December, 1915
Paris, France
Madeleine looked resplendent in her dark green dress, with the bright red corsage I had pinned on her breast.
She looked very much in keeping with the holiday, which was the idea, since we were entering the ballroom at the Ritz Hotel, the same one where we had spent our wedding night, for the American Embassy's annual Christmas banquet.
Because the United States was still neutral in the Great War that was raging not far away, we were not under the same moral imperatives that restricted the holiday celebrations of the combatant nations.
It would not be seemly for the French or British to put on extravagant parties for the holidays when they had men dying by the thousands at the front.
But we weren't under any sort of restrictions, and the American Ambassador, William Sharp, had decided that we would celebrate the season in the normal fashion, which meant the large banquet, with a small orchestra for after-dinner dancing, would go on as usual.
Diplomats from all of the nations that still had embassies in Paris, along with many French government dignitaries, had all been invited, and almost all of them had accepted.
Truth be known, our colleagues among the French, British and Russians welcomed the opportunity to let their hair down and enjoy some festive moments. Heaven knows, there had been few such moments in the previous year.
We were mingling with the crowd during the social hour, prior to the meal, when I saw someone I had hoped I'd seen the last of a year or so earlier.
He was an attachΓ© with the Spanish Embassy, but I also knew him by reputation from his time as a minor functionary in Cuba, before the Spanish-American War. His name was Don Juan Pablo de Velasquez, and we had developed an instant dislike for the other from the first time we met, not long after my first arrival in France in 1913.
Not only was he arrogant, a darkly handsome man of about 40 who was related in some way to the Spanish royal family, but he had been one of the many diplomats who had been frequenting Marcel's and sniffing around Madeleine when I came on the scene.
Most, like my Russian friend Sergei, had gracefully bowed out when it became clear that I was the one she wanted, but not Don Velasquez. He had made passes at her almost until the day of our wedding, and I hadn't forgotten.
Of course, I was predisposed not to like him anyway, because of some things he had done while in Cuba before the war there. He had been widely suspected of ordering a massacre in a small village in the mountains that was supposedly a haven for Cuban rebels.
The unit I had been with during the Spanish-American War had actually come upon this little town, and there was plenty of evidence that an atrocity of some sort had taken place β a burned-out church and a mass grave being the most prominent.
Of course, by then, Don Velasquez was long gone and well beyond any kind of justice we could have meted out.
Not long after our wedding, Don Velasquez had supposedly been called back to Spain for some reason, and no one had seen much of him in the previous six months. But there he was in his full dress uniform, which made him look like some sort of pretentious peacock.
Naturally, the moment he saw us together, he made a beeline to where we happened to be standing, chatting with an acquaintance from the British Embassy.
"Why Madeleine, it such a pleasant surprise to see you here," he said to her, while completely ignoring me.
"Don Juan, how have you been?" Madeleine said without much enthusiasm. "You do know my husband, Monsieur Guidry?"
Good girl, I thought as I greeted Don Velasquez. We stared at each other for a moment as we shook hands in a rather stiff manner, before I turned to my wife.
"Come, my love, we must find our seats," I said. "As always, a pleasure, Don Velasquez."
"Madeleine, you must favor me with a dance later," he said in parting.
"Maybe later," Madeleine said halfheartedly.
As we turned to find our seats, she turned to me and said in a low voice that only I could hear, "He is such a ... pig."
"You don't know the half of it," I said.
A few minutes later, as we were being seated, she looked at me with the usual megawatt smile on her face and told me that she had an early Christmas present for me that she wanted to show me later that night.
"Will I like this gift?" I said.
"Oh, yes, you will," she said with a mischievous smile on her face. "You will like it very much."
The dinner was sumptuous, and the wine delicious. As was my practice of late, I limited myself to two glasses at dinner, plus a snifter of brandy with dessert.
During dinner, the orchestra had played mostly background type music, but after dinner they began to step up the tempo and play music that was more suitable for dancing.
We didn't immediately go to the dance floor, because we were engaged in a brisk conversation with an acquaintance from the French government on what the United States intended to do in regard to the war.
I was gratified β and he was surprised β when Madeleine contributed some salient points to the debate. Her point was that no one should be eager to go to war, and if America could find some way to avoid it, then we should do so.