“I like you very much too. In fact, I love you, Bettina. I think we could be happy together. Why don’t you want to get married again?” She found that she could always be honest with him and could say anything to him, and she liked that too, like a best friend.
“I don’t want more children. It wasn’t a good experience for me. In fact, it was awful. I was sick the whole time. I hardly knew the man I married, and I didn’t think about what could happen. We were barely more than children, and got swept up in the drama and romantic illusions right before the war. But in terms of a baby, I don’t think I’m very maternal. I love Lili, but I never really feel like a mother.” He was touched by her honesty, as he leaned over and kissed her.
“Then we won’t have children,” he said simply. “I’m not sure I want any either. If you marry me, may I adopt Lili? Then she will be my daughter, and that’s all the children we need.” He made it all seem so easy. Everything was effortless with him, and she knew he’d protect her, like her father.
“Yes, you could adopt her. Her father’s family isn’t involved with us. They’ve never seen her.”
“Never?” He was surprised when Bettina shook her head. “How long were you married before he went to war?”
“One night,” she said with a sheepish grin. “We eloped. His family has a fish restaurant and my father was furious with me for marrying him. I think I got carried away with a lot of girlish delusions because he was leaving.” Louis nodded, and understood the situation better than before.
“When are you going back to the States?” Louis asked her, thoughtfully.
“I’m not sure. Maybe sometime this summer, or in the fall. My parents have been asking me to.” But she was in no hurry to leave Paris and go home. She was having too much fun.
“I’m leaving for Dordogne. I have to spend a few weeks with my parents and my grandmother, who’s very old. But if you wait a few weeks, I’ll go back to the States with you, and I can ask your father for your hand properly. How does that seem to you?”
“Very nice.” She beamed at him, realizing that she loved him too, and how well he treated her. He was a kind, patient man, and would be a wonderful father for Lili. Angélique said he had a very considerable fortune, and was an only son. He wasn’t showy in any way. He was substantial and solid, which was so much better. And he was handsome, in a dignified fatherly way, which she liked. He wasn’t a boy, he was a man. She could suddenly see herself married to him, and the idea pleased her very much. It was not a wild romantic love, like her youthful passion for Tony. This was a very stable love, which seemed better to her, and Angélique said would last longer.
“You’ve forgotten one thing,” he reminded her, with a warm light in his eyes that made her feel happy and safe.
“What did I forget?” She looked puzzled.
“You haven’t said yes yet to my proposal. Should I get down on one knee again?” She blushed in embarrassment as she laughed then, put her arms around his neck, and he kissed her.
“Yes. Yes, I will marry you, Louis, and…I love you,” she whispered and he kissed her again, very pleased with what they’d agreed to.
They made all the arrangements for her trip back before he left for Dordogne. He booked their passage on the ship for three staterooms, and she wrote to her parents that she was coming home. She said she was bringing someone with her, a friend of the Margaux, and her family assumed it was a woman when they received her letter. She didn’t say his name, and she didn’t mention that they were getting married, since Louis didn’t have her father’s permission yet. Bettina wanted to do it right this time. Her family had no idea that she was bringing her prospective husband home. And she didn’t tell Louis that both her brothers and her grandmother and great-uncle weren’t actually alive, and were ghosts whose spirits had returned to their home after their deaths. She hoped he didn’t figure it out while he was there. There were some things he didn’t need to know.
While Bettina spent her last weeks in Paris, anxiously waiting for Louis’s return from Dordogne, Angélique was jubilant that she had found her a husband after all. He seemed like the perfect one to her. The Margaux were very pleased with their matchmaking, but Louis and Bettina were the most pleased of all. She could suddenly envision a bright future with him. And she laughed thinking of what her grandmother would say when she told her she was marrying a Frenchman. That was going to rock her grandmother to the core.
Chapter 14
Bettina would have been sadder to leave the Margaux after staying with them in Paris for five months, but she knew she would be returning soon. She and Louis were planning to stay in San Francisco for a few weeks, long enough for him to meet her family and ask her father properly for her hand in marriage, and then they would travel back across the country and return to Paris by ship. It was a long journey to make, and Louis needed to be back for work at the end of August. When they got back, Angélique wanted to give a party for them, to celebrate their marriage. Louis was a discreet person, but he was well liked and had many friends, and Bettina had met a number of people in Paris that she liked too.
Louis’s parents had a house on the Place Fran?ois Premier that they no longer used since they had retired to their chateau in Dordogne, and Louis wanted to move into their old home in the city with her. He was living in a small bachelor apartment now. His parents’ house was perfect for them and Lili.
And in the meantime, Bettina was leaving two of her trunks with Angélique and Robert. All she was taking was what she needed for the boat, and a few things for when she was at home in San Francisco. They would be away for only five or six weeks, and after that, Paris would be her home forever. She missed her parents, but her life in France was so much more interesting and more exciting, and she liked knowing that Lili would grow up there. Louis spoke English, but he preferred speaking to both of them in French. It seemed hard to believe that she had left San Francisco five months before, and her whole life had changed.