Invitation to Provence (15 page)

Of course both animals knew where they were going, back to the stables near town. And of course they didn’t want to go there and they didn’t want to leave Jake, but they had learned to take the good with the bad.

Criminal’s mission finally accomplished, Jake slid off the fence, checked the horse, locked its box and got in the driver’s seat. The dog leaned his head out of the window, ears flapping in the breeze, scanning the woods for wildlife as they descended the winding route to town.

“This is going to be some party, Criminal,” Jake spoke out loud, sharing his thoughts the way he always did with his dog. It was one of the perils of living alone, you talked to your animals, but the bonus was they didn’t give you any lip.

“Yes, sir,” he said, glancing out of the corner of his eye at the dog, who eyed him back. “Quite a scene, huh? Rafaella will be back on form again, beautiful and charming and winning all hearts, including mine all over again. Franny Marten will be the odd girl out, my flower child lost amid the splendors of her ancestral home.” He sighed. “Trouble is, boy, I really care about her. Silly, I know, after only one night and all those years alone, but hey, that’s where I’m at. And will she ever speak to me again? I’ll have a hard time explaining myself, but y’know I couldn’t tell her I was just checking her out before letting her loose on Rafaella.

“Then there’s her friend, Clare Marks—well, now, she’s the mystery player in the pack. And Juliette—well, Juliette will be Juliette, loud, raucous, generous, and funny.

“Then of course there’s Haigh, who’ll put us all in our place with a few short, sharp words. Plus the handsome Aussie winemaker—I wonder if Rafaella’s hoping to set her grandniece up with him, keep the winery business in the family. If so, I’ll have to put a stop to that!

“And then of course there’s little Shao Lan, the unknown granddaughter who will make Rafaella a happy woman again. And of course, hanging over us all,” he added thoughtfully, “will be the shadow of my dear father, ‘the Lover.’ ”

Sensing Jake was finished, the dog turned and hung his head out the window again, watching the woods for jackrab-bits, though if he saw one, all he would do was bark. Criminal was a well-behaved dog, which was quite different from being a well-trained dog in that Criminal did exactly as he liked, which was almost always exactly what pleased Jake. The arrangement worked out very well for both of them.

Jake wondered if Rafaella would put him in his old room, the one on the third floor that used to be her father’s, well away from the one used by her icy mother, whom nobody had liked. And well away, too, from the room overlooking the lake that Rafaella had later shared with his father, a room made dark in spring by a giant magnolia tree that flung its flashy, waxen blooms to the moon and that, according to Rafaella, smelled like the Garden of Eden. But of course that was because she was in love then.

Jake thought his old room was the most beautiful room in the entire château. It had a giant sleigh bed covered in dark gold velvet, narrow Tiffany lamps shaded in amber, and odd pieces of Biedermeier and Louis XVI furniture, all found by Rafaella’s father, who was a keen
antiquaire.
The two windows overlooked the terrace where the Chinese wisteria drooped, heavy with purple blossoms that changed color with the evening light to a showy pink. Jake could recall clearly the sounds and smells of the nights when he was sixteen and would lay awake wondering what life was about.

Nights at the château were almost tangible, heavy with the scents of nicotina and maquis. Hit by the sprinklers, the grass flung its scent in the air, the reeds rustled in the lake, the fountains smelled green and mossy, the crickets hummed, and often nightingales sang.

Happiness struck Jake like a jolt in his stomach. He was beginning to get used to this new feeling. “Damn it, Criminal, I’m going home,” he said, smiling. “And I’m going to see Franny again.” Remembering that hard kernel he’d discerned at the heart of his peach, he added, “Better keep your paws crossed for me, boy. I’m going to need all the luck I can get.”

Remembering Juliette’s three Pomeranians that were to accompany them on the jet, he looked at Criminal. “Why don’t I take you with me, boy?” he said. “You can make friends with Louis and Mimi. Besides,” he added, patting the dog’s big head, “I know Franny will love you.” And the dog looked back at him with those sharp, intelligent brown eyes and gave him a woof.

“I knew you’d say yes.” Jake said.

