Thurston House

by Danielle Steel

  “It was beautiful here once.” She waved a hand, defining the different vines she had grown, and told him more about the blight, how Prohibition had completely shut them down. “I don’t suppose I’ll ever do anything with it now.” She had two thousand acres of land sitting there, and more vineyards farther on, and André said little. They walked into the fields, pushing branches from their faces, as he looked at what she had, stooped more than once to feel the soil with his hands, and then he looked up at her with a serious face, and he sounded terribly French, which made her smile.

  “You have a gold mine here, Mrs. Harte.” He was serious and she shook her head.

  “I might have once, but not now. Like everything, it’s less valuable than it once was.” She was thinking of the mines she had had to close, and once these vineyards had been so well kept. They were barely recognizable now, and it saddened her to remember what had once been. It was a double-edged sword coming here, it fed her soul to return to the land she and her father had loved, yet it reminded her of all that was no more; her father … John … even Jonathan was almost gone. She felt her lost youth weighing on her as they walked slowly back to her car. She was suddenly sorry they had come. What difference did it make? What point was there coming back to cry over the past? “I really should sell all this one of these days. I never come up here anymore, and the land is just sitting here.”

  “I would buy it from you”—he held the car door open for her—“but it would be like stealing from a child. I don’t think you really understand what kind of land you have, my friend.” It was like the rich soil of the Médoc, and he knew instinctively from the climate and the warmth, and the feel of the soil, the look of the overgrown vines, he knew that he could produce wonders there. “I want to buy land here, Sabrina.…” His eyes narrowed as he looked out over the hills. It wasn’t Bordeaux, but it was beautiful and he could be happy here. If Antoine would come, and a few of their best men, they could do wonderful things, but first he had to find some land.

  “Are you serious about this?” She could see in his eyes that he was, and she had offered to help him after all. He wasn’t pressing her for her land, and she knew everyone around. She took him to the best office of agricultural real estate, and he talked to several men, and discovered that there were more than three thousand acres for sale next to her land. The price was low, and there was a great deal of work to be done, but André was anxious to see it before dark, and Sabrina drove him there. They had been there before, but they hadn’t known about the acreage for sale, and now they drove past her property and he seemed to walk miles by himself, out in the fields, looking around, feeling the soil again, breaking vines, touching leaves, he almost looked to Sabrina as though he were sniffing the air. And she was suddenly amused by him as she watched from the road. He was so intense about everything he did, so quiet and serious, and yet when she talked to him there was almost something mischievous in his eyes, but not when he discussed vines with her, or his récolte, or the land they were standing on as they drove back to the real estate office again, and when they got back to the office, he turned and smiled at her. He looked enormously pleased, and his excitement was contagious as she watched the spark in his eyes.

  “What would you say, Sabrina, if I asked you to sell me yours?”

  “Instead of what we just saw?” She looked surprised.

  “In addition to that and I have a better idea still.” She waited to hear as he went on. “We could be partners you and I. I will cultivate your land for you as well. It would give us an incredible vineyard,” and for a moment, Sabrina’s eyes danced. It was what she had always wanted to do. But now?

  “Are you serious?”

  “Of course I am.” And with that the salesman returned to them and in the blink of an eye, André negotiated the price, and settled the deal, much to the man’s relief. His family would be eating well now on the commission he was going to make, and he had four children to feed at home.

  André turned again to Sabrina then. “And what about you?”

  There was an endless pause, as they both held their breath and she felt a thrill she hadn’t felt in a long time. The excitement of business, of industry, of ownership, buying and selling. Solemnly, she shook her head. “I won’t sell to you, André.”

  Instinctively, he had expected that. “Will you let me cultivate your land and become partners with you?” Together, they would have six thousand acres, an enormous chunk, and now she nodded her head, her eyes ablaze like his.

  “I will.” He stuck out a hand, and they shook hands, as the salesman watched, feeling somehow that history had just been made, and he wasn’t far off. A moment later, André wrote him a check as a deposit on the land he had just bought. And it was only then that it occurred to him he needed a house.

  He hadn’t even thought of that, and he looked at her in surprise now. He needed a place for himself and his son to stay, but they didn’t need much, he could rent something small at first. He was leaving a small, elegant chateau in France, in the Médoc, on the terrains he had now. But he was willing to leave everything. Every fiber in his soul told him that Europe was heading downhill. And this was a new country, a new world, a new opportunity for him. It was far more exciting than sitting comfortably in a well-carved niche, long since established for him. And this would be exciting for Antoine too. They stopped at a roadhouse for something to eat shortly after eight o’clock, and they were both ravenous as they ate hamburgers and drank beer, and she told him about the Napa Valley of long ago, as best she remembered it.

  “I was born here, in St. Helena, in my father’s house.”

  “Do you still own it now?”

