Dreaming of Manderley Page 5

  We walk back toward the hotel together, crossing through the park. A gilded carousel with painted horses stands in the center. I must have rushed through this square at least two dozen times throughout the Festival—on my way to screenings at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès—but I never paused to appreciate the festive mood.

  I stop walking and watch the carousel spin around and around, feeling wistful for my youth and grateful finally to have a few moments to stop, breathe, and enjoy the moment.

  Xavier stops walking, too. “Is something the matter?”

  “No.”

  “Then come along,” he says, cupping my elbow.

  “Not yet,” I say, smiling up at him. “Please.”

  He releases his hold on my elbow and we stand side by side, watching the blinking lights and listening to the bubbling Wurlitzer music.

  “Have you ever ridden on this carousel?”

  “Non.”

  “Would you like to?”

  He frowns slightly. “How old are you?”

  The note of accusation in his question makes me feel like a foolish, wide-eyed child. I start to walk again, but he grabs my elbow again.

  “I am twenty-seven,” I say. “How old are you?”

  “Thirty-six.”

  “Thirty-six? So old?”

  “Ancient as Lascaux,” he says, chuckling. “Go ahead, ask me the significance of the famous shaft scene.”

  Most people outside of France probably haven’t heard of Lascaux, the complex labyrinth of caves located in southwestern France famous for their Paleolithic cave drawings. I, however, read The Cave Painters: Probing the Mysteries of the World’s First Artists by Gregory Curtis, so I know the shaft scene is the most famous of the drawings.

  I laugh.

  “Come on then,” he says, grabbing my hand and pulling me toward the carousel. “If mademoiselle wishes to take a ride, it would be my pleasure to give her one.”

  My cheeks flush with heat even as I tell myself his declaration is not a double entendre.

  “That’s okay.” I resist. “Really.”

  “Would you let me leave Cannes without knowing the thrill of riding a carousel?”

  “Of course not. Only . . .”

  “Only?”

  “Are you leaving Cannes soon?”

  “Why? Would you be upset if I were?”

  Truthfully, I feel a strange melancholy at the thought of Xavier leaving Cannes and disappearing from my life. The heat spreads from my cheeks to the tips of my ears. I shift my gaze to my feet, to the slender straps on my sandals.

  He chuckles again, as if he read my thoughts, and raises my hand to his lips.

  We wait for the carousel to stop spinning and the riders to disembark. Xavier hands the carousel operator the fee. We step onto the carousel. I choose a white horse with a brightly painted saddle. Xavier lends me his hand and I climb on the horse, sitting sidesaddle. Xavier leans against the horse beside mine, crossing his arms and observing me with solemnity.

  “Aren’t you going to ride a horse?”

  He raises an eyebrow. “I am not sure my arthritic bones could handle the excitement.”

  “Oh, Xavier,” I say, pressing a hand to my heated cheeks. “I am sorry for calling you old. I was terribly rude.”

  “So you don’t think I am a Neanderthal?”

  I look at his thick wavy hair devoid of gray, his sparkling blue eyes framed with laugh lines, and his broad, muscular shoulders visible beneath his thin navy tee. I detect an electrifying vitality beneath his urbane, self-contained exterior, a vitality more powerful than that of men half his age.

  “No, Xavier,” I whisper. “You are definitely not a Neanderthal.”

  A smile tugs at one corner of his mouth. “Have you always enjoyed riding carousels?”

  “I don’t know. This is the first time I have ridden one, but I suspect I will enjoy myself. There are so few things in this world that allow one to recapture the fleeting, wondrous days of innocence. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  He fixes me with an inscrutable stare, and I wonder, not for the first time, what he thinks when he looks at me.

  The carousel begins spinning slowly, picking up speed to match the energetic organ music blaring from the speakers. I grip the golden bar and try to avoid Xavier’s intense gaze. We go around and around, until I am dizzy with the motion and with my happiness.

  When the ride slows, Xavier reaches up, places his hands on my waist, and lifts me off the horse, as casually as if he had done it a hundred times before.

