The ball at versailles, p.24
The Ball at Versailles, page 24
And Sam didn’t tell him that Willie Brockhall had just visited Amelia for the weekend. She didn’t want her father getting nervous about Quentin. He was uneasy about her phone romance with a man three thousand miles away. She knew that her father was hoping she’d lose interest in him, but she was more in love with Quentin every day. And her father didn’t need the reminder of Amelia’s romance, and that long-distance relationships did work out sometimes. She was going to tell Amelia to be discreet about Willie’s visit too.
* * *
—
The weekend in Greenwich at the Walkers’ farm turned out even better than Robert had hoped, once Sam told him about the plan. Jane stayed in the guesthouse farthest from the main house. As soon as the girls went to Sam’s bedroom at night, where Amelia was sleeping with her in her giant king-sized bed, Robert slipped quietly out the back door, and walked across a field down a narrow path, and joined Jane for the night. They slept and made love and watched the sun come up together. She made breakfast for him, and they went on a sunrise ride. He gave her a very docile horse, and he took her to the far reaches of the property. They were closer day by day, and the girls spent very little time with them, except at meals. They wanted to be alone to speak freely about the men in their lives without their mother and father within hearing distance.
The weekend became a model for them to follow in future, and met all their needs, Jane and Robert’s to spend time with their respective daughters and still be together, and even sleep in the same guesthouse on weekends. The far guesthouse became their weekend love nest, and the girls never suspected anything.
Jane and Robert talked about it one day.
“We have to say something to them at some point. I don’t want them to feel that we lied to them for months when we finally do tell them,” Jane said. But they also liked keeping their romance to themselves. It made it more private and more special, but they also knew that they were walking a fine line with their daughters’ trust in future. The right time to tell them hadn’t become clear to them yet. Sometimes Jane wondered if it ever would.
Chapter 15
Halloween was fun on all their campuses. Amelia at Columbia, Sam at NYU even as a nonresident student, Raphael at Harvard as a graduate student, and Felicity at MIT all wore costumes and went to parties, and ate trick-or-treat candy, except for Felicity, who had lost another ten pounds, and was within nine pounds of her goal and refused to do anything to jeopardize it. They all had fun. And Caroline sent them all a picture of herself in the original costume of the witch in The Wizard of Oz, complete with green face and pointy hat. Her mother had borrowed it from the studio, and Caroline had won a prize at USC for Best Costume and Best Makeup.
She said she was doing well, and told the girls that she wasn’t dating anyone and didn’t want to. She was working hard at getting off academic probation and putting all her effort into that, and thought she’d be off probably by Christmas. She said she was hoping to come to New York either during Christmas break or in February, and wanted to see them all then. Sam said she thought she sounded very serious, but she’d had a hard experience with Adam. They didn’t know about the rest, but she had been very subdued in her correspondence to them after the ball. Felicity was the closest to her after spending time with her at the Hotel du Cap. But they were all looking forward to seeing her whenever she came to New York.
Raphael had particularly enjoyed Halloween, because it was all new to him since it wasn’t celebrated in France. He had come up with a very creative costume, as a foreign student at Princeton. He had worn a Princeton T-shirt he found at a garage sale, wore a blazer and a tie with it, and gray flannel slacks he bought secondhand, slicked down his hair to look remarkably preppy, and carried a life-sized plush tiger around with him, with his face painted like the French flag in blue, white, and red stripes. It made everyone who saw him laugh, and those who didn’t know him thought he was putting on the French accent, which made it even funnier because it was real. Felicity went as Superwoman with curves in all the right places for the first time in her life. She was thrilled with her new figure and showed it off in a leotard from her ballet class, which she was doing for exercise now instead of track and enjoying a lot more. And Raphael was enjoying her new look too, and was happy to eat all the candy people gave her that she refused to touch.