  “I sold it”—she looked at him honestly, she had nothing to hide—“to put my son through school. When the stock market crashed in ’29, he was fifteen, and three years after that I sent him to college back East. I was losing the mines, I lost all of my investments in the crash, and I didn’t need the house in Napa anymore, we’ve been living in town for years.” She wasn’t too proud to admit her problems to him. He was a very unassuming man, and since they had shaken hands on the vineyard land they would annex and cultivate, she felt a peculiar bond with him. It was as though instantly they had become friends, and because of Amelia she trusted him. “I still have to get my son through one more year. And then,” she heaved a small sigh of relief, “at least I’ll know he had the best I had to give.”

  “And you? What does he give you?” She wanted to say “love,” but she wasn’t always sure of that. He gave her something, she supposed, a sense of comfort when he came home, a feeling that there was someone who loved her somewhere in this world, but he certainly never expressed it that way. He was more interested in what she could give him.

  “You know, I’m not sure, André. I’m not sure children give one anything, except the joy you have just knowing they’re yours.”

  “Ah.” He nodded his head, looking very French again. He smiled at her and set down his glass. “Give him a few years.” She laughed, remembering some of the run-ins they had had.

  “It may take at least that long. Now, what about that land, what do you think you’re going to do?” She was fascinated by the earnestness he showed every time they spoke of it. He was determined to leave Bordeaux and move here. “Do you really think things will get that bad in France, André?”

  “Worse. I am absolutely certain of it. I argued about that with Amelia all night in New York. She says the French are too smart to ever be pulled down, but I think this time she might be wrong. Politically, we’re sick, economically, we’re not strong, and there’s that madman to the east, waving his Nazi flag at us. I sincerely think it’s time to leave, at least for a while.” But she wondered if he was panicking. Perhaps it was his age. He had told her earlier that he was fifty-five, and John had gotten more conservative too around that time, and far more worried about politics than he had been before. Suddenly, for a time, he had seen doom everywhere, and she remembered that her fa
ther had been that way too, so she didn’t put much stock in what André said, but he was looking at her now pensively, and over coffee, he began to speak hesitantly. “You know, Sabrina, perhaps you think I’m mad, but I keep thinking about that piece of land. Yours and mine. It is perfect for what I want to do, and you mentioned that you were interested once in your vineyards too. Rather than my just leasing it and cultivating it for you, could you not be an active partner and start the business with me?”

  “I think those days are past for me. I’m not a businesswoman anymore, André.” And she had paid a high price for that, in the anger of her son.

  “I don’t know. I just see you as involved as I in this. Does that sound crazy to you?”

  “A little bit.” She smiled as the waitress poured fresh coffee for them. André seemed to drink a lot of it, and murmured tactfully that it was not quite like the coffee in France, an understatement that made Sabrina laugh, but she was intrigued to hear his idea now.

  “What are you thinking of, André?”

  He took a quick breath, and set the coffee cup down again. “How would you like to buy just enough of that piece of land with me so that we are indeed equal partners on this. Fifty-fifty all the way.”

  She laughed right out loud at the American term. “Buy with you? André, you don’t understand. I can barely keep my son in school, I have hardly anything left at all, except my house in town and that piece of jungle in Napa that you saw. How could I possibly buy part of that parcel of vines with you?” It involved a purchase of eight hundred acres for her, an expense she could hardly afford, to say the least.

  He looked disappointed but not defeated yet. “I didn’t know … I just thought …” There was a Gallic twinkle in the blue eyes, and she noticed again that she liked his looks. In many ways, he was a handsome man, and his lean, lithe good looks made him seem younger than he was. It was easy to imagine him twenty years younger than he was. “Have you no other resources then?” It was rude to ask, but he wasn’t being mean. He was desperately anxious to start a business with her. He had been comfortable with her from the moment they met that day, and Amelia had said extraordinary things about her, about how she had run the mines for years and had a brilliant mind. He suspected that her abilities were the only reason she stayed afloat now, and somehow he sensed that if she wanted to, she could find some way to buy the property with him. And she knew more about making wine than she admitted to him.

  “It’s been years since I paid attention to that sort of thing, André. When I was young, I imagined that I was going to grow fine French wines right here, but,” she laughed at herself, “how many years ago was that? Fifteen? Twenty-five? I would be no use to you at all.” She was amazed that he had even suggested a partnership, but she had to admit that she was intrigued by the idea. Much more so than just leasing him her existing land. “You know, I’d almost like to do something like that with you. But I should be selling my land, not buying more.” She sighed, just thinking of it. She had another year’s tuition at Harvard to come up with in the next few months, and all she had left to sell was the Napa acreage, the garden lots around Thurston House, and her mother’s jewels, which she never wore. She had been mulling it over now for a while, and she thought of it that night again as she lay in bed. André was going back to Napa himself the following day, to go over more extensively the parcel he had first bought and talk to the owners about the deal, and he had to find a place to live as well.

