Invitation to Provence (18 page)

T
HUNDER CRACKLED AS FRANNY
leaned on the bell again. No one came, so she banged on the door, thinking, What if no one is there? What would they do? Even the village looked deserted. It was all too spooky.

Behind her, the others huddled under the portico. Even the silence seemed dark, with only the beat of the rain and the cypresses creaking in the wind.

The door was thrown open so suddenly she took a quick step back, staring at the cadaverous-looking man, holding an enormous candelabra.

“Oh my god,” Clare whispered, “it’s the house of Frankenstein.”

“Ah, maintenant,”
Haigh deliberately spoke French to put them on their mettle.
“La Petite Bleu, Mademoiselle Franny, et Madame Clare, je présume? Mais vous êtes très en retard,”
he added disapprovingly. Then, peering behind them into the
night, he said in perfectly normal English, “What happened to the car?”

Nervously Franny explained that there was no car, that the rental had broken down and Monsieur Allier from the greengrocery had given them a lift in his pickup.

“I thought I smelled melons,” Haigh said, sniffing as he waved them inside. “Welcome to the Château des Roses Sauvages. I am the butler and my name is Haigh.” He closed the door behind them and the draft blew out all the candles. A slow wheezing creaked through the darkness, followed by a terrible grinding. Clare shrieked and clung to Franny just as a clock tolled the hours in a flat, dead tone.

“It’s only a clock,” Haigh told them, “an antique eighteenth-century clock to be exact.”

“I knew we should never have come,” Franny whispered, dripping rainwater, as the butler relit the candles and turned to look at them, tut-tutting when he saw the puddles on his newly polished parquet.

Holding his silver candelabra high, he said, “I’ll show you to your rooms,” and walked to the stairs. He stopped and looked back. Shao Lan had not moved. “Follow me, child,” he said sternly, but she stood her ground. She wasn’t going anywhere. Head lowered, shoulders hunched, she only glared at him, a deep blue Marten glare. “Fuck off,” she said clearly.

Clare stifled a giggle. “Baby’s first words,” she whispered.

The butler stared down his long, thin nose at Shao Lan, one hand on his hip, head tilted to one side. “Well now,
aren’t
we being the Little Madam,” he said, then he turned and swished his way up the stairs. “Follow me please, and bring that child with you,” he said, hiding a grin.

They followed him up the beautiful curved staircase, peeking at the large gilt-framed paintings and the marble statues in the dim niches, feeling the sumptuous softness of the carpet under their bare feet, still nervously aware that the big house was completely silent.

Haigh stepped in front of a pair of tall double doors. With a flourish he threw them open. “Shao Lan,” he said, stepping back to let them see the beautiful candlelit room with its red damask–draped four-poster and heavy red silk curtains, “your grandmother wanted you to have the Red Room because she knew red was the special Chinese color for happiness and good fortune.”

Shao Lan understood what he’d said but she didn’t understand why he spoke of her grandmother. She wondered, Was Bao Chu here? Would she see her soon? Hope flickered.

Franny took her hand and led her into the room. She showed her how comfy the bed was, then knelt so she could feel the fluffy white rug, but Shao Lan’s face showed no reaction. Then Haigh and his candelabra moved on to the room next door.

“This was Madame Rafaella’s own room,” he said proudly as they looked, awed, at the delicious green-and-white boudoir. “Madame wanted Miss Franny to have it. She said to tell you she hopes you will be as happy here as she once was.”

Walking into the room, Franny thought she caught a sweet hint of mimosa in the air. The striped silk taffeta curtains rustled in a sudden draft. A strange thrill rippled up her spine, a tiny, soft stroking. She could swear she
knew
this room.

They followed Haigh’s candelabra again and went next to
a fantastical white-on-white art deco bedroom that seemed to have been preserved intact from the twenties. “This is to be Miss Clare’s room,” Haigh said. “It was Madame’s mother’s room, and she was hoping Miss Clare would help dispel its ghosts.”

They stared at him at the word
ghosts
and he smirked knowingly. “Only in a manner of speaking, you understand. I knew Madame’s mother well, and I doubt she would want to haunt this place. She’s more likely to be found in the casino in the Hôtel de Paris in Monte Carlo.”

