The two young men splashed around for a few minutes, cavorting and roughhousing until the gloomy mood dissipated; breathless and laughing, they pulled themselves out onto the lip of the pool and lay panting in the soft warm light. The sun had not set yet, but had dipped below the roofline of the colonnade surrounding the pool. The construction had obviously been influenced by the Neptune Pool at Hearst's San Simeon, with its large Greek temple reaching out gracefully curving arms of Corinthian columns interspersed with Classical statuary; but the temple was an actual pool-house with changing rooms and baths, the colonnade was enclosed by an arched stone wall, and the columns supported wistaria-hung pergolas, encircling the elongated octagon of the swimming pool, which was paved in azure tiles patterned with lapis lazuli in an elaborate geometric Roman pattern featuring more octagons.
"Your architect seems to have been fond of octagons," Danny remarked after a few minutes, noticing that even the capitals of the columns were octagonal, as well as the tiles of the terrace and the floor of the pool.
"It was the last Comte who was obsessed with them," Valerien corrected, shifting around to prop his head against Danny's chest, "The architect originally planned round towers to the Chateau, and an elliptical pool echoing the curved colonnade. But my great-grandfather was absolutely potty about the number eight. He was born on August eighth, eighteen eighty-eight, and so believed that eight was his lucky number. He ordered octagons shoved in wherever the architect could put them. He even designed some of the octagonal follies himself. You find them in the most unexpected places. Even the family crest, where it's worked into the architecture, features an octagonal shield instead of the traditional écu français. Look at the bosses at the tops of the windows, and the medallions in the corners of the ballroom floor."
"There's something especially pleasing about octagons, though, don't you think? I had an octagonal bedroom at my aunts' house at home."
"I suppose," Valerien shrugged, then sat up, "I'm so accustomed to seeing them everywhere, I don't really notice them anymore."
"I remember reading a book called Octagon Magic when I was a kid; it was a great book, about a girl who meets this strange old lady who lives in an octagonal house that's magical, with a dollhouse replica of the house inside it that allowed one to time-travel."
"I wonder if the old Comte read it. When was it published?"
"The seventies, I think," Danny answered after a long pause in which he tried to picture the ratty paperback library book in his mind's eye, and trying to place the art on the cover in a decade.
"Ah, then he would have missed it. He died in the late fifties."
"It was a kid's book, anyway, I doubt he'd read such."
"If it had the word 'octagon' in it, he would have, I'm sure," he reached across to the pile of his clothes and rooted around until he found his pocket-watch, snapped it open and looked at the time, "We'd better be getting in, we only have an hour to dress. Do you think my father is happy?"
"He seems happy," Danny stood and followed his friend into the poolhouse, bemused by the turn of conversation, "Content at the very least."
"I sometimes wonder. If happiness is the absence of pain, he does seem happy. But I don't know... I never believed in that absence-of-pain definition. What do you think happiness is?"
"I've always thought happiness was something you simply felt or didn't feel. Like love. It can't be quantified or even adequately explained. But then, Poppy says that happiness is a way of life, you simply decide to be happy and then nothing can make you unhappy, even when sad or bad things happen. What do you think happiness is?"
"I wish I knew. I know I've been happy, and I know I'm not happy now. I just wish I understood it all better. This business of getting married, I'm not so sure I'm up to it," the young Baron put on a bathrobe from one of the changing-rooms and handed another to his friend.
"Your father was right, though," Danny said, shrugging into the soft white terry, "You shouldn't if you don't want to. It'll just make you miserable, and if you're miserable, your wife will be miserable. And any children you have will be miserable."
"But I do want to," Valerien objected, "I want to continue my line. An unbroken male descent over nine hundred years? I don't want to break that; I want to keep it going. And I do want to have children, to nurture them and make them happy and watch them grow. No, not wanting to isn't the problem. Not being able to is the problem. What if I can't do it? I've never tried."
"It's not that hard," Danny told him, "I mean, it's not the same as with a man, but I've slept with women a lot of times and had no difficulty."
"But I'm not you, my love," Valerien reached up and touched his cheek, smiling, "I'm not the rampant sex-monster you are."
"Oh, I don't know about that," Danny reached out and took hold of Valerien by the waist, pulling him close, "You're a pretty horny little bugger. I think you could fuck anybody or anything if you were inspired."
"Stop that," Valerien wriggled out of his grasp and rearranged his bathrobe to hide the erection that was starting to rise up, "We don't have time to finish, so don't get me started."
"You're right, we'd better go get dressed for dinner."
The two friends walked thoughtfully back to the Chateau, entering through a ground-floor salon and climbing the stairs in the ballroom, pausing to look at the elaborate medallions inlaid in varicolored wood in the parquet floor: a blue octagonal Seguemont shield, showing a diagonal scarlet band with a gold fleur de lys above and a silver crescent below, surmounted by the purple-capped coronet of a count and peer of France, supported by a leopard and a hawk, surrounded by a fancifully curling ermine mantle and bearing the motto Vérité sans peur.
Danny did not remark on the contradiction of a family bearing the motto "Truth without fear" when they had an ostensibly dead son hidden away in a secret garden; but it gave him something to think about as he climbed flight after flight of stairs to arrive finally at his high tower bedroom, where he found a liveried footman waiting to help him dress.
"If monsieur would tell me what he wishes to wear this evening, I will lay it out while he takes his shower," the man said in his formal French. Like the family, most of the servants were French citizens, or naturalized French nationals; but this one was clearly American or Canadian and had the distinctive accent of someone who learned French in school rather than at home.
"Thank you," Danny replied in his more faultlessly fluent French; he'd grown up with a French nanny, and learned his accent from her, and then studied French literature in high school and college to gain a more sophisticated vocabulary, "What's your name?"
"I call myself Eric," the young man answered, bowing low.
"Please speak English to me, Eric," Danny laughed, slipping out of his robe and enjoying the servant's bug-eyed appreciation of his body--there were few things as gratifying to him as turning men on, "I'll wear the black Gucci dinner-suit with the dark green waistcoat and tie. I'll let you use your judgement on the shirt and shoes. And would you take that robe back to the poolhouse later on?"
"Yes, sir, thank you, sir," the footman replied in English, then scuttled off into the closet to get the clothes out.
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1,309 Words
23,823 Total Word Count
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