A Bordeaux Dynasty: A Novel (14 page)

Louis-Marie didn’t look convinced, and Alexandre added, “Jules has Dad’s faults. He identified with him so much he became his clone. And then, at one point, he surpassed him.”

Alexandre held out the glass so his brother could fill it again.

“So,” Louis-Marie said, “it’s a wonderful life around here.”

“Yes and no. Dominique is on my back to get us to leave for Mazion. Imagine the scandal that would cause?”

“I don’t know about that. Between Dad, Jules, and Lucas, things are running smoothly at Fonteyne. If there’s already enough help here and you’re needed at Antoine’s …”

Alexandre shrugged. He knew Louis-Marie couldn’t understand the full scope of the situation. And he didn’t feel at all like admitting that taking charge of an estate scared him.

“I love Fonteyne as much as they do. …” he said with a muffled voice.

Louis-Marie asked him the last question on his mind, “And the day something happens to Dad … ?”

Alexandre got to his feet and dusted off the seat of his pants with his hand.

“I don’t know. … He must’ve planned for it.”

“Planned what, Alex?”

Alexandre said nothing and Louis-Marie also got up. They headed for the spiral staircase. Reaching ground level, they saw it was raining again.

Disheartened, they watched the sheets of rain for a while. Most of the day had been superb, and the suddenness of the storm was startling. They left the cellar and ran to the house. By the time they got there, they were soaking wet. Alexandre immediately looked for his father. Louis-Marie found Pauline in the main living room, where Jules, kneeling before the hearth, was starting a fire. Having arrived from Margaux five minutes earlier, he was also drenched.

He welcomed his brother with a smile and said, “So, you and Alex emptied out the cellar?”

“News travels fast around here!” Louis-Marie shot back.

“Contrary to what you might think, the caves aren’t open to everyone,” Jules explained. “There’s pretty much always an employee keeping an eye on the entrance. Fortunately.”

Louis-Marie wrapped his arm around Pauline’s shoulders and ushered her toward the fireplace.

“What rotten weather,” he said. “We’re all going to catch our death going from hot to cold like that. Where’s Robert?”

Jules got back up while examining his fire. With apparent indifference, he said, “I ran into him in Margaux, with Laurène. They had lunch at the
Relais
.”

Pauline frowned, a bit annoyed that Robert would be interested in a woman other than her. Louis-Marie refrained from making any remarks. As it was dark in the room, he lit the lamp closest to him and went over to sit on a sofa.

“I drank too much with Alex,” he said with a sigh.

Pauline got some coffee, while Louis-Marie challenged Jules to a game of chess. He knew that his brother was an excellent player, but he couldn’t convince him to sit down and play. Jules repeated that he wasn’t on vacation, drank his cup of coffee standing up, and said he was going to change.

Once in his room, he took off his wet clothes. He’d put on a good face for Louis-Marie’s sake, but his unexpected encounter with Laurène and Robert, two hours before, had put him in a foul mood. He put on a pair of jeans, his boots, and a turtleneck, then a leather jacket. He grabbed a pack of cigarettes and put it in his pocket. He knew very well that he never should’ve given his brother the go-ahead. There was nothing surprising about Robert trying to forget about Pauline by dating a young, beautiful woman like Laurène. Robert had asked if it was okay; he’d been a straight shooter.

Exasperated, Jules slammed his bedroom door and ran down the stairs. The rain was falling as hard as it had been earlier. He went over to the office to ask Fernande if she’d seen Aurélien. She told him that he’d come back half an hour earlier, wet from head to toe, as he’d been caught by the rain in the middle of a field. Jules waited until Fernande prepared a rum toddy, then he went down to his father’s room. He found him sitting on the side of his bed, in his robe, lighting a small cigar.

“What got you upset enough to smoke?” Jules asked as he put the rum toddy on the nightstand.

“The rain. … I really thought the weather was changing. …”

He held out his cigar to Jules.

“You want it? I don’t like the taste after all. … So, how did it go with Amel?”

“Everything’s taken care of,” Jules said, laconically. Taking a puff of the cigar, he added, “This Davidoff is great.”

Aurélien smiled, in spite of himself. His tour of the vines had reassured him somewhat—the grapes weren’t looking as bad as he’d feared.

“You were right about the vines,” he said. “If harvest is delayed a bit, we might be all right.”