“Satin,” Clare said, walking to the bed and running her hand lovingly over the embroidered spread, “and all these mirrors. Just look at the silver and the chrome. Oh my god, it might have been made for me!”

“Dinner will be served at nine o’clock,” Haigh informed them from the doorway. “Madame Rafaella always dresses for dinner. Please be on time.” Then, his duty apparently done, he took his candelabra and left them to sort themselves out.

S
HAO LAN REFUSED
to go into the Red Room. She sat on the edge of Franny’s bed, her feet dangling. Clare had already gone to her own fantasy room to get ready for dinner. Outside, the wind still roared through the trees and thunder rumbled close by.

Franny talked encouragingly to the silent child as she helped her undress, then stuck her under the shower and made sure she washed. When she was done she wrapped her in a towel and the girl went and huddled on the bed again.

Franny sighed. She knew what to do with animals but not small children. She dressed quickly, left her hair loose, and gave an extra little spritz of the ginger-flower scent. She looked at herself in the mirror and thought with a sigh that perhaps she should have let Clare take her shopping after all.

Then she opened Shao Lan’s tiny suitcase and stared, shocked, at its contents—a few pairs of tired underwear, some socks, and a clean shirt. Sighing again, she helped Shao Lan get dressed, then wrapped her in her own blue crochet shawl, hoping it might add cheer to the kid’s awful outfit. It didn’t help much.

Clare bounced in, brimming with excitement, chic as always in the perfect little black lace cocktail dress. She stared at the child in her blouse and crumpled gray school skirt, then at Franny. She raised her brows despairingly. “It’s all we’ve got,” Franny explained, thanking god there was no time for Clare to argue. In fact, the antique clock tolled nine as they walked back down the curving staircase to the hall where Haigh was waiting for them. Franny held Little Blue’s hand, feeling suddenly nervous—after all, she was about to meet the only other member of her family, her real true family.

THOUGH SHE HEARD
the clock strike, Rafaella remained sitting in front of her dressing table mirror. It was a myth
about candlelight, she thought scornfully. It was just like any other light. Too much sent shadows under your eyes and mouth, too little gave you a featureless moon face. A woman needed to be lit with a soft pink or amber tint at exactly the right angle to look really good. Especially at her age.

But the women she was about to meet were young enough to look beautiful whatever the light. Haigh had told her they looked like a pair of drowned rats, but that they had “promise.” Coming from Haigh, she took that to mean they were good-looking girls.

She had laughed when he’d told her Shao Lan’s only words. “The poor child is obviously frightened,” she said, but Haigh said he’d known right away she was a Marten by her sparky temperament.

“I never heard those words cross your lips when you were young, Madame,” he said.

But looking at her reflection in the mirror, Rafaella thought, Ah, Haigh, if only you knew what I said to Lucas in bed on those long moonless nights, entwined in his arms in the sultry summer darkness.

She shook her head. This was no time to be thinking about the Lover. Her guests were waiting. Tucking a bright red hibiscus flower into her silver chignon, she secured it with a ruby clip, dabbed a little of the mimosa scent at her throat, and went to check her appearance in the tall mirror.

The red chiffon Dior swathed her shoulders and bosom, falling in a soft fluted column to her ankles. She ran her hands over it, liking the way it felt, pleased that it fit her as perfectly as the day she’d bought it. She had on a pair of Roger Vivier pointy-toed silk shoes from the 1960s. Despite
the pain, she was determined to wear them tonight because they made her feel young again.

“Vanity is shameful in an old woman,” she said to her mirror, “but it’s a vice I can never give up.” She wrapped a long strings of rubies around her neck, arranged the sweeping magenta satin shawl over her shoulders, picked up her cane, and walked slowly to the door.

The great moment had arrived. She would finally meet her new family. She hoped they would like her.

W
EARING
GRANDPÈRE’S
BLUE VELVET
smoking,
Haigh looked like a character in an Austin Powers movie as he watched the guests descend the staircase.

“Bonsoir, mesdames, mesdemoiselles,”
he said, reverting to the pretense that he spoke only a little English, in the hope they might say something indiscreet so he could find out what they were really thinking. Then he escorted them into the main salon.

