Chương 2
Then the baby shifted again.
Claire took his arm.
Lucien turned to the security director. “Dr. Valette is in the east salon. Bring her.”
Madeleine stepped forward. “Lucien, surely this can be handled privately.”
He regarded her with the distant courtesy he used for people whose names he intended to remember for legal reasons.
“It is being handled privately.”
“There are guests.”
“Yes.”
“This is an engagement banquet.”
“I am aware of the event taking place in my ballroom.”
The use of the word my moved through the room more effectively than a shout.
Elise looked at Adrien. “You said she worked here.”
Claire almost smiled. It would have hurt too much.
Adrien’s face had gone pale beneath his olive skin. “She did.”
Lucien’s attention returned to him.
Claire felt her father’s arm harden under her hand. He had not known that part. Not all of it.
Lucien led her toward the east salon. The guests remained where they were, uncertain whether movement would look disloyal, curious, or afraid. As Claire passed the white roses, she smelled their sweetness mixed with spilled champagne and the faint mineral cold of the marble.
A waiter bent to pick up the cracked glass.
His hands shook.
Inside the salon, Dr. Amélie Valette made everyone except Claire leave.
Lucien objected once.
Amélie pointed toward the door.
He went.
Claire lay on a cream settee while the doctor checked her pulse, her blood pressure, the baby’s heartbeat, and the tenderness along Claire’s hip. The room had been intended for private aperitifs. A bowl of lemons sat beneath a mirror. Someone had left a half-finished espresso on the mantel, its surface dark and still.
The fetal monitor found the heartbeat quickly.
Claire closed her eyes.
The sound was fast, mechanical, and alive.
Amélie watched her for a moment before adjusting the sensor. “Any cramping?”
“No.”
“Bleeding?”
“No.”
“Dizziness?”
“Not now.”
“Did he strike you?”
Claire opened her eyes.
Amélie had delivered babies for women who denied contractions, affairs, addictions, and names. Her face showed no judgment, only the patience of someone willing to wait longer than a lie.
“I lost my balance,” Claire said.
“That was not my question.”
Claire stared at the chandelier reflected upside down in the mirror. “His hand moved. I felt something. I don’t know whether it was his palm or his wrist or whether I turned before—”
“You do not have to classify it for me.”
“I don’t want to say something happened if I can’t remember it cleanly.”
“Shock is rarely clean.”
Amélie examined Claire’s cheek. There was no redness beyond what could have come from heat and humiliation. No swelling. No visible injury.
“Your baby’s heartbeat is strong,” she said. “But you need monitoring at the clinic. At least several hours.”
“I’m not going to the hospital in front of those people.”
“The private entrance, then.”
Claire sat up slowly.
Amélie placed a hand against her shoulder. “Your father can survive gossip.”
“That is not what I’m worried about.”
“No,” Amélie said. “It usually isn’t.”
Outside the salon, Lucien stood with the security director and a uniformed officer from the municipal police. Adrien, Elise, and Madeleine waited on the opposite side of the corridor. The distance between the groups could not have been accidental.
Adrien tried to meet Claire’s eyes.
She looked past him.
The police officer introduced herself as Lieutenant Sofia Arnaud. She was in her forties, compact, with dark hair cut to her jaw and the tired politeness of someone called away from dinner. She asked Claire whether she wished to make a statement.
“After the clinic,” Lucien said.
Sofia did not look at him. “I asked Ms. Beaumont.”
Claire appreciated that. Her father did not.
“After the clinic,” Claire said.
Sofia nodded. “Security will preserve all recordings. I will also need the names of witnesses.”
Madeleine gave a brittle exhale. “This is absurd. Adrien did not touch her.”
A guest at the corridor entrance shifted his weight.
Everyone turned.
He was an older man Claire recognized as a retired magistrate from Lyon. His champagne flute was still in his hand.
“I saw his arm move,” he said. “I did not see contact.”
Madeleine seized on the distinction. “Exactly.”
The magistrate looked at Claire’s gown, then at Adrien. “I did see her fall.”
Another guest appeared behind him, then another. Their expressions did not hold certainty. Some had witnessed only the aftermath. Some had heard Claire’s words. Some had been looking at Elise’s dress, at the flowers, at their own phones.
Public truth was already dividing into angles.
Adrien stepped forward. “Claire came here to disrupt the banquet. She has been threatening me for weeks.”
Lucien turned his head.
Claire felt the familiar pressure of her father’s anger gathering without motion.
Adrien continued, speaking faster now. “She is upset about the end of a relationship. I tried to calm her. She became unsteady.”
“You denied knowing me,” Claire said.
“I denied the version of our relationship you were presenting.”
“What version was that?”
Adrien glanced at Elise.
That hesitation caused more damage than any answer.
Elise’s face became very still. “What relationship?”
Madeleine touched her wrist. “Not here.”
Claire looked at Adrien. “Tell her.”
His eyes hardened again, but fear sat beneath the anger now.
“This is not the time.”
“You chose the time. You chose the room.”
He lowered his voice. “Claire.”
The sound of her name from him, after he had told the ballroom she was a stranger, made something inside her settle.
Not break.
Settle.
She reached into her handbag and took out the black phone again.
Adrien watched it.
The fear in his face deepened.
Lucien noticed.
“What is on that phone?” he asked.
Claire closed her fingers around it. “Not here.”
May you like
For once, her father did not press.
At the clinic, Claire changed into a pale cotton gown and lay beneath a thin blanket while a monitor traced the baby’s heart rate across a screen. Lucien sat in a chair by the window. He had removed his jacket and folded it across his knees with the care of a man performing a task to avoid performing an emotion.
