скачать книгу бесплатно
Was nothing private anymore? He couldn’t even talk to his mother in their own home without some idiot and his camera phone?
“Eh, you!” he shouted at the man. “No photos. Give me that phone.”
The guy clutched his phone to his chest but Jacques easily wrestled it from him and deleted the picture.
But that first man was not the only one. A larger camera took his picture—several times. Had his mother hired a photographer for the party? No, he noticed a polished brunette standing next to the photographer, taking copious notes.
“Reporters, Maman?”
Her stricken expression confirmed it. “Just the society page. They asked to come when we got news of your return.”
“I don’t want to be on the society page.” That was a big reason he didn’t stay in France for very long.
“I’m so sorry, Jacques.” Her big blue eyes started to tear. “I missed you so much and wanted to welcome you back.”
The large room started pressing in on him. “No, Maman, I’m sorry for embarrassing you. But I can’t stay.”
“What?” Her forehead creased. “But, Jacques, you just got home.”
“I can’t,” he repeated. The noise, the bright lights, even the smell of the food was making him dizzy and disoriented. Nadine’s theatrical sobs in the background didn’t help, either. He pushed his way through the party guests and grabbed his beat-up backpack from near the door.
Ever the professional, Bellamy opened the door. “Good to see you again, milord,” the butler informed him. Jacques gave him an incredulous glance considering the mêlée coming towards them, but the old man was as unruffled as always.
“If you would permit some advice from a longtime family retainer, I would recommend a sojourn in the country. Perhaps some fresh air and hearty cooking would benefit your constitution.”
“That’s the best idea I’ve heard in a long time, Bellamy. Merci beaucoup.” Jacques spotted the ambitious reporter and her photographer gaining on him.
“Not to fear, sir, mum’s the word.” After delivering the quintessential English promise, Bellamy tipped him a wink before practically shoving him out the double doors.
Jacques darted down the steps and heard a thud against the door. Bellamy was holding off the savages at the pass, so to speak, so Jacques took advantage of the delay and made a beeline for the Métro.
He hopped a train to the Latin Quarter, a quirky neighborhood along the Seine that was home to the famous Sorbonne, the seat of the University of Paris. He knew of a student hostel there, and his scruffy appearance would blend right in. A bowl of soup in the café, a good night’s sleep and then out of the city.
He’d had enough of Paris, and he’d only been there about two hours. A new record, even for him.
2
LILY STEPPED INTO the elevator of the youth hostel. At twenty-six, she was a bit older than many of the backpackers, but they were an accepting bunch. She’d never had the money to take a year off and backpack through Europe, so she envied the young students.
Two of them called down the bare-bones hallway to hold the elevator, so Lily stuck her arm out to block the doors.
“Thank you, Lily. Where do you go today?” Blonde and German, Silke and her companion, Hans, had been very helpful since Lily’s arrival, pointing out tricks to getting around the Métro and giving her tips on cheap eats. To save money, Lily ate like the backpackers—rolls and café au lait at the bakery across the street for breakfast, a loaf of bread and ham along with some cheese and fresh fruit for lunch, and maybe a dinner out at a café if she could find one reasonably priced.
“I’m not exactly sure, but probably to la Madeleine.”
“Who?”
“La Madeleine is a giant church in the Opera Quarter. Napoleon helped design part of it.” Lily’s stomach growled. “Plus there’s a huge food mall and flower market next to it.”
“Ah, very good.” She gestured to her equally blond companion. “Hans and I are going to the cemetery in Montparnasse.”
Hans nodded enthusiastically. “Ja, many important writers and thinkers are buried there. Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Charles Baudelaire and—”
“And don’t forget Samuel Beckett. He wrote Waiting For Godot,” Silke added helpfully, in case Lily wasn’t familiar with that mind-numbing play. Thanks to her English degree, she unfortunately was.
“And if we have enough time, we will see the Catacombes. When they ran out of room in the city cemetery a couple centuries ago, they moved everyone there.”
“Everyone?” Surely they didn’t mean…
“They have walls of skulls and bones. That says so much about what life is all about. In the end, we are just piles of organic matter for others to stare at,” Silke finished.
