Five days after she arrived in Paris, they began her Paris social life with a dinner party for a dozen guests, all carefully chosen to further her life there. There were two sisters her age, with their parents, there was a charming young couple with a child Lili’s age, and three handsome bachelors from excellent families whom their hostess said were the most desirable men in Paris. It was everything her parents would have wanted for her, and Bettina didn’t normally think about. But she had a fantastic evening, and managed to speak French all night, much to everyone’s delight. She knew her parents would have been extremely pleased and very grateful to her hosts. It more than made up for the two extremely boring and depressing years she had just spent at home in San Francisco during the war and her pregnancy. It had been five years since she’d come out, and she’d had no social life to speak of for the past three. She loved her family, but now she was ready to explore the world on her own.
Bettina thanked her hostess again profusely the morning after the dinner. Angélique assured her that she had another one planned for her the following week. And two of the men she’d met sent her flowers that afternoon. She had a feeling they were both practiced flirts, and the third one seemed like a fortune hunter, but they had certainly been fun for an evening. Angélique wanted to know if any of the men of the night before had struck her fancy.
“I’m not really looking,” Bettina said honestly. “I just wanted to get away from San Francisco for a while. I didn’t have any plan to find a husband.” And she wasn’t sure she wanted one either, which she didn’t say. She didn’t want to appear ungrateful.
“But why not let us try? It’s so much fun. And you deserve a handsome man.” Bettina felt like a schoolgirl as she blushed, and she had to admit, it was entertaining to be the object of their attentions.
From then on, they gave a dinner party once a week to introduce her to suitable men and potential husbands, and Bettina had never seen so many good-looking men in her life. She had no idea what her grandmother had against the French, but Bettina thought the men were devastatingly handsome. And people she met at the Margaux dinners started inviting her too. Two months after she’d arrived, Bettina had a wide circle of friends in Paris. It was early May by then, and the weather was beautiful. She was invited to a lovely garden party one afternoon, to play croquet, and afterward she sat down on a lawn chair with a glass of lemonade and was surveying the scene when a man approached her. He was quite serious, and, as she recalled, he was a banker like her father and Robert de Margaux. He looked less playful than the men who had been pursuing her, but he was handsome and seemed pleasant, and was older than the others by several years.
“How are you enjoying your stay in Paris?” he asked her. He had come to one of the Margaux dinners for her, so she assumed they approved of him, or he wouldn’t have been there.
“Very much so,” she answered in French, she remembered that his name was Louis de Lambertin.
“How long will you be here?” he inquired quietly.
“I don’t know. I needed a change of scene,” she said honestly.
“Heavy losses during the war?” he asked, curious about her. He knew she was from a prominent American family in California, but nothing else about her.
“A brother and a husband,” she answered his question. It was true, although Josiah was back in their midst. But Tony wasn’t.
“I’m sorry. The war was so hard on everyone. I don’t know of any family that wasn’t touched by it,” he said sympathetically.
“Particularly in Europe,” she said softly, and they exchanged a smile.
“Do you have children?” he asked her, since she’d been married.
“A little girl, sixteen months old. Her father died before she was born.” She didn’t know why she was telling him all that, but he had asked. “Do you have children?” she asked, turning the tables on him, and he laughed.
“No, I don’t. I’ve never been married.” It surprised her, since he looked almost as old as her father, though not quite. She correctly guessed him to be around forty. In fact, he was forty-one, eighteen years older than she, but he seemed younger in spirit. She couldn’t imagine her father having anything to say to a girl her age, particularly a single woman.
“Were you in prison?” she teased him, and he laughed.
“No, but perhaps I should have been. All bankers should be in prison.” They chatted for a while, and then she went to look for the Margaux among their own friends, and Louis de Lambertin joined his. He didn’t appear to be in a flashy group. They seemed like solid, aristocratic people, rather like her parents. Some of the Margaux family’s friends were more glamorous.
Angélique commented on her talking to him, on the drive home, and Bettina asked about him.
“He’s very quiet. I think he had a serious romance when he was younger that didn’t work out, and then he never married. I’m not sure he’s in the market for a wife. He strikes me as a permanent bachelor now. After a certain point, they don’t care,” Angélique said.
“That’s perfect.” Bettina smiled at her. “Because I’m not shopping for a husband.” But a friend would have been nice, someone to explore Paris with her.
She was surprised to hear from him a few days later, and he invited her to Le Pré Catelan in the Bois de Boulogne for lunch.
He picked Bettina up in his enormous Citro?n, drove her there, and they never stopped talking all through lunch. He wasn’t a practiced flirt like many of the men Angélique had been introducing her to. He was just a nice person who was easy to talk to, and he thought the same about Bettina, and in addition he thought she was very beautiful. He invited her out again, the next time to dinner, and she had a good time with him once more.
She continued going to dinner parties, and the Margaux persisted in entertaining for her, but she managed to go to the ballet and the theater and the opera with Louis, and he took her to a dinner party to meet his friends. He met Lili and they went to the park together and he was very sweet to her, and Bettina realized that she had never been as comfortable with anyone. He was part father, part brother, part friend. She tried to explain that to Angélique after they had been seeing each other for over a month, and she smiled at her young friend.
“That sounds like a husband to me,” Angélique said sensibly.
“Does it?” Bettina looked surprised. “I thought it was supposed to be much more romantic,” she said innocently, and it had been with Tony, for one night.
“Not really.” Angélique explained the ways of the world to her. “Eventually the romance goes away, most of the time anyway, and you want to be sure you’re left with something you can live with. Friendship isn’t a bad way to start, especially if it’s what you wind up with in the end.” It made sense to Bettina, and apparently to Louis too. He continued asking her out, and planning excursions that she enjoyed, and at the end of June, before he left to visit his family in Dordogne for the month, he proposed to her, on one knee. It had been quite different with Tony. They had just rushed off to city hall to get a marriage license and get married before he shipped out, and spent a night in a cheap hotel. In retrospect, it seemed tawdry, and she knew her father had been right. It would never have worked. Their worlds were too far apart.
“I never thought I’d get married again,” she said in a soft voice after he asked her. “I’m not even sure I want to, although I like you very much.” He smiled at the choice of phrase.