Dreaming of Manderley

by Leah Marie Brown

  “Unless you do not want to marry me,” he says.

  I look up and fresh tears fill my eyes.

  “Perhaps you do not find me attractive.”

  “Are you serious? You’re gorgeous.”

  “Okay then.” He laughs. “Maybe you don’t like me.”

  “Like you? I love you.”

  My cheeks flush with heat. I look down at my Tiffany-painted toenails peeking out from the tops of my sandals and wish I could call Cut! and redo this scene.

  “Did you mean that?”

  I look into his eyes and realize this is the time to put it all on the line. I might not have another chance to tell Xavier what meeting him has meant, how it has brought into sharp focus a yearning previously ignored.

  “A little less than a month ago, I stood on a cliff on the Côte d’Azur feeling alone in the world, wondering how I would ever find the strength to take my next breath, and then the unimaginable, the unbelievable happened: You stepped up and took my hand and I learned to breathe again.”

  “Then marry me.” He wraps his arms around my waist and kisses my forehead. “Take a chance on me, Manderley Maxwell. You won’t be sorry, I promise.”

  “It is difficult to think clearly when you are holding and kissing me.”

  “Bon! I don’t want you to think clearly, ma bichette.” He brushes his lips over mine and I inhale the clean, soapy scent of his shaving cream. “I want you to be mad with passion, reckless in your desire. I want you to follow your heart where it is telling you to go.”

  “You want to marry me?”

  He chuckles. “Oui. Is that so hard to believe?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you hardly know me.”

  “I have seen glimpses of your soul and those glimpses were beautiful. You are kind, honest, and selfless. Everything else is distraction. Everything else I will learn over time.”

  “But . . .”

  “What?”

  “Aren’t there things you want to know before you ask me to marry you?”

  “I have already asked you to marry me, ma bichette.” He grins. “However, I will ask you a few questions if it will make you feel better.”

  “It will.”

  “Besides fidgeting with your eyeglasses, do you have any bad habits I should know about?”

  “Each morning, I make a comprehensive to-do list and I cannot go to bed unless I have checked off every item.”

  He frowns. “You’re organized and driven. That’s hardly an annoying habit. Try again.”

  “If I am reading a book or watching a movie I don’t find enjoyable, I won’t stop reading it or leave the theater. I have to finish it. Also, I steal socks.”

  He laughs. “You steal socks?”

  “My feet turn icy at night if I don’t wear socks to bed. But, I have this thing about wearing the same pair of socks two nights in a row. So, if I run out of fresh socks, I will take a pair from my family, friends, or boyfriends. There is always a pile of discarded socks beside my bed.”

  Xavier whistles. “That is serious.”

  “See?”

  He laughs. “I don’t think you will have to worry about cold feet when you are in bed with me, my love. Nevertheless, you have my permission to borrow my socks whenever you want. Better yet, we will sail to Ireland and I will buy you enough woolen socks to last a lifetime.”

  I cast my gaze across the sitting room to the bedroom beyond, the king-size bed with the rumpled sheets, and my pulse quickens.

  “Thank you,” I say, heat flushing my cheeks at the thought of sharing a bed with Xavier. “What other questions do you have?”

  “Do you want children?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bon.” He hugs me tighter. “I wouldn’t want you to sacrifice one passion for another, so will you promise to continue to write the screenplay with Olivia? I am sure it can be accomplished via the internet.”

  “I promise.”

  “Bon. I don’t have any other questions right now. Do you have any for me?”

  “Only a million.”

  He chuckles, lifting my hand to his lips. “Start with one. We have a lifetime for the rest.”

  “Why didn’t your relationship with Marine work?”

  “You don’t really want to hear about my relationship with another woman, do you? Wouldn’t you rather talk about what we want out of our marriage?”

  “My father remained alone after my mother died. I asked him once why he didn’t date. He said when he married my mother it was forever, that death hadn’t altered his affections. I want that kind of love. How do I know you will be as committed to me as I will be to you?” I drop my head to his chest and listen to the thud of his heartbeat against my ear, seeking courage in the strength of the sound. “Divorce is not a path I ever want to tread.”