Lily fought back a sigh. How very grimly existential of them. No wonder they were going into raptures about Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, the king and queen of existentialism. Lily preferred to take a more cheerful view of life, but that didn’t seem to be the European way. No wonder they thought Americans were cockeyed optimists. And of course most Americans, if they thought of the French at all, imagined either mimes in white-striped shirts or else morose chain-smoking café dwellers dressed all in black.
Maybe that was a good blog article. “So what do you think of Parisians?”
Silke immediately answered, “Oh, it is very nice here.”
“Ja,” Hans agreed.
The elevator opened and they walked out to the lobby. “But what do you really think?” she insisted.
Silke looked around furtively. “It is not very organized. Sometimes the attractions do not open on time.”
“Twenty minutes late, even,” Hans threw in. “And they close for lunch at all hours—not what the sign says.”
Lily smiled. Ah, punctuality. The more laidback French attitude did not sit right with German precision. “I can see how that would be a problem. But perhaps some spontaneity is a good thing on vacation?”
They gave her identically puzzled looks. Silke shrugged. “If they want to be open different hours, they should change the signs.”
And that was that. Lily waved goodbye as they set off for their sunny Parisian day of skulls and cemeteries.
Lily turned toward the door, but she bumped into another backpacker, a tall, lean man with a long brown ponytail and matching beard. “Oh, pardonnez-moi,” she tried her French on him.
“No problem,” he replied in perfect English with only a hint of an accent, as he adjusted the straps of his small black backpack.
Rats. “Is my accent that awful?” she burst out.
“What?” He looked at her, startled.
“My accent. My cousin Sarah says I have a terrible French accent, even on basic things like pardonnez-moi and merci.”
He gave a tiny wince as she pronounced those words.
“You hear it, too, don’t you?” she cried. “I must sound like the American village idiot trying to speak your language.”
“Hey, hey,” he soothed her. “How long have you been living in France?”
“I’ve been visiting for a couple days.”
He raised his shoulders in a typically French shrug. “And so you think your two days in Paris means you speak French perfectly?”
“Well, I guess not. But you speak English perfectly.”
“I should hope so. I lived in Manhattan for ten years.”
“Really? I’m from Philly, but I live in New Jersey right now.”
“Ah, Joisey,” he said in a perfect New Jersey accent. Was there no accent this man couldn’t do?
“Hey, don’t knock Jersey. Not all of us can afford Manhattan.” Although he didn’t look like he could afford even the student hostel. And if he’d lived in New York for ten years, he was probably older than the other backpackers, too.
He held up his hands in placation. They were big and nicely shaped, with long, strong-looking fingers.
“Do you play piano?”
“What?” He looked startled again. Lily was singlehandedly earning a reputation for all Americans as being slightly crazy.
“Piano.” She wiggled her fingers at him.
He looked down at his hands and then back at her. “Why? Do you want me to play a tune for you? Would you like ‘Alouette’ or ‘Frère Jacques’?”
“I can see you must be too busy to make conversation.” She lifted her nose like she’d seen her mother’s employer do a million times before to an impudent guest. Mrs. Wyndham was one of the grand ladies of Philadelphia’s upper crust and Lily’s mother was still her housekeeper, in charge of managing the myriad employees and tasks necessary for the smooth running of a historic mansion and busy social activities. “Thank you for your assistance, and have a nice day.”
She brushed past him out the door onto the busy French sidewalk. Fresh croissant or pain au chocolat for breakfast? Flaky French chocolate rolls sounded good. Before she could decide, she felt a touch on her elbow.
“Hey, hey.” Backpack Guy stopped touching her with his long piano fingers as soon as she stood still. “I’m sorry, mademoiselle. You caught me by surprise and I forgot my manners.”
“No problem.” Lily spotted a café down the street that she hadn’t visited yet. “I’m always grumpy before breakfast, and that chocolate roll is calling my name.” She eyed his spare frame. She didn’t think it was from too many cigarettes since he didn’t smell of smoke. In fact, for a guy who looked like he’d been sleeping on a park bench for a month, he actually smelled nice. “If you don’t mind my saying so, you could use a croissant.”
His mouth pulled into a wry grin. “Probably. Why don’t we get some croissants together?”
She leaned away from him and gave him a suspicious stare.
“I was a Boy Scout if that makes a difference.”
“Really? There are French Boy Scouts?” She perked up. This was the kind of thing she wanted to learn about his country—something that wasn’t in the tourist books.
“Come have a café au lait with me and I’ll tell you all about le scoutisme français.”
