Page 4 of Sweet Savage Love

4

F our years certainly brought many changes. Pierre Dumont, dining with some of his friends at Maxim’s in Paris, sounded rather melancholy as he lamented the fact.

“He’s still pining for his little cousine, ” Jean-Jacques Arnaud commented, winking at the Viscomte De la Reve, who sat on his right.

“Well—but in spite of her obstinate ways I suppose I do miss her,” Pierre confessed.

“Ha! Of course he misses her!” René du Carre laughed. “‘Face of a demi-mondaine, body of a woman—’ you see, I remember what you told us four years ago.”

“That was true enough then! And you’ll remember, when my chère maman insisted that I escort Virginie to her first ball, I added that she had the mind of a child, excited by small pleasures. Yes, but alas, she grew too clever for me.”

“And heartless, too,” the Viscomte stated self-pityingly. He flashed a quick, apologetic look at his friend’s reddening face. “No need to look so annoyed, my old one. You know very well that I offered for her in all honor, and she turned me down. Told me she had only been practicing on me, in order to learn how to be a flirt—because someone had told her she was becoming too much of a bluestocking to be appealing to a man.”

“I plead guilty!” Pierre admitted. “I was afraid, you see, that her success at all the smart salons my esteemed papa dragged her to would spoil her. But—well—she turned me down too, although I knew, of course, that it would never do—for we are cousins.”

“Quite so—but you fell in love with her, and she twisted you around her little finger!” René said slyly. “Remember that time she teased you into taking her to dine in one of those discreet little rooms upstairs, because she wanted to find out how it would feel to play at being a demi-mondaine? ”

“Dieu!” Pierre said, clutching his head in mock-anguish, “why do you have to remind me? She embarrassed me with all the—very searching questions she asked—and when the waiter came in she sat on my knee with her arms about my neck, so that she would not embarrass me, she said. Thank God my parents never found out!”

“You never did tell me that story before,” his friend the Viscomte said, frowning. “Damn—I wish she had not been your cousin, Pierre!”

“Well—it is of no consequence now, is it?” Jean-Jacques interposed lazily. “She’s left France—she’ll probably marry some rough, crude Americaine with lots of money in the end. Where did you say she was going to live, with her papa?”

“Oh, in some Godforsaken place they call California—they discovered much gold there some years ago, you remember. A very rough place, and crawling with wild Indians, I’ve heard.”

“Ah, yes—also they fight duels with pistols in the very streets, and every man carries a pistol on his hip…”

They started on a lively discussion of life on the American frontier, while Pierre stared dourly into his wine. Why had they started to speak about Virginie? Damn, but De la Reve had spoken truly. If only she hadn’t been his cousin, and he hadn’t discovered her charms so late—he might have made the chit fall in love with him—why, at sixteen she had obviously adored him! How she’d blushed whenever he teased her or looked at her long enough.

He wondered where she was, and what she was doing. He even hoped kindly, for her sake, that there were parts of America that were civilized. Poor, lovely Virginie! Her beauty, her elegance and her wit would be quite wasted in America. Perhaps, at last she would begin to regret that she had left France, that she had left him.

Pierre would have been surprised, all the same, if he had known that his cousin was actually, and at that very moment, thinking of him with affection, and even a twinge of nostalgia.