And then they were there. Two uniformed servants hurried across the gravel-covered cour d’honneur to welcome Alain, open the passenger side of the Porsche for Janie, and gather up the luggage from the trunk.
Janie couldn’t quite follow the rapid-fire French that Alain exchanged with the young, slightly plump uniformed man who seemed to be in charge, though she formed the general impression that Alain was demanding and more than a little domineering with his staff.
“Oui, Monsieur Chanson. Absolutement, Monsieur Chanson.” The plump man nodded and nearly bowed as they came into the grand front hallway. It had terra-cotta tiles, white-plastered walls, and a vaulted ceiling two stories high. A wide staircase, deeply polished steps agleam, curved gracefully upward to the étage noble. A faded Flemish tapestry—depicting a rowdy scene of rustic wine-making—hung above the landing. To her left Janie caught a glimpse of a large room crowded with bookshelves and warmly colored Turkish carpets. The smell of fresh lavender and wood smoke filled the downstairs. Janie, who had prepared herself for something altogether more formal and forbidding, sighed with pleasure. Alain turned to her at once.
“I’m sorry, you must be exhausted,” he said politely. “It’s totally up to you, but I’ve asked that we be served a light dinner. If you’d rather go straight up to bed, though, just tell me.”
But Janie had of course replied that dinner sounded delightful, and it was, though the food itself had little to do with her pleasure. They ate together on the closed-in back porch that ran nearly the length of the house. The walls were the color of goldenrod, the windows and doors painted Dutch blue. Lanterns, lit with kerosene, flickered from the latticework on the wall, casting shadows that danced across the platters of grilled oysters, Provençal chicken, and fresh garden salad that the cook had arranged on the brightly flowered tablecloth.
“You are certain you’re not too cold?” Alain asked her as they sat down at the table. “We could close the doors if you like.”
“No, this is wonderful,” Janie told him, breathing in the mingled aromas of peat moss and damp flowers from the unseen garden beyond. The long row of double French doors was angled open to the night. The flickering lanterns were mirrored back at the room in the hundreds of panes of glass.
“Are you always so accommodating, Jane?” Alain asked, pouring her a glass of Chanson’s premiere label, Clos de Prime. He swished wine around in the glass, held it up to the light, and then placed it proudly beside her plate. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in a bad mood. Are you never—what is the American phrase—bitchy?”
She gazed quietly across at him, her look of longing masked by the half-light. His features were softened by the flickering lanterns, his voice gentler, less strident than it had been in Paris. She had been afraid that in his own home, surrounded by the familiar objects of his life, he would look at her—and suddenly see her for what she was. For no matter how many times she stared at herself in the mirror these days—as she had done alone in her room before dinner for several long minutes—she could not wholly believe that the pale-skinned, red-haired beauty who stared back at her really was her. In her heart she was still the chubby wallflower nobody wanted to take to the dance. Of course, he could remember what she had so recently looked like. Suddenly, despite the fact that she knew it might shatter forever the sweet tension that was mounting between them, she knew she had to make him understand the dizzying side effects of her transformation.
“When you grow up as an ugly duckling,” Janie replied softly, “you learn that you simply have to be nice and cheerful—or you’ll have no hope of ever finding friends.”
“You speak such nonsense in such a serious tone.” Alain laughed, pouring himself another glass of wine. “All little girls think they’re hideous, didn’t you know? I have no idea why. I’m sure you were a vision, my dear, just look at you! How many hearts have you broken? No,” Alain said, cutting her off when she tried to protest, “don’t tell me. I can’t bear to know.”
“Alain,” Janie continued with determination, “you know perfectly well that I haven’t always looked like this. It was just a few months ago, in fact, that I…”
“Please,” Alain said. “You know, you have only one fault, Jane, though I’m not sure how bad a trait it really is. You are far, far too modest. What’s the point of selling yourself so short? It’s ridiculous, really, listening to how you go on. Please let’s put your little uncertainties away, all right? Let’s forget the past—forever. As far as I am concerned, you are perfect, and you were born perfect. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes,” Janie replied, smiling.