He had a little trouble getting the blue, white, and red face paint off the next day, particularly the blue he’d used, which turned out to be waterproof and hard to remove, and half his face looked bruised when he went to class, and his physics professor asked him if he’d gotten in a fight and been punched in the face for wearing the Princeton costume, which delighted Raphael. He was thoroughly enjoying his American experience, and he and Felicity were together as much as possible, biking between their two campuses, even when it snowed.
* * *
—
The day after Halloween, Quentin called Samantha, and she told him all about the party she went to, dressed as Minnie Mouse, and he explained to her that the first of November was All Saints’ Day, a holiday in France, so he had the day off from the law firm where he worked. He said he had good news, and told her he had a week’s vacation coming up in three weeks, and he wanted to come and visit her. She was thrilled when she heard the news, and then did a quick calculation. Thanksgiving fell in the week he wanted to come, and she wasn’t sure how her father would feel about it. It was an important day to them, and having no other family except each other, they usually spent the holiday at the farm alone. Holidays were still hard for her father, even fourteen years after her mother and brother’s deaths.
“Could you come a week earlier or later?” she asked, and sounding disappointed, he said he couldn’t. He had to take the week he’d been assigned.
“I’ll ask my dad tonight,” she promised. She would have preferred a time when they could buffer his presence a little, and include others. Having Quentin visit her for a week would make it very clear to her father how serious they were about each other, and she had a feeling he wouldn’t be pleased.
She broached the subject with Robert that night at dinner, with delicacy and caution.
“I spoke to Quentin today,” she started gingerly, and her father smiled.
“That’s not an unusual occurrence,” he said, tolerant as long as Quentin was three thousand miles away. He was still expecting them to lose interest in each other, but that hadn’t happened yet.
“He’s planning to come to the States,” she said, pushing peas and mashed potatoes around her plate with her fork.
“For work? He must be doing well at the law firm, if they’re sending him out on international work,” he said.
“Actually, he’s coming on vacation,” she said in a small voice, and her father looked directly at her.
“Is he coming to see you?” Robert asked her, as his eyes bore into hers like fact-finding lasers.
“He might be…yes, actually, he is.” She waited for the storm to break, and it didn’t. There was a long silence at the table.
“What are you asking me, Sam?” He could tell there was more to it, and she was always open and honest with him.
“The only time he can come is Thanksgiving week, and I’d like to see him.” Robert didn’t answer her for what seemed like an eternity, while he weighed the pros and cons of his decision as quickly as he could. If he refused to let Sam see Quentin, he knew it would heighten their romance, and he had no real objection to him, except that at twenty-seven, he was a man, not a boy, and he lived in Paris, three thousand miles away, and Robert didn’t want to lose his daughter to him. But stopping her, or trying to, would only make it worse. In an instant, he decided to put the outcome in the hands of the Fates.
“Would you like him to join us for Thanksgiving?” he asked her, and she nodded.
“Yes, Dad, I would.” The look of love in her eyes, for another man, and the trust he also saw of her father melted his heart and touched him profoundly.
“Then ask him to join us. Explain to him that it’s an important American holiday about family, and welcoming others at our Thanksgiving table. He’s welcome to spend it with us.” Quentin had already told her that he would stay at a hotel, so it was not a question of asking to have him stay at the house, which would have made Quentin uncomfortable too. She felt a rush of gratitude toward her father for his answer, jumped up from her seat, and went to hug him.
“Thank you, Dad, it really means a lot to me, and will to him too.” That was precisely what Robert was afraid of, as he expressed to Jane when he saw her later that night, when he went to her apartment for a glass of wine and to make love to her.
“She’s serious about him,” he said to Jane, as they lay in bed afterwards, talking about it.
“I think she is,” Jane agreed with him. It had been going on for almost four months now, since the ball. “Amelia is serious about Willie too, but fortunately neither can afford to think about marriage. It’s very different in Quentin and Sam’s case.” She agreed with Robert now, there was serious risk there. Robert had discovered that Quentin’s family was very wealthy, and Quentin had a good job at the law firm that employed him.