  His body tenses. He puts me back on the couch. I worry I have pushed him too far.

  “Do we ever know another person, really? I would like to promise you that we are a perfect match and we will make each other so deliriously happy, so content, we won’t ever think of divorce. I can’t promise that, Manderley.” He leans his elbows on his knees, reaches for my hands, and looks deep into my eyes. “I can promise I won’t ever betray you. Remember when we were at La Grotte and you said you wished you could be more audacious? Wearing a scandalous designer gown and guzzling champagne is not audacious, ma bichette. Following your heart when your head is telling you to take a different direction is audacious. Be audacious.”

  Be audacious. If I were writing the script for this scene, I would have typed those words for Xavier to say. Does he know how lonely I have been living in the shadows, watching everyone around me reap the spoils of their daring? I want to be daring. I want to be reckless. I want to step on the tightrope even if I fall. Do it! Take a risk. Otherwise, you are going to die in the shadows, yearning, unfulfilled, and alone.

  “Okay. I will do it! I will marry you.”

  I do want to marry Xavier, even if there is a little maggot of doubt wriggling inside the tender, developing fruit of our love, a maggot that could so easily be squashed if only Xavier would tell me about my predecessor—Marine.

  Chapter Twenty

  “What do you mean, you are eloping with Xavier?” Olivia isn’t taking the news of my impending nuptials well. I am in my room, packing my suitcase while she paces in front of my open closet doors. I reach past her for a sundress still hanging in my closet. She snatches the hanger from my hand. “Stop! Would you please stop packing for just a minute and tell me what is happening?”

  She hangs my sundress back up in the closet before taking my hand and leading me to her suite. Olivia sits on the sofa, curling her legs underneath her.

  “Xavier asked me to marry him,” I say, sitting on the chair across from the sofa, “and I said yes.”

  “This is insane. Shutter Island insane! You hardly know him.”

  “Do we ever know another person, really?” I say, repeating Xavier’s logic. “I love him, Olivia. I love him so much it physically hurts when I think about leaving him here to fly back to Los Angeles.”

  “Are you saying you are marrying him because you don’t want to go back to Los Angeles? You hate it that much?”

  “It’s not about hating Los Angeles, Olivia. Well, not entirely.”

  “What?” she cries. “What is it about, then? Help me understand how you, the most levelheaded woman I know, could even consider running off with a man you have known for less than a month. It’s so . . . so . . .”

  “So what?”

  “Irresponsible.”

  “What’s wrong with being irresponsible once in a while? Tara has been irresponsible most of her life. Emma Lee is still irresponsible. I want to be irresponsible. Just once.”

  “Fine!” She uncurls her legs and hops to her feet. “Then stay in bed all day and eat greasy takeout. Go to bed before you have crossed off everything on your to-do list. I know! We will go to a club an
d get stinking drunk. You can pick up the first hottie you see and have dirty, dirty sex with him. That’s irresponsible . . . for you.”

  “I don’t want to have dirty sex with a stranger. I want to marry Xavier and let him make sweet love to me.”

  “Assuming it is sweet.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “What does it mean?” She snorts and throws her hands up. “What if he is a freak? What if you get to Italy and he whips out a Christian Grey contract and manipulates you into agreeing to be his submissive sex slave? He could beat you!”

  “He’s not going to beat me.”

  I cross my arms in front of my chest and stare at Olivia over the tops of my eyeglasses so she can see her words are not going to alter my course. I am resolute.

  “I am going to marry Xavier, Olivia.” I anxiously look at the clock on Olivia’s nightstand. Xavier is due in a little over an hour and I still have a lot to do before then. “I know you love me, O, and you are worried I am making a big mistake. Maybe I am. I just know if I don’t do this, I will spend the rest of my life wondering what might have happened if I’d had the courage to take a chance, to follow my heart.”

  “You love him?”

