Page 8 of The Mademoiselle Alliance

7

Full Throttle

Casablanca, 1929

Never have I ever done anything like this! The Rally of Morocco is as bone-rattling as Marguerite warned, but the red desert stretching on to Marrakech steals my breath and then my heart. It’s the emptiest place on earth. No villages. No nomad tents. No life. Just skeletons and a glittering red-rock road. Only out there is it possible to get a true sense of the great, ungraspable sweep of the world. How perfect every corner is, even with its flaws. If it weren’t so empty here, you would never feel so full of awe.

When we reach Marrakech, we hear we’re in seventh place.

“Ready to give it our all?” Maurice asks.

“Nothing less.”

We race back to Casablanca at an even faster pace, Maurice at the wheel, me watching for potholes and boulders, deer foxes and polecats—anything that might cause a mechanical catastrophe in the middle of nowhere.

Atop the hill into Casablanca, I look across at Maurice and we both shout, “Full throttle!” before we fly into the city half laughing, half terrified, careening around every near-blind curve, me using the map to call out warnings, Maurice braking just enough for us to survive each one.

When we pull into the Place de France, I see Marguerite waving frantically. Maurice leaps out, picks up his delicate wife, and kisses her passionately, the two of them like a rhapsody played on French horn: colorful, tonal, ecstatic. Like I thought I would be, like I sometimes am with Edouard. And in the midst of such radiant joy, I imagine Edouard will be just as proud when I tell him I came fourth in the great Morocco Car Rally.

“You look like aliens,” Marguerite says, gesturing to the red dirt caked over us.

I groan. “I think I left my backbone somewhere near Settat. You can be his navigator next time.”

“You won’t do it again?” The duke looks at me quizzically.

“Next time, I’m driving.” I grin. “And maybe I’ll even beat you.”

We drag our aching bodies back to the H?tel Excelsior, where I have a luxurious bath. Then we go down to the brasserie with the other drivers and navigators and the European sophisticates who populate Casablanca to celebrate having beaten thirty other cars.

Our group is mid–extravagant conversation when Marguerite seizes my arm and excuses us.

Her belly parts the crowds. Once we’re in a corner, she asks, “Did you tell Edouard?”

I stare at the floor. “I told him I was coming away with you. I invited him, but he said he was busy. And the rally part…” I look up at her. “I thought forgiveness would be easier than permission. I will tell him.”

“Marie-Madeleine,” she says gently, “he’s here.”

“Maybe he just missed me.”

Marguerite can’t hide the pity on her face.

“Come back to the table,” she urges. “He won’t make a scene in front of Maurice.”

But Edouard marched me out of a nightclub in Rabat. I can’t bear to be dragged from another room. Because I promised myself I’d do something if it happened again. Now that it’s a possibility, I can hear the sound of my promise breaking, little shards of my self-worth scattering onto the floor.

“Don’t let him empty you out,” Marguerite whispers before I flee to the elevator.

Edouard enters my room about twenty seconds behind me.

“I should have told you,” I say, reaching for his hand. “I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t even see my hand, intent only on the anger that’s driven him here.

“When you need money, ask for it.” He takes my purse from the table. “You’re to only go out with my driver. No more dancing. It’s bad for the baby. And you’re never to go near a car rally again.”

“You can’t…”

I drop onto the bed, gut-punched by realization. He can.

Per French law, my husband owns my money. He can order me to do whatever he wishes.

For the rest of Edouard’s life, I will never be free.

I thought he was a dashing young captain bound for Morocco and that marriage to him would bring adventure and love. I never thought about what it would cost.

I swipe my hand over my cheek and wish with all my might that the child inside me will be a boy. Edouard will never let a daughter live the kind of life I want her to have.

—

The baby comes in a headlong rush that I’m unprepared for. It’s all-consuming, and I hardly remember anything of the thankfully few hours it took for him to be born. All I remember is the instinct. Edouard might have been my first love, but this child is my second, and it’s an altogether more ruthless kind. I understand now the love that Ghislaine, my informant, has for her son.

Which means keeping the peace at home. For my son to thrive, he needs to know the love of a father, just as I knew the love of mine.

I’m lying back on the pillows, utterly spent, my beautiful boy asleep at my breast, when Edouard puts his head in. “Here’s your son,” I whisper.

He glances at the baby and I watch his face, wanting to see him fall too, but his expression doesn’t alter. “ Bon, ” he says, as if I’ve served him dinner rather than a child. Then he looks at me and his face does change. It softens, love evident in his eyes.

I’m about to invite him to sit beside me and meet Christian properly, but he says, “Some officers are due to arrive in Rabat in a fortnight. I want to take them out to that village where you made friends with that woman. There’s a dearth of information coming from the tribes. Maybe you can talk to her again. Or charm her husband with your Arabic.” He kisses my cheek.

And I understand. I’m allowed to be myself when it benefits him.

There have been so many nights in this bed when we were like some celestial bit of happiness I mistook for love. But now I know—for Edouard, love is possession.

And my heart withers like the body of the parched donkey in the desert, gasping for just one drop of tenderness.