Past Perfect

by Danielle Steel

  She continued going to dinner parties, and the Margaux persisted in entertaining for her, but she managed to go to the ballet and the theater and the opera with Louis, and he took her to a dinner party to meet his friends. He met Lili and they went to the park together and he was very sweet to her, and Bettina realized that she had never been as comfortable with anyone. He was part father, part brother, part friend. She tried to explain that to Angélique after they had been seeing each other for over a month, and she smiled at her young friend.

  “That sounds like a husband to me,” Angélique said sensibly.

  “Does it?” Bettina looked surprised. “I thought it was supposed to be much more romantic,” she said innocently, and it had been with Tony, for one night.

  “Not really.” Angélique explained the ways of the world to her. “Eventually the romance goes away, most of the time anyway, and you want to be sure you’re left with something you can live with. Friendship isn’t a bad way to start, especially if it’s what you wind up with in the end.” It made sense to Bettina, and apparently to Louis too. He continued asking her out, and planning excursions that she enjoyed, and at the end of June, before he left to visit his family in Dordogne for the month, he proposed to her, on one knee. It had been quite different with Tony. They had just rushed off to city hall to get a marriage license and get married before he shipped out, and spent a night in a cheap hotel. In retrospect, it seemed tawdry, and she knew her father had been right. It would never have worked. Their worlds were too far apart.

  “I never thought I’d get married again,” she said in a soft voice after he asked her. “I’m not even sure I want to, although I like you very much.” He smiled at the choice of phrase.

  “I like you very much too. In fact, I love you, Bettina. I think we could be happy together. Why don’t you want to get married again?” She found that she could always be honest with him and could say anything to him, and she liked that too, like a best friend.

  “I don’t want more children. It wasn’t a good experience for me. In fact, it was awful. I was sick the whole time. I hardly knew the man I married, and I didn’t think about what could happen. We were barely more than children, and got swept up in the drama and romantic illusions right before the war. But in terms of a baby, I don’t think I’m very maternal. I love Lili, but I never really feel like a mother.” He was touched by her honesty, as he leaned over and kissed her.

  “Then we won’t have children,” he said simply. “I’m not sure I want any either. If you marry me, may I adopt Lili? Then she will be my daughter, and that’s all the children we need.” He made it all seem so easy. Everything was effortless with him, and she knew he’d protect her, like her father.

  “Yes, you could adopt her. Her father’s family isn’t involved with us. They’ve never seen her.”

  “Never?” He was surprised when Bettina shook her head. “How long were you married before he went to war?”

  “One night,” she said with a sheepish grin. “We eloped. His family has a fish restaurant and my father was furious with me for marrying him. I think I got carried away with a lot of girlish delusions because he was leaving.” Louis nodded, and understood the situation better than before.

  “When are you going back to the States?” Louis asked her, thoughtfully.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe sometime this summer, or in the fall. My parents have been asking me to.” But she was in no hurry to leave Paris and go home. She was having too much fun.

  “I’m leaving for Dordogne. I have to spend a few weeks with my parents and my grandmother, who’s very old. But if you wait a few weeks, I’ll go back to the States with you, and I can ask your father for your hand properly. How does that seem to you?”

  “Very nice.” She beamed at him, realizing that she loved him too, and how well he treated her. He was a kind, patient man, and would be a wonderful father for Lili. Angélique said he had a very considerable fortune, and was an only son. He wasn’t showy in any way. He was substantial and solid, which was so much better. And he was handsome, in a dignified fatherly way, which she liked. He wasn’t a boy, he was a man. She could suddenly see herself married to him, and the idea pleased her very much. It was not a wild romantic love, like her youthful passion for Tony. This was a very stable love, which seemed better to her, and Angélique said would last longer.

  “You’ve forgotten one thing,” he reminded her, with a warm light in his eyes that made her feel happy and safe.

  “What did I forget?” She looked puzzled.

