Free Everlasting by Nancy Thayer Page B

you know how to do is be beautiful and charming at parties.”
    “I think I can manage that.”
    They joined a group of American friends. Lifted away into a mist of pleasure by their chatter and the bubbling champagne, Catherine relaxed. She let go. Now, tonight , was all that mattered, a world complete in itself, glittering, golden, dreamy, as free from the real world as a balloon cut free from its tie to the earth, to drift above spires, mountains, clouds.
* * *
    T he Croce family and the Weyland family and those in the wedding party dined in the formal dining room. The others ate in the library, at tables for eight covered with elaborately embroidered white tablecloths and set with the family’s gold-rimmed white china, platinum-rimmed crystal, and heavy elaborate silver.
    Catherine was so taken with the food, she could scarcely concentrate on the conversation. The first course was a fresh whole salmon with an elaborate herb sauce for each table; next a galantine of duck, an elaborate dish of cold ground pressed duck, pork, truffles, pistachio nuts, and ham, decorated with truffles and sparkling cubes of golden aspic; then a saddle of lamb with vegetables that had been shaped and sculpted into miniature works of art; then a leafy green salad. Each course was served with the appropriate wine, and finally, with the château’s own champagne, came the pêches cardinal , poached peaches coated with thick raspberry sauce and whipped cream, decorated with fresh whole raspberries.
    Satiated, Catherine sat back in her chair, looking at the gold-embossed spines of the books behind the glass doors of the library. Surely she was incapable of doing anything else for the rest of the night, or perhaps for the rest of her life. She felt as though she’d never eaten so much before. But courtesy demanded that she respond when the pleasant French gentleman who had been seated next to her asked if he could escort her into the ballroom, so she rose and took his arm.
    Four sets of high wooden doors had been pulled open at the end of the grand salon to reveal the ballroom, which had been decorated especially for the wedding festivities. The ceiling, which arched three stories above the dancers, was painted in mythical Greek scenes of love, hunting, and feasting. Like the long French windows that opened onto the terrace, and the high mirrors on the opposite walls, the ceiling gleamed with gilt.
    At one end of the ballroom a band was playing Strauss waltzes. At the other end stretched a long table with drinks of every kind and more champagne than Catherine had ever seen in her life. The room was lined with striped love seats and chairs for those who wanted to sit and watch, but most of the guests were dancing, compelled by the delicious music. The French doors had been flung open to the early summer night. Outside, steps led down to the formal garden, at the center of which was an oblong pool surrounded by small fat flickering candles.
    A man asked Catherine to dance. Then another. And another.
    Soon her head was light from jet lag, dancing, and champagne. Her mother’s strapless turquoise gown, with a tight waist and a flowing skirt whose chiffon fluttered out in a sea of rippling pleats, flattered Catherine, and she knew it. She held back her dark curls with rhinestone-studded combs, but her earrings, large drops of Persian turquoise surrounded by small diamonds, were real. She loved the feeling of them swinging against her neck as she danced or laughed. She was introduced to so many men and women, she finally gave up even attempting to remember their names.
    Catherine’s French was passable—one thing she had learned from Miss Brill’s—and most of the French guests spoke excellent English, so everyone mixed and mingled, until Catherine was certain she had danced with all of the forty or so young men in the room. They all seemed equally tall and handsome, courtly and clever, an entire team of beaming Prince Charmings. She forgot her