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And I swear I saw her lips curve.
There are yet more offices and storerooms here, I see now. It is not until I climb to the second floor—something that is a lot harder than it used to be with a pregnant belly—that I see more of what I expected to find if Taio’s mother actually lives here. Private drawing rooms, a gloriously appointed dining room, a long gallery with the expected art displayed as if this is a museum.
I suppose, like the rest of the house, it is.
I find Francette herself sitting in a bright room that has built-in bookshelves, exquisite floral arrangements, and extraordinarily antique chairs and tables—all gilded and gleaming—that nonetheless look comfortable.
My mother-in-law sits at a delicate wood secretary, apparently attending to her correspondence like a heroine from a historical novel.
She gazes at me when I appear before her, without warning, and only lifts one silvery eyebrow. “I do not have a meeting with you in my diary.”
“I’m dropping in unannounced,” I tell her cheerfully. I walk into the room, find a seat on the sofa, and take my time lowering my heavy body into it. It’s as comfortable as it looks. “Only to be expected with uncouth Americans like me.”
Francette’s expression goes wry and she inclines her head. The way her son likes to do.
“I do not wish to offend you,” she tells me in her calm, lovely voice. “My son has taken great pains to inform me that I behaved badly. I forget that Americans can be so sensitive about these things. For me, you understand, it is always better to call a thing what it is.”
She reminds me of my stepmother then, always managing to get in that dig—
But I stop myself. Francette Arceneaux de Luz is not the same as mean little Cayleen Alden, tucked up with her blind pets, cowed husband, and spoiled daughters in a Pennsylvania town that no one ever visitsby choice.For a great many reasons, not all of them involving my mother-in-law’s blue-blooded hauteur and selection of everyday jewels.
There’s also the most important reason. This woman in front of me will bemychild’s grandmother. My husband might find her problematic, but he loves her.
I’m not a child. I get to choose what kind of relationship I have with this woman. No one is forcing it on me and telling me that if I could only shape up and get with the program, maybe I’d be worthy of love.
Something, I vow then and there, no one will ever makemychild feel. Not if I have anything to say about it.
“I understand completely,” I say to Francette, not the ghosts inside of me. “And that’s what I came here to do.” She eyes me. I smile. “I want to call the thing what it is, actually.” I lean in, as far as I can with my belly in the way. “But first I have a question. Do you love your son at all?”
She blinks. She pulls back, the very picture of French horror. “What kind of question is this?”
“A real one,” I say quietly. “Because my baby isn’t even born yet and I already know that I love it. More than that, I would protect this child with every last breath in my body, and I would never put it through the agony of a scandal I could end myself. So I ask again. Do you love Taio?”
She pulls herself up a bit taller in her seat, which should not be possible with her already ballet-straight back. I expect her to denounce me and send me away. She looks as if she’s considering it.
“Because I do love him,” I tell her, and I don’t mean for my voice to thicken. I don’t mean to sound so raw. But I can’t take it back. Maybe I don’t want to. “And I cannot bear to see him sink any further beneath the weight of this.”
And only then, as I gaze back at her, does she relent.
“You do not understand,” she says after a moment. “The way I was raised, one never comments on the baseless imaginings of others. It gives them legitimacy, does it not? When it should be beneath notice. Beneath contempt.”
“It isn’t going away. And it would be one thing if it didn’t bother him.” I lean forward again, keeping my eyes on her. “But you must see that it does.”
Francette frowns and sits back in her seat, her spine somewhat less straight. When she looks at me again, I can see Taio in her features. In that stern expression on her face.
“Amara Mariana was my friend,” she says, just when I’m starting to imagine that she’s going to freeze me out or send me away. She doesn’t look at me. She keeps her eyes trained out the window, toward the lake, her gaze troubled. “She was my servant, so I know that in these enlightened times, people will claim we had no friendship. But we did. We were both young girls thrown into circumstances beyond our control. We both made the best of it.”
I think she almost smiles then, as if remembering, but it fades before it takes hold. “I was lucky in many ways,” she says. “My marriage was, at times, a heavy weight, but it was not cruel. The trouble for Amara Mariana is that she was a servant. And so, when my husband’s friends came to visit, as they did often in those days, there was one companion of his in particular who took a shine to her. Too much of a shine.”
Francette presses her lips together. She stays like that for a moment, then looks at me directly. “I hated him.”
She shakes her head, and I do not dare do anything but hold her piercing gaze. “He was the sort to act one way when my husband was around, when other men could see how he was. But alone, when there were only women—and especially women who could not openly defy him for fear that they would be thrown out of the house—well. That was when his real face could be seen.”
Again, she presses her lips tight together, and I know she’s remembering that real face. “Things are very different now. Back then it was still very traditional in this house. I required my husband’s permission to do most anything, and my wish did not always translate into his acquiescence.” She folds her hands in her lap. Then rearranges them. “If I did not care to wait for my husband’s permission, the only thing I could do was rely on what was only mine.”
It seems as though she’s waiting so I nod encouragingly, hoping she’ll go on.
And she does. “My grandmother owns a great deal of property in France. Or I should say, she did. Some of it has been sold off. Some of it is mine. So I sent my friend to a little cottage where no one would think to look for her.”