CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
They sat in the parlor. Night had folded around the castle. The fire burned; red-orange reflections danced on the wood floor. Julien sat at the pianoforte. He took a deep breath, started the melancholy air of Schubert’s Winterreise. The notes rose in the air, sorrow moving across the room, pressing on Adrienne’s shoulders.
She was jittery with anxiety, her plans knocking around in her head, almost making her feel dizzy. She swallowed, and the workings of her own throat seemed impossibly loud in the quiet night. She knew she would have to find something to keep her occupied this evening: something to keep her eyes down, away from Marie’s gaze. She was certain her face would give her away if she didn’t. Adrienne stood and moved to the bookshelves across the room. She ran her fingers along the top edges of the bindings, pretending to scan titles when in truth she wasn’t quite sure what was on the shelf before her.
Adrienne reached for a book, Les Misérables, and moved back to her seat by the fire, carefully avoiding looking directly at Marie. She opened the book, forced her eyes to find the words. Marie moved to the sofa and held a glass of wine in front of Adrienne, the merlot like a liquid garnet in the crystal.
Adrienne reached for the glass and held it with one hand, trying to pretend absorption in her book. Marie moved across the room, placed a glass of wine on the pianoforte. Julien did not look at her. His eyes were closed; his shoulders swayed with the anguish of the piece he played.
Marie sat down in the wing chair, her black skirts swishing as she moved.
Adrienne did not look in her direction. She did not trust her eyes, did not trust her face. She willed herself to stay completely calm, tried to make her features look blank and peaceful and lost in the novel before her. For the third time, her eyes traveled over the opening sentence: “An hour before sunset, on the evening of a day in the beginning of October, 1815, a man traveling afoot entered the little town of D—”
Julien finished the piece he was playing. He raised his hand and shuffled through the sheet music lying on top of the pianoforte. Adrienne could see his long fingers; she almost retched with the thought of those fingers brushing over the hands of the little girls. Brushing over her own hands all those years ago.
She shook her head and tried again to concentrate on the words of the book in front of her. The amber light of the fire glowed on everything: on one side of Marie’s face, on the polished wood of the floor. Marie looked up from her stitching. Her eyes caught Adrienne’s. She lifted her wineglass and sipped, her eyes never leaving the face of her niece.
Adrienne dropped her eyes back to the book. She raised her eyes and her glass of wine at the same time. She took a long, slow sip. She glanced at Julien, who had stopped playing, his hands arrested over the keys, as if he had lost his train of thought. Adrienne was acutely aware of every sound, every sensation in the room. The clock ticked. The fire crackled and popped. She could hear the thread as it pulled through the fabric of Marie’s stitching.
She turned her gaze back to the page. She took another sip of her wine, starting to feel slightly sick. Her pulse raced; her face grew warm. She felt dizzy, as if the entire world had started to spin.
“Drink, Adrienne. It is getting late.” Adrienne raised her eyes to the face of her aunt. Marie’s eyes gleamed in the firelight, a glint of triumph in their dark depths, a hint of a smile brushing the corners of her mouth.
Adrienne raised the glass to her lips and drained it. Slow liquid warmth flowed down her throat and into her chest.
Adrienne. Marie had called her Adrienne. Adrienne lowered the glass, stared at the fire. She couldn’t remember the last time Marie had called her Adrienne. For a moment, she felt as if she were at the back of some long tunnel, sound coming to her from far away, muffled and indistinct. Marie and Julien and the fire in the grate seemed a tremendous distance away.
Julien raised his head, took his own glass of wine. She watched his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed. She could hear it, a swallow that seemed inordinately loud and far too slow. This was not normal. She could almost hear the workings of his throat, could hear the swishing of the wine as it made its way down his esophagus. Nothing that she looked at or heard was normal.
Adrienne rubbed her hand against her forehead. The beginnings of a headache pinched at her temples and between her eyes. The corners of the room began to move forward and back, as if she were in the throes of fever.
The word slammed into her consciousness with the sudden bang of a drum. Poison. She shuddered, swallowed, sat up straighter. Her breath caught. Poison. Adrienne lowered the glass to her lap, trained her eyes on the flames of the fire. She cast a sidelong glance at Marie, her own eyes held low, trying to see Marie through her lashes.
Marie sat in the wing chair. She was stitching again, her needle poking through the fabric, her arm extending as she pulled the thread. Every now and then she stopped, raised her own glass of wine, and sipped. She appeared to be absorbed in what she was doing.
Adrienne moved her glass in a slow circle, staring at the few drops of crimson liquid that still lay in the bottom. She wrapped both hands around it. Wasn’t it normally Julien who poured the wine? Adrienne tried to pull back the memories of every other night in the parlor. One evening floated into the next, a relentless repetition. They were all alike. Marie stitched. Julien played. Adrienne read. They drank a glass of wine. They knelt on the carpet, prayed the Rosary. Marie followed her up the stairs and locked the door behind her. But she could swear that it was Julien who usually poured the wine.
She raised her eyes to Marie, who continued to stitch. She felt light-headed, queasy, as if she had already drunk far too much of whatever potion Marie had concocted. Her head pounded. She was lost in a fog, her body sitting in the parlor, her mind fuzzy. She could not begin to sift through the thoughts that pounded in her brain, the foreboding that crept up her arms and raised the hair on the back of her neck.
“I’m . . . I’m not feeling very well this evening,” Adrienne murmured. She leaned forward, and with a shaky hand, placed her wineglass on the low table before her. “I don’t think I can manage . . .” She swallowed hard and looked up at Marie again. “I feel as if I might be sick.” As if to corroborate her words, sweat broke out on her forehead and upper lip. Her face went completely pale.
“Hmmm,” Marie murmured, eyeing her own wine. Her eyes flicked up to Adrienne. “You cannot manage prayers this evening?”
Adrienne felt herself flush with color. A rush of heat spread up her spine and into her face. Sweat pooled on her lip. “No, I . . . I think I had better lie down,” she whispered. She rose, swaying slightly on her feet.
“Bonne nuit.” Adrienne bent her head slightly to Marie. She turned and ducked her head toward Julien. He didn’t look in her direction.