“I hope he’s not coming with anything serious in mind and it’s just a visit. Maybe it’ll cool off when they see each other,” but he didn’t believe that and neither did Jane now. It sounded serious to her too. “They’ll want to do things in the city while he visits, so I guess we won’t do Thanksgiving at the farm this year. Would you and Amelia want to join us for Thanksgiving? I’ve been meaning to ask you anyway.” He rolled over on his side in her always-welcoming bed and kissed her. There was nowhere on earth he’d rather be now. Their affair had gone on for two months.
“We’d love it,” Jane responded. “It wouldn’t be an intrusion?”
“On the contrary. It’ll take some of the steam out of just Quentin being there, and Amelia knows him too. It might make things easier and more relaxed. You have a way of making things seem normal and less dramatic.”
“We would love to be there.” She answered for Amelia too, and knew she would be thrilled with the invitation, rather than just dinner with her mother, which wasn’t much fun by comparison.
He told Sam the next day that he had invited the Alexanders, and she was as delighted as he knew she would be.
Thanksgiving was over three weeks away, and Quentin and Sam were counting the days until they would see each other again. It gave the holiday this year much greater meaning to Sam, and Robert was facing it with trepidation and a chill running down his spine each time he thought of it.
* * *
—
Felicity made the decision the week before Thanksgiving. She’d been mulling it over for a month. It was a bold move she would have never dared to do before, but it was something she knew she had to do for her own mental health and personal growth. Raphael had something to do with it, but it wasn’t because of him. But his being with her would make it easier. The worst part would be telling them, but she knew she had to do it. She and Raphael were lovers now. They had both been virgins, and she knew she had grown up in the past few months, ever since she decided that she didn’t care what her sister did or said anymore. She had started to lose the weight after that. She had decided not to let any more poison into her body, through her mouth or her ears. Araminta was just too toxic to be around.
She called her mother a week before Thanksgiving and told her she wasn’t coming home this year. She didn’t say the decision was forever, but in her mind it was. But one year at a time would be easier for her parents to accept. Her mother was shocked when she told her, and then she cried, which made Felicity feel terrible. But it was either them or her this time, and she had decided to do what was best for herself, for the first time in her life. She had always done what they wanted her to do, and they had never protected her from her sister in nineteen years.
“I can’t come home, Mom,” she said. “I can’t sit there and listen to her and let her insult me and be rude to me and degrade me. You can’t stop her. I see that now. She’s too old to punish. It’s better for me to stay here. I’ll be fine, Mom. And you will be too. You won’t have to worry all day about what she’s going to do or say, or if she’s going to ruin Thanksgiving for all of us by beating me up.”
“That’s terrible,” Charlene said, still crying. “What will you do for Thanksgiving? You should be home with your family.” Felicity didn’t want to say that she had no family, and the way hers behaved was not how she wanted to spend the holiday.
“They do a big Thanksgiving dinner for all the students who stay here, all the international students, and a lot of the ones from around the country who can’t afford to go home.”
“I can send the plane for you,” Charlene said, missing the point entirely, as usual.
“I don’t want the plane, Mom, and I don’t want to come home. It’s not your fault, or Dad’s, or about you.” But it was about them, and how little they had understood her and not defended or protected her enough. And now, she wanted to be in Boston with Raphael, and not with them. It felt good to be free from the pain she knew she would have to endure if she went home. And she wasn’t even overweight anymore. She only had five pounds left to lose. It had never been about her weight, it turned out, it had always been about how much her sister hated her, which her parents chose to ignore and which they thought would fix itself. It hadn’t. And now Felicity needed to do what was good for her. Being with them wasn’t it.
“I’ll talk to you soon, Mom,” she said, and got off the phone as quickly as she could, before it degenerated into a long discussion about what was wrong with their family, and how it would change. It wouldn’t, she knew that now.
