“Oh, I don’t mind,” Teddy told him. “Free champagne, strawberries, good-looking women. For you, anyway.”
“Good-looking French women, Teddy. But I’m not in the market anymore, remember? Now get out of here.”
The ball was everything one could have hoped for, held in an incredible salon, an orchestra playing at one end. All the world seemed to be there, handsome men, beautiful women, uniforms everywhere, church dignitaries in purple or scarlet cassocks. Teddy had departed to procure some more champagne, and Cazalet stood alone on the edge of the dance floor.
A voice said, “Jake?”
He turned around and found her standing there, wearing a small diamond tiara and a black silk ballgown. “My God, it’s you, Jacqueline.”
The heart turned over in him as he took her hands. She was still so beautiful it was as if time had stood still. She said, “Senator Cazalet now. I’ve followed your career with such interest. A future President, they say.”
“And pigs might fly.” He hesitated. “I was sorry to hear of your husband’s death last year.”
“Yes. It was quick, though. I suppose one can’t ask for more than that.”
Teddy Grant approached with a tray holding two glasses of champagne. Cazalet said, “Teddy, the Comtesse de Brissac . . . an old friend.”
“Not the Teddy Grant from that Harvard cafeteria?” She smiled. “Oh, I truly am pleased to meet you, Mr. Grant.”
“Hey, what is this?” Teddy asked.
“It’s okay, Teddy. Go and get another glass of champagne and I’ll explain later.”
Teddy left, looking slightly flummoxed, and he and Jacqueline sat down at the nearest table. “Your wife isn’t with you?” she asked.
“Alice has been fighting leukemia for years.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“She’s a brave woman, but it dominates her life. That’s why we didn’t have any kids. You know, it’s ironic. My father, who died last year, too, urged me to marry Alice because he thought I should have a family. People worry about politicians who don’t.”
“Didn’t you love her?”
“Oh, I have a great deal of affection for Alice, but love?” He shook his head. “I’ve only known love once.”
She touched his arm. “I’m sorry, Jake.”
“So am I. We all lost—Alice, you, and me. I sometimes think I came off worst, having no kids.”
“But you do, Jake,” she said gently.
Time seemed to stop for Jake. “What do you mean?” he said at last.
“Look over there, just at the French window to the terrace,” Jacqueline said.
The girl’s hair was long, the white dress very simple. For a heart-stopping moment, it might have been her mother.
“You wouldn’t kid a guy,” he whispered.
“No, Jake, that would be too cruel. She was conceived that one night in Saigon, and born in Paris in nineteen-seventy. Her name is Marie and she is halfway through her first year at Oxford.”
Jake couldn’t take his eyes off the girl. “Did the general know?”
“He assumed she was his, or so I thought, until the end, when the doctors told him just how bad his heart was.”
“And?”
“It seems that while he was in the hospital in Vietnam after being found up-country, that someone sent him a letter. It told him that his wife had been seen with an American officer, who had not left her suite until four o’clock in the morning.”
“But who—?”
“A member of staff, we think. The maliciousness of it! Sometimes I despair of human beings. But he had known, all that time, my dear Jean. Before he died, he signed a declaration under the provisions of the Code Napoléon, stating that he was Marie’s titular father. It was to preserve her position and title legally.”
“And she doesn’t know?”
“No, and I don’t want her to, and neither do you, Jake. You’re a good man, an honorable man, but a politician. The great American public doesn’t take kindly to politicians who have illegitimate daughters.”
“But it wasn’t like that. Dammit, everyone thought your husband was dead.”
“Jake, listen to me. You could be President one day, everybody says that, but not with this sort of scandal hanging over you. And what about Marie? Isn’t it better if she just lives with her memory of her father, the general? No, if Marie isn’t told, that leaves only two people in the world who know—you and me. Are we agreed?”