Heaven Scent (51 page)

‘Leoni?’ she said gently, accurately guessing the reason behind his torment.

He nodded, only slightly taken aback that his mother seemed to know exactly what was going on in his head. She had developed the knack in his teens and always seemed able to get to the heart of the matter without any faff or nonsense.

‘Sort things out with her, son,’ Arthur urged, joining in. ‘Life’s too short and all that.’

Ashton shrugged helplessly, his blue eyes clouded with distress. He gestured to the building. ‘I have to sort this out . . . there’s no time. And Leoni, we’re barely speaking these days. She has a new, rich boyfriend,’ he said dismally. ‘French, of course,’ he added.

Joyce gripped his arm and gave him a confident smile. ‘It’s not over yet, Ash. Don’t give up before you’ve really put your heart on the line.’

Arthur nodded encouragingly. ‘Your mother’s right.’

‘Are you saying I haven’t done that already?’ In spite of himself, Ashton pulled a face of mock dismay. ‘Seriously, you have no idea! I’ll tell you all about it in a minute.’

Joyce picked her suitcase up. ‘First things first. Where can we dump our luggage and where’s the kettle?’

Feeling ridiculously grateful for their presence and completely forgetting his builders were waiting for coffee, Ashton handed his parents hard hats and led the way into the building.

 

Back at La Fleurie, Leoni was in the breakfast salon, sifting through some photographs Stefan the photographer had sent over. She was preoccupied. The thought of Ashton and Marianne together, and of Ashton ‘sacrificing’ himself in order to secure the building, was quite simply nauseating. It changed Leoni’s entire perspective of Ashton and unnerved her completely. He had always been such a rock, a very proper, reliable rock that she could always turn to, especially after Olivier died. But now, after Marianne’s revelations, Ashton seemed like a different person and not the sweet, honourable person Leoni had always believed him to be. He was obviously a liar, something she would never have believed possible of him, in spite of all the time he had spent with Olivier, and he now seemed to have a sinister edge which didn’t suit him at all.

Leoni swallowed. It really bothered her. It had been grim enough to find out that her little brother had been more of a liar and a cheat than she had imagined, but somehow this was worse. She had always known Olivier had bad habits, but where Ashton was concerned, Leoni would never have believed him capable of behaving in such a way. It was so unlike the Ashton she thought she knew.

Leoni glanced outside. The air was sultry, and dark clouds were gathering, threatening a storm. She prayed for it to break; it was suffocatingly humid and the atmosphere was crackling with tension, mirroring the mood of the family perfectly. Tearing her attention back to a photograph of Angelique reclining on a chaise-longue, Leoni frowned. It left her cold. Angelique’s pouty mouth, covered in gooey lip gloss, looked almost obscene and her body, as desirable as it was, seemed overly sexual. The image jarred. Leoni knew it did not convey what Xavier had in mind for his perfume at all.

Her phone buzzed into life and she listened to a voicemail from Ashton. He sounded achingly familiar, the Ashton she remembered as her best friend, not the one Marianne had described. Leoni felt stricken but she slowly deleted the message. She couldn’t stop thinking of Ashton as a cheap gigolo, sleeping with Marianne just to secure the purchase of a building. Why had he done it? Surely he hadn’t believed he needed to stoop to such levels? Leoni shook her head. It would be easier to think Ashton had slept with Marianne simply because he’d been attracted to her but if so, surely Marianne would have said as much.

Telling herself not to bother caring so much about Ashton, especially since he couldn’t see fit to talk to her in person about any of it, Leoni forced herself to look at the photographs of Angelique again. Trying to be objective – Angelique had never been her favourite person – she tried to get a handle on exactly why the photographs didn’t work. Thinking back to Xavier’s short brief of glamorous, young and sexy and the extended one that contained all the other words pertaining to his new scent, Leoni could fit them all to the images but they didn’t ring true someone. Part of the problem with Angelique’s photographs was the lack of intimacy and warmth. They did not fit the Ducasse-Fleurie brand. It was obvious Stefan thought the same because he’d attached a Post-it note with ‘Best of a bad bunch, re-do?’ scribbled across it. Leoni frowned. There were any number of models out there but did they have time to source another?

