into the dank cellars, lifts his torch, and exposes the secrets crouching like shadows in every forbidding corner? Will the secrets, once brought to light, skitter across the flagstone floor, horrid and naked, trying in vain to return to the darkness? And then—
“Dashing.”
I stop writing and look over at Xavier, reclining on the lounger beside me, a slender volume of poems open in his hand.
“I beg your pardon?”
“The word you are trying to think of is dashing.” He grins. “You’re writing about me in your journal, aren’t you?”
I laugh. “I am not writing about you.”
“Is that so?” He closes his book and crosses his arms, looking at me from behind his dark sunglasses. “We’ve only been married a day and you’re already writing about another man? Cruel woman.”
“I am not writing about a man.”
“Is it a journal entry?”
I wish I hadn’t brought my notebook and pen to the pool. “It’s nothing.”
He frowns. “It’s something.”
“I thought . . .” I look at the last sentence scrawled across the page. “I am going to try to write a novel.”
“Non.”
“No?”
He removes his sunglasses and stares deep into my eyes, so deep I think he can see all of the secrets written on the pages of my heart.
“You’re not going to try to write a novel. Trying is passive, it is yielding to the possibility of failure before you have even begun. You will write a novel.”
Now I know how Xavier was able to dramatically increase his company’s earnings in less than ten years. His fortitude is as powerful as his physique.
“I will write a novel.”
“Bon. That’s better.” He smiles, slipping his glasses back on. “Can I read it?”
“It’s not worth reading. It’s nothing.”
He holds his hand out. I consider lying. Oh, these scribbles? They’re my to-do list.” I consider tossing the notebook into the lake, letting it sink to the bottom to feed the fish. Instead, I hand him the notebook and study his profile as he reads the entry. He looks over at me and back at the notebook, reading the entry a second time.
“It’s good, Manderley.”
“Really?”
“I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t mean it,” he says, handing me the notebook. “It’s an intriguing beginning. I want to know more about the house on the strand and the secrets hidden in her cellars.”
“Thank you.” My heart swells with his praise.
“De rien.” He looks over his shoulder, smiling. “Tell me, are the secrets of a romantic nature? Is this to be a tale of forbidden love, full of heaving bosoms and ripped bodices?”
I frown. “Why would you assume it’s going to be a romance novel?”
“I am French, mon amour. Romance is our lifeblood, running through our veins, at the heart of every great story we have ever told, the motivation of our greatest feats.”
“I would like to hear a few of your stories,” I say, closing my journal and staring at my toenails, the pool sparkling beyond my feet. “Tell me about your romances.”
He laughs and the sound disturbs a swan waddling on the lawn nearby. The bird hisses.
“Those are stories better left unwritten, ma bichette.” He chuckles, but the sound is less natural. “Besides, you are clearly the writer of the family and your story sounds far more interesting. Are you sure it isn’t going to be a romance?”
“Positive.”
“What’s the secret then?”
“Murder.”
“Murder?” He sits up and takes his glasses off again, fixing me with a curious stare. “Who was murdered?”
“The wife of the man who owns the house on the strand.”
The words come out of my mouth without thought, as if something deeper and darker is compelling me to speak. Xavier pushes his sunglasses back on his face and stares out at the lake. I feel colder, bereft, as if the sun has moved behind the clouds. I hug the notebook to my chest.
“Why?”
“Why?” I repeat.
“Why did he murder his wife? What was his motivation?”
“Is there ever a good motive for murder?”
“Oui. Occasionally.”
I glance at his profile, notice the muscle working frantically along his jaw, and an uneasiness comes over me, a feverish, queasy, sick feeling. I assume Xavier was talking about motives for a fictional murder. Wasn’t he? Change the subject, Manderley. Ask him about sailing, about his home in Brittany, about that little book of poetry. . .
“Betrayal,” he says in a cold, flat tone. “There’s a powerful motive for murder. Betrayal can drive a man mad with rage, make him do things he would not normally consider. The deeper he loves the person who treated his trust so capriciously, the more insane their betrayal makes him.”
Something tells me Xavier is not speaking theoretically when he speaks about the rage of betrayal. Did Marine betray him and did his love for her drive him to the point of madness? I want to ask him. I should be able to ask him—after all, we are husband and wife, bound together for all eternity—but I am afraid to hear his answer. My confidence in Xavier’s love for me is still so fragile, as paper-thin as the tissue that was in my Dior gift bag, that I am afraid to test it.
I lift the hem of my cover-up and stick my finger through a hole in the eyelet lace. How much easier would my life be if I had the courage to say what I was thinking and to ask the questions fear keeps me from asking? Instead, I am tortured by the unknown, haunted by the what-ifs.
“Stop fidgeting,” he says, reaching over and pulling my finger free from the hole. “Do I make you that nervous? I am sorry. I am afraid I can be sullen, sometimes.”
Whatever clouds skittered across his mental sky must have skittered away again because he doesn’t appear sullen or distracted. My smiling, attentive husband has returned.
“You don’t make me nervous,” I lie.
He looks skeptical, but doesn’t argue. “Are you going to finish your novel?”
“I don’t know.”
“Finish it, Manderley. Always finish what you begin, even if the journey is not a pleasant one and you end up somewhere you never expected to be.” He squeezes my hand. “Believe in yourself to see it all the way through. I know you can do it.”
“Thank you.”
“De rien.” He grabs the sunscreen lotion off the table and stands, towering over me, his broad shoulders blocking the sun. “You’re starting to burn. Roll over. I will rub lotion on your back.”
I shrug out of my cover-up and roll onto my stomach. Xavier sits on the edge of my lounger. His thigh presses against my side and a frisson of desire passes through my body. Will it always be this way, I wonder? Will my body always react to his slightest touch?
He moves my hair to the side, exposing my back and part of my neck, squirts lotion onto his hand, and rubs it into my skin with his fingertips. Slow, firm circles moving down my spine, working the tension from my muscles. I close my eyes and feel myself drifting to the warm, happy place between awake and sleep.
“Tomorrow is our last day here,” he says, leaning down to kiss my shoulder. “I have something special planned.”
“Mmm.”
“Do you want to know what it is?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“I rented a boat. We are going sailing.”
“Sailing?”
I scoot up, wide-awake now.
“Oui. Is there a problem?”
Xavier grew up near the sea. He was in the French navy. He is the president of a major boat-building corporation. I don’t want to disappoint him, so I swallow the bile rising up my throat, and blink back the tears.
“No, no problem at all.” But it is a problem. A big problem.