The long hot summer passed. Always so hot in le Midi, in the remote valley of QueÌreur. Françoise and LĂ©onie remained virgins, and so, for that matter, did Alain, but for all it was, perhaps, only just. A summer of pleasure, of heat and animal lust. But like the summer it could not last. Before the winter snows Françoise was sent away. Her bags packed almost before she knew it. Her father was not to be disobeyed. Not even time for one last visit to her farmhouse or to say au revoir to her friends.
The strange summer of discovery over. Leoni and Alain discovering their love for each other but so often in the company of a third. Françoise knew herself to be at least half in love with Alain but had resisted any thought of jealousy about her friend. Had she not enabled their ongoing meetings when she could so easily have met Alain at the farmhouse on her own again and again; who knew what might have happened then? In a way, that lovely afternoon when she had sat in that chair by the front bedroom window in her farmhouse -- she could not stop thinking of it liked that -- and experienced such an orgasm from the two of them working in concert was so much a symbol of Alain and Léonie's courtship. Their fingers together, almost as if holding hands, within -- very much within -- Françoise's sex. Their fingers entwined as they simulated a pénis. It was as if their love had blossomed within the confines of Françoise's thighs.
Three long years of study, at Paris so far away. Far from her farmhouse and her friends. A wrench, but so much to do and learn. She could not but obey her father. Finding herself a right 'country bumpkin' at first in the sophistication of Paris, yet anything but that by the second year. Her father expected her to return as a fine young lady, intelligent and cultured and he was not disappointed.
Not the impetuous girl of the fields when she stepped from the train at Narbonne. Nor riding with her father in his carriage, her long dress neatly spread and her parasol raised against a sun she had almost forgotten. Her father talking to her of local matters, so strangely provincial after Paris, almost humorous in their provinciality, almost a matter for contempt. He had wanted to make a Parisian of her, and he found he had got what he had sought. His daughter's conversation a world apart from his own.
So strange to return to her old bedroom and find it unchanged. The things of her girlhood, three long years before, still sitting there on shelf or chest. A grand diner to welcome her back. Had her brothers not grown? Fine young men. Sitting there in her fine dress, so fashionable, so Ă la mode compared to her mother's best dress that so betrayed her country origins and fashions long past in Paris.
The morning, though, saw Françoise dressed in her old gingham, Tissu Vichy, blue dress, cool and simple in the rising heat of the day. A day close to home but in the late afternoon, Françoise dressed formerly in her Paris finery and was driven with father, mother and brothers into town for a fine dinner at the hotel. Her father's friends were there, monsieur le maire and Françoise noted with amusement so, particularly, were the promising young sons of her father's friends. She very much knew what that was about. Her mother said as much.
It was the next day that found Françoise slipping out and up the hillside as she had done years before as a young girl, dressed in her simple gingham blue dress, ascending the hillside through the long grass. It was something she had not done in Paris. The glorious freedom of the open country and the feel of the grass and the flowers on her bare legs. Above her, as she climbed up and up, the old farmhouse came into view but not at all as she remembered it. The brambles were more than cleared: there was a working farm around the house and from the chimney the smoke of a kitchen fire; on the air came the sound of a baby crying. Françoise paused in astonishment, before resuming her climb.
"Françoise!" It was Léonie running down the hillside towards her, arms outstretched. "It is you!"
The two women met, kisses to cheeks and then to mouths.
"Come, come!"
At the door, the brambles clearly long cleared and gone, Alain was there, standing in welcome, his smile so lovely, to take Françoise in his arms and repeat the kisses to cheeks. Never before had Françoise entered the house by the door; and what a change inside. She had tried her best to restore some sort of homeliness to the farmhouse when it had been hers, but her efforts paled compared to what the couple had done. But that was not all they had done. In a cradle another occupant of the kitchen. A baby had come.
Upon Léonie's left hand a ring. Alain and Léonie had, of course, married. They sat at the table and talked and talked. They talked of the restoration of the farm; of the wedding and how they had missed her; of Léonie finding she was pregnant and the baby's arrival; Françoise talked of Paris and how big it was and grand. Such a world away from Léonie and Alain.
"You have done so much to the house. It is now so alive when it was just sleeping."
"Would you like to see upstairs, look out of the windows where we looked so often..." She had been there more than an hour already. Léonie smiled, an almost conspiratorial smile as she no doubt was remembering, just as Françoise was, back those three years to what had happened upstairs.
"Yes, I would like to see it all."
At the foot of the stairs Léonie paused and turned, a quizzical look in her eye. "We did not go upstairs in those days clothed, did we?" A laugh. "Perhaps we should not now." The young mother looked shyly at Françoise. It was an invitation.
Françoise's teeth came together holding onto her bottom lip. The thought of once again being naked in her house -- no, not her house but Alain and Léonie's -- was more than pleasing and what would ensue. She nodded. That would be good.
"Alain?"
A pause full of implication and promise and then the young man took the hint and began to remove his clothes. It was a joy to Françoise to watch. Such a fine young man, as she had always thought. She could but watch the revealing.
Stark naked with the two young women the young husband could not help erecting. It rose up right in front of Françoise, such a sight, the so remembered sight.
"You are as fine as always, Alain." And he was. So manly, so strong and so showing his fifth limb.
Her old dress pulled over her head revealing pretty and new -- from Paris -- underclothes. LĂ©onie clapped her hands in delight.
"Does she not look a picture, Alain?" She would not let Françoise take them off at first and it was obvious Alain delighted in seeing her half undressed like that.
