Philistines.
I take another gulp of champagne straight from the bottle because I’m not drunk enough yet to go back inside, where the party roars on without me. I’m feeling sorry for myself. In the blackest of moods. Ungrateful too. “Oh, don’t look at me that way,” I say to the stone marquise, like her doe eyes can see into my guilty heart. “You had the world handed to you on a silver platter. Title, riches, castles . . .”
I trail off, hearing footsteps. Merde. I didn’t think anyone noticed when I slipped down the back stairs. The rose garden should be the last place anybody would look for me—anybody but Henri Pinton, who’s known my hiding places since childhood. Now he asks, “Who are you talking to?”
“La Femme Lafayette,” I confess, cradling her stone head. “She’s a good listener.”
Henri chuckles, fishes a cigarette from his pocket, and lights up. “Listen, I know you’re bent about losing the scholarship . . .”
I’ve always liked his habit of using French-accented American slang, but it annoys me now because I’m more than bent. And he should know it. We grew up here together—went to school together, even before the foundation could afford separate classrooms for girls. He’s always known that I dreamed about being more than a schoolteacher—a profession to which I’m singularly ill suited, which I prove by stealing the cigarette right out of Henri’s mouth.
He lets me do it but asks, “Trying to get fired?”
“Wouldn’t that just be another kick in the pants?” I ask, taking a puff.
Teachers here at the preventorium’s school are expected to set a good example. That means no smoking or drinking for unmarried young women like me. Even forward-thinking Madame Beatrice expects me to at least pretend to be ladylike. Unfortunately, that train left the station a bottle of champagne ago. “Do you think the marquise de Lafayette will rat me out?”
“I think the old hag will keep quiet if you put her back before anybody notices she’s missing.” Henri takes a bite of pastry, then pops the rest into my mouth, which keeps me from saying that I can throw my sculpture off the castle roof if I want to—and I do. I’m forced to chew, listening to the muted oompah of the bass, the wail of the saxophone, and the sultry song of the chanteuse from the house while Henri says, “At least it wasn’t Sam who beat you.”
“I wish it was Sam,” I say in a spray of crumbs.
I could at least feel a little happy for a pal. Instead, the scholarship went to a dull fellow who wants to study engineering, and I overheard one of the board members whisper, “Marthe’s talented, but there’s no use for artists if there’s a war . . .”
Henri clears his throat and says, “I’ve got an idea that might cheer you up . . .”
I hope he means stealing another bottle of champagne, but he’s the wholesome outdoorsy sort who thinks problems can be solved with a camping trip, a hayride, or a midnight swim, so I warn, “I’m in no mood for a jump in the fishpond.”
He takes off his tuxedo jacket, slipping it over my bare shoulders. “Let’s jump into something else together.” I’m too drunk to take his good manners for a tip-off and I sit there like an imbecile as he roots around in his pocket. Then he comes out with something that glints in the moonlight. “How’s this for a consolation prize?”
A ring? Grateful for alcohol-numbed emotions, I laugh but give him a little shove. “I’m in no mood for jokes either.”
He’s not laughing, but he can’t be serious. Whereas I’m an orphan without any family at all, Henri’s a ward of the nation, because his father was killed in the Battle of Verdun. He has a mother and a struggling family farm to support while he finishes his medical studies; it’s his dream to work as a physician in the preventorium one day, so marriage isn’t in the cards for a long time, if ever, and we’ve both been frank about that. Nevertheless, now he clears his throat and begins, “Marthe Simone—”
I stop him before he can go all the way down on one knee. “Do you want to give your mother a heart attack? God knows she doesn’t think I’m good enough for you.”
“She doesn’t think anyone is good enough for me,” he admits, holding the ring up to the moonlight until I recognize it. And I gasp, covering my mouth, because now I know he’s serious. It’s his mother’s ring. When we were young, I’d see that distinctive diamond wreathed in a matte gold halo nearly every month when Madame Pinton came to visit Henri here at the castle . . . visits I used to envy.
Like Henri, some of the kids we grew up with had a surviving parent or grandparent who could take care of them after the war. Most of the others eventually got adopted. But nobody wanted a smart-mouthed rough-and-tumble little girl like me. Oh, some couples expressed interest, one even returned for a second visit, but they never came back. And so I taught myself not to expect anybody to come back for me—taught myself not to need anybody.
Now Henri squints, trying to gauge me. “Maman gave her blessing when I reminded her that I could be called to join a regiment anytime . . .”
I exhale a long ribbon of smoke in frustration that Henri has gotten caught up in the blather of politicians that’s come to nothing for four years, and a good thing too, because France still hasn’t recovered from the last war. “You probably scared your mother to death with talk like that. You’re not going to get called up!”
“Marthe,” he says, brows furrowing, “Hitler rolled over Czechoslovakia. Poland is next, and if that happens, France will fight.”
He’s crazy. Our leaders talk tough to Hitler, but that’s all. France isn’t going to fight to save Poland—a country most of my students couldn’t even point out on a globe. I can see Henri is genuinely frightened, though, so I try to knock the frown off his face. “C’mon. You wouldn’t even be thinking of marriage right now if it weren’t for your father.”
Henri shrugs. “Maybe not. But if I die at war like he did, I’d want to leave something of me behind. If not a baby, then at least a pretty widow . . . So, what do you say? Who needs an art scholarship when you’ve got a wedding ring?”
I wince because the question cuts me. How did he get the idea that studying art is just something I want to do until a husband comes along? Now I’ve got two things to brood about. “You’re a real romantic . . .”
“You’re the one who hates sentiment,” he reminds me, stealing the cigarette back. He’s right. I do hate sentiment. But I still get a little misty when he holds up his hand and says, “Marthe, I’ve loved you ever since that math class when Sam dipped your pigtail in an inkwell and you turned to stab him with a pencil in revenge, but missed and stuck me instead. See? I’ve still got the lead spot on my palm—the prick of Cupid’s arrow.”