  “You haven’t said yes yet to my proposal. Should I get down on one knee again?” She blushed in embarrassment as she laughed then, put her arms around his neck, and he kissed her.

  “Yes. Yes, I will marry you, Louis, and…I love you,” she whispered and he kissed her again, very pleased with what they’d agreed to.

  They made all the arrangements for her trip back before he left for Dordogne. He booked their passage on the ship for three staterooms, and she wrote to her parents that she was coming home. She said she was bringing someone with her, a friend of the Margaux, and her family assumed it was a woman when they received her letter. She didn’t say his name, and she didn’t mention that they were getting married, since Louis didn’t have her father’s permission yet. Bettina wanted to do it right this time. Her family had no idea that she was bringing her prospective husband home. And she didn’t tell Louis that both her brothers and her grandmother and great-uncle weren’t actually alive, and were ghosts whose spirits had returned to their home after their deaths. She hoped he didn’t figure it out while he was there. There were some things he didn’t need to know.

  While Bettina spent her last weeks in Paris, anxiously waiting for Louis’s return from Dordogne, Angélique was jubilant that she had found her a husband after all. He seemed like the perfect one to her. The Margaux were very pleased with their matchmaking, but Louis and Bettina were the most pleased of all. She could suddenly envision a bright future with him. And she laughed thinking of what her grandmother would say when she told her she was marrying a Frenchman. That was going to rock her grandmother to the core.

  Chapter 14

  Bettina would have been sadder to leave the Margaux after staying with them in Paris for five months, but she knew she would be returning soon. She and Louis were planning to stay in San Francisco for a few weeks, long enough for him to meet her family and ask her father properly for her hand in marriage, and then they would travel back across the country and return to Paris by ship. It was a long journey to make, and Louis needed to be back for work at the end of August. When they got back, Angélique wanted to give a party for them, to celebrate their marriage. Louis was a discreet person, but he was well liked and had many friends, and Bettina had met a number of people in Paris that she liked too.

  Louis’s parents had a house on the Place François Premier that they no longer used since they had retired to their château in Dordogne, and Louis wanted to move into their old home in the city with her. He was living in a small bachelor apartment now. His parents’ house was perfect for them and Lili.

  And in the meantime, Bettina was leaving two of her trunks with Angélique and Robert. All she was taking was what she needed for the boat, and a few things for when she was at home in San Francisco. They would be away for only five or six weeks, and after that, Paris would be her home forever. She missed her parents, but her life in France was so much more interesting and more exciting, and she liked knowing that Lili would grow up there. Louis spoke English, but he preferred speaking to both of them in French. It seemed hard to believe that she had left San Francisco five months before, and her whole life had changed.

  She hoped that her father would approve of Louis and the marriage, and that her grandmother wouldn’t make a fuss because he was French. She had warned him that her grandmother was very opinionated and eccentric, and that her great-uncle lived with them and was even more so, but she didn’t tell him that the house was full of ghosts an
d the people who lived there never seemed to leave. Even if they died, they came back, and nothing changed. She didn’t want him to think that her family was strange before he met them. This was her chance to have a normal, happy life, and she didn’t want anything to spoil it. And there was always the risk that the ghosts wouldn’t appear at all, which might be simpler.

  Their crossing to New York on the ship was almost like a honeymoon for them, except that they were in separate staterooms. He was very respectful of her. Having understood that her previous conjugal life had lasted for exactly one night, he didn’t want to press her for more than they had until they were married. There would be time enough to discover each other then. He could hardly wait. She was so young and beautiful that he felt like a very lucky man. And he was acquiring a daughter too. He was wonderful to her as well.

  On the ship, they dined with the captain, talked to people on deck, played shuffleboard, lay in the sunshine, swam in the pool with Lili, talked for hours on deck chairs, and went dancing every night. Bettina had never been happier in her life. She even enjoyed Lili more, knowing that she had provided a father for her who would love them both. The burden of motherhood that had seemed so weighty to her before, seemed lighter now that she knew that it would be shared. And she was relieved that he didn’t want more children. He was the perfect spouse for her.

