The Rich Shall Inherit (64 page)

The blond beams tapered to an apex over the place where their bed would go, facing twin windows with a view over the tree-lined meadow to the sparkling Montespan brook that gushed and gurgled and rippled its way over a bed of polished stones, until it met up with the River Cher twenty kilometers away. Franco had roared with laughter—a sound none of his Family had ever heard—at Poppy’s delight in the small, simple details. “You live in a palace, surrounded by beautiful things,” he chided her.
“How can you be so pleased over an old stone sink and a storage cupboard?”

“Numéro Seize is business,” she’d replied scornfully, “it’s not my home.”

She’d filled the house gradually with simple things, but they were nonetheless beautiful. She had shed her trademark gray image and bought bright rugs from India and Turkey, crisp cotton curtains from Provence, and great baskets of scented dried flowers from the local marketplace. The sturdy farmhouse tables and chairs had seated generations of countryfolk, and their bed was fashioned from local elm—wide, simple, and comfortable—a place to dream in each other’s arms, away from the truths of Paris and Naples.

Poppy’s favorite piece was a sixteenth-century wedding armoire, a vast wardrobe of pale polished elm, hewn from the wood of a single tree, and lovingly carved with bouquets of blossoms two hundred years ago by a craftsman for his bride. And every time she came back to Montespan, Poppy would hang away her Paris clothes in its cavernous interior, change into a simple blouse and skirt, and think longingly of the day she, too, would be a bride.

She had never approached the house without a heady feeling of happiness, almost light-headedness, as though the guilty burden of her Paris life had magically lifted from her shoulders, and she was just a normal young woman coming home to be with her lover. But this time, as the dark green de Courmont swept into the graveled courtyard, Poppy was looking for comfort.

Old Madame Joliot, the housekeeper, lived in the cottage at the end of the lane. She looked after the house and the chickens and ducks, while her husband tended the garden, sawed the logs, and looked after the small herd of sweet-faced black-and-white Friesians. She had built up the fires against the chilly evening and their warmth slowly began to melt the ice in Poppy’s veins.

She took off her smart Paris dress and, wrapping herself in a soft blue cashmere robe, she lay on the bed, staring at the flickering firelight, waiting for Franco. It was as though all life had stopped until he got there. She didn’t allow herself to think of Greg or what had happened; she just forced her mind into a blank, seeing only the fire and Luchay on his old wooden stand, watching her with alert topaz eyes. Her life was suspended until
Franco arrived, only then could she begin to feel again—all of it, the pain, the love, all the anger. And the regret. And then Franco would kiss her and everything would be all right again.

The ticking of the clock on the mantel and the occasional shifting of a log in the grate lulled her into an uneasy doze. Dawn broke and still Franco hadn’t come. Poppy ran barefoot downstairs, flinging open the front door as if expecting him to be there. Placing her hand over her eyes, she scanned the lane, hoping to see his car, but the lane was silent and empty.

Back in the house, she stared at the telephone, willing it to ring, praying it would be Franco to say he was in Paris, he was on his way to her now … but it, too, was silent.

Luchay fluttered to her side as she huddled back in their bed. “Tell me he’s coming, Luchay,” she whispered, “tell me it will be all right.

Madame Joliot fussed up and down the stairs all day with cups of coffee and bowls of steaming broth, but Poppy simply turned away her face and buried deeper into the blankets. As suppertime came and went and still she hadn’t eaten or spoken, Madame Joliot hurried home to her cottage where her husband was waiting. “Madame is either ill or she’s going crazy,” she told him. “I don’t like to leave her in this state, there’s no knowing what she might do.”

“And where is her husband?” he demanded, dunking a chunk of coarse crusty bread into his soup. “He’s the one who should be here with her, not you.”

“Husband!” sniffed Madame. “She wears no wedding band. Still, for all that, she’s a fine lady. I’m afraid to leave her alone; I’ll go back there after supper and stay with her. I’ll sleep in the kitchen.”

The house was dark and quiet and Madame Joliot went around lighting lamps and building up the fires. She filled the big iron kettle and put it on the stove to boil and soon its soft whistling blended with the crackle of logs and the fragrance of freshly ground coffee. She heated milk in a copper pan taken from a cow she had milked that morning; then she poured it over a bowl of soft white bread and added a sprinkling of sugar.

