Hey everyone. First two chapters here and here.
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“Of course, everyone knows Madame Verdon is simply a dreadful hostess,” said Madame Breton, as she sat with a few others in the elegantly furnished living room of the Loudon house. “How she ever entertains any company is beyond me. Why, I went to a dinner of hers last season – actually Adèle, you were there as well, were you not?”
Adèle nodded.
“Anyway, as I’m sure Adèle could also tell you, Madame Verdon has no sense of how to arrange these things. The assortment of guests that night! Simply bizarre, am I right Adèle?”
“Very interesting people.”
“And the help!”
“Dreadful help,” Adèle chimed in, smiling.
“Quite slow, and terribly impolite. To think! If any of my servants acted as hers do, I’d dismiss them in a heartbeat. Anyway, the whole evening was a debacle. What am I forgetting, Adèle?”
“The food, horrible food.”
“Quite right! Why, their cook must be just terrible. To imagine having to eat that sort of food every night. I’m not sure how I would survive.” At that Madame Breton stopped talking, appearing breathless.
Red leather chairs and exquisitely carved mahogany tables covered the spacious living room, and small groupings of people were scattered about. The murmurings of polite conversation filled the air. Adèle sat on the chair to Madame Breton’s left, smiling slightly, and a fair girl sat rather stiffly to her right. She had a pinched face and had barely said a word all evening, probably hoping to remain unnoticed.
Monsieur Loudon, a rather short man with graying hair who had been sitting across from them, politely listening all the while, waited until there was a definite pause to speak. “I’m sure you would survive, Madame Breton,” he said, smiling. “What about you, Mademoiselle Turcotte? Do you agree with their verdict?
The pale girl blushed at being so directly addressed. “I’m not sure, Monsieur, you see, I’ve never been to her home.”
“And quite well you haven’t!” Madame Breton broke in, appearing to have regained her breath.
Just then a man from across the room approached Loudon. He was young and possessed a strong, lively stature that seemed somewhat at odds with his tired-looking eyes. Short brown hair framed his head and his well-defined features.
“Monsieur,” he said. “Please forgive my late arrival.” He smiled, his face breaking into a warm, natural expression.
Loudon immediately stood up and shook the man’s hand. “Think nothing of it. How good to see you, Francois. I’m so glad you’ve arrived. You know Madame Breton, of course?” he asked, gesturing to the stout lady.
The man nodded. “Nice to see you, as always, Madame.”
“Francois! My dear boy. You don’t know how many people I’ve been telling about your achievements!”
“You flatter me, Madame.”
Before Madame Breton could say another word, Loudon cut in. “And I’m not sure you’re acquainted with Mademoiselle Turcotte or Mademoiselle Dupont?” He gestured to the two young ladies on either side of Breton.
“Neither, I’m afraid.” He nodded at each of them. Adele nodded back, and Sarah smiled weakly.
“Adele, Sarah, this is Lt. Colonel François Despard; he’s been a hero on the southern front,” he said. “And François, Mademoiselle Adèle Dupont and Mademoiselle Sarah Turcotte.”
“Pleasure to meet you both.”
Loudon sat back down. “Please, François, take a seat,” he said, gesturing to the empty chair next to Adèle. François obeyed, and Madame Breton immediately claimed Loudon’s attention as he reclaimed his seat.
“Why, Monsieur, I don’t believe I’ve told you of my nephew’s engagement? The most lovely match!” she begun, and trailed off educating him on just how exactly the very best matches are made.
François turned to Adèle. “Mademoiselle Dupont, I’ve heard so much about you.”
Adèle raised her eyebrows, her features creasing as she demonstrated the textbook definition of polite surprise. “Good things, I hope?”
“Of course, Mademoiselle, what else could there be?” François smiled. His face was tanned from long hours spent in the sun, and his features shifted once more into their warm expression.
Adèle laughed. “I am only surprised to learn you knew of me.”
“The only child of Colonel Dupont could hardly escape notice.”
She nodded slightly and gave a look of comprehension. “You know my father?”
“Know of him, rather, but yes, we’ve met a few times. One tends to learn of other officers rather quickly in this war.”
Adèle opened her mouth but Loudon interrupted before she could speak.
“François, tell me, how long is your leave?” he asked hurriedly, seizing the first chance of escape from Madame Breton’s focused conversation.
“Only until this Saturday,” said François, and the two men went on to speak of the war. Adèle waited patiently for his attention to be focused back on her, as it inevitably would be, but he failed to look back at her any more than politeness entailed.
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It was some hours later, as dinner was ending, that Adèle seized her chance. François sat across from her, a few china dishes, long white candles, and the red tablecloth separating them. He had been previously engaged in conversation with Loudon’s daughter on his left, a polite, pretty girl who possessed her father’s rather short stature and small features.