Fires blazed high in the two enormous limestone fireplaces at each end of the long, beautiful room, with its celadon-green paneling and amber taffeta curtains. Dozens of candles, reflected in the huge Venetian mirrors, sparkled like tiny rainbows of light from the crystal chandeliers. The
French doors leading onto the terrace were firmly closed against the storm, but the wind still rattled at them fiercely, sending little drafts that made the heavy curtains tremble.

Secure in the candlelit warmth, with the storm and the wind safely shut out, Franny felt suddenly content. This was the first place she had ever been that really felt like “home.”

“May I offer you some champagne?” Haigh said, presenting the bottle, wrapped in a white linen napkin, making sure they clearly saw the name Krug and the year, wanting to impress them. Of course Franny didn’t know a good year from a bad, never having had much opportunity to drink champagne, but Clare knew all right and she smiled her appreciation at Haigh.

They stood silently together by the blazing fire, sipping the champagne. Franny thought it was the most delicious thing she had ever tasted. How small and insignificant her own little house and its precious flea-market finds seemed compared with this grandeur. Yet her grandfather had been born here, and had things been different, this would have been her father’s home, perhaps even her own. Curious, she examined the silver-framed photos of laughing groups from long ago standing on the front steps of the château, and she wondered which one of them was her great-grandfather.

Everything in this house must have a memory, she thought, touching the exquisite little rosewood table inlaid with garlands of a pale wood—every chair, every table, even the faded green brocade sofas. If only walls could speak, these surely would have quite a story to tell, of family gatherings, birthdays, christenings, weddings, fights, and love affairs. She wondered what could have happened to divide such a family.

Haigh had left them alone, the wind had dropped, and in the silence they heard the clatter of hooves. Suddenly the French doors burst open and the wind shrieked in again, sending the curtains billowing and snuffing out all the candles. In the swirling gray mist a black horse with a caped and hooded rider galloped past.

“I’ll bet it’s a ghost,” Clare said, hurrying to shut the doors. “This place is like Sleepy Hollow.”

A moment later the doors from the hall were flung open and their “ghost” stood there, dripping water from his long Drizabone-oil-proofed cape, the kind Australian ranchers wore to keep out the rain. He swept off his broad-brimmed hat, sending a small torrent onto the Aubusson rug, and gave them a beaming smile.

“Hi,” he said in a very unghostly Aussie accent. “I’m Scott Harris, Rafaella’s winemaker. I hope you’re all okay. This is quite a storm.”

Franny and Clare took a second look. He was tall and lean, with a tanned face and sandy hair that stood up in damp spikes where he’d pulled off his hat. Clare grinned and nudged Franny. “Hey girl,” she whispered, “salt-of-the-earth type, remember?”

“Sorry ladies,” Scott said with that sunny smile, “but the power won’t be reconnected till morning. It’s candlelight for all of us tonight.”

Since Franny seemed to have been struck dumb, Clare introduced herself. “I’m Clare Marks,” she said, shaking his damp hand, “and this is Franny Marten, and the little one is Shao Lan Ching Marten.”

“The family reunited,” Scott said, as Haigh appeared to take his wet coat. “I’m very glad to meet you all,” Scott
added, going over and shaking Franny’s hand. Shao Lan hid her face in the toy lamb. He knelt next to her and took her hands gently in his. “Hey, pretty girl, don’t be afraid. It’s just a storm,” he said. Over his head, Franny’s eyes met Clare’s, and they smiled.

Unnoticed, Rafaella stood in the doorway, watching them. The dogs crouched next to her, stunned into silence by the unusual sight of people in the salon. The child was the first one to notice her. She stared at her with those deep-blue Marten eyes, sending a thrill through Rafaella. Her granddaughter was so small and skinny and frightened, and she loved her already. She smiled back at her, but again Shao Lan hid behind the woolly lamb.

Rafaella looked at the tall woman with the long blond hair and knew she must be Franny. But what a beauty she was with that sweep of pale gold hair and her lovely peachy skin. There was an otherworldly quality about her too, a vulnerability and an unexpected gentleness. She was tall and lean, like the Martens, but her lack of style was definitely not inherited.

And the dark woman was her friend Clare. An interesting face, Rafaella thought, studying her, a sleek, self-assured, modern beauty, or at least that’s the impression she gave. But beneath that smooth veneer Rafaella caught a hint of something else. Sadness, perhaps? They were young though and lovely, and with all of life in front of them, and she sighed, remembering how quickly those years went by.