“Did you tell them?” Raphael asked her when she saw him that night.
“Yes, I did,” she said, smiling at him. She felt lighter than air. And she was happy with him. The heavy burden she had carried for so many years, her sister’s jealousy and viciousness, had been lifted from her, and she had shed it like her excess weight. “I love you,” she said, and put her arms around his neck. They made love in his room, because the rules were different at Harvard for graduate students, and his room there was their love nest. It was home to her now, and he was her family now, the only one she wanted at the moment. And best of all, she knew that she could take care of herself.
* * *
—
Quentin arrived in New York on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, and checked in to the Mark Hotel. It was a small, trendy, chic hotel where a lot of Europeans stayed, close to the Walkers’ home, and he had stayed there before and liked it. He was nervous and excited to see Samantha, and had been wide awake for the whole flight, thinking about what he was going to say to her, what it would be like seeing her again. He had never been seriously in love before, and it made everything that happened between them seem more important. He wanted to do it right, and he knew that her father was worried about her. He was eager to have Robert meet his parents so he could see that Quentin had a solid family. He was sure their fathers would get along, they were both powerful businessmen, used to getting their own way. He was glad that his parents had met Sam, and approved of her. They thought he was young to be so serious, and she was even more so, but they had faith in his judgment, and respected how much he loved her. They had dealt with their own parents’ disapproval, and wouldn’t do that to him. It would cause damage that could never be repaired later. They genuinely liked Sam, and found her mature for her age.
Quentin called her from his room at the hotel, and it was thrilling to know that she was only a few blocks and not an ocean away.
“When can I see you?” he asked, breathless with anticipation and excitement.
She was just as excited as he was. “Now, if you want. Do you want to come over, or should I meet you at the hotel? Are you hungry? They have a good restaurant at the Mark.” She had lunch there sometimes, or she and her father went to dinner there when their cook was off. “Or we can go for a walk, and then come back here and have something to eat. My dad is in Connecticut for the weekend. He’ll be back tomorrow night.”
“I want to say hello to him of course.”
“He figured we’d be busy. Why don’t I come meet you, and we can go for a walk, unless you want to eat first.”
“That sounds great, I’ll meet you downstairs in twenty minutes. I’ll just take a quick shower and change. And Sam, I can’t wait to see you.”
“Me too.” His English was flawless, and he was relieved to hear that her father was out of town and he had a reprieve for a day before he had to see him. He was happy to be alone with her for the next two days and to get used to each other again. Talking on the phone was different than being able to put his arms around her.
Robert was in Greenwich with Jane, and Amelia was studying in the library at Barnard. The girls still knew nothing about them. Robert was as nervous about seeing Quentin as Quentin was about seeing him. Jane was trying to calm him down and thought the weekend at the farm would do him good. The cook was off, and Jane was staying in the main house with him. It was nice being there alone without the girls, which was rare.
* * *
—
When Quentin got to the lobby, Sam wasn’t there yet. He was wearing a blazer and slacks and a warm topcoat, he wanted to look respectable for her. He walked outside into the chill November air, glanced toward the park, and saw her walking toward him in a sure steady gait, with just the slightest hitch to it. She was wearing a fluffy pale blue mohair coat, and a white cashmere knitted hat, and she smiled when she spotted him, and he walked rapidly toward her. He reached her first, and pulled her into his arms and held her tight and then he kissed her. His kiss told her everything that he was too moved to say. He couldn’t stop smiling and kissing her, and then they walked slowly toward the park. It was a cold, sunny day, and the park looked beautiful. The last of the red leaves were falling off the trees, and the city was alive with energy. The atmosphere was contagious, as she tucked her hand into his arm, and they walked through the park, and then looped around and came back to her house. She had seen how beautiful his home was, so she wasn’t embarrassed to have him see hers, no matter how imposing it was. She took him upstairs to the library, and there was a fire lit. They took off their coats and he took her in his arms again.
