Free Arms of a Stranger by Danice Allen Page A

usual.”
    “Lucien, mon fils , how delicious to see you.” She tapped his knee with her pearl-seeded fan and smiled warmly. Even after bearing twelve children, only seven of which had lived beyond infancy, Marie Delacroix was still an attractive woman. Her black hair was streaked rather strikingly with silver, and her waist, with the help of a corset, was only a couple of inches thicker than it had been on her wedding day thirty-five years before.
    “Are you all settled in, Maman?”
    “After so many years of setting up housekeeping in the city each autumn, Lucien, I have perfected a system. That is why your father insists we stay at Bocage till the very day the opera begins. He feels there is no need to come sooner, and you know how he loves the country.”
    Lucien glanced at his father’s stern profile, his thick silver hair combed in a smooth pompadour above his high brow, his mouth a thin, straight, unequivocal line. “How is Papa?”
    Lucien’s mother leaned close to him and whispered. “Not as well as he pretends to be. He’s short of breath sometimes. I worry for his heart.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that.”
    “Oh, Lucien, you come so seldom to Bocage!”
    “I come as often as business dictates.”
    “Your father would enjoy it if you came just to see him, you know.”
    “You’re mistaken, Maman, if you think I’m a comfort to my father. Once we’ve talked about the crops, we’ve nothing to say to each other. He won’t discuss his health, and I’ve learned not to inquire after it unless I want my head bitten off.”
    “It would make him so happy…” She paused and took Lucien’s hand, squeezing it till the facets of his rings cut into his fingers. “It would make us both very happy if you married this year, Lucien.”
    Lucien smiled warily. “Must we argue, Maman?”
    “Lucien, have you seen Liliane Chevalier since their visit to Bocage last spring? She is enchanting, so grown-up now. Here, take my glasses and look at her. Next to Renee, I believe she’s the handsomest girl in the house.”
    Grudgingly, Lucien accepted the opera glasses his mother handed him. Then he remembered that Katherine Grimms had a box at the opera and made it a point to attend opening night. In his depression over the murders at Belle Fleur, Lucien had forgotten that he might catch a glimpse of Anne Weston tonight. That sudden realization caused his spirits to soar to the domed ceiling of the Orleans Opera House. He looked through the glasses with a boyish eagerness that frightened him.
    Dutifully, impatiently, he panned the room first to locate the Chevalier box. Finding it quickly by the coordinates whispered in his ear by his mother, he gave Mademoiselle Chevalier a cursory inspection. She was good-looking enough, even-featured, plump in all the right places, ruddy-lipped, dusky-haired, and dressed in the usual white. But she radiated about as much liveliness as a marble statue.
    “Well, aren’t I right, Lucien? Don’t you think she’s lovely?”
    By now Lucien had turned his head slightly to the right and up a tier, and was looking at a vision in midnight-blue; a vivid, animated female with smiling lips and sparkling eyes. Among the several guests Katherine Grimms had already attracted to her box, Anne Weston stood out like a full-blown wild rose in a patch of field daisies.
    She was just as he remembered her. No, she was more than he remembered. More lovely, more alive, more desirable than ever. And she was sitting by a man Lucien knew well by reputation. Jeffrey Wycliff was an editorial journalist and reporter for the American newspaper, the Picayune . They were whispering to each other, smiling and laughing as if they were old friends.
    “Lucien … What do you think of her?” his mother prompted.
    “I think she’s lovely,” he replied truthfully, his eyes still trained on Anne.
    “ Bon . I knew she would be just to your liking. Will you visit her at intermission?”
    “Who, Maman?”
    “Why, whom