  For a few breath-stealing seconds, we are standing so close I can feel the heat from his skin, smell the warm, spicy scent of his cologne, see the flecks of silver in his dark blue eyes. A shiver of pleasure spreads through my body.

  “Did you enjoy the ride?”

  His lips curl in a teasing smile and I experience that thrilling, frightening sensation one feels when they are at the top of a rollercoaster, waiting to plunge down, down, down.

  “I did.”

  “Bon.”

  We step off the carousel and follow the path leading to the hotel.

  “This is such a pretty square, but I wonder who Reynaldo Hahn was and why it is named after him.”

  “He was a composer who specialized in Mozart. He was also a decorated World War I soldier and a close friend of the French writer Guy de Maupassant,” Xavier explains.

  “I love Guy de Maupassant.”

  Xavier looks at me. “Do you? I do, too.”

  We cross the street and make our way to the hotel entrance. Xavier motions for me to walk first through the revolving door and then follows me.

  “What are you doing now?”

  “Olivia is not feeling well, so I am free for the next few hours. I thought I would stroll along the Croisette.”

  “How utterly pedestrian,” he says, grabbing my elbow. “Come along then, we will go for a drive.”

  “A drive. Where?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Not really, only . . .”

  “Only what? Are you frightened I will ravish you?”

  My cheeks flush with guilty heat.

  “You are blushing. How marvelous.”

  “I was going to say that I need to be back before Olivia wakes up, in case she needs anything.”

  “Olivia is a big girl. She can fend for herself for an afternoon,” he says, steering me toward the elevators. “Go on now, run upstairs and get whatever you need. I will wait for you out front.”

  It occurs to me, as I am standing in the elevator, humming the tune from the carousel, that Xavier’s manner is, at times, old Hollywood: Go on now. There’s a good girl.

  As a modern woman living in the most progressive feminist age, I should balk at his patriarchal attitude. After all, I am not Joan Crawford and he is not Clark Gable. We are not filming a scene from Forsaking All Others, where I sass him and he grabs me by the waist, tosses me over his knees, and gives me a good spanking.

  And yet . . .

  If I am being entirely honest, deep down, I like being ordered about by Xavier.

  Chapter Five

  Text from Winter V. Hastings, Esquire:

  Wonderful news, Manderley. Since your aunt was, indeed, a citizen of Ireland, and the property she bequeathed you is not situated in the United States, you will not have to pay gift taxes for the yacht.

  “All set?”

  I adjust the lap belt snugly against my abdomen and click the seat belt buckle into place. “I believe so,” I say, clutching my camera lying in my lap.

  Xavier smiles, wraps his long, lean fingers around the leather steering wheel, and we take off, windows down, wind whipping through my unbound hair. Xavier maneuvers the sports car through the congested streets until we arrive at the entrance to the D6185. He revs the engine and the Jaguar flies up the on-ramp. It takes only a few minutes before we are high in the hills overlooking Cannes. Xavier shifts gears and maneuvers into the fast lane.

  “Manderley Maxwell
.”

  “Yes?”

  He looks over at me and I clutch my camera strap tighter. A shaft of afternoon sunlight slanting through the windshield illuminates his eyes, leaving the rest of his face hidden in menacing shadows.

  “Tell me, are you always so trusting of strangers?”

  My palms begin to sweat. “I . . . I don’t know?”

  I stare into his eyes, falling into their unfathomable depths, like a person plunging off the side of a cliff, spiraling helplessly, too paralyzed with fright to scream. He returns his gaze to the road and I relax my hold on my camera strap, wiping my damp palms on my skirt.

  There is something strange about Xavier. I can’t put my finger on it—just a vague feeling that he is like the cypress swamps surrounding my daddy’s plantation. It is a place of beauty, with dark, still waters, magnificent trees, and leafy ferns as intricate as Belgian lace, a place of beauty filled with creatures lurking beneath the water and in the foliage. Bobcats. Coyotes. Cottonmouth snakes. Wetland gators. Fiddleback spiders.

