A Bordeaux Dynasty: A Novel (74 page)

“Easy does it!” Laurène pleaded.

There was so much chaos in the room that no one had noticed Alex’s arrival. Dominique walked into the room, and her sons ran to her, accusing each other of all kinds of misdeeds. They then spotted their father and screamed with joy. Jules turned to his brother, slowly picked up Esther by the waist, and set her down on the floor.

“Be right back,” he said to her, smiling.

He walked over to Alex, who straightened as though he was expecting to be attacked.

“Your timing is perfect,” Jules said. “Everybody’s going nuts with those tree lights that never work from one year to the other. Want to take care of that?”

The twins, brimming with joy, dragged their dad to the box with the lights. Alex still hadn’t uttered a single word. Dominique bombarded Jules with worried glances until he finally answered with a wink. Jules was discreetly watching her and noticed the way she ran a hand over her husband’s shoulder as he untangled the strings of lights with his sons. He waited until the tree was fully decorated and then applauded along with the others when Louis-Marie lit it up.

Then he went by Alex and muttered, “I’m going to my office.”

His brother didn’t hesitate and silently followed his brother down the hallway.

“I said ‘my’ office,” Jules said, closing the office door behind him. “Sorry about that.”

“Why is that? Even when Dad was still alive, this was your office, wasn’t it?”

Jules knelt in front of the fireplace and put in two logs.

“We’re not off to a very smooth start, are we?” Jules joked.

“I’m not sure I know where to start,” Alex said. “I suppose that explaining myself is a must …”

“No, not if you don’t want to. I don’t care. If you have nothing to tell me …”

“I’ve got tons of things to tell you. But first I have a question for you: Do you see my being here as an intrusion?”

“You have a knack for thinking up stupid things. … This house is also yours, even though you’ve been trying to undermine it for a while.”

“My house? So accepting me under your roof has nothing to do with charity, then?”

“You’re pissing me off!” Jules exploded. “What’s with that ridiculous tone of yours?”

“With you, it’s always an angry tone.”

Jules slammed the top of his desk, and it took everything he had to regain his composure.

“Why don’t you just come out and say what’s on your mind for once?” he demanded.

Instead of answering, Alexandre scanned the office. He knew this room inside out. He’d often been afraid in here as a child, when his father had to sign his report card. And much later, when his father glared at him, unhappy about some of Alex’s negotiations, his initiatives, his ideas.

“I’d love to work at Fonteyne, if you didn’t exist,” he finally said.

He looked worn-out all of a sudden but not angry.

“Fonteyne wouldn’t exist if I wasn’t here,” Jules said.

“Lots of vineyards do just fine without you.”

“Of course! But things are different here. You never took an interest in numbers, and that’s too bad. The company is in constant progression. The profits have increased steadily for ten years, and never to the detriment of quality. I modernized the operations, and that’s even though Aurélien, Lucas, and—let me remind you—you were against it at first. I opened up great new markets for us. I have more clients than I can handle, all very faithful. The Château-Fonteyne Company depends on nobody and feels no pressure from anyone. The value of some of my wine has gone through the roof. I only sell what I want, to who I want. I’ve saved a fortune in payroll expenses because I handled things myself. I used that money to increase the size of the estate. I’m carrying the entire weight of Fonteyne with pride and pleasure, and I’m also willing to do anything to protect it. Our wines have won prizes everywhere, Alex. Merchants give me deals they wouldn’t offer any other wine producer. We’re in a class apart. That’s what I wanted for Fonteyne, and that’s what we’ve got.”

Jules kept his eyes riveted on his brother.

“I’m not saying all that expecting thanks or a pat on the back. This company belongs to you guys as much as to me, but you wouldn’t be able to run it as well as I do. I always wanted it to do as well as possible. And what you did was try to ruin it. That was so freaking idiotic! In order to get to me, you didn’t hesitate to bite the hand that feeds you. … It was that important to take your revenge on me?”

Alexandre lowered his head, but Jules insisted, “Revenge for what, exactly? What did I do to you? You wanted to be king and I wouldn’t let you? How ridiculous!”

