Her Own Rules

by Barbara Taylor Bradford

  “I do. I’ve just spoken to Millicent Underwood. At the foundation. She’s already working.”

  “Amazing.”

  “What is?”

  “Your sudden and inexplicable efficiency.”

  “I want to get this out of the way. Over and done with,” he answered. Then he smiled at me.

  I stared at him.

  I took in that wide, genial smile, noted the complete lack of concern in his eyes, registered yet again the absence of sorrow, and I knew. He was glad. Jack was glad that Sebastian was dead.

  This clarity of vision on my part, this sudden rush of knowledge stunned me. I could only incline my head before I turned away from him, walked across the floor to the small writing table in the seating area of the bedroom.

  I stood with my back to him, composing myself. “I’ll start making my list,” I mumbled without turning around. I could not bear to look at him.

  “See ya, Viv.” Jack slammed the door behind him and was gone.

  I remained standing with my hands resting on the writing table, trembling, endeavoring to calm myself. And with growing horror I could not help wondering if Jack Locke had come back to America to commit a crime. Had he returned to murder his father? The mere thought of this sent a chill trickling through me.

  I felt chilled to the bone for the rest of the day as I went about my chores, trying to keep busy I put my papers in order, filed my notes, and labeled the tapes from my tape recorder. The moment I finished a story I categorized all of the relevant research material and put it away for safety, and now I welcomed doing this. It kept my mind occupied.

  At the end of the afternoon, not long after Belinda had gone home, I lit the fire in the den, made myself a large mug of tea, and settled down in front of the blazing logs.

  Not unnaturally, my mind was on Jack and that terrible thought I had had about him earlier in the day. I turned this over in my mind now. It was one thing not to care very much that your father was dead, but quite another to actually be joyful about it. Was Jack happy because he had detested Sebastian so much? Or was it because he was going to inherit all that money, all that power? I seriously doubted that power meant anything to him but certainly the money did. And people did kill for money.

  I sat staring into the flames, endeavoring to squash my disturbing thoughts without much success. My mind kept turning on Sebastian’s death and Jack’s possible involvement in it. Patricide. There was nothing new about that. It was an old story, as old as time itself.

  Suddenly I had the need to talk to someone about my worries; the problem was there really wasn’t anyone I thought I could trust. Perhaps Christopher Tremain. Certainly he was the only person who I felt absolutely sure about. Kit was kind and wise, and he had proved to be a good friend to me.

  I was nothing if not decisive, and so I reached for the phone on a nearby table, lifted the receiver, began to punch in the numbers for France. Then I stopped, reflecting for a minute, and finally put the receiver back in the cradle. My natural caution had taken over.

  There was no way I could call Kit. That would not be right, not fair to Jack, who had been my lifelong friend. We had grown up together and he was like a brother to me. And after all, it was only a suspicion on my part, nothing else. There was another consideration. Kit was not particularly kindly disposed toward the Lockes. He had taken an instant dislike to Jack the first time he had met him, and he frequently spoke of Sebastian in scathing tones.

  I sighed under my breath, thinking of Kit. He was an American painter of some renown, and about two years ago he had bought a property in the area where I lived in Provence. As we got to know each other better, we realized we had a lot in common and there was also a strong physical attraction between us. About a year ago we had become quite seriously involved with each other, and for some time now he had wanted me to marry him. I kept stalling. I loved Kit and we were compatible, but I wasn’t sure I could make the kind of commitment to him he needed and wanted. I suppose I balked at marriage: I had had my share of wedded bliss. Of course he was disappointed, but this did not alter our relationship.

  On several occasions, just before I had left for New York, Kit had made a couple of snide remarks about Sebastian, and he had even gone so far as to suggest that I was still in love with him. Foolish idea that was.

  Now, on further reflection, I realized I could never talk to Kit about Jack. He was a good man, and very fair, and I was confident he would keep an open mind. But unburdening my worries to him was not a solution to my dilemma, and it would be a rank betrayal of Jack. Nor could I take anyone else into my confidence.

