Blood and Oranges by James Goldsborough (latest books to read txt) 📗

things into perspective. The cities were lively, the people friendly, the men beautiful, the countryside lovely, exactly as they’d hoped except that over everything hung a great black cloud of doom. People covered up their anxieties with wine and dancing and making love, but the next morning the dread came seeping back. They were adrift in leaky boats in violent seas, reprieved occasionally by lulls of false hope, as at Munich.

She was dressed in white silk. Her luminous dress and gold bangles and dangles in stark contrast with her dark hair and bronzed skin. In Paris, where fashion demands the palest skin, where women invest in the costliest creams and salves to erase the slightest blemish and would never dare go outdoors uncovered, the vibrant Maggie Mull was as rare a sight as an Amazon princess on the Rhine.

“My goodness,” he said.

“May I take that as a compliment?”

He smiled. “You look wonderful.”

“Come sit down, Cal. I have some news.”

They were at the front of the hotel in rooms looking out on Place de la Concorde. The noise from that turbulent racetrack of cars was diminished but not eliminated by two sets of thick double windows. He sat down in a meticulously stitched Voltaire chair with shiny brass-tipped upholstery pins that likely went back to the great man himself. He watched his cousin sit down on the settee across from him and light a cigarette.

He knew without being told. It was the largest diamond he’d ever seen.

Arnaud was waiting at the bar, and Cal immediately congratulated him. They shook hands and ordered champagne. “Before we sit to dinner,” said Cal, as their flutes were filled, “may I toast you both. It is of course wonderful news.”

It was not exactly how he’d received the news in Maggie’s room. It had bothered him, alarmed him, and good soldier that he was, he still couldn’t hide it. Nelly had fiercely resisted sending her daughter off with him, even knowing that no amount of resistance would change a thing. She’d taken Cal aside and made him promise to watch over her day and night, making clear that he was responsible for her, knowing it was an impossible demand.

They’d talked in Maggie’s room until they were more than just fashionably late for the dinner with Arnaud. The diamond said he had no chance, but he had to try.

“Another Harold, no?”

“Nothing like that. Harold was flying lessons.”

“Another Falkenberg.”

“Stop it, Cal.”

“And Arnaud?”

“I’d say we were made for each other. He would say the same thing.”

“Excuse me for being practical, but at least Harold didn’t live in a place about to go to war. What do you do when it breaks out—and it will, you know.”

“He wants to come to America.”

“Everyone over here wants to come to America. The ships would be bursting if we gave them all visas.”

“So, I stay here.”

“Why is he any different from the German?”

“You bastard!”

“Well . . .?”

“Arnaud is on our side.”

“Oh, you’re taking sides?”

“I am now.”

“He’s in the French Air Force. No way they let him leave.”

“Just for our honeymoon. He wants to meet everyone in Los Angeles.”

“And when the honeymoon is over?”

“You’re too far out there, Cal, as always.”

“Someone has to think ahead.”

She showed a flash of anger. “Why? Why does anyone have to think ahead? Why not take life as it comes?”

“Sure—unless what’s coming is a war, a really nasty war, just like the last one, where just about everyone in uniform is killed and whole nations are destroyed and afterward everyone runs around asking themselves, goodness, how could this have happened?”

Her dark eyes closed down on him, and he had to look away.

“Cal, have you ever been in love?”

He stared at her without answering. She understood.

“Then how can you have an opinion? Love is not something you walk away from. You walk away and you hate yourself the rest of your life, wondering, always wondering.”

“You make a mistake and you pay for it the rest of your life.”

“God, you’re cynical.”

“No, I am not cynical,” he said, with feeling. “And no, I have never been in love—at least not to the point of signing up for the rest of my life, if that’s what you mean.”

At dinner with Arnaud, over more champagne, his opposition softened, as things tend to do. There was nothing to dislike about Arnaud except that he didn’t have long to live. He’d been raised in the best of Parisian families, gone to the best of schools, including in England and Germany. He was cultivated, curious, courteous and madly in love with Maggie.

“I was in love with her from the first,” he said, laughing, “even after finding out she was a flier. As for flying, she is magnifique! I let her fly my MS, you know, all the way to Dover. She wanted to fly over London but we didn’t have enough petrol. Anyway, we didn’t have clearance.” He laughed again and reached for her hand. “You never know about the English. They’re never sure who the enemy is. Maybe everybody. They might have shot us down.”

The wedding was set for March 4 in the Basilique Sainte Clotilde, just around the corner from the Ministry of Defense, where Arnaud worked. Cal stayed for it, though no one came from the States. Nelly wanted to come, but not alone, and Eddie and Lizzie were too busy. Lizzie wrote a long letter saying she felt awful but it would take a month and the Times wouldn’t give it to her. In Eddie’s absence, Cal gave away the bride. Everyone at home, he learned from Lizzie, was upset but not surprised. If Maggie hadn’t shocked them this way, she would have found some other way. They peppered him in letters with questions he couldn’t answer. Arnaud was first rate, he said, just that the timing was bad.

With no one else from the Mull side, there were plenty of Scitivaux to fill the pews at Sainte Clotilde. It was a military family from centuries back with roots all across France. Arnaud’s immediate