I understood the sentiment. More than ever, since the recurrence of my illness.
These weren’t wasted moments at Chavaniac, though. Now that the guns had stopped booming, there was the peace to attend to. The rebuilding of the world. It couldn’t wait. I was still part of that fight . . .
My cavalier tried to pull me into another kiss, but a heaviness descended in my limbs. “Max, the operations you’ve seen here are only a fraction of what I’m responsible for. We’re beginning a preventorium to treat tuberculosis, and there’s the Paris office too. I’m needed awhile longer, if only to set things on the right track.”
Max rubbed at the back of his neck. “How long—a week—a month?”
“I don’t know.”
“A few months?”
He was trying to be reasonable. He was being reasonable. So why did I prickle with frustration? “I didn’t expect you today, and while it’s a lovely surprise, I . . . well, as I said, I didn’t expect you.”
Max sat on the edge of the bed, hands clasped. “You’re right. I beg your pardon. Like a brute, I’ve invaded your fortress intent on carrying you off.”
“You’re just eager to start a new life,” I said, caressing his cheek.
He took my hands. “Yes. As soon as possible, I want you to become Mrs. Maxime Furlaud.”
Mrs. Maxime Furlaud. It should’ve made me delirious with happiness to hear it spoken aloud. But it would be another name that wasn’t my own. Another role to play in a production not of my own direction.
What was wrong with me? I loved Max. I admired him. He’d be good to me and my children, patient and kind. Still, I had already failed at being a wife twice before . . .
As a chasm of silence opened between us, Max squinted. “You do want to be my wife, don’t you?”
His question turned me into a rigid statue. To answer, I had to carve words out of my own heart. “You don’t know me . . .”
“I know you as well as you let me know you.”
With a shaky voice I admitted, “And I’ve only let you see the side you needed to see.”
He paled. “Not again, Beatrice. Don’t do this to me again.” I let out a sudden sob, bringing my hand to my lips to silence it. And he stared, devastated but finally comprehending. “How long have you known?”
All along, I thought. Also, somehow, not until just this moment . . .
Every time a doubt crept in, I remembered he was a soldier at war and that I must do nothing to dispirit him. Now the curtain on the war had fallen, so I started with the easiest truth; the one he had a right to know. “I can’t have more children, or at least I shouldn’t. The doctors have told me so.”
His eyes brightened, hopeful. “Is that all? Doctors can be wrong!”
“They’re not wrong.” I was, after all, nearly thirty-nine, older than he supposed, with an allegedly frail heart.
“Then we’ll adopt,” he said. “Marthe needs a mother and father, doesn’t she?”
I could so easily see this lovely future in my mind’s eye. Pigtailed Marthe, the daughter I’d always wanted, a precious child I’d taken to my heart the first moment Max put her into my arms . . . but I’d already lived the life of a new bride and mother to small children. Already bought and furnished nurseries and picked schools and shopped for back-to-school clothes. Already gauged my every move by how it might reflect upon a husband. And all this besides the fact that as much as I loved that little girl, I now had hundreds like her to love and provide for.
As my silence lengthened, Max frowned, staring down at his clasped hands. “I’ve already taken your boys into my heart. It can be enough if I have you and the future we dreamed.”
“You are a dear, sweet man,” I whispered, knowing I was breaking him. Wishing I knew how to stop. You’ll chew him up and spit him out and leave his heart bleeding on the floor. That’s what Willie had said. Had he known me better than I knew myself? “Maxime,” I said, sitting beside him. “I want you to have everything. New York. The white house, the cassoulet, and quiet evenings by the fire . . .”
He swallowed, not missing my meaning. “But you want to stay in France.”
I nodded. “Once the peace accords are signed, I want to send for my boys. I need them to see what kept me away all this time. I want them to understand Chavaniac.” There was so much I wanted to show them. So many places I wanted to visit myself. My hands positively ached with the longing to sculpt and create again. To make art, to write books, and to enjoy the freedoms that victory had secured. But maybe I could learn to make the damned cassoulet. “Would you build a different kind of life with me, here, in France?”