“Taste this, madame, please,” she begged to the silent heap of bedclothes. “It will do you good. Nothing is to be gained by starving.”

Poppy peered at her gratefully.
“You
are so kind, Madame Joliot,” she whispered, “but you shouldn’t be here. You must go home to your husband.”

“Nonsense,” she scoffed cheerily, “I can see you need looking after, that’s why I’m here.”

“Madame Joliot,” Poppy said wearily, “I want to cry—and I can’t. Isn’t that a terrible thing, madame? All my tears must have been shed in the past and God is permitting me no more.”

“Grief takes you like that sometimes,” Madame Joliot said kindly. “It’s not Monsieur Franco?” she added worriedly.

Poppy was staring at her but Madame Joliot knew she wasn’t really seeing her. “Maybe,” she whispered at last. “Maybe it is.”

So, it was man trouble, Madame Joliot thought as she tidied the kitchen and settled herself into the rocker by the fire with a cup of coffee. Well, in her experience a woman always managed to cope with that problem somehow.

As the long dark miles sped past under the wheels of Simone Lalage’s maroon de Courmont, Franco listened to the rain drumming on the roof. The chauffeur was a good driver, steady and not inclined to take chances, but on such a stormy night Franco would have preferred to be at the wheel himself. The journey had been a long one; first the train to Rome, then to Genoa and Nice and from there to Paris. He had telephoned Simone from Nice and she’d sent her car to meet the Paris train as it crawled into the station, three hours late due to the violent electrical storms across the Midi.

Franco felt tired and dirty and unshaven, and he was desperately worried about Poppy. No one had heard from her since she’d called him. Simone had told him what had happened at Numéro Seize, but she’d added, surprised, “I knew Poppy was upset and didn’t want to see Greg Konstant, but I hadn’t realized
how
upset.” Her car had been waiting in Paris to speed him to Montespan, and in the boot was a hamper of champagne and delicacies fit to tempt an invalid—or a pair of lovers. Simone always thought of everything.

As they sped onward through the night, Franco’s thoughts drifted between Poppy and the tense situation he had left behind him in Naples. There was no hurry over the Palozzi Family situation, he reassured himself; his men were discussing ways to deal with it; when he returned they would offer him their suggestions and then he would make the final decision. War or no war? Death for Mario Palozzi or life? Poppy’s vivid, sweet face replaced Mario’s in his mind; her bright blue eyes sparkling, her cool creamy skin that never changed color in the sun, even
though she wandered bare-legged and hatless at the farm. He remembered her hair tugged by the wind, a dazzling flame color in the sunlight, and tawny when it was spread across her moonlit pillow. Oh, Poppy, Poppy, he groaned silently. I can’t bear it if you tell me you’re still in love with him … I love you so much. I can’t live without you.

The de Courmont limousine crunched quietly over the graveled courtyard and he peered through the blinding rain at the darkened house. Unlike the Naples villa, the doors were never locked at Montespan and he simply lifted the latch and walked in. Madame Joliot was dozing by the fire, a large ginger cat on her knee. The black-and-white border collie who had come with the house when they bought it knew his footsteps and watched him silently from his position on the old rug near the stove, his tail wagging.

The uncarpeted elm stairs creaked as he hurried up them and opened the door to their room. Poppy was sitting up in bed looking at him and the red glow of the embers in the grate painted her flesh a warm pink. Her eyes looked dark in the strange half-light as Franco said, tight-lipped, “I’m here to know my fate. Poppy. Are you going to tell me that you are still in love with Greg Konstant? That you want to go back to him?” He gripped her by the shoulders.
“Tell me now,”
he said, his tone brutal with despair.
“Tell me now so I’ll know the truth at last.”

“No! No!” she cried. “Don’t you understand? The girl who was Poppy Mallory loves Greg. It’s me, Madame Poppy, who loves you, Franco. Oh, I love you, I love you … Thank God you have come. I don’t know what I would have done if you didn’t … I need you, Franco. Tell me you love me, tell me I’m real … tell me I exist. I don’t want to remember the past, I only want to be here, now, with you …” Tears welled from her eyes and she sobbed hysterically as he wrapped her in his arms, murmuring that he loved her, that they would always be together, that he needed her, he couldn’t live without her….

