Read Online The Destiny of Nathalie X by William Boyd - Free Book Online

me for a
digestif
when she stood up and left the room. As she passed the table she looked at me for the first time, squarely, with a casual candid curiosity.
    Slept well. For the first time since leaving London did not dream of Louise.
    Monday
    Encountered the woman in the hotel’s small garden. I was sitting at a tin table beneath a chestnut tree, spreading fig jam on a croissant, when I heard her call.
    “Thierry?”
    I turned, and her face fell. She apologized for interrupting me, she said she thought I was someone else, the linen jacket I was wearing had made her think I was her husband. He had one very similar, the same hair color too. I introduced myself. She said she was la Comtesse de Benoît-Voulon.
    “Your husband is staying here?” I asked. She was tall, her eyes were almost on the same level as mine. I could not help noticing the way the taupe silk singlet she wore clung to her breasts. Her eyes were very pale brown, they seemed to look at me with unusual curiosity.
    She told me her husband was visiting his mother. The arc of an eyebrow lifted. “The old lady and I …” She paused diplomatically. “We do not enjoy each other’s company so, so I prefer to wait in the hotel. And besides, our car is being repaired.”
    “So is mine,” I said with a silly laugh, which I instantly regretted. “Quite a coincidence.”
    “Yes,” she said thoughtfully, frowning. That curious glance again. “It is, isn’t it?”
    To fill my empty day I walked to the next village, called Argenson, and lunched on a tough steak and a delicious tangy
vin rouge en carafe
. On the way back I was given a lift in a lorry piled high with sappy pine logs. My nose prickled with resin all the way back to Saint-Barthélemy
    The hotel was quiet, no one was in the lobby. My key was missing from its hook behind the desk so I assumed the maid was still cleaning the room. Upstairs, the door was very slightly ajar, the room beyond dark and shuttered against the sun. I stepped inside. La Comtesse de Benoît-Voulon was lifting a book from my open suitcase.
    “Mr. Mountstewart,” she said, the guilt and surprise absent from her face within a second. “I’m so glad you decided to come back early.”
    Monday
    I must make sure I have this right. Must make sure I forget nothing.
    We made love in the cool afternoon darkness of my room. There was a strange relaxed confidence about it all, as if it had been prefigured in some way, in the unhurried, tolerant manner our bodies moved to accommodate each other. And afterward we chatted, like old friends. Her name, she said, was Giselle. They were going to Hyères, they had a house there. They always spent August in Hyères, she and her husband.
    Then she turned to face me and said: “Logan?… Have we ever met before?”
    I laughed. “I think I would have remembered.”
    “Perhaps you know Thierry? Perhaps I’ve seen you with Thierry.”
    “Definitely not.”
    She cradled my face in her hands and stared fiercely at me. She said in a quiet voice, “He didn’t send you, did he? If he did you must tell me now.” Then she herself laughed, when she saw my baffled look, heard my baffled protestations. “Forget it,” she said. “I always think he’s playing tricks on me. He’s like that, Thierry, with his games.”
    I slept that afternoon, and when I awoke she had gone. Downstairs, the old waiter had set only one table for dinner. I asked where the lady was and he said she had paid her bill and left the hotel.
    At the garage the limousine had gone. The young
garagiste
proudly brandished the spare part for my Packard and said it would be ready tomorrow. I pointed at the empty blocks where the count’s car had been.
    “Did he come for his car?”
    “Two hours ago.”
    “With his wife?”
    “Who?”
    “Was there a woman with him, a lady?”
    “Oh yes.” The
garagiste
smiled at me and offered me one of his yellow cigarettes, which I accepted. “Every year he spends two days with his mother,