“Scoutisme? Is that a real word?”
“On my honor.” He raised his hand in what looked like a Boy Scout sign.
“Well, okay. And maybe you can help me with my French pronunciation.”
“I would be happy to.”
Lily turned to face him. “All right, I can’t call you French Backpacking Boy Scout, so you better tell me your name.”
He smothered a laugh. “No, that would be quite a mouthful. My name is Jack Montford.”
“Jack? Isn’t it actually Jacques?”
“Yes, but I started going by Jack when I lived in New York.”
“Smart move. I’m Lily Adams.” Lily set off for the café. “Come on, Jack-with-the-Backpack, let’s get you a couple croissants—with extra butter.”
JACK DIDN’T KNOW quite how he’d wound up going out for breakfast with a woman he’d literally bumped into, but Lily Adams was right—he could use some calories. She’d thought he picked her out as an American from her accent, bad as it was, but he had picked her out as an American as soon as he saw her blond ponytail and cheerful expression. Her hazel-green eyes gazed eagerly at everything, as if she were trying to memorize details for later.
And to think she wanted to learn about French scouting, of all things. Not where to get the best-smelling parfum or cheapest designer knockoffs, but actual bits of real French life.
They stepped up to the café counter and Lily cleared her throat. “Je voudrais deux croissants et deux pains au chocolat. Oh, deux cafés au lait. Merci.”
Jack had to admire her tenacity when she knew she had difficulties with the language. He quelled the cashier’s incipient smirk with what he thought of his comte look.
Lily, happily oblivious, accepted the bag of pastries and handed him a cup of coffee.
“Merci,” he thanked her. “And you say de rien, which means, ‘It was nothing.’”
She practiced that a couple times as they walked to a bench along a pretty little park. Jack chewed a bit of pain au chocolat, mindful that his digestion was still a bit sensitive. Lily dipped her croissant into the milky coffee with gusto, not minding the flaky crumbs falling on her khaki cargo pants.
University students from the nearby Sorbonne argued about philosophy and politics while a young long-haired musician played guitar, his girlfriend staring up at him adoringly.
Nadine had stared at him like that while they were dating, but stopped soon after their engagement. It was as if she didn’t need to bother once she had his ring. And of course he had been gone many months out of the year with his disaster relief work. His closest friends in the world, Giorgio, Prince of Vinciguerra, and Francisco, Duke of Aguas Santas in Portugal, had warned him to slow down.
Jack found it easy to ignore their advice. They were ones to talk about slowing down. Giorgio ran his own country and Francisco owned not only a huge, busy estate in the Portuguese countryside but also a private island in the Azores.
If only his friends had grabbed him in person a couple months back, since it wasn’t hard to delete their phone and text messages.
He’d slowed down, all right, almost to the point of permanently stopping. When they’d heard he was sick, George and Frank first offered to fly to the hospital in Thailand to collect him. When that hadn’t been necessary, they threatened to confiscate his passport so he couldn’t leave France until George’s sister’s wedding.
George, Frank and Jack had met going to university in New York and had set up a nice bachelor pad for themselves when George’s parents tragically died in a car crash back in their small country Vinciguerra, on the Italian peninsula. George’s distraught twelve-year-old sister, Stefania, had come to live with them, along with a no-nonsense housekeeper.
End of their bachelor pad, but the beginning of the best time of his life. Stevie became one of the gang and the sister he’d never had. And now she was getting married.
Jack hoped she and her German fiancé looked at each other like the young guitar player and his girlfriend.
“Earth to Jack.” Lily peered into his face and waved a croissant. “You still hungry? You put away that chocolate roll pretty fast.”
He looked down into his lap. A small pile of crumbs was all that remained. Maybe the fresh air and quiet greenery was helping his appetite, but he didn’t want to push his luck. “You want to know about the real France?”
She rolled her eyes. “Of course. Who doesn’t?”
“Many people. For them, we are France-Land, a giant amusement theme park for them to visit. See the Eiffel, look at the Mona Lisa, hear the bells rung by the Hunchback of Notre Dame, and voilà! You have experienced the true France.”
She gave him a peeved look. “I don’t agree with that at all, and you have a pretty low opinion of tourists for a guy who’s backpacking his way around the country. Or is it just a low opinion of American tourists?”
“Well…”