“Do tell me, Colonel Despard, how someone as young as yourself becomes such a high ranking officer?”
François turned and directed his brown eyes on her. He smiled. “I fear you give me more esteem than is my due, Mademoiselle, and on that matter, that I am fast approaching the end of youth.”
Adèle laughed. She was sitting at the edge of her chair with impeccable posture, her expression at ease and her words charming. “I know that you are too young to say that, at least. Why, you can’t even be thirty.”
“Come summer you will be quite incorrect.”
“Is that so?”
“Well, next summer, that is.” François smiled and Adèle laughed. “Here I am, letting a girl tell me about age. And how old might you be, Mademoiselle?”
“Colonel, you must know nothing of polite society if you are asking a lady her age.”
“Ah, well, I’m afraid I’m rarely in polite society nowadays, so that must be the cause.” He smiled.
The guests were slowly beginning to rise from the table and adjourn to either the drawing or billiard rooms. The sounds of conversation, laughter, and piano music from an adjoining room continued to fill the air. Adele opened her mouth to reply.
“Shall we?” François asked, rising. Adèle replied affirmatively and stood, and the two made their way to the drawing room.
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A dozen and a half people were gathered in the drawing room, and it was not easy to unobtrusively claim the colonel’s attention when he so adamantly failed to play his part. Mademoiselle Sarah now played the grand piano in the corner. She played quite well, if a little mechanically, and seemed to be at great relief to be in her own sphere, free from expectations of educated conversation.
Adèle sat once more in the company of Madame Breton and half a dozen other ladies, discussing passionately last season’s hats and the failure of some to give them up. Their conversation had not been trivial the entire evening; earlier they had talked of the war and of the husbands, brothers, and sons deployed, but now they fell back into the easy patterns of late. Some embraced the new topic, while others could be seen with creased brows and pursed lips in the midst their trite words. The conversation was a pretense, though a comforting one, and the worry could not be so easily lifted for those among them of more sensible natures.
Adèle sat on the cold leather sofa, smiling and laughing with the other ladies, adding in a comment or two when necessary, but her eyes focused on the opposite end of the room, where Lt. Colonel Despard stood with a few middle-aged gentlemen too old to serve and one or two other officers who were also on leave. Only eight or nine men could be counted among the guests that night, which was only to be expected. The rooms, for the most part, were filled with the chatter of ladies.
“When will they ever learn...”
“And the English think that they know fashion!”
“It was really quite a dull color, almost the same as... ”
Adèle ceased to hear the conversation around her. Despard shook the hands of Loudon and a thirty-something blond man in uniform. He smiled his warm smile and said a few words that Adèle could not hear, and began making his way out of the posh room. But Adèle did not greatly worry. He was staying the night in the Loudon house, as was she and as were most of the guests.
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Some two hours later Adele walked down the hallway of the second floor, the location of the majority of the guest rooms. Everyone staying the night had retired to their rooms, and most were now drifting off to sleep. Adele was still dressed in the soft blue dress she had worn throughout the evening, her dark hair still up.
She knocked on a door near the end of the hall. Francois opened the door, and he looked down at her with an expression more alert and awake than Adele had expected.
“Please, Colonel, it’s Madame Breton. She asked me to come fetch you. She needs your help with something. Moving an armchair in her room, or something of that sort.” She smiled apologetically.
His brown eyes met her green ones. “Of course.” He looked over his shoulder back inside his room. “Let me just take care of something first.”
Adele glanced inside the room. The same poster bed and ornate furniture that covered her room furnished his as well. She eyed the wooden desk, scattered with papers and quills.
She remained in the hall as Francois made his way to the desk and cleared the papers, storing them away in one of the desk’s many drawers. He walked back out and smiled.
“And where is Madame Breton's room?”
“Just down the hall.”
But her room, as it turned out, was not just down the hall. It was down the hall, on the opposite wing of the house. The two walked in silence for a few moments.
“Are you enjoying your leave, Colonel?”
They continued to walk in silence for a moment before he replied. “I’m rather more anxious to get back, actually.”
Adele did not answer but turned to her side to glance at him. His eyes appeared sunken and weary, and his uniform hung straight and orderly against his tall frame.
They approached the door of Madame Breton. It stood, white and wooden, amongst the sea of white, wooden doors.
“Odd,” Adele said. “It had been open.”
She knocked on the door, to no answer. “Madame Breton?” She knocked again and waited. Silence filled the empty hallway. The door remained closed. “Madame Breton?”
Tentatively, she turned the metal door handle. It did not move.