  “I do,” I say, excitement fluttering in my belly. “I love him and we are eloping to Lake Como.”

  “Well, it doesn’t look like you are going to have any problem saying those words when you get to the altar,” she says, sinking back down onto the sofa. “If this is what you want, to elope with Monsieur X, I will do everything I can to help you get to the altar. Let me make a quick phone call to my agent. I will tell him I need to postpone the meeting with Warner Brothers because I am going to Lake Como to serve as my best friend’s maid of honor!”

  “No!”

  “No?”

  “You can’t postpone your meeting with the studio. They might change their minds about optioning the screenplay.”

  Once Warner Brothers discovers Olivia’s writing partner is an unknown with no screenwriting experience, they will most certainly pass on the project, but Olivia is energized and I don’t want to drain that energy with my doubts and negativity.

  “You’re my best friend, Mandy. I can’t let you get married to a virtual stranger in a foreign country without at least holding your hand as you walk down the aisle, especially now that your dad is . . .”

  Dead. My dad is dead. This is the first time I have thought about him since Xavier asked me to marry him. I try to imagine what my father might have said if I had phoned him all breathless from the first flush of love and told him I planned to elope. My father was a sensible man, but he was also a marshmallow-soft romantic. I want to believe he would have said, Follow your heart, darlin’, as long as it eventually brings you, and that young man of yours, back home.

  Home. My heart shrinks for what it misses even as it expands at the hope of what might be.

  “Thank you, Olivia,” I say, sniffling. “It means the world to me that you want to stand by my side when I marry Xavier, but I wouldn’t be happy knowing you sacrificed an opportunity to achieve your dream just to help me achieve mine.”

  “But isn’t that what you have been doing these past four years?”

  She has me there.

  “Ha! I have you there, don’t I?”

  I brush a stray tear from my cheek and laugh. “Yes.”

  “So you will let me come with you to Italy?”

  I don’t want to hurt my best friend’s feelings, but I don’t want her at my wedding. I don’t want anyone at my wedding. There is something romantic about two lovers running off to get married in secret. No wedding planners. No family drama. No rubbery dinner in a banquet hall. No drunk second cousins doing the Chicken Dance or the Electric Slide on the dance floor.

  I get up and walk to the sofa.

  “I have a better idea,” I say, sitting beside Olivia. “Why don’t we both go after our dreams? Then, when you have secured your Warner Brothers contract and I am a newlywed, we can celebrate together. You can come to Brittany and we will—”

  “Brittany?”

  “Xavier’s home is in Brittany.”

  “Oh.” Her shoulders slump. “I guess I didn’t realize marrying Xavier means you will be moving to France. We have seen each other nearly every day for the last eight years. I am going to miss you.”

  “I am going to miss you, too.”

  I drop my head onto her shoulder. She gives me a quick side hug before hopping to her feet. She grabs my hand and pulls me up.

  “Let’s go. You have to finish packing before your Prince Charming arrives to whisk you off in his Jaguar.” She walks back into my room and I follow her. “Speaking of Cinderella. What were you planning on wearing on your elopement day?”

  I reach into my suitcase and pull out the white eyelet-lace sundress I wore the day I met Xavier. Olivia looks at the dress and wrinkles her nose.

  “You’re joking?”

  “ No.”

  “Manderley! You can’t wear that tired dress.”

  “Why not?”

  She tilts her head and her bangs fall over her eye. “Do you think Carole Lombard wore a Madewell sundress when she eloped with Clark Gable? Do you think Marilyn Monroe wore eyelet when she eloped with Joe DiMaggio?”

  “I am not Carole Lombard or Marilyn Monroe.”

  “Pish,” she says, waving her manicured hand. “You’re as beautiful as a classic Hollywood actress—or you would be if you would put a little more jhusj into your appearance.”

  Jhusj is Olivia’s made-up word for glitz and glamour.

  “Wait here.”