He drank his grog and put down the mug ever so slowly.

Jules broke into his characteristic laugh.

“Aurélien,” he said, “you want me to feel sorry for you? Poor Aurélien, things aren’t going as well as he’d hoped. …”

“You must think I’ve gone senile,” Aurélien said. “Gone cuckoo. Maybe you should plan to eliminate me.”

“I actually put some arsenic in your grog,” Jules said, still laughing.

Aurélien took off his robe and put on a cashmere vest over his shirt.

“You what?” he said. “I feel better. You’re going to have to poison me some other time. Though, as a matter of fact, you do poison my life a little bit every day! Hand me a tie, will you? Any will do. … Well, no, not
that
one. Geez …”

Jules handed him three ties, and Aurélien snagged the one in the middle.

“If you think about it,” Aurélien said, “these are great years for you. You have Fonteyne and no worries at all.”

“No worries. …” Jules echoed, raising his eyes to the ceiling.

Aurélien put a friendly hand on Jules’s shoulder and said, “The only way to get something out of you is to actually be stronger than you are. I don’t envy your future wife.”

Jules, surprised, stared at this father.

“I don’t—”

“I know,” Aurélien interrupted. “You only understand what you want to understand.”

He left the room whistling, very cheerful.

There was another two hours of sun the following morning. While surveying the vineyards, Jules saw, as Aurélien had the day before, that the successive downpours hadn’t damaged the grapes. Fog was clinging to the vines in the damp dawn, and the soil remained muddy. Jules thought about the laborers and all the problems inherent to the harvest. He knew that, for all his talk, Aurélien counted on him. He felt deeply responsible for the estate and knew that this wasn’t the time for matters of the heart. And so he tried not to think about Laurène, though she kept creeping back into his mind, muddling his thoughts.

He’d never had any trouble getting what he wanted from women. As a matter of fact, he usually got much more than he wanted. He conquered them effortlessly. He made love to them well because he loved it, and then promptly forgot about them. On the rare occasion that a woman tried to resist his charms, he gladly played the game and did everything he could to seduce her. But Laurène was a totally different matter. After carefully avoiding her for so long, Jules had finally admitted to himself that he loved her. In hindsight, he realized how ridiculous he’d been to think that all he had to do was tell Laurène and have her fall into his arms. He’d figured that she was attracted to him all along, and he’d been wrong. “You only understand what you want to understand,” Aurélien had told him the previous day—he was right.

If any other woman had preferred Robert over him, Jules would have been indifferent, as it wasn’t a matter of pride for him. But in the case of Laurène, he was stunned by how possessive he felt. He’d easily put up with Aurélien’s hurdles, thinking it was only a question of time before they came down. A vague rivalry with Aurélien hadn’t bothered him, but the thought of having to fight with Robert made him angry.

He shivered since he hadn’t moved in ten minutes. For a man who didn’t want to think about women, he was neck-deep in it. Slowly, he began to walk alongside some vines, forcing himself to examine them. He shrugged at the thought of his own stupidity.

“So you went and fixed what I screwed up?” an angry Alexandre barked from behind him.

Jules was rarely caught by surprise, and the fact that Alexandre snuck up on him like that showed how deep in thought he was. He turned to his brother and forced a smile.

“So?” Alex insisted.

“Yes, I did,” Jules said. “We couldn’t leave things like that. I went because Aurélien asked me to. But I’m not blaming him. The deal had to be changed anyway.”

Alexandre, hesitant, stared at his brother.

“How can you win with Amel?” he asked, both angry and baffled.

“We’re the ones doing him a favor, Alex. He needs us. Our wines, they’re great. You should never feel like a debtor with guys like Amel. If you’re sure of yourself, you obtain what you want. I actually told him that I was going to do without him from now on.”

“You’re not going to deal with him?”

“I’m not going to deal with any distributor.”

Alexandre seemed alarmed. His brother’s ideas always caught him off guard.

“It’s the way of the future,” Jules said. “In the meantime, I’m having a problem with logistics for the laborers. You have to work out getting us the bus to transport them. …”

They talked for a while, as equals, before heading for the Jeep Jules had left on the road. The wind was rising, and they spotted the first clouds. The rain began to fall as they reached the garage. Aurélien was waiting for them there, and he rushed over to Jules.

