“Ah,” she said, rather unnerved that he had brought her to an establishment known for assignations with courtesans. “Thank you for explaining, Monsieur d’Albret.”
“Oh, please—you must call me Jean-Fran?ois.”
“Very well. I’ve, ah, never been here before,” she said, hoping to steer the conversation in a more conventional direction.
“Where do you dine, if not in the finest establishments?”
“Well, I dine at home. With my aunt. And I do go to several restaurants in Montparnasse with—”
“Pah. That ghetto. With my apologies to your aunt’s excellent cook, I fear this means you have not yet experienced the wonders of French haute cuisine.” He snapped his fingers, and a waiter ran in from the corridor.
“I have decided that we shall both partake of the tasting menu. To begin, I have ordered a bottle of their finest champagne.”
“Oh, really, there’s no need—”
“But I insist.”
Dinner was endless, a parade of increasingly rich dishes that he devoured with great gusto, but which Helena barely touched. The tasting menu, disappointingly, included many of her least favorite foods, and she was simply unable to muster the appetite to eat more than a bite or two of each course. There were jellied langoustine, which looked disconcertingly insectlike, duckling in a viscous orange sauce, lamb’s kidneys, and even frog’s legs.
She had accepted only one glass of champagne at the beginning of dinner and had refused anything more; by the end of the meal, Jean-Fran?ois had finished off the bottle, as well as an additional bottle of claret. He stumbled on the way out of the restaurant and had some difficulty in entering the car, but this in no way dampened his enthusiasm for the evening.
“Let us go to Le Grand Duc in Pigalle. It has the best American jazz music in Paris. After that, we shall go dancing at the Bal Bullier.”
Although she would much rather have gone home, the prospect of hearing jazz music played live did appeal to her. She’d only ever heard it on gramophone records, and if she were lucky the music would be so loud that she wouldn’t have to make conversation with the man, her store of conversational topics having petered out well before the second course at dinner. Of course, if he’d even once asked about her interests, or work, or friends, they’d have had plenty to talk about.
At the Grand Duc, they were ushered to a table near the front and provided with yet another bottle of champagne on ice. Helena ignored her glass, knowing it would only make her growing headache worse, and though she asked the waiter for a glass of water it never appeared.
None of that mattered once the music began. The musicians played without sheet music before them, often at dizzying speeds, and although she didn’t know much about jazz it seemed that they were improvising some of the songs. It was the perfect music for dancing, though she’d no idea how one would dance to it. Perhaps étienne might be able to show her.
Jean-Fran?ois emptied the bottle of champagne at high speed, and thereafter he seemed to grow increasingly annoyed with the music, or perhaps the venue in general. Right in the middle of a song, and in front of the entire audience, he stood and beckoned for her to follow him out.
“We are going!” he shouted over his shoulder. “I’ve had enough of this degenerate Yankee music.”
“I thought the musicians were very accomplished,” she said as they got in the car.
“Pah. What would you know?”
“I beg your pardon?”
He giggled, a ridiculous sound coming from a grown man, and patted her arm in a way she did not appreciate, not one bit. “I do apologize. I meant only that a lady like yourself cannot possibly understand the vulgarity of such music.”
“I think I should like to go home now,” she said evenly.
“But the night is young! How can you even think of going to bed before midnight? And surely you do not wish to disappoint me, not after keeping me waiting for so long.” His smile widened into a leer, and a wisp of panic took up residence behind her sternum. In this car she was trapped, for she couldn’t depend on the driver to come to her aid, and d’Albret—she no longer wished to think of him in a friendly fashion—seemed to have abandoned his morals along with his sobriety.
An idea came to her then, for hadn’t étienne said he would be at Le D?me? If she could persuade d’Albret to go there instead of the Bal Bullier, she might enlist her friend’s aid in divesting herself of this disagreeable man. At the very least he could distract d’Albret while she got into a taxi and went home.
“Very well. But could we go to Le D?me first? The barman makes the most divine cocktails.”
“I suppose,” he acceded. “But after that we must go dancing.”