Chapter 31: The Vow

Margaux had the first needle in before the housekeeper reached the door.

She knelt on the dining room floor with the old woman's head on Julien's knee, and her case open on the rug.

"Wrist," she said. "Hold it still. Julien, loosen her collar."

"Her lips..."

"I can see her lips."

The second needle went in at the inside of the elbow, the third at the web of the thumb.

Her hands were perfectly steady, because it was the only thing in the world that they knew how to do.

"Count with me," she said. "In for four."

"I am not a child," the old woman whispered.

"Then breathe like a grown woman."

A ghost of a smile moved across the grey face.

The household doctor ran in with his bag, saw the needles and stopped in the doorway.

"Madame, shall I call the ambulance?"

"Wait," Margaux said.

She watched the thin pulse in the wrist.

It skipped, and skipped, and then began to run clean.

Ten minutes later the old woman opened her eyes.

"What a performance," she said hoarsely. "Did I ruin the soup?"

Julien put his face down on her silver hair and did not lift it for a while.

By midnight she was in a hospital bed in her own garden room, scolding the doctor.

The monitor above her ticked on evenly.

"Three weeks," Margaux told Julien in the corridor. "She needs three quiet weeks, and she must not be frightened."

"She will not be frightened."

"She heard us through a door, Julien. She is not made of glass. She is made of spite."

"Then the wedding."

"Is in three weeks. A Tuesday."

"She will be there."

"She'll be there if I have to carry her in on a chair."

On a wet Tuesday morning three weeks later, the old woman was carried up the steps of the town hall in her wheelchair, by two guards.

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