Luchay watched unblinkingly from his old oaken stand as Franco smoothed her pillows. He brought her a fresh nightgown and dressed her as tenderly as a child, and then he wrapped her in the blankets and went to build up the fire. He undressed and stood for a moment, naked, in front of the flames. His body was as hard and muscular and disciplined as his life-style. He was filled with desire for her, he needed to claim her again as his own, but he knew he must wait. Poppy must sleep away her fears
and exhaustion and tomorrow they would begin a new life, without the shadow of Greg Konstant.

As the gray, stormy dawn broke, Poppy turned in his arms, feeling his desire. Her lips met his in a kiss that was more than just a symbol of her need; she loved him and he loved her and their lovemaking had a new intensity, as though they both realized they were finally committing themselves to each other totally.

The sudden spring storms vanished as quickly as they had come, leaving the sky a pure clean washed blue, spotted with cotton wool clouds. The next two weeks were the happiest Poppy ever remembered. For the first time she didn’t compare
where
she was with the Rancho Santa Vittoria, and she didn’t compare
who
she was with the girl she used to be; and she put Greg Konstant completely out of her mind.

The worried frown had gone from Franco’s face and he was like a boy again, laughing as he chased her across the meadow to the brook, stripping off his clothes and plunging into the icy pool created by the piled-up boulders. Together they herded the cows from their pasture at night, trying to milk them and getting covered in creamy froth as the animals kicked over the bucket, impatient with their amateur fumblings. They searched the hedgerows for the hens’ favorite nesting places, collecting the eggs, and they drank Simone’s gift of champagne sitting beneath a willow, holding an improvised fishing line in a vain attempt to catch trout for their supper. They refused to answer the telephone and they never looked at a newspaper. They dismissed the rest of the world from their lives while they played at being simple country folk whose only problem was to while away their days, filling themselves on good fresh food and passionate lovemaking.

Franco was sitting comfortably across the table from her after a supper of a vast fluffy omelet and a glistening fresh salad washed down with a little cool, brittle white wine. For the first time in his life he felt he was living the life of a normal man, with an everyday man’s pleasures and longings—he could imagine himself married to Poppy and running this small farm. He could see himself returning to her each evening after the day’s labors in the fields, and finding her waiting—maybe with a child in her arms. His son. Someone to inherit Montespan and the freedom and happiness it stood for. He could imagine no greater joy.

“Why does anyone need more than this?” he demanded. “I never want to leave here.”

Poppy laughed, clutching his hands across the blue-checked cloth. “You wouldn’t last five minutes here without a woman to look after you,” she teased.

“There have been women in my life,” he told her seriously, “but none I would have lasted a day with, alone. Besides,
you
are my woman. There’s no one else. And never will be.”

“Yes,” she said smiling at him. “I know.”

Madame Joliot and her husband always went to the Thursday market in the local town, arriving back after a hearty lunch at the cafe, laden with fresh produce—a special pate cooked by the butcher, a prime piece of veal, a fine trout from the big river, and stiff, spiky artichokes wrapped in newspaper.

Sniffing the delicious aroma of the stock Madame Joliot was brewing from the bones she’d bought at the butcher’s, Poppy and Franco ran to the kitchen to see what good things she’d brought home this time.

“Mmm,” he complained, touching the silvery scales of the fish, “why couldn’t I catch one like this?”

“You didn’t use the right bait, M’sieur Franco,” Madame said, hobbling backward and forward between the pantry and the stove, “and besides the brook is too shallow, the fish see your shadow. The only way to catch a trout there is to ‘tickle’ it.”

“Madame Joliot, you’re a mine of information,” he said, poking at the newspaper parcel. “What’s this? Artichokes! My favorite—” he stopped in midsentence, staring at the black headline running across the top of the page.

UNDERWORLD KILLINGS ROCK SOUTHERN ITALY
, it said.
MASSACRES IN CALABRIA AND NAPLES.

“I’ll cook them for you now, M’sieur Franco,” Madame Joliot said, “you’ll have them cold for supper tonight, stuffed with fresh crabmeat.”

“Wait!” Franco’s voice was suddenly so icy and strange that she jumped in alarm.

“What is it?” Poppy asked, her smile disappearing as she saw his tense face.