  When they docked in New York, they stayed at the Plaza again, and took the train to California the next morning, in three first-class compartments, as they had done on the ship. The journey was tedious and long, and Lili was fussy. At nineteen months, she was running everywhere by then, and hated being confined in the small compartment. Louis walked her up and down the passageway with the nurse, when Bettina took her afternoon rest.

  In San Francisco, they were getting ready for her return, thinking she was coming home to stay. She had given them no warning that she was going to be there for only a short time, and that the guest she was bringing home was important. They wondered who it was, but all Gwyneth could think about was Lili. She couldn’t wait to have her granddaughter home again. Their five-month absence had seemed interminable to her. It had been a long summer. The Gregorys had rented a house in Maine for two months for their annual vacation, and they weren’t due back until the end of August. Andy was going straight back to Edinburgh from the East Coast, and Caroline was flying directly to Los Angeles. Quinne was with them, and Magnus missed Charlie terribly. Everyone at the Butterfields’ house had been bored without the Gregorys and Bettina, particularly Josiah, who had been reading novels to Lucy at night, for lack of anything else to do, and missed his conversations with Bettina.

  The family had gone to the house in Woodside briefly in July, but it was tiresome there too. They’d been happy to get back to the city, and Gwyneth wanted the house to look beautiful when Bettina got home. The day they were due to arrive, she put vases of fresh flowers everywhere, and the house was fragrant with the scent. She had cut them from the garden and arranged them herself.

  “You’d think we were expecting a royal visit, instead of your daughter,” Augusta complained, but she was excited too. Angus had offered to meet the train and pipe them in, but Augusta had convinced him not to, and to wait for them at the house. It was a foggy day and chilly, as San Francisco tended to be in the summer, and she didn’t want him to catch a cold. “Who’s she bringing, by the way?” Augusta asked her daughter again, thinking she might know by then, but it was a mystery to them all. Bettina had just said “a friend,” and her mother assumed it was some nice woman she’d met in Paris who was coming to stay for a month or two, as people did from Europe, because it was so far to come for a shorter visit.

  Gwyneth was pacing the halls around the time Bettina was expected to be there. She had wanted to go to the train station in Oakland, but there would be so much confusion with all their trunks and bags that they had sent the chauffeur with the car, and the carriage and coachman, and had agreed to meet at the house. Bert had come home early, and was excited too. Augusta and Angus were playing a card game in the drawing room, Josiah and Lucy were watching, and Magnus was up to some sort of mischief in the garden. The whole family was there, waiting for her.

  And then, finally, they heard the car pull up in front of the house, and the carriage wheels, and they all ran outside to greet her. Bettina was the first one out of the car, wearing a white linen suit and a huge hat she’d bought in Paris. She looked very stylish. The nurse was carrying Lili and stepped out right behind her, as Gwyneth rushed forward to hug them, and Bert was beaming. Louis stepped out of the car last in a dark suit and a homburg, looking very much like the banker he was, and he smiled, watching the scene of Bettina in the arms of her family. They hadn’t even noticed him until the grande old dame stood at the top of the stairs to the house and stared him into the ground, her fierce scowl suggesting he didn’t belong there. She normally would have disappeared with a stranger among them, but she stood visible and undaunted.

  “Bettina!” she said in a booming voice that would have carried for miles. “Who is that?” As Bettina heard her, she looked up and smiled at her grandmother, pleased to see her so clearly, and ran up the stairs lightly to hug her, and then hugged her brother and sister and great-uncle right after her father. She turned to glance in the direction her grandmother was pointing and saw Louis behind her, waiting discreetly before he approached. Bert gazed at his daughter and then at the man in the hat and dark suit with a question in his eyes.