“Good.” He looked at her over his wineglass. “That’s my girl.”
But would I be, Janie couldn’t help but wonder, if you knew the real me? Would you smile and talk and hold my hand with such tenderness if you could see—as I still do—the Janie Penrod who never once received a valentine? Janie couldn’t help but feel a guilty twinge that Alain didn’t know who she really was. And that he would never look at her the way he was now—with a mixture of amusement and longing—if he did.
Chapter 29
Alain woke up happy. It took him several seconds to remember why. He had suspected the moment he had seen Jane coming toward him at the airport that it was happening again. Except this time it was so very different. Lisbeth had been a fraud, a conniving little poseur who had wanted only one thing from him. Jane was real, almost heartbreakingly sincere, and she seemed as baffled by the madness that was descending upon them as he was.
For that’s what falling in love was, Alain knew, simply a benign and delightful form of madness. Each day they had been together he felt himself tumbling further into this wild, inverted world where nothing—work, family, food—seemed the least bit important next to Jane. Or perhaps more precisely, nothing would be worth living for without her. He sighed, closed his eyes again, and thought of how she looked the night before as he said good night to her outside her guest room.
“Dormez bien,” she had told him, slipping into her correct schoolgirl French. Her vocabulary was adequate. Her syntax passable. Her pronunciation atrocious. It would be one of the first things he would have to teach her, he decided. That, and perhaps how to dress with a bit more style. But most importantly how to project confidence and a dash of hauteur. Well, his maman could help with that, of course, teaching by example. Oh, he was running way ahead of himself, he knew. Stick to the here and now, he told himself, take each step one at a time. Again he closed his eyes, lay back on the damask-covered pillows, and tried to decide just what it was that made her so hauntingly beautiful.
The skin, of course, was one of the first things one noticed. Peaches and cream, the English called it. She also had the refined, carefully stoked, inner glow of a Gainsborough beauty. But then there were her eyes—the feathery, quizzical brow that steered you harmlessly toward the gray-green beckoning shoals of her gaze. What he loved about her eyes, he decided suddenly, was that he never quite knew by looking at her what she was thinking. He, Alain, who made a lifelong study of the female sex, who often knew before a woman did what it was she wanted: teasing, sex, dinner, a nap. But Jane was different.
She was, in a funny way, exotic. She had an inner language, a set of principles, a way of looking at the world that was unlike anything he knew. It was as if she had been raised in some unknown foreign land—some fairy-tale country—where modesty and kindness reigned side by side.
Oh, yes, he was ridiculously happy!
He bathed in the bathroom adjoining his large corner room, in the ancient porcelain lion-footed tub that had been installed at the chateau when it was first built over three hundred years before. From the bathroom window, Alain could see the far wing of Chateau Chanson and the green rise of the beautiful surrounding park-lands, still half-shrouded in the morning mist. Directly below him was his maman’s pride and joy: an acre of perfectly manicured formal garden regal enough to have made old Louis XIV proud. Ofte
n, in the past, this pruned quilt of flowers and shrubbery had irritated Alain. How like his maman the garden was—a tightly controlled thing of undeniable beauty, and yet so perfect and cultivated that not a rosebud dared be out of place! In Paris, his maman’s monarchic way of life seemed appropriate. From the smallest boning knife in the kitchen, to the largest chandelier in the salon, everything within the Chansons’ Paris residence was perfection itself. Here in Bordeaux she tried to set a slightly lighter tone, claiming to limit her civilizing tendencies to the confines of the garden. Despite that, however, Alain found irritating traces of his maman everywhere he turned: fragrant sachets hidden in the back of his closet, a new hand-embroidered pillow positioned just so on his favorite chair, an obviously valuable antique ewer of no discernible use sitting atop his dressing table.
