Chapters (45)
- Cover
- Blame Iton Paris
- Copyright Notice
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- Book One
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Book Two
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
Sébastien looked past me. “No, no, he’s my sister’s godfather. Damn it, Jean-Charles promised to keep him under control.”
“That explains a lot about your attitude toward godfathers. By the way, your dad just gave me some very explicit advice about our wedding night.”
Sébastien groaned.
“I guess that’s the rugby player in him, hmm?”
Exhausted guests crawled into tents, the backs of their cars, or any spare mattress or layer of blankets in the house; but most were still going strong around 3:30 in the morning. I took a break by a grill to hold my hands over the fire. Jean-Charles looked fuzzily concerned. “Are you cold? I’ll warm you up!” He picked up a bale of hay and threw it on the fire.
“Good God!” Everyone jumped back, but the bale of hay didn’t explode in flames. It had covered the entire grill and blocked all the oxygen, so now there was no heat, only sullen smoke seeping out from under the hay.
Jean-Charles frowned, indignant. “Oh, stubborn, are you? Don’t worry, we’ll get you warmed up!” He picked up a can of lighter fluid and started splashing it all over the hay.
I backed up. “Sébastien, maybe it’s time for us to head for our hotel.”
“So soon?” he said, aggrieved. It was now almost 4:00 A.M.
“Not,” Bruno said, appalled, “before you eat your soupe à l’oignon.”
“Oh, no, no onion soup, thank you,” I said. “I’m full. Also exhausted, but I’m feeling kind of guilty about that, since no one else seems to be.”
“Onion soup is a tradition,” Bruno said. “You wait.” He dashed off for the kitchen.
“And the pot de chambre!” Titi jumped up and raced after him.
People had been making taunting references to this pot de chambre for weeks now. I could imagine a lot of wedding traditions that might be called a chamber pot, none of which promised to be good things for the bridal couple.
“Really,” I said to Sébastien. “I’m about ready to go. We can come back tomorrow morning and do the pot de chambre thing at breakfast.”
Sébastien, who knew what a pot de chambre was but had joined his family in refusing to tell me, looked horrified. “That’s the old-fashioned way, but no one in my family is that cruel.”
“No, really,” Claudine said. “The morning after, a pot de chambre would make you vomit. It’s better to get it over with.”
I redoubled my efforts to get through the guests, while Sébastien dragged his feet. “The pot de chambre, Laura. We can’t miss that.”
Behind us, the bale of hay on the grill finally burst into flames, and I batted sparks out of my hair. “Yes, we can. I feel no qualms about it at all.”