She turned to Francois, her eyes slightly frantic. “I am sorry, Mons– Colonel, I don’t know why she’s not answering. I passed by her door only minutes ago and it was open. She called me inside, and after thoroughly explaining her predicament, asked me to fetch you."
“Do not worry, Mademoiselle,” he calmly reassured her, and knocked on the door himself.
They waited in silence. The corridor seemed to stretch endlessly in either direction. “She must have forgotten she asked me, or resolved it herself.”
“So it appears.” Francois laughed. “The antics of Madame Breton.”
Adele laughed somewhat apprehensively.
“Do not worry, Mademoiselle. Really, it is no matter. Let's head back.”
They journeyed back to his door in silence. The nearest light flickered, casting shadows on the walls. Francois opened his door and paused before entering.
“Why don’t you come in for a moment, Mademoiselle?” His warm brown eyes fixed upon hers.
Adele’s eyes lost their frantic touch and a glint of something else entered them. She merely shrugged and followed him inside. He closed the door behind her.
Once inside, Francois walked a few feet to the desk. Adele remained by the door. They stood facing each other somewhat expectantly for a few moments under the electric lights. The brilliant brown tapestries that adorned the room worked to soften the lights’ otherwise harsh glow. With its furniture, tapestries, and the nineteenth century paintings that decorated its walls, it was a beautiful room.
Adele’s eyes scoured the room, carefully noting all these furnishings and particularly catching upon one tapestry in the corner. She looked back to Francois, whose back was to the tapestry. His attractive, yet weary face was no longer creased into its warm smile as he stared back at her.
“Any particular reason you asked me to come in, Colonel?”
He gave no answer. Adele took a step toward him at the same moment that there was a flurried movement in the back corner.
Adele’s eyes were quick. She saw the gun before she heard its shot. Of course, Francois had a gun. She and Nicolas could rarely work with guns, their gunshots too noticeable. But Francois, Francois wouldn’t have to worry about gunshots, she thought dryly. Apparently, he and Loudon had awfully close connections.
Adele watched as Nicolas’ body dropped to the floor in the corner. He fell onto the brown tapestry, and his body laid intermingled with it on the ground. She hadn’t even seen him yet, in the room, and already he was dead, or close to it. He laid unmoving, blood seeping from the small wound on his chest. His face looked quite young, quite guileless in death.
Her father was dealing with a greater match than he realized.
She tore her eyes away from Nicolas and looked back to Despard. His broad-shouldered back was turned to her, still facing the corner where Nicolas’s body lay. She could see the slightest movements, up and down, that his body made with each breath he took. She waited.
Slowly, Francois turned himself to face her, pointing his gun at her as he did so. He took in her cold, stoic expression and his features twisted in disgust. They stood motionless across from each other in the room, his arm and gun pointed in a straight line to her heart. Silence filled the room, and the air seemed to grow colder.
She stared back at him impassively for a movement before a slight smile crept up her lips. “Go ahead,” she murmured, almost taunting him. He would already have done it, had that been his plan.
He shook his head and sighed deeply. “Believe me that I want to.”
He lowered the gun to his side and dropped his head, and he rubbed it wearily for a moment in his free hand. Adele did not move, and the two continued to stand across from each other in the room.
Francois raised his head to meet her eyes, but did not lift the gun. “Your father is dead,” he said coldly. “I’d suggest you stop doing whatever the hell it is you do exactly if you don’t want to end up like him.”
Adele’s face remained impassive, her smile gone, but her eyes appeared wickedly amused. “Fair enough.”
They stood there for a good moment, under the electric lights, staring at each other silently. Then Francois sighed and shook his head once more. He pointed with his gun to the door.
“Get out,” he spat.
Adele raised her eyebrows slightly, and lifted her soft blue dress as she walked out the door.
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6/9: Okay, I edited it up to make Adele appear less weak (she did have her reasons, but I hadn't realized how weak she looked), to make the surrounding characters seem slightly less fake, and some other suggested editing here and there. I'm not satisfied or done editing yet, but this is what I have for now.
7/12: Majorly re-edited the last couple scenes. Just to make them more clear and hopefully cinematic (and descriptive.) I had one of those experiences where you look back on past writing and just think 'eww'. Sooo hopefully now it's less "ew," although I didn't spend too much time with the beginning, or even doing any real major changes. I just redid presentation. Anyway, you guys are gods, thank you so much for all the help. Editing is reediting, I suppose.
Thank you again, sooo much, I always appreciate the clarity(?) of your reviews. You're super good at seeing like, the bottom line of what needs to be fixed.
. But don't worry too much; I direct you to what I explained to canislupis above. You are very correct in what you forshadowed with the playing field being changed 
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