Page 133 of Frankly, My Dear

Selene blinked with surprise. “Leave?”

“Oui, of course. Now that I am back, reunited with my husband, did you really think I would countenance his lover in my home?”

Selene swallowed hard. It was too soon to make such an important decision.

“Do not make things awkward for us all, my dear. Do not force James to ask you to leave. Surely your pride is greater than that.”

Selene tried to draw on James’s words of last night, begging for her trust. She did trust him, but this was a situation beyond trust.

“He will not divorce me, you know. We were married in the church, and there is no divorce in our religion.”

Selene had suspected as much.

“Would you be satisfied with the role of mistress? Away from Bayou Noir? Perhaps in some house in the swamps?”

Selene recoiled with horror. No! Never!

“James loved me once,” Giselle reminded Selene with relish. “There is no doubt he will love me again. Men are so easy to…manipulate.”

And all Selene’s insecurities about her sexual allure slammed back with a vengeance. Giselle was probably right. If she left, James would forget about her eventually. Perhaps he and Giselle could reconcile their differences, make a true family with Etienne. It was for the best, really.

“I could leave on St. John’s Eve,” she offered in a shaky voice. “I had made arrangements once before to leave on that date.”

Giselle pondered her words. “Hmmm. Twelve days from now. Well, that will have to do, I suppose. In the meantime, I expect you to know your place in this household. You are a governess and housekeeper. No more than that.”

Whoa! I don’t like the tone of this woman. Just who does she think she is? No way is she going to get the last word here. “Tell me, Giselle…did you know that doctors have finally discovered the cause of pockmarks on a blonde’s face?”

Reflexively, Giselle gasped and put her fingertips to her face.

“They’re not pimple scars, according to the doctors. The pockmarks are caused by dumb blondes trying to learn how to use a fork.”

“Wha…what did you say?” Giselle fumed. “Are you saying…oh, how dare you speak to me so! You’ll be sorry.”

“Fiddle-dee-dee!” Selene said with a smile, and the phrase felt really good on her lips. Then, employing her years of modeling experience, Selene swept out of the room in her best Scarlett imitation, head held high.

Once she closed the door, however, Selene struggled to hold back her tears. She had just made a decision to leave everything she held most dear in the world, the only man she had ever loved. And she felt as if she had just signed her own death warrant.

That evening the drums started soon after dusk, along with another storm. The rolling thunder to which Selene had become accustomed portended one of those quick bayou showers—violent in its onslaught, over within minutes. An hour later, the ground was often bone dry again.

Selene sat with Etienne until he fell asleep, having told him one bedtime story after another to soothe his troubled spirits. The audacious, mischievous boy had turned overnight into a trembling, overserious child, and Selene didn’t know how to help him. More important, she didn’t know how to prepare him for the time when she would be gone, no longer the buffer between Giselle and himself.

She would have to talk to James about that. Along with so many other things. But she hadn’t seen him since the night before.

Selene fell asleep to the steady beat of raindrops on the roof and awakened hours later from her deep slumber, with a jolt. She wasn’t sure what had disturbed her sleep, but now she sensed a presence in her small room, quiet except for the swish of a cool breeze through the open window. No, there was another sound—breathing.

Is it Giselle? Oh, Lord! And I have no weapon with me.

Peering through the shadowy room, Selene exhaled with a sigh of relief. James sat in a low rocking chair, his hands shoved in his trouser pockets, his long legs braced against the edge of her cot, using it as a lever to push himself back and forth. That motion must be what had awakened her.

He watched her with an unreadable expression on his face. He was keeping a silent vigil. Like a good-bye, Selene thought, gulping back tears.

She sat up and pulled the sheet up near her shoulders to hide the bare skin exposed by her thin camisole.

James’s eyes flashed with hurt at her gesture of embarrassment. It bespoke the sudden distance between them.

“Why are you sleeping up here, chérie?”

Selene looked at him with surprise. “Giselle’s orders.”