Page 138 of Frankly, My Dear

A flicker of doubt swept Giselle’s flushed face, but she quickly shook it off. “I believe Victor. And soon we will attain our goals. Then we will move away…somewhere gay…perhaps Paris…and I will have my medicine, and Victor, and…” Her voice grew faint as she tried to remember all the details of their dream.

Selene wondered where Etienne fit into those plans, and decided not to ask. Because she knew, even if Giselle did not, that Victor would never harbor James’s child.

After that, Giselle made little sense. Selene changed the sheets and tied Giselle’s flailing body to the bed with strips of linen, aided by Iris, Hyacinth, and the guard. She knew nothing about treatment for drug addicts, but it seemed to her that Giselle posed a danger to herself unless restrained.

For days after that, she and the servants took turns wiping Giselle’s convulsing body with cool cloths when she was feverish, and covering her with blankets when the chills came. They tried to force some broth down her parched throat.

After three days they removed the restraints because Giselle just lay listlessly, whimpering occasionally for her medicine and Victor. James came once to see her and left almost immediately, shaking his head with revulsion.

Exhausted, Selene plodded to the bath chamber late that afternoon with clean clothing and linen towels. A tear slipped down her cheek as she made a mental note of the date—Saturday, the day she and James had planned to marry.

Selene bathed in a zombie-like fashion, unable to gain her usual pleasure from the luxurious bathtub. After her bath, she dressed and tidied up the room, then leaned against the wall.

With hot tears streaming down her cheeks, she finally accepted the facts that she had resisted for days. Witnessing firsthand Giselle’s sickness and her need for love and a helping husband had driven home to Selene that she could not stay at Bayou Noir.

Selene couldn’t help but liken this situation to the death of her friend Tessa. What if Tessa had had a husband who failed to understand her anorexia and addiction to diet pills? What if that husband had fallen out of love with Tessa and had been involved with another woman? Selene would have expected Tessa’s husband to stay with her, to help her survive, to rebuild their marriage.

Selene couldn’t justify her own position in this triangle.

It was two days until St. John’s Eve, and Selene decided that she would go home then, back to 1996. She had no choice.

With that decision made, she dragged herself up to her fourth-floor bedroom. It was past time to make preparations for her departure. Minutes later, she came storming out.

Her precious ballgown, her key to the future, was gone.

I’ll kill him, she raged to herself. I can’t believe James would take my ballgown. I can’t believe he would force me to stay here against my will.

Should she go out to the fields and confront him, or should she wait until dinner? She decided to wait for him in the kitchen. She was passing through the lower-floor corridor when she saw him approaching.

James saw Selene before she saw him. Looking right and left to see that no one else was about, he smiled to himself. At last, an opportunity to catch Selene alone.

Before she had a chance to protest, he pulled her into the cold cellar, maneuvering around the hanging hams and barrels of leftover winter vegetables and fruits.

“I’ve been looking for you,” Selene said when he backed her up against the cool stone wall. “Oh…stop that,” she added, swatting at his right palm that circled her breast, drawing the nipple into a hard point. He loved the way her body responded so readily to his touch.

“Stop what?” he murmured against her lips. He nibbled at her lower lip until she parted for him, then devoured her with his lips and tongue. “So long…it has been too long, chérie,” he whispered. “I am so hungry for you.”

She moaned and tried to push against his chest. “I need to ask you something…I need to…a-a-ah…”

“I will fill your needs,” he promised with an exultant cry as he pressed his hardened manhood against the cleft of her thighs.

“Don’t…you can’t…we can’t…” Her words of protest weakened as he lifted the hem of her skirt and inserted a finger into the slit of her drawers. “O-o-h.”

“I love the way you say that, ma chérie.”

“What?” she gasped.

“The way you say ‘oh.’ Did you know you have dozens of ways of saying ‘oh’? And I’m beginning to recognize each of them.”

She flashed him a look of disbelief, still trying to wriggle out of his embrace.

At his first touch of the slick heat of her womanhood, she cried, out, “Oh…I mean…”

He groaned with pure male satisfaction. “That ‘oh’ means you like to be touched in just that spot.” He repeated the strokes to prove his point, and her eyelids fluttered erotically.

“Stop it, James. We can’t do this.”

“I love you, Selene. And we can, and will, do this.”