Jules got up, went over to the fireplace and stoked the fire.

“I should’ve patted you on the back more often? I should’ve coddled you? Massaged your ego? Why?”

He turned around and saw Alex’s pale eyes focused on him.

“What are you expecting from me?” Jules asked, sounding tired. “That I cajole you? That I give you platitudes? That I tell you you’re incredibly talented and that we’re going to start over again hand-in-hand as if nothing had ever happened?”

“You son of a bitch …”

“No, not me. You are. I don’t hit Laurène, I don’t force her to have sex with me, and I don’t destroy my own land.”

“I did all that, yes!” Alex exploded. “And I got drunk every damned day! Are you going to shove that in my face until the end of time? You’ve never made a mistake, Jules? None whatsoever?”

They’d raised their voices so much that they suddenly clammed up, worried. The rest of the family was waiting for them to come out of the office.

“I don’t want you to judge me,” Alex muttered. “I can’t stand that anymore.”

Jules hesitated and then walked up to Alex. He clumsily mussed his brother’s blond hair.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “About everything. …”

He went over by the French doors and stood there, giving Alex time to mull over what he’d just said. For a few moments, all the two brothers heard was the crackling of the fire. The wind was blowing, and Jules gazed at the few fluttering leaves that Bernard had missed.

“What are we going to do?” Alex finally asked.

Jules took a deep breath before answering.

“If you want your old job back, it’s still yours.”

“Louis-Marie also works here now?”

“He mainly deals with the administrative side of things.”

Jules turned back to face Alex.

“I do need help and it’d be great if it were you,” he said. “And you and Dominique could move back into the Little House, so we wouldn’t have to put up with each other twenty-four seven.”

“Why are you doing this?” Alex asked in an odd voice.

Because you have nowhere else to go, and you need help,
Jules thought.

Instead, he said, “I never wanted to take away your share of Fonteyne. And I’m not talking about money, but your share of the work and the responsibilities. You have a right to this. You’re my brother … and you know full well that we don’t choose our family members, unfortunately. …”

Jules was smiling, ready to make peace once and for all.

“I’m the manager, Alex,” he said. “It’s not bothering Louis-Marie, and I don’t see why it shouldn’t be okay with you, too. Someone has to be at the helm of the ship!”

Alex looked at him with an incredulous expression.

“You’re doing this because of the trial?” he asked. “To get yourself off the hook?”

Jules looked outraged. “Are you kidding? I won the case!”

It was Alex’s turn to smile. He got to his feet and pulled a folded piece of paper from his back pocket.

“Since things are settled between us,” he said, “let me give you a Christmas present. Of course I didn’t have time to go shopping …”

He handed his brother the piece of paper. Intrigued, Jules unfolded it and started to read.

“My attorney gave it to me the other day, before you came to see me. But I’d already had time to think about it and decided not to go along with it. Besides, I really dislike that woman. She’s pretentious and condescending. … I gave her a lot of money. And then she comes over, looking like she’d struck it rich herself, to tell me that you’d be forced to sell some land to pay my part of the inheritance. I thought that was … awful. I don’t care about money. And even if you might not believe me, I do love Fonteyne. I’m giving you this piece of paper. You can toss it in the fireplace.”

Jules had turned white. He snatched his pack of Gitanes off the desk and lit one. He was still holding on to the piece of paper.

“Would you have done it?” he asked with all the calm he could muster.

“No. Even drunk I wouldn’t have done that.”

“You’re sure?”

They looked at each other for a few moments. Alexandre had been capable of striking at the vines, Jules wasn’t going to forget about that anytime soon. Alex went over to him, took the piece of paper, tore it up, and threw the pieces into the fire.

“I never could’ve gone that far,” he said. “Even if you were three times worse than you already are, which is hard to imagine, I couldn’t do it. That land is ours.”

“Yes.”

“It belongs to the four of us.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t care about Mazion.”

“Of course.”

They said nothing for a while. Jules was thinking about Valérie Samson with anger and bitterness. But he’d messed up, he knew that. He’d taken the risk of throwing fuel on the fire by sleeping with her. He’d hurt her, and she’d wanted to get back at him. That was part of the game.