  And as Sabrina thought of him, she realized that she liked the man, and hoped that he would do well with his wines. One had to admire a man his age, abandoning a country where he was comfortable and had everything he wanted already established there, and coming to a place six or seven thousand miles away to start again. It took more than a little spirit to do something like that, and she admired him. Almost as much as he admired her. He had sensed an extraordinary inner strength about her that day, and Amelia had hinted at it before they met. She had a lot on her back even now, he suspected accurately, although the only hint of that was what she told him when he had offered to buy the land in partnership with her. And she was still thinking about his idea, regretting that she couldn’t buy the land, when she sat bolt upright in bed the next day … if she sold all the gardens around Thurston House, she could have enough to pay for Jon’s last year at school, but there would be much more than that. She had planned to put it away for herself, and perhaps make an investment or two, but what better investment was there than land? Her father had always told her that, and if she joined André in the purchase of the acreage, she wouldn’t have a dime left for herself, but if he knew what he was doing, they would make money in time. It was an outrageously risky thing to do, especially given the economy, but there was a feeling in her heart just thinking of it, that made her blood race again as it had years ago as she pushed the mines on to greater things than they had done before, and this was what she had always wanted to do, right from the first. Even as a very young girl, she had loved the vineyards more than the mines. She thought about it all day, wondering if André had bought something else, and she made two or three calls about her garden lots and when he called her that night, she was so excited that he could barely understand what she said.

  “I can do it with you, André!” The broker felt that there would be an offer on her Nob Hill lots by the next day. Two developers had been waiting for years, and they were willing to pay a decent price. It meant that she would have to live with construction all around her for a while, and she would never have the same seclusion she had had before, but she didn’t care. If she could go into business with him.… He barely understood anything she said and was totally confused at his end of the line.

  “What?… what?… what did you say?… slowly, slowly …” He was laughing with her, certain that something marvelous had occurred but he had no idea what.

  “All right, I’m sorry. First of all, how did it go today?”

  “Fine. Marvelous.” He sounded excited too. “And I had this perfect idea. I buy the land, I sell the eight hundred acres to you, and you defer payment to whenever you want. Pay me in five years if you want. By then we’ll both be rich from our wines.” He laughed and she beamed.

  “You don’t have to do that. I came up with an idea.”

  She started to tell him and then instantly thought better of it. “I have an excellent idea. Would you like to come here for a brandy perhaps, there’s something I want to discuss with you.”

  “Ahh …” He sounded intrigued, and the brandy was a fine idea. “Are you sure it’s not too late? It’s already after ten o’clock.” She couldn’t have stood waiting to discuss it till the following day. She had been like an excited child all afternoon, and he agreed to take a cab from his hotel. Five minutes later, André was outside knocking on her front door, and she flew down the stairs, and opened it to him. She had brandy and a snifter already waiting for him upstairs beside the fire in her library, and she raced upstairs like a puppy dog as he laughed at her. “What in the world have you been up to today, Sabrina?” When he said her name it sounded French and she laughed at him, swiftly poured him the brandy, and indicated a comfortable chair facing her own.

  “I had an idea … about the Napa property.”

  A spark from her eyes caught his, and he looked at her, barely daring to hope. He wondered if this was why she had brought him here. Maybe she was going to wreak a miracle. “Sabrina, don’t keep me in suspense.” He whispered the words at her, and she looked at him, and instinctively she knew that her life was about to change, as it had only a few other times in her life … when her father died, she had to run his mines … when she married John … when Jonathan was born … and now suddenly, her life was going to take a dramatic turn again. She knew it as she looked into Andre’s eyes. She had thought that her days of power had come to an end, but she knew now that they had begun again. She wanted to go into partnership with him. She wanted it more than anything. And she also knew with every ounce of her b
usiness acumen that there was something special about this man. André de Vernay had walked into her life. And now she was going to walk on with him. And she knew, because of his long friendship with Amelia, that she could trust him too.

  “I want to buy the property with you.”

  Their eyes met and held. “Can you do that? I thought.…”

  “I thought about it all last night, and I made some calls today. What I have to do is sell my garden lots here, surrounding Thurston House. I still need the money for my son’s Harvard tuition next year.” She was being painfully frank with him, but she had no reason to hide anything from him, and she never would, if they went into partnership. “But if I get a healthy price for them, and I think I might, I might just be able to squeak through to buy part of that acreage with you. We could be equal partners, right from the start.” Her eyes blazed and he looked at her, as though he also knew that something very important to both of them was about to begin. She narrowed her eyes and looked at him and her mind was turning just as it had when she ran the mines. “I really see it all.”

  “So do I.” He looked at her for a long moment and then lifted his glass to her. “To our success, Madame Harte.” There was a seriousness in his eyes she had rarely seen and she lifted her glass to him.

  Afterward, her brows furrowed again, she was well aware that they would have a lot of work to do, but she thrived on that. “Who’ll cultivate the vines? Will you bring people from France?”

  “I’m bringing three men with me, and my son. The five of us will do everything that needs to be done, and we can hire local laborers as we need them. Why? Are you volunteering to pick the grapes, my friend?” He reached out and took her hand in his and smiled into her eyes. “Do you really mean all this?”