As if reading my mind, he said, “I’m not bedding that little chippie.”
I should’ve felt more relieved. Why didn’t I? Perhaps I didn’t believe him. Or perhaps it was simply less painful to think Willie had succumbed to temptations of the flesh than to accept that he found my presence so tiresome that he preferred to keep an ocean between us.
“She was caressing your face,” I pointed out.
“She was studying my face.”
I gave a delicate snort.
“She’s an artist,” he said. “Mr. McAdams is making a bust of me, and she’s his assistant.”
At hearing this, a new and more powerful surge of anger sent me shooting to my feet. “You commissioned someone else to sculpt you?”
Willie held up a hand to fend off my tirade, but I jabbed a finger into his palm, quaking from the heels of my boots to the tip of my ostrich plume. “See here, Willie Chanler: I studied under Victor Salvatori. My pieces are on display at the National Academy of Design! I carved a four-hundred-foot bas-relief frieze in the lobby of the Vanderbilt Hotel for you—”
“I convinced you to do it!”
“That’s not the point. You know how important sculpture has become to me since leaving the stage. When we married, you promised I wouldn’t be just one more society lady who plays bridge-whist and attends tango teas.”
“You’re the Queen of the Social Register, and you love every minute of it.”
Again, that damnable smile of his. All confidence and smolder. I simply refused to let it make me soft in the head. “Be that as it may, you posing for some other artist is like taking out an advertisement to denigrate the talent of your own wife.”
“Then maybe it’s time we let more people know we’re separated.”
His words were such a slap to the face that I blinked. Years before, we’d come to an amicable arrangement to live apart, but since then we’d enjoyed more than a few reconciliatory trysts. Besides, I’d come to fight for my marriage, and I wasn’t ready to surrender. “I’m still your wife,” I snapped, wondering why the devil he wanted a bust carved of himself anyway. Busts were for posterity. Busts of living people seemed pretentious and—
“Oh, Willie . . . you’re frightened about the surgery, aren’t you?”
“I’m not frightened of anything.”
I used to believe that. Now, staring at his jutted chin, I wasn’t sure. I was frightened for him and knew I must retreat before I let it show. “Well, you obviously need your rest. I’ll bring the boys in the morning.”
“I’d rather you didn’t. Little boys don’t relish hospital visits. Take a trip to Le Touquet and rent a cottage on the beach. Keep them active; toughen them up a bit.”
“Ah, the Roman father speaks.” This was, after all, an old quarrel. “Shall I leave our boys on a windswept crag and see if they survive?”
His brow furrowed. “Stuff them with pralines and petit fours if you want, but don’t bring the boys here tomorrow. Or the next day, or the day after that. It’s going to be a difficult surgery, and the recovery will be worse. Do you think I want my sons to see me like this? I don’t.” I was too dumbstruck by this outburst to interrupt, which may have encouraged him to add, “And tell the Chapmans not to visit me either.”
The Chapmans—his sister Elizabeth, her husband, Jack, and our nephew Victor—wouldn’t like this news, and I was indignant that Willie expected me to deliver it. “Is there anyone else in the family you’d like me to wound for you?”
His expression softened. “In a month or two when I’m back on my feet, we’ll have a family reunion. I’m confident you can enjoy France without me in the meantime. Tell the boys their father loves them.”
With that, I understood myself to be dismissed. My husband wished to face this dangerous battle without me. Or perhaps with the curvaceous sculptor’s assistant. Either way, I wasn’t wanted, so I rose, intent upon escape from abject humiliation.
That’s when he caught my wrist. “Bea . . .” He stroked the place where my glove gave way to the skin of my arm. “You still have the prettiest, most expressive blue eyes . . . bluer than Capri’s grotto on a sunny day . . . astonishing, really.”
He hesitated, as if he meant to say more. I hoped he’d changed his mind and would ask me to stay . . . but he only said, “I look forward to seeing those baby blues again when the morphine isn’t clouding my head, and then we’ll discuss important matters.”