  Better to keep my own counsel.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The night before the funeral I was restless. Sleep proved to be elusive. I tossed and turned for several hours before I finally got up in desperation and went downstairs.

  Glancing at the hall clock, I saw that it was already three in the morning. Nine o’clock in France, and for a split second I thought of calling Kit. Not to confide my worries, since I had decided against doing that, but simply to hear a friendly voice.

  In a way, I was a bit surprised he had not called me. He must have heard of Sebastian’s death, and it struck me that the least he could have done was pick up the phone to say a few kind words to me. After all, Sebastian had not only been my husband for five years but my guardian as well, and surely it was obvious to my friends that his passing would have a distressing effect on me.

  Marie-Laure de Roussillon, my closest girl friend in France, had phoned me yesterday to express her sympathy and ask if there was anything she could do, as had several other good friends in Paris and Provence.

  On the other hand, to be fair and to give Kit the benefit of the doubt, perhaps he did not know.

  Right now he was painting day and night in preparation for his next show, to be held in Paris in November. The last time we talked, about ten days ago, he had been hell-bent on finishing a huge canvas that was the last of his works for the current exhibition.

  When Kit painted in this singleminded and dedicated way, he did so in total isolation. The only people he saw were the French couple who looked after him and his house. He never read a newspaper, watched television, or listened to the radio. He followed a simple but extremely disciplined routine: paint, eat, sleep; eat, paint, sleep, paint. Sometimes he painted eighteen hours a day, almost nonstop, and he continued like this for as long as it was necessary, until he had put the very last brushstroke on the canvas.

  I suppose I could have phoned, given him the news myself, but I was reluctant to interrupt him. I was also conscious of his mild dislike of the Lockes. I didn’t want to get a flea in my ear for intruding, disturbing his routine; nor did I wish to expose myself to some of his sarcastic remarks.

  For a moment I toyed with the idea of calling Marie-Laure, just to chat for a while, and then decided against it. She ran the family château and vast estate near Ansouis, and early mornings were generally excessively busy for her.

  Meandering through into the kitchen, I boiled a pan of hot milk, filled a mug with it, added a spoonful of sugar, and went into the library.

  Turning on a lamp, I sat down on the sofa and slowly sipped the hot beverage. It had been Gran Rosalie’s cure-all for almost everything when I was growing up, and now I took great comfort from this childhood remedy. Perhaps it would help me fall asleep when I went back upstairs to bed.

  I knew why I was restless, filled with such unprecedented unease. It was the thought of tomorrow. I was dreading the funeral; dealing with Jack and Luciana was not going to be easy, nor did I look forward to coping with Cyrus Locke and Madeleine Connors.

  In my experience, families seemed to behave badly at large gatherings like funerals and weddings; I was absolutely certain Sebastian’s funeral was not going to be an exception to this rule.

  In an effort to relax I purposefully shifted my thoughts away from tomorrow, focused on my own immediate plans. And after only a few minutes I made a sudden decis
ion. I was not going to hang around here any longer than was necessary. There was no real reason for me to do so. Once the memorial service had taken place in New York next Wednesday, I would leave. I would book myself a flight to Paris for that night.

  I longed to be back in France, back at my quaint old olive mill situated between the ancient villages of Lourmarin and Ansouis in the Vaucluse. There, under the shadows of the Lubéron mountains, amidst my gardens, olive trees, and endless fields of lavender I knew peace and tranquility It was a world apart.

  Certainly I am my happiest there. It was the one spot where I worked best over long periods of time, where I could truly concentrate on my writing. For some weeks I had wanted to get back to the biography of the Brontë sisters I was writing. Actually it was vital that I did so; the manuscript was due at my publishers at the beginning of March, and I had only four months to finish it.

  The thought of a long stretch of work over an unbroken period of time was suddenly rather appealing to me, and I found myself filling with that special kind of excitement which usually precedes a creative period for me.