Leoni looked up as Delphine entered the room. Her snowy-white hair was caught up in its usual neat chignon and her cream suit was as spotless as ever but Leoni couldn’t help thinking her grandmother seemed somehow older – fragile even. It was an unsettling thought. Delphine was the figurehead of the family and someone they all relied upon for strength and resilience. However bossy and cutting she could be, Delphine was a force to be reckoned with. The idea that she might be less than robust was something Leoni didn’t care to linger on but she fervently hoped Delphine’s health wasn’t suffering with all the drama going on.

‘Have you seen Guy?’ Delphine asked, gripping her cane with more dependency than normal. She looked troubled and her shoulders were sloped as though she was carrying an enormous weight on them. ‘He’s usually surgically attached to his office but every time I try and speak to him, he’s nowhere to be found.’

Leoni shook her head. ‘Max was looking for him earlier too.’ An idea occurred to her as she glanced down at the photographs again. Was it a crazy thought? It would require an awful lot of work in a very short time. Delphine was waiting for an explanation.

‘Er, sorry. Max was charging around like a man possessed looking for Guy this morning, said he had something to talk to him about. I’m hoping he didn’t find him, actually, because he looked as though he was about to explode.’ Leoni frowned. Where did Uncle Guy keep disappearing to? He had been difficult to track down ever since the incident with Seraphina back in the spring. Leoni wondered if he was having a breakdown.

‘Teenagers.’ Delphine sniffed, reverting to her snippy self for a moment and not appearing to be overly concerned with Guy’s odd absence. She noticed the pile of glossy photographs and nodded at them.

‘What do you have there?’

Leoni gathered them up and held them to her chest. ‘Just something to do with the ad campaign. I’m thinking of something a bit different. These photos of Angelique don’t seem quite right.’ She lifted her eyes to meet her grandmother’s, almost daring her to disagree. ‘Do you have any objection if I play around with another idea?’

Delphine sighed. Ever since Angelique had set foot in La Fleurie – no, before that – Delphine had been feeling uncomfortable about her meddling. She regretted her decision to draw Angelique back into the fold, not least because Xavier seemed so incensed. He had disappeared to Morocco and no one had heard from him in days, even though he should have been back by now. Angelique was swanning around as if she owned the place, upsetting the housekeeper and several of the maids with her rude and unreasonable requests. How could she have been so wrong about the girl? Delphine fretted. Far from being a positive influence and the love of Xavier’s life, it was obvious Angelique was unhealthily ambitious. And the fact that Xavier felt antagonistic towards her spoke volumes because Delphine knew that despite his tempestuous temper, he was very sure of his feelings when it came to the people close to him.

‘Do whatever you think best, Leoni,’ Delphine uttered finally, sinking into a chair. So much had gone on over the past year or so since Olivier’s death and for the first time in her life, she felt terribly
old
.

‘Thank you,’ Leoni said, feeling a rush of gratitude. Not quite sure why, she dropped a kiss on Delphine’s powdery cheek as she headed to the door. Leoni would have been astonished – and greatly moved – had she seen the tear trickling down her grandmother’s cheek at the tender gesture.

Embarrassed, Delphine wiped the tear away quickly. Anxiously, she wondered where Guy was. Something bad was about to happen, she could sense it. Like a row of wobbling dominoes, Delphine felt as though her family were about to topple and fall.

Having been spoiling for a confrontation for the past few weeks now, Max finally tracked his father down near the stables, staring out across the valley that had claimed Elizabeth’s life. Max marched up to him, grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him round.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Guy demanded, his brown eyes darkening with rage.

Momentarily distracted, Max noticed threatening clouds circling overhead like ghouls sensing a twisted party they wanted to gatecrash. He refocused his gaze on his father. ‘I’m doing something I should have done ages ago,’ he roared, angered by his father’s reaction. It was his fault everything was so screwed up at the moment and Max was sick and tired of pussyfooting around and letting him get away with it.

His eyes roamed over his father. The impeccable white shirt he wore and the silver-grey hair that was combed carefully into place enraged Max even more. He wanted to see his father look ravaged with guilt, he wanted to see him ruffled and crumpled and losing control, for once. What the hell was wrong with him? Didn’t he have any sense of remorse whatsoever?