  What lurks beneath Xavier’s dark, beautiful surface? Is it threatening? Or am I seeing serpents when there are only shadows? I am not usually one to let my imagination run wild. My daddy used to tell me to go with my gut.

  Of course, he also used to say if commonsense were lard, my sisters wouldn’t have enough between them to grease a skillet.

  “What are you thinking?”

  Xavier’s deep voice in the quiet car startles me. I hold my camera strap, balling it up in my closed fist. “Nothing.”

  He looks at me.

  “N . . . nothing important.”

  He narrows his gaze and I am reminded of that vulnerable, exposed feeling I get each time I step into the full body scanner at LAX. Guilty heat flushes my cheeks and I shift my gaze to a distant place out the front window.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Y . . . you don’t?”

  “Non.” He changes lanes, races around a slow-moving Citroën SUV, and then looks back at me, reaching out and rubbing the spot between my brows with his thumb. “Now, what is causing those unsightly little lines? What worries you, ma bichette?”

  Ma bichette. My little deer. “I am thinking how much I like the way you pronounce my name.”

  He smiles and, again, I feel as if I have stepped into the full body scanner. I pull the summer sweater draped over my shoulders closer together.

  “I like the sound of your name: Manderley Maxwell.”

  My breath catches in my throat.

  “Mon-de-lee,” he says again, drawling it out in his slow, gravelly accent. “It’s unusual. Is it a family name?”

  I shake my head because the breath is stuck in my throat. One of the benefits of working as a Hollywood assistant is the opportunity to meet fantasy-worthy actors, men gorgeous without Photoshop or soft-focus filters. In the beginning, I was goggle-eyed and tongue-tied. Spend enough time around luminaries and you become impervious to their glow. Their toothy grins and smoldering gazes lose their dazzling effect.

  It’s different with Xavier. He thrills and terrifies me like no man has. I think I could spend the next sixty years staring at him and still feel breathless and sweaty-palmed.

  “My mother loved classic novels,” I whisper, my voice barely audible over the Jaguar’s purring engine. “Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca was her favorite. Have you read it?”

  “Non.”

  “Oh, but you must! It is a brilliant novel, truly. Maxim de Winter, the moody, mysterious protagonist, lives in a Gothic manor named Manderley.”

  “Your mother named you after a fictitious home?”

  “Yes . . . well, you see, the opening line of the novel is famous. The narrator says she dreamt about visiting Manderley again, the hero’s haunting, Gothic estate on the coast of Cornwall.” I close my eyes and conjure the wispy, ghostly image of my mother, curled up beside me on my bed, reading from her dog-eared copy of Rebecca. “My mother had difficulty conceiving and had almost given up hope when she fell asleep watching Rebecca, the film adaptation starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. Anyway, she dreamt she was walking through the gardens at Manderley, lost in the fog and sad, terribly sad. Maxim de Winter suddenly appeared out of the fog. He told her to cheer up, that she would soon be the mother of a beautiful baby girl. The next day, my mother learned she was carrying me. So, she decided to name me Manderley.”

  I open my eyes and blink against the bright sunlight, my mother’s ghost vanishing from my mind’s eye, her voice fading away like the fog.

  “What a charming story.”

  “Yes. My mother was a charming woman.”

  “Was?”

  “She died many years ago, when I was a child.”

  “I am sorry to hear that, Manderley,” he says, reaching over and squeezing my hand, a fleeting touch as powerful and warming as a jolt of electricity.

  “Thank you.”

  “Do you have any siblings?”

  “Two sisters.”

  “And are they also named after fictitious places?”

  Out of the corner of my eye I see his lips twitch in a playful, teasing smile and a satisfied warmth spreads through my body. “Tara is named after Scarlet O’Hara’s cotton plantation in Gone with the Wind, but Emma Lee is named after Jane Austen’s Emma.”

  “Your mother was fond of novels and old movies and now you work as an assistant to a woman who writes stories for movies. Interesting, the effect a parent has on a child’s subconscious, especially an absent parent.”