  “I’m sorry.” Bettina remembered her manners immediately, beckoned to Louis, and introduced him to her parents. “Louis de Lambertin, may I present my parents, Bertrand and Gwyneth Butterfield.” She smiled proudly and Gwyneth took her in her arms again and held her, to make sure she was real. “I wrote to you that he was coming,” she reminded them, because the entire family looked stunned to see Louis. They just stood there and stared.

  “You didn’t tell us you were bringing a gentleman,” her mother said gently, “you only said ‘a friend.’ ”

  “I thought it was better for you to meet him,” Bettina said, since she wanted the reason for his being there to be a surprise.

  Louis shook Bert’s hand, and Angus’s, and bowed low over her mother’s and grandmother’s hands to kiss them, and then he shook hands with Josiah, who greeted him warmly. Nothing about their appearance or behavior would have suggested that Josiah, Angus, Augusta, and Magnus were not alive. They looked, felt, and behaved entirely real. Only if they did their disappearing act would one know, and Bettina was going to warn them not to while Louis was there.

  “Why don’t we go inside and have some tea?” Gwyneth suggested, smiling politely at Louis and engaging him in conversation as they walked in. Bettina could see that the house looked beautiful and was filled with flowers. She was very proud of her home, just as Louis was of his family’s château in France. And his father had agreed to let them move into the house on the Place François Premier in Paris once they were married. He couldn’t wait to show it to Bettina when they went back. It wasn’t a palace, or as large as Bettina’s home, but Louis’s city home was a very handsome house. And the château was huge, daunting, ice cold, and nearly impossible to heat. But his parents lived there, and Louis only went there a few times a year.

  “Is he French?…He must be French,” Augusta was saying. “Did you see him kiss my hand? No self-respecting Englishman would do that.” Louis was smiling at what he overheard, and was tempted to do it again to shock the old lady. Despite his restrained exterior, he had a sense of humor.

  Gwyneth handed him a cup of tea as they sat in the drawing room, and she asked if he took milk and sugar or lemon, and he said plain. The moment Bert observed him more closely and how he and Bettina spoke to each other, he knew why Louis was there. There could only be one reason why he had come so far. And now Bert wanted to know who he was. He whispered a question to Bettina, and she smiled and nodded.

  “You could have warned us,” he scolded her.

 
“I wanted it to be a surprise,” she said innocently and looked very young.

  “Well, it certainly is.” He took her aside and led her into the library, while Gwyneth chatted with Louis in conversation with the others. So far, it was all polite, banal repartee.

  Once he had her alone in the library, Bert looked at his daughter seriously. “All right, who is he and how do you know him? How did you meet? Who are his parents, and does he have any? He seems rather old for you,” he said sternly.

  “He’s a lovely person, Father. You’ll love him. He’s a banker like you. He’s French. He has a house in Paris, and a château in Dordogne, or his family does. I met him through the Margaux. They like him very much, and I love him. We want to get married.”

  “You didn’t ask me last time,” he reminded her. “Why now?” he asked, still a little miffed over Tony.

  “Louis wants to ask your permission,” she said seriously, and Bert could see all that it meant to her in her eyes. He was pleased that she was doing it the right way this time, with the right man. It was his only concern.

  “How old is he?”

  “He’s forty-one, Father. But he’s not old,” she insisted.

  “He’s eighteen years older than you. That’s a lot.”

  “He’s very good to me. He’ll take care of me.” She was pleading with him. Bert had already seen that he was a kind, proper person, and approved, particularly since the Margaux had introduced them. They would never have introduced them if he were unsuitable.

  “And where would you live? Here or in France?” He guessed the answer before she said it. She hesitated for a long moment, knowing he’d be sad.

  “He has to work there, Papa,” she said in a soft voice. “At the bank. We’ll have to live in Paris. But you can come to visit us anytime. And he wants to adopt Lili.”