Victoria saw that Beaumont Fournier had chosen a table where she would be sure to see him among the after-work cocktail crowd, or rather, where he would not miss her entrance. You could tell a lot about people from their entrance into an unfamiliar place. Posture, the pause to take stock, the scan of the room spoke much about the person before the mouth could confirm or undo the impression. She advanced toward him, amused. He had chosen the perfect spot in the chandelier-lit lounge for Ralph to see and claim her. She offered her hand. “Monsieur Fournier,” she said.
“Please. Beaumont will do, and may I call you Victoria? It is such a…regal name. It quite becomes you,” he said in French and bowed over her hand to brush her skin lightly with his lips.
“I’d be pleased for you to call me Victoria.”
“And I was so pleased when I learned that the translator of Robert Desnos’s Deuil pour Deuil would be assigned my novel,” Beaumont said as he drew out her chair. “Accuracy is crucial to avoid the wrong impression of the original, a transgression of which I’ve never heard it said that you are guilty.”
“I’m surprised my name is mentioned in your circles, monsieur,” Victoria said.
“Robert is a friend of mine, I’m honored to say. He was very pleased with the quality of your work.”
“I’m delighted to hear it. Monsieur Desnos is well?” Victoria had come to know and like the forty-year-old French surrealist poet through her correspondence with him while translating his poem “Mourning for Mourning,” but she’d become worried about him. News had filtered across the Atlantic that he had been writing negatively about the Vichy Regime, the pro-Axis government operating in the Free Zone of Nazi-occupied France, and that his opinions had not been warmly received.
“For the moment. I regret that Robert is a bit too outspoken against the current political situation for his own good. It is not healthy for writers of renown to get too involved in the issues of the day in France just now.” The Frenchman made a slicing motion across his neck. “Off can come one’s head.”
“Are you concerned about yours?” Victoria asked, judging that the author would take every precaution to guarantee that his attractively shaggy head remained on his neck. Not for the first time since reading about him, she wondered if he could be a Nazi collaborator. She could see him worrying with her question, considering how best to reply without risking her regard. Willard would have told him her fiancé and brother flew for the RAF. Relief leaped into his eyes at the approach of the wine steward.
“I try not to get involved in politics,” Beaumont answered offhandedly before giving an order for a specific champagne to the sommelier. When he bowed away, the author smiled across the table at Victoria and explained, “I’ve ordered a bottle from the north of France where the distinct taste and purity of the wine is due to the chalky soil and continental growing conditions. You’ll like it I’m sure.”
She glanced at her watch. “If only I had time to truly enjoy it. My brother will be here at any moment. I’m sure Willard warned you.”
“He did. Therefore…” He touched his fingertips to his lips and threw a mock kiss into the air. “Let us make hay while the sun shines, as your imaginative countrymen would say.”
“So they do,” Victoria agreed and skirted to a subject safer for her temperament by engaging the writer in his favorite topic—himself. As she expected, the Frenchman applied his charm with a trim of humility. Americans were impressed by humility in great men, so the author had expressed in a French interview. Modesty presented an appealing contrast to expectations. While the writer waved aside her obligatory praise of his novel, its salutary reviews, industry awards, and movie deal as embarrassing—“I told them it doesn’t matter to me whether Claudette Colbert or Marlena Dietrich plays the lead”—Victoria watched a solitary pigeon, a winged gray blur, settle in the spray of the famed Pulitzer Fountain on Fifth Avenue. She felt a leap of excitement. Ralph should have landed by now.
Her inner glow must have shown on her face. Presuming that it was for him, Beaumont leaned forward and laid his hand warmly over hers. “I have read numerous examples of your English translations of French literary works, Victoria, and know your craftsmanship to be excellent,” he said. “Therefore you must forgive my…ploy for luring you here. I know you are engaged, but I simply could not allow the opportunity to go by to enjoy the company of a beautiful woman for even a short while on what will probably be my last visit to America for some time.”
Victoria thought she could see how a woman could be taken in if she were not aware of the writer’s long history of philandering. A drop or two of honesty introduced at just the right moment was like cream to a dish. It added a little depth and strength to an otherwise false charm.
“You’re forgiven, if you’ll forgive my running off in a little while when my brother shows up,” she said.
He sighed and drew his hand away. “Must you keep reminding me?”
The champagne arrived. “Let’s talk about your book,” Victoria said.
An hour crawled by. The pigeon on the lip of the fountain flew away. Panic rising, conversation growing as exhausted as the bottle of Bollinger, Victoria nearly leaped from her chair when Beaumont said regretfully with a look at the revolving door, “I do believe I see your brother now. Tall, handsome, wearing a Royal Air Force uniform? I can see the family resemblance.”
Victoria thought: Family resemblance? Ralph was dark to her fair; brown-eyed to her gray-green. Beaumont pushed back his chair, irritation tinging his plastered smile. Slowly, Victoria turned around.
“Hello, sis,” her blond-haired, gray-green-eyed brother Lawrence said.
There was no need to ask what he was doing here. The weighted features of her brother’s face explained why he had come. The room fell into a slow, cream-colored, chandelier-lighted, mahogany spin. Victoria permitted Lawrence to assist her to her feet. Beaumont Fournier, bewildered, swam in a haze of cigarette smoke and the swirl of cocktail chatter. He was an unusually tall man, she noticed, pencil slim, as if he existed on truffles and champagne. “Uh, pardon, please,” he said in English, “but I am a bit confused. Is…there anything wrong? Could I be of help?”
“We’ve lost a family friend in the skies over France,” Lawrence said. “We’re both in a state of shock. There is nothing anyone can do. Excuse us. I must take my sister home.”
“Oh, yes, well, of course,” the Frenchman said. “I’m so sorry to hear it, but, uh, Miss Grayson—Victoria—I must ask. Does this mean that you won’t be translating my novel?”
Victoria did not answer as she allowed Lawrence to lead her toward the door.