  “I had never thought of that before, actually.”

  He glances over at me. “Hadn’t you?”

  I shake my head.

  He smiles and looks back at the road. “My father fell ill while I was in La Royale.”

  “La Royale?”

  “The French navy.”

  “You were in the navy?”

  He nods. “My father’s illness put an end to my dreams of being a career naval officer. I had to go home to help run the family business.”

  I have a difficult time imagining the polished, sophisticated Frenchman sitting beside me in anything but tailored business suits and expensive wristwatches. I am about to ask him about his family’s business when he abruptly changes the subject.

  “Tell me about your life in Los Angeles. Do you socialize with movie stars?”

  I chuckle softly. “The Invisibles do not socialize with movie stars.”

  “The Invisibles?”

  “The people of little consequence—anyone who isn’t someone or married to someone. Actors. Directors. Producers. Agents. Writers. To them I am of little consequence, easily overlooked or dismissed, invisible. I am not wildly rich or stunningly beautiful. By Hollywood standards, I have nothing of substance. Sometimes . . .”

  “Sometimes, what?”

  “Nothing. It’s silly.”

  “You don’t strike me as a silly girl. Go on, then. What were you going to say?”

  “Sometimes I wish I had more substance.”

  He looks at me, his eyes as dark and hard as obsidian stones. “You mean money?”

  A trickle of unease travels down my spine.

  “I do not care about money,” I say, rubbing the gooseflesh that suddenly developed on my arms.

  I wish I hadn’t said anything. If he keeps pressing me, what will I say? That I sometimes wish I were a bold, buxom blonde with a black book full of hot guys and an over-scheduled social calendar? I wish I had more confidence than common sense.

  “People of ‘substance’ are often the hollowest, most superficial people, incapable of giving love and without fidélité.” Even though he is responding to something I said, I have the strange feeling he is talking to someone else. “You are a lovely and unusual person, Manderley. Do not ever let someone make you feel invisible.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You don’t need to thank me!”

  We drive in silence, Xavier concentrating on the traffic, while I, I replay his compliment i
n my head. You are lovely and unusual, Manderley. You are lovely and unusual. . .

  “Do you attend movie premiers?”

  “I beg your pardon,” I say, blinking.

  “I asked if you attend many movie premiers.” His tone is softer, his expression less haunted, than it was moments before.

  “Only Olivia’s.”

  “But you like movies.”

  “Old ones, yes.”

  He looks at me and smiles. “Just like your mère.”

  “Yes, like my mom.”

  Xavier follows the signs for the D9 to Grasse.

  “Why do you prefer old movies?”

  “They are cleverer than today’s big budget films. Casablanca. Citizen Kane. Laura. Suspicion with Cary Grant.” I sigh. “Alfred Hitchcock conveyed more drama with his lighting than any of the modern directors do with their massive explosions or car chases. I would love to travel back in time and live in the 1940s or ’50s.”

  “Really? Why is that?”

  “It was a quieter, more elegant time.”

  “You prefer quiet?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Yet, you work in Hollywood.”

  “I don’t plan on living there forever.”

  My mind flies from the bright lights and congested highways of Los Angeles to the palmetto-lined streets and pastel-colored houses of Charleston. How many times have I dreamt of packing my bags and leaving LA’s smog-choked skies behind, of returning to my hometown, walking barefoot on Folly Beach while breathing in the fresh, salty air? More times than I could count.

  “You mentioned you like to write. Why aren’t you writing?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You said you wanted to be a writer, yet you work as a writer’s assistant. Why is a Columbia graduate working as a writer’s assistant and not a writer?”

  “Actually,” I say, looking at his chiseled profile, “I wanted to be a book editor, not a writer.”

  “But you said you enjoy writing. Why not do it professionally?”

  “I believe it was Hemingway who once said, ‘There is nothing to be a writer. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.’ I do not have it in me to bleed for mass consumption. I can’t be that . . .”

  “Yes?”