A
LAIN WAS THE ONLY
one who would not be coming home for the reunion, and Rafaella stood outside his old room. Mimi and Louis sat next to her, waiting. Downstairs, the ancient longcase clock in the hall ground its gears creakily before striking six times. Evening sunlight beamed through the tall southwest-facing windows, showing up the cracks on the black double doors, which had been painted with skull and crossbones by Alain himself in an act of rebellion at the age of fifteen.

The fact that the doors dated from the eighteenth century had not deterred him. He’d said he was sick and tired of “old.” Alain had always wanted the here and now, he’d wanted fast cars and slick women and city life. He didn’t want to be stuck in the country at the château. He needed to be in Paris or on the beach at the Côte d’Azur, sniffing out bikini-clad girls who might think he was at least eighteen and rich and smart as well as handsome.

Rafaella had always thought of Alain as her “wounded bird.” He was quieter than Felix, always thinking, always plotting revenge against his brother, demanding Rafaella’s attention and crying at the drop of a hat.

Alain had cried when he brought her the baby birds he
said he’d found dashed from their nests. When he discovered Rafaella’s favorite pug drowned in the lake, he’d carried the poor little body all the way home himself. He’d been soaking wet and shivering from diving in, trying to rescue it, he’d said, because he knew how much his mother loved her pet.

Felix was always locked away in his room, but Alain was always hanging around. Sometimes he’d be sunk into the corner of the big gold brocade sofa in Rafaella’s room, hiding beneath the cushions. Spying on her, Haigh said.

“But I didn’t mean to hide,
maman,”
Alain explained when she questioned him. “I just wanted to be near you.” Later he’d made up a poem for her, apologizing for being bad. Now Felix would never have written her a poem, but then Felix would never have hidden in her room, either. Yet Alain endeared himself to her as Felix never had, and much later, when they both abandoned her and each other, it was the loss of Alain that hurt her the most.

Trouble was, Rafaella thought, running a finger over the chipped skull and crossbones, Alain got away with everything because he had the kind of charm that could get him into trouble anywhere in the world—and also get him out of it unscathed.

Alain was the handsome son, tall and too skinny in his early days but whip-thin and muscular as he grew, with sun-streaked blond hair falling shaggily over his blue eyes and sun-brown skin stretched tautly over his high cheekbones. With his full mouth and sexy stare, he set her friends gossiping. Watch out, they said, he’s trouble, and they’d kept their daughters carefully away because they knew Alain was exactly the kind of “bad boy” a girl would fall head over heels
for. And they also knew that with Alain it was no holds barred. God help Rafaella, they said to one another, he’ll be the death of her one day.

Rafaella still hesitated, her hand on the brass doorknob. She knew that, unlike Felix’s room, Alain’s was not exactly the way he’d left it. After he’d gone, Haigh had made order out of the chaos. He’d cleaned it, put everything in its place, which was certainly never the way it was when Alain was in residence. She would find no trace of her younger son’s personality here, except perhaps a leftover hum of energy in the air.

Alain had lived in an aura of light and movement. A hedonist, he drew people to him, then crushed them, turning away when he was finished with them. Which is what people said must have happened with the young woman from Marseille, except it still seemed more likely that Felix was the culprit, because Alain had witnesses who said he was in Antibes. Anyhow, Rafaella still believed it was an accident because whatever Felix might have been, he was no murderer.

Jake had still not been able to find Alain, however. He was gone from her life as surely as Felix was. Resolutely, Rafaella turned away from Alain’s door. She would never see her younger son again, but she still wondered if he was really the father of her new granddaughter.

L
ATER, LYING WIDE-AWAKE
in her big four-poster with the curtains pulled back to let in the cool air and the soft flutters and scurryings of a country night, Rafaella was still thinking about her younger son, pinpointing the time when her life changed. Jake was gone, she had lost her lover, then Felix, and then she also lost her best friend when Juliette and Rufus moved suddenly to Australia, where Rufus had been posted as an aide to the governor-general. Rafaella missed Juliette terribly. She missed the yapping little Pomeranians, missed the joyous boom of her laughter, missed her loud, confidential whispers and the exchanged secrets between women, but Australia was far away from Provence and life had to go on. The château was no longer crowded with happy faces, and laughter no longer rang in the hallways. She spent her days alone with her dogs. In the hope that Felix might come home, she even purchased the little vineyard in Saint-Emil-ion for him.