“And you think that … that it’s going to be possible to …”

“What?” Jules said.

“To not talk about all this anymore?”

Jules stared at Alex. His brother had kept, in his face, something youthful, almost childlike.

“I think it would be best, yes. …”

“You know,” Alex said, his voice soft, “I never had any aspirations to run Fonteyne. Actually, I know I’d hate it. It’s too much responsibility, too hard, too risky a business. I never wanted your position. All I wanted was for you to ask for my opinion once in a blue moon. But you’re like Dad, you don’t really care about other people’s feelings.”

“That’s a young man’s trait,” he said. “And I’m getting older. I have a family that’s making me age in a hurry!”

Jules laughed. He suddenly felt relaxed, almost happy. Their conversation had erased months of worries, of latent guilt. Jules didn’t forget that he’d almost killed Alex. That he’d truly tried to kill him. And that he’d then hoped for reconciliation, without really admitting it to himself.

He looked at the court order’s ashes.

“No regrets about the fortune you just burned?” he asked his brother.

“None whatsoever,” Alex said, resolutely.

“Well, thank you very much for the Christmas present, then!”

Turning away from the fireplace, Jules saw Alexandre standing by the French doors, looking out at the castle’s surroundings and the vineyards on the horizon.

Jules went over to him, slapped his shoulder and said, “You’re right. Look at all this, it’s priceless.”

Robert unfastened his belt and asked the flight attendant for some champagne. He put his arm around Pauline’s shoulders and pulled her against him. He’d feared a last-minute change of mind so much that he was almost surprised to be sitting next to her on the plane.

“This is the first time we’ve traveled together,” he whispered.

He thought she looked gorgeous in her dark-blue cashmere turtleneck.

“If you only knew how much I love you,” he added.

Pauline closed her eyes and leaned against his shoulder. She’d told him nothing of her phone conversation with Louis-Marie. After hanging up the phone, she’d cried for a long time, convinced that she’d made the biggest mistake of her life. What kind of life would she have with Robert? She didn’t want any more children, but what about him? And where would they live? And what would she do with herself all day, as he spent long hours at the hospital?

“What are you thinking about?” he asked, while knowing that she’d never answered that question before.

“About Esther,” she said. “I hope she has a nice Christmas.”

“She adores her father, right? And then there are the twins, and the new baby …”

He was trying to reassure Pauline, but she wasn’t really worried about her daughter. Dominique and Laurène would take care of her. Besides, Esther loved being at Fonteyne. In time, she’d probably convince her father to have a pool built, and her uncle Jules would no doubt show her how to ride. An irresistible treat for a child her age.

As for me,
Pauline thought,
I’ll never be able to set foot there again.

Louis-Marie had mentioned something about alimony, the sale of their apartment. Pauline wondered how she’d wound up in that position. Was Robert worth it? She opened her eyes to give him a sideways glance. He was handsome, younger than Louis-Marie, smarter, funnier. He’d also be more demanding and more jealous, she had no doubt about that. She finished her glass of champagne and took some gum out of her handbag, in anticipation of the landing. What was the point of torturing herself with all these questions? Robert was a marvelous lover, and they were getting to know each other more and more. She felt with pleasure the hand he’d just placed gently on her thigh. She decided to think about nothing except the wonderful Christmas Eve she was about to enjoy.

Intrigued, Jules stepped out onto the terrace and looked at the cab coming to a stop at the bottom of the staircase. When the back door opened and he saw Fernande struggling to step out of the car, he rushed down the steps.

“What are you doing here? Are you nuts?”

Quite pleased with herself, she gave him a wink.

“I don’t have any money on me,” she said. “Can you pay the driver?”

Jules fished some bills out of his jeans, paid the man, then grabbed Fernande’s suitcase. She was wearing slippers and a bathrobe. Jules led her inside the house.

“Did you leave the hospital without authorization?”

“Not at all! I convinced Dr. Auber that I wouldn’t be able to bear spending Christmas in the hospital. I’m doing fine.”

“What a pig-headed woman you are!”

“I’m going to the kitchen,” she said.