The Frenchman's Bride

“Paul asked me not to tell you.”

“If she’s so perfect, then why the concern?”

“Because he knows the answer will make you happy.”

His daughter was speaking in riddles. More puzzled than ever, Vincent pulled into the hospital parking and shut off the engine.

“Am I such an awful ogre you can no longer trust me with the truth?” He needed all the truth his daughter could give him in order to work with Dr. Maurois.

She slowly turned her head toward him. The tortured brown eyes so dear to him seemed to take up her whole face.

“In two weeks Hallie’s going back to California to enter a convent.”

A convent.

Ms. Linn?

“Paul can’t bear it,” her voice trembled. “That’s why he gave her the ring, so she’d know he was serious about getting married one day. He’d do anything to stop her from making a decision that will prevent him from seeing her again. If you knew how wonderful Hallie was yo—”

“Just a minute,” he cut her off. “Back up.” Vincent’s mind was reeling. “She told you she intends to become a nun?”

Talk about dangling forbidden fruit in front of Paul! Could anything the opportunistic Ms. Linn have dreamed up to bring him to his knees have worked better than a fabrication like that?

“Papa— Hallie already is a lay nun.”

“Then she’s been lying to you,” he muttered through gritted teeth.

“No,” Monique protested in a calm voice. “She’s been doing church service for the last year and a half through the Dominicans. First in California, then at Clairemont Abbey not far from Tati’s.

“Nowadays more and more women are working as lay nuns in ordinary clothes while they mingle with the public. They hold day jobs to pay for their own housing and expenses.”

This was the first Vincent had heard of it. Whether it was true or not, Monique firmly believed Ms. Linn’s story. Until he could check it out, he didn’t dare alienate his daughter any further.

He took a fortifying breath. “All right. Assuming everything she’s told you is true, why is she suddenly leaving Paris?”

His daughter looked crestfallen. “She has plans to take her vows at the motherhouse in San Diego in June. The only problem is, once she’s professed we’ll never see her again.” The tremor in her voice revealed such deep affection, it stunned Vincent.

“Paul’s desperate to keep her here. He loves her so much. It isn’t like he has a few years to work on her and get her to change her mind before proposing. He had to do it now, today, before it was too late! It’s taken him months to get up the courage.

“We planned the birthday fete in order to bring her to the apartment where he could have privacy when he asked her to marry him. Since he needed time alone, I left them long enough to buy Etvige a dress with the last of the money I’d been saving. She’s always wanted something stylish from Paris.”

His daughter’s explanation plunged him further into the black hole engulfing him since his conversation with Dr. Maurois. While she was talking, he could hear another voice from another conversation, drowning out her words.

“I’m not pregnant. But if I were, are you telling me you would bribe me into going away knowing I was carrying your grandchild inside my body? You would deprive Paul of his own child to love and raise?”

A harsh laugh came out of him. “Who said anything about it being Paul’s?”

“Be careful before you say anything else you’ll live to regret. Paul took us both by surprise today, but since you were incapable of listening to reason, I fear your reaction has caused irrevocable harm to your relationship with him.

“Promise me you’ll work things out with him tonight before it’s too late. He’s trying hard to be a man. Go to him and explain why you were so upset. Paul’s very sweet and sensitive inside. He’ll understand and forgive you.”

Vincent groaned. His assessment of the situation had been so completely off the mark, he felt like he’d entered the twilight zone with no exit.

In reality there was no exit, not after what the psychiatrist had told him.

Paul’s mental health was in grave jeopardy. Furthermore Vincent had permanently destroyed the bond with his son, a bond he’d once thought to be indestructible. What made things even more hopeless—he couldn’t help Paul if he wanted to where Ms. Linn was concerned.

She wasn’t in love with his son.

If Vincent recalled her words correctly, she’d said she loved Paul like a younger brother. Before leaving the dining room she’d murmured “Goodbye forever. May God bless you.”

Something about those parting words convinced Vincent she’d been telling his children the truth. She’d meant what she’d said in the literal sense because she would be turning her back on the world when she took her vows.

Everything that had transpired at his apartment was starting to make a horrible kind of sense. The Rolland household had been turned inside out.

Monique was barely speaking to him. His son was in hell because Vincent had insulted the love of his life, a woman who was about to become cloistered and permanently unavailable to him.

Everything Vincent had done since the twins’ birth to make sure they didn’t repeat his mistakes had blown up in his face.

Nothing would ever be the same again.

Had it only been twelve hours since he’d awakened in his hotel room in London, excited because he was going to fly to Paris to surprise his beloved children?

Tonight despair made him feel a thousand years old.

“Let’s go inside, petite. Paul needs us, even if he wishes I were drawing my last breath in the middle of the Sahara.” Even if my son wishes he’d left this earth…

CHAPTER THREE

IT WAS five o’clock on Saturday evening. Hallie took care of her last customer, rang up the receipts and left Tati’s.

Two days had passed since she’d hurried out of Monsieur Rolland’s apartment in pain. The terrible situation she’d unwittingly created by becoming friends with his children had been haunting her until she had to do something about the awful limbo she was in.

Last night she’d started a fast after her prayers. Tonight she had an appointment to talk with Mother Marie-Claire about the twins. By now they were home with their father in St. Genes. Hallie feared that any attempt on her part to talk to him or his children by phone would prove unsuccessful.

The only thing she could think to do was send him a letter conveying her sorrow, and hope he wouldn’t tear it up without reading what was in her heart first. But before she put her thoughts to paper, Hallie wanted to know her Superior’s opinion on the problem.

In the beginning Hallie had perceived she could fill a need for the twins while they were away from home. Tragically it had backfired with shattering consequences.

The painful encounter with their father had caused Hallie to lose confidence in her judgment as a human being, let alone as a nun. Where had the inspiration been to prevent this disaster?

Was she such a prideful person it had gotten in the way because she’d believed it was her mission to comfort the motherless twins? Had it blinded her to signs of trouble?

Or was it some latent maternal instinct that had suddenly sprung to life, thus preventing her common sense from surfacing?

In either case, what kind of a nun was she going to make in the future working with young people?

This was one of the questions she needed answers to. If she didn’t find some peace on the matter soon, Hallie feared she wouldn’t be good for the order. Sick at heart, she started walking faster.