It would be her gift to him, something of his own and nothing at all to do with his brother. Then, to her surprise, Alain had suddenly returned to live at the château, between jaunts to Paris, that is, and for the first time he’d shown an interest in the winery. He’d also talked constantly of Felix, undermining him subtly to her. He hinted at how sullen Felix
had always been, how unrewarding as a person, how self-contained and dangerous.

“Dangerous?” Rafaella had repeated, alarmed.

And Alain had turned and looked at her, his blond hair flopping boyishly over those Marten-blue eyes. “Well, he turned out to be a murderer, didn’t he?” he said, and Rafaella thought it was odd that he was laughing as he said it, as though it were all one great, marvelous joke.

She remembered grabbing him by his shirt, her eyes blazing with anger. “Don’t you dare say that,” she’d cried. “Felix did
not
kill that girl. He told me so, and Felix does not lie.”

Alain simply raised one elegant dark brow. “He
told
you that,
maman?
I
don’t
think so. From what you said, he told you to ‘believe whatever you want,’ ” and he’d laughed at her again, because it was true, and he had her and he knew it.

Then, looking suddenly repentant, he’d put his arms around her and hugged her. “There’s nothing you can do about him,
maman.
You must just face the facts.”

In the end, though, it wasn’t just the facts about Felix she had to face, it was the facts about Alain.

A few months later, when Alphonse Giradon, the winery manager, along with her accountant and her head enologist, asked for a meeting at the château, Rafaella was surprised. Alain had taken over two years ago and she had left the running of the winery to him.

She had known Alphonse for forty years, but now he stood stiffly in front of the long table in the grand dining room, refusing to sit down. Then Haigh arrived with cold
drinks and sugar biscuits and the espresso she thought by now must surely flow in their veins.

“Madame,” Alphonse had said hesitantly, “we have sad news to relate. It is not easy to tell you this story, Madame, especially after …”

He had not said the name, but Rafaella knew he meant “after Felix” and also “after the Lover,” because there was nothing the villagers and her workers did not know about her life. It was part of the price she had to pay for being their
patronne
and a price which, until now, she had not regretted.

“Yes?” she said. “Please go on, Alphonse.”

The other two men stood silently by his side, lending moral support, while her old friend Alphonse told her that Alain had been systematically siphoning off money from the winery accounts. Alain claimed to have ordered thousands of expensive new growth-stock, but instead he’d pocketed the money. He’d found a dozen different ways of filling his pockets. And he’d left the Marten winery devastated.

Alphonse had hung his shaggy gray head. “Iam distressed to be the bearer of this bad news,” he’d said finally. “Your son has been very clever. We never knew until the audit that he robbed the winery. Every penny we made over the past years has gone into his pockets. Everything you and your family and the village have worked for centuries to build is in jeopardy. Madame Rafaella, we are looking at the end of the Marten winery.” He’d lifted his head to look at her, and Rafaella saw the tears in his eyes. “What can I say, Madame, to comfort you, to comfort all
your workers who now face unemployment. All is in disarray, Madame, and I only wish I had known and come to you earlier.”

It was a blow to her heart, but Rafaella knew she had to take charge—it was her duty, her responsibility to her family name and to her workers. She took a deep breath, gathered her strength.

“My friends, please sit down,” she’d said gently. “I understand how difficult this was for you, and I appreciate your honor in coming to me.” She turned to Haigh, standing arms folded by the door, his eyes black with anger. “Bring a bottle of champagne for us, Haigh,” she said, managing a smile. “We are about to drink to the rebirth of the Marten winery. No one here will be unemployed, and no one will go without because of my son. I will make sure of that. And I will make sure that the winery gets back on its feet, even if it means selling off all my assets and working twenty hours a day.”

And that is exactly what she did. It cost her another son as well as most of her money, but she’d honored the Marten family’s commitments to her employees and to the business.

Of course Alain had denied it. He’d yelled and screamed at her, his eyes full of fury. He’d blamed Felix, he’d blamed Alphonse, he’d blamed the accountants, he’d even blamed her for not taking care of the winery herself, the way she always had.