“Damn!” he said. “See that? It’s coming down again!”

It was a cry from the heart, and the brothers almost burst out laughing. They all ran to the house—the sons surrounding their father—and took refuge in the office. Laurène joined them a few minutes later, and Aurélien dictated a few letters to her. Jules was trying to read a financial statement, but couldn’t concentrate. He kept raising his head, peeking at Laurène. She was sitting on the edge of a chair, her legs crossed, her notepad resting on her knees. She was wearing a miniskirt and a tight T-shirt. Jules could see her sideways, her slightly opened mouth revealing small, straight teeth. She had freckles and her eyelashes went on forever.

He swallowed hard and forced himself to try to study the statement again. He couldn’t remember wanting something as badly as he did now, with no way to obtain it. He flipped a page with a quick gesture and continued reading. Jules felt Aurélien’s eyes on him, and he turned his head from Laurène to his father. He read on Aurélien’s face a mixture of irony and bitterness. In silence, they glared at each other for a while.

“You’re too harsh, Aurélien,” Jules muttered, setting the document on the desk.

Laurène was waiting, pen in hand, watching them both. Jules stood up and buried his hands in his pockets.

Aurélien said, in an aggressive tone, “So, do you agree with the accountant’s report?”

Certain that his son hadn’t read a single column of figures, Aurélien didn’t expect a response to his jab.

“No, I don’t,” Jules shot back. “His total debt ratio isn’t taking everything into account. The interest on the loan for the Massey, for example. I’ll talk to him later.”

Stunned, Aurélien couldn’t come up with anything to say. He let Jules leave the room, wondering how his son was able to do two things at the same time like that.

Jules worked relentlessly the entire morning, exasperating Lucas with all his demands. Set on relegating Laurène to the back of his mind, he imposed on himself chores he could’ve given to one of his employees. He let Fernande know that he’d have no time for lunch and decided to go to Margaux to pay the accountant a visit. When he came back at two in the afternoon, he wanted to go riding while Aurélien was having his nap. He was surprised to find Laurène and Dominique waiting for him by the stable.

“Hello, girls,” he said as he went by the sisters, without glancing at them.

They caught up with him in front of Bingo’s stall, and he had to turn to them both, intrigued by their insistence. Laurène was first to speak.

“Dominique has a few things to tell you,” she said.

Jules was caressing his horse’s head. He waited a bit before saying, “Okay, I’m listening. …”

Dominique looked embarrassed, and Jules was increasingly curious to find out what was on her mind.

“It’s about Alex and Mazion,” she finally said.

“Oh, I see.”

Jules leaned against the stall’s wall.

“Let me guess,” he said. “You’d like for Alex to leave Fonteyne and you want my blessing, right?”

Dominique avoided giving a direct response.

“You and Aurélien have to understand that … that—”

“What? Don’t bother. I know exactly what you have in mind. You can talk to me about it, but Aurélien won’t listen to you for a second.”

Upset by Jules’s scornful tone, Dominique shot back, “You’re the one running the show around here. You think I’m too stupid to know that? What good is Alex to you anyway? You don’t need a foil, do you?”

Jules produced a contemptuous smile.

“You don’t have very much respect for your husband, do you?” he said. “If he has a problem, why doesn’t he talk to me about it?”

“You don’t give a damn about our problems!” Dominique shouted.

Jules stopped smiling and planted his eyes on his sister-in-law.

Laurène decided to intervene: “In Mazion, he’d have a chance to prove himself. He’d feel more useful than he does here. It’d be a good solution.”

Jules straightened. He was the angry one now.

“What business is that of yours?” he said. “You came with Dominique for moral support? Who do you think I am? Do I really look that dumb to you?”

Instinctively, Laurène took a step back. The deep misunderstanding that already existed between them was only getting worse.

Jules added, this time more calmly, “Mazion is going to be split in two eventually. And that’s too small for two bosses.”

He looked at Dominique exclusively and continued, “The day Laurène decides what to do with her life, we’ll see. Then I’ll try to convince Aurélien. If Alex wants to take care of everything someday, I promise that your father won’t have to worry about a thing. But if Laurène marries someone who wants to run the vineyard, Alex will be glad he stayed at Fonteyne. You see, it’s simple. In any case, as far as I know, Antoine is in no hurry. He can still take care of his land.”