That morning, however, nothing could bother Alain. He looked out the window again and smiled. They would start the day’s tour from the garden, Alain decided, remembering how much Jane had loved the Jardins de Bagatelle in Paris. As he toweled himself off with one of the fluffy monogrammed towels designed by Halard specifically for the chateau (there was an entirely different, more complicated design for Paris), Alain began to plan out the next few days. He’d left a million things hanging in Paris, and yet he felt none of the guilt or panic that usually engulfed him when Chanson duties loomed. He felt so free and so damnably happy! He found himself smiling as he slipped into his dressing gown and wandered out to the salon just as the maid wheeled in the breakfast cart. The smell of freshly brewed café au lait filled the room with its comforting, domestic aroma. The maid hesitated after she’d arranged his breakfast of petite pains and buttery croissants, freshly picked strawberries, and wax-rimmed jars of fruit preserves that were put up each winter by the head cook.
“Anything else, monsieur?” she asked.
“Yes,” Alain replied, reaching for the new needlepoint pillow his mother had fluffed up against his favorite wicker frame chair. “Send Henri up, please.” He tossed the pillow onto the carpet, and sat down to begin his breakfast, taking pleasure in his small, silly act of filial rebellion.
“Monsieur?” Henri, the chief steward, was at the door within minutes. “Marie said you wished to see me?” he asked nervously. Such cursory summonses from Alain Chanson never meant particularly good news for Henri.
Henri had been hired by the Chansons during the years that Alain had made himself persona non grata in the household. He quickly became Madame Chanson’s favorite and was given responsibility for the more genteel side of the chateau—the upkeep of the manor, the gardens, and the day-to-day comfort of the Chansons—while the proprietor of the vineyards handled the business side of Chateau Chanson. By nature a bit fussy and extremely fond of pretty things, Henri fell in love with the chateau and was more than a little smitten, in a deeply respectful and totally platonic way, with Madame Chanson whom he considered one of the last great ladies of Bordeaux. Though everyone else had welcomed Alain back with much fanfare when he finally decided to behave in a responsible manner, Henri had never been able to forgive the Chanson heir the heartache and worry he had caused his maman during the intervening years. He had also found Alain both difficult to please and unpredictable in his demands. Just the month before when he visited, he had wanted Henri to find him a certain kind of horse to ride—apparently one similar to the polo ponies he kept in Argentina. It had been impossible on such short notice to find such a beast, and the rather sluggish roan mare that Henri finally turned up wasn’t even saddled before Alain decided to abruptly drop the expedition. But as difficult as he seemed, everybody knew Alain Chanson was gradually being handed the reins to Chanson International. More and more frequently these days, Madame Chanson would bow to Alain’s judgment on how to manage the affairs of the chateau. And of course everybody recognized, Henri reminded himself, that the old man wore the skirts in the family. Yes, it was this arrogantly handsome man before him whom Henri would have to learn how to please—or else.
“Oh, yes, come in, Henri,” Alain replied, looking up from his coffee. “There are a few things I’d like to discuss with you. Sit down, please, Henri,” Alain continued, gesturing to a nearby chair, “I will not bite.”
“Merci,” Henri murmured, perching uncomfortably on the edge of the seat opposite, and pinching the fabric at the knee of his rather tight-fitting trousers. “How might I be of use?”
“Henri, for the next few days while Jane Penrod is my guest, I must have everything be perfect. The meals, the housekeeping, down to the flower arrangement in her bedroom—I must have, I demand, your very, very best.”
“Of course, monsieur,” Henri retorted somewhat huffily. “But have you found conditions substandard thus far? Do you have some complaint I should know of?”
“What?” Alain retorted, staring at but only half-seeing Henri. He clearly had no idea that he had already insulted him. “No, no … everything’s been fine. But from now on, Henri, I’ll need continued perfection—and absolute privacy. We’ll be spending most of our days in the vineyards and touring the chais, with a trip into Bordeaux, I suppose. However, Henri, when we return at night I want—just a skeleton crew in attendance. The cook and you, perhaps. Both seen and not heard. Do you understand?”