Bristling at the contemptuous scrutiny his son was subjecting him to, Guy glared at Max, his nostrils flaring. How dare he be so aggressive! Who did he think he was, charging up to him like that? Guy, already on the defensive, immediately went on the offensive, knowing he was in for a fight.

Neither of them noticed Cat emerging from one of the nearby stables wearing white shorts and a torn yellow vest top. She had been looking for an earring she had lost that night with Xavier. She stood rooted to the spot, not sure whether to duck back into the stable or discreetly slip off to the château. Pulling her T-shirt away from her sticky skin, Cat wished the muggy weather would make its mind up and either subject them to a thunderous downpour or allow the sun to work its way through. She couldn’t believe it was June already . . . the weeks at La Fleurie seemed to merge into one another, slipping past blissfully, yet uneventfully with nothing resolved from her perspective.

‘Do you even care about Seraphina?’ Max yelled, his fists clenched by his sides. He was dressed in a red polo shirt that matched the high spots in his cheeks and dirty beige jodhpurs with boots. ‘She fucking idolises you and you’ve done nothing but let her down!’

‘Seraphina?’ Guy made an impatient sound. ‘Of course I care about her! I want to throttle her for what she’s done and I can’t bear to look at her right now but do I care about her. What a stupid question.’

Max snorted. ‘It’s not stupid, and how dare you say you can’t bear to look at her? What right do you have – what has she done wrong here?’ He was becoming increasingly inarticulate as he struggled to get his point across. ‘Oh, don’t tell me, Dad; she’s a massive disappointment because she almost slept with some bloke old enough to be, well, you?’

Guy stared at Max. Feelings he’d done his best to suppress sprang to the surface and he couldn’t push them down again. He wanted to stop Max’s torrent of abuse but he felt powerless.

In the shadows by the stables, Cat shifted awkwardly, realising she had no choice but to stand still. She felt voyeuristic – she really didn’t want to witness the confrontation between Max and his father.

‘Do you know how . . . how
useless
you’ve been since Mum died?’ Max howled, feeling a pain in his chest. ‘Do you know how abandoned we’ve been feeling? Sending us away to college like that, was that the best you could do?’

Guy recoiled. Useless? Abandoned? Where was all this coming from?

‘Did you think you were the only one who missed Mum?’ Max’s voice broke. ‘Did you think we didn’t want to talk about her . . . to remember her? Why did you stop us from doing that? Why did you act as though we weren’t allowed to be as devastated as you were?’

‘I didn’t . . . I was . . .’ Guy’s voice was hoarse and his hands flapped helplessly.

‘Oh, save it,’ Max spat.

Cat’s heart lurched. She knew Guy had an awful lot to answer for but it was like watching a firing squad hit him repeatedly whilst he scrabbled around on the floor in agony. She willed Max to ease up but deep down she knew he had every right to vent his anger and let his true emotions out.

‘Why do you think I’ve been doing all the stupid stuff I’ve been doing? Have you even bothered to think why Seraphina might have lapped up attention from some old guy she didn’t even know very well?’

Guy looked horror-struck and bewildered. As if to punctuate the moment, thunder cracked overhead.

Max hadn’t finished. In fact, he was on a roll. ‘Did you ever stop to think how it would make us feel to send us off to some stupid college miles away? Did you ever think we both might need you, that Seraphina needed you?’ He lifted his chin, scorn burning in his eyes. ‘She wants your attention, your – I don’t know – maybe your approval.’ Max faltered. ‘And . . . and what about Xavier? You pushed him away too. You have no idea what he was going through after Angelique left.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Guy struggled to take everything in. It was as if his worst nightmare had come to life. All the feelings he’d pushed down again and again had reared up without warning and grabbed him by the throat. It was as though someone – his own son, in fact – was pumping him full of reality, tearing down the previously tough and efficient walls of self-delusion he had built up over time to avoid responsibility and blame.

Guy’s head was swirling but he latched on to Max’s comment about Xavier. What did he mean? What had happened with Angelique? Something had gone on, obviously ; one minute the pair of them had been inseparable, as though they would spend eternity together, and the next they were two separate beings once more, alone, wounded and apart.