  She hurries back into her room, returning a few minutes later with her garment bag slung over her arm. She unzips the bag and removes the Chanel dress she planned on wearing to after-parties if she had won the Palme d’Or, an ivory silk sheath dress with flutter sleeves, tiny, prim buttons marching up the sides, and a plunging back. She found it in a vintage store on Melrose in West Hollywood. The store owner told her Angelina Jolie’s designer used it as inspiration for a dress he designed for Angie to wear to the Academy Awards—though he removed the sleeves and added a plunging neckline to go with the back.

  “I want you to have this,” Olivia says, handing me the gown. “Wear it on your wedding day.”

  “Oh, Olivia. Are you sure?”

  She nods. “It will be your something old and borrowed. Now you just need something new and blue.”

  * * *

  Forty minutes later, I have my something new. While Olivia finished packing my toiletries, I popped down to the Dior store and purchased a lacy bra and matching panties to wear under my wedding dress.

  Now, I am sitting in my room waiting for Xavier to arrive, shredding a fresh Kleenex, a pile of shredded Kleenex on the table beside me. My suitcase and garment bag stand at the ready beside the door.

  Olivia departed for the airport a few minutes ago, sniffling and repeatedly reminding me that she is only a call, text, or Leo’s private jet ride away. Olivia might have concerns, but secretly she is happy her conservative best friend is about to do something scandaleux.

  I look anxiously at the clock on the nightstand. Xavier is fifteen minutes late. What if he doesn’t come for me?

  I am imagining myself rushing to the airport to join Olivia on the flight back to Los Angeles, the scalding humiliation I will feel when I have to confess that I was jilted before even making it to the altar, when there is a knock at the door.

  Dropping the Kleenex I am clutching onto the pile, I stand, smooth my hair, take a deep breath, and walk on shaky legs to the door.

  Please, dear Lord, let it be Xavier.

  I clutch the door knob, my palm damp with perspiration, and peer through the peephole. My heart skips a beat as I recognize Xavier standing on the other side of the door. I open it.

  “Thank God you are still here,” he says, a note of worry clearly recognizable in his voice. “I was afraid you had lost faith in me.”

  “No,” I whisper,
my mouth suddenly dry.

  He pulls me into his arms and kisses me hard on the lips, a leg-lifting, dizziness-inducing kiss. I wrap my arms around his neck. I expect it to be a quick, chaste peck since we are still standing in the hallway, but Xavier has something else in mind. He puts his hands on my waist, urging me back into the room, and kicking the door closed behind him.

  Then, I am pinned to the wall, the proof of Xavier’s desire evident beneath his linen trousers, a big, solid promise of what to expect on our wedding night.

  He raises his head, grinning down at me.

  “What was that for?”

  “All couples have rituals.” He lets his hands drop from my waist and my skin feels colder at the loss of his touch. “I think kissing you good and hard is what I am going to do every time I come home late.”

  I laugh, drunk with his kiss and talk of rituals. “Do you plan on coming home late often?”

  “Oui, if it means I get to kiss you like that.” He glances over at my suitcases. “All ready, then?”

  “Yes.”

  We are walking to the elevator when my iPhone chimes. I reach into my Lady Dior bag to see if it is a text from Olivia or my sisters, but Xavier stops walking, drops my suitcase, and takes my phone out of my hands, slipping it back into my purse.

  “This our time, ma bichette.”

  “What if it’s important?”

  “More important than marrying me?”

  The air leaves my lungs in a rush. “When you put it that way . . .”

  He tucks an errant lock behind my ear, smiling. “I don’t want to control you, Manderley, but when we met you said you were exhausted from being everyone’s life preserver. Don’t you think now might be a good time to make a change?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When you slip my ring on your finger, I will become your life preserver. It will be my duty to cherish and protect you. I don’t ever want to see you as overwrought as I did that first day on the cliff, and I will do anything I can to prevent that from happening, even if that means urging you to let your sisters and friends float on their own for a while.”

  A lump of emotion forms in my throat. Xavier’s pledge is the most thoughtful, romantic thing any man has ever said to me.