“Certainly, monsieur,” Henri replied calmly. After all, Alain Chanson was notorious for his—how aptly put, Henri decided—need for privacy. The servant girls said that he was not beyond needing his privacy with one of them from time to time. And though Henri had nothing against normal, healthy men taking their pleasure when and where they chose, he found himself revolted and more than a bit outraged that Alain would blatantly intend to use his mother’s showcase manor for such purposes.
He was grateful for the serendipitous timing that allowed him to remind Alain, “You will recall that Madame and Monsieur Chanson are expected later this evening. Surely they might find a shortage of staff inconvenient?”
“Oh, damn,” Alain muttered, slamming down his butter knife. “Damn it to hell, I forgot!” When Melina and Jane’s visit was first discussed with his maman, the coincidence of his parents’ spring stay at the chateau with the arrival of people from one of his American advertising firms seemed of little consequence. In fact, he had rather looked forward to seeing how Melina and his mother would react to one another. Like oil and water, Alain had decided, since his mother had the uncanny ability of knowing with whom Alain was sleeping. There was no question that she would ever approve of Melina’s high-powered acquisitory ways. When he had first planned the visit, he had almost laughed at the idea of Melina and his mother in the same room—their daggerlike glances, the tightly smiling lips—and had relished the repercussions of the meeting.
“Another slut, Alain,” he could imagine his maman whispering as she poured out tea on the terrace. “When will you ever learn?”
“What a stuffy old bitch!” he could hear Melina cry as he came to her bedroom late that night. “Sorry to be crude, Alain, but she does sit like she has a poker up her ass.”
Well, at that time such imaginings had been amusing—but now Alain failed to see the humor in what he had so stupidly arranged. Just when he felt the overwhelming urge to have Jane to himself, to fill himself with her presence, to become drunk on her sweetness—his mother would arrive with her birdlike smile and bright, observant gaze and … what? Alain stopped himself short. What would she do? What could she say? Disapprove of Jane? Was that what worried him? Yes. It struck him that what he wanted now, almost as much as Jane’s love, was for his mother to like and respect Jane Penrod. But, damn it all, he knew it was far too soon for Jane to be thrust in front of his maman’s critical gaze. She was still too uncertain. They were both so smitten with each other. It would be unfair to present Jane to his maman in this state.
He sat in tense thought for a moment, and then said, “Henri, I just remembered … the hunting lodge. What sort of condition is it in? I haven’t been out there since October. Have you been keepin
g it up?”
Henri sniffed before answering, “But, of course, monsieur. We keep all the outbuildings in excellent condition. In fact, a new roof was just laid down in March.”
“Excellent, excellent,” Alain replied. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? The hunting lodge, where Alain had spent many happy weekends in his youth, was in many ways even more charming than the chateau. Built a generation after the manor house as a summer retreat ten miles west of the chateau, the lodge was a long thatched building modeled after Marie Antoinette’s famous hamlet at Versailles where the ill-fated queen had escaped the elaborate pageantry of her husband’s court. It was small, just eight rooms altogether, but comfortably appointed. It had been one of his maman’s many projects years before to fill the lodge with rustic period pieces dating from the reigns of the Louises. It was with endless admonitions to take care where they put their filthy boots and guns, that Madame Chanson had allowed her husband and son to use it as a hunting lodge when Alain was growing up. Since then, especially during the first difficult months when he had returned like the prodigal son to the demanding bosom of his family, Alain had used it as his own personal retreat. Once or twice his parents had arranged a supper party there for their more important brokers and acquaintances, but by general consensus the miniature manor had slowly become Alain’s private domain.
“We’ll stay at the lodge then,” Alain told Henri, “tonight, at least, and perhaps for a few days after that. I’ll need a decent chef, Henri, and perhaps a maid. You can round them up from town. Tell them to keep things simple. I trust you’ll know exactly what to do.”
“Indeed, monsieur,” Henri replied, standing up as he sensed the main part of the interview was over. One last question remained, however, the one that would no doubt cement his importance once and for all in Alain’s mind. “And what, exactly,” Henri asked quietly, “would you like me to tell Madame and Monsieur Chanson as to your whereabouts?”
Changes of Heart Page 23