  As I settled back against the antique needlepoint cushions, feeling happier, thinking lovingly of my home in Provence, my eye caught the large photograph album on a bookshelf next to the fireplace. There were pictures of Vieux Moulin in it, and I had a sudden desire to look at them.

  I rose and went to get it. Returning to the sofa, I opened the album, but instead of seeing the mill in Lourmarin, as I had expected, I found myself staring at photographs of my twenty-first birthday party in 1979.

  I studied them for a brief moment.

  How revealing it was to examine photographs after a long time had passed. How different we look, in reality, than we remember ourselves looking then, years ago. Whenever I cast my mind back to that particular birthday party, I think of myself as being so grown up at twenty-one. But of course I wasn’t. My image, captured here on celluloid, told me how innocent and young I was in my off-the-shoulder white lace dress and string of pearls. My dark brown hair was brushed back, fell around my face in a soft, unsophisticated pageboy style, and my high cheekbones were not as prominent as they are now My wide mouth looked tender, vulnerable, and a very serious pair of green eyes looked out at me from the album, expectant and trusting.

  I peered at my face more closely. Not a line, not a mark. I smiled to myself. Why would there be? I was very young, just a girl, inexperienced and untouched by life.

  Sebastian was with me, smiling and debonair in his flawlessly tailored Savile Row dinner jacket, his gleaming white shirt punctuated down the front with those deep-blue sapphire studs which he had had such trouble removing later that night.

  Here was Luciana, a bit plumpish in her pale pink taffeta, looking as if a pound of butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, her short curly hair a golden halo around her radiant face.

  Even at thirteen there had been a certain lusciousness about her, despite the puppy fat. How much older she actually appeared to be in this particular shot, certainly much older than the little girl she really was at the time. And she had had the mouth of a thirty-year-old on her. I knew that only too well.

  I regarded the picture of Jack for a long moment. I couldn’t help thinking he looked like a little old man. His hair was untidy and his dinner jacket was rumpled; his whole appearance was decidedly unkempt. The expression on his face was surly, disgruntled, and with a start I realized he had not actually changed much. He was exactly the same as he had been at fifteen. Jack had never grown up, more’s the pity.

  Flipping the pages, I came to a series of photographs of Sebastian, which I had taken that summer, when we had been on vacation in Nantucket. My favorite was a shot of him standing nonchalantly on the deck of a sailboat belonging to his friend Leonard Marsden. It was called the Rascal, and at the time we had joked about the name being so appropriate for Leonard, who was something of a playboy.

  Sebastian’s white opened-necked shirt emphasized his deep tan, and he was so boyish, so carefree in his appearance the snap took my breath away for a minute. His hair was tousled by the wind, his eyes very blue beneath the dark brows; he had been forty-one years old that year, but he certainly didn’t look it. Not at all.

  Nor had he looked fifty-six at lunch last week.

  I had told him this at one point during the meal, and he had laughed delightedly, obviously pleased and flattered by my comment. And then he had told me I didn’t look my age either, going on to remark that I appeared to be ten years younger.

  A bit of a mutual admiration society it had been that day. And I had reached out, squeezed his hand resting on top of the table, told him that we both seemed to be defying time.

  My comment had amused him even more. “You’ve always been my favorite, Vivi. I suddenly realized how much I’ve missed you. We’ve got to see each other more often, my darling girl. Life’s too short not to spend some time with those one genuinely cares about.”

  I had reminded him that he was the one who was constantly traveling the world nonstop, whilst I was either sitting in New Preston or Lourmarin, and was therefore extremely easy to find. “Don’t worry, Vivi, I’ll come and find you,” he had promised, smiling into my eyes. And I knew he meant it. But that could never be. Not now. It was too late.

  Sighing sadly, I moved on, turning the pages, skipping over our winter holiday in Sun Valley, Idaho, that same year, ignoring the photographs of my graduation from Wellesley the following summer.

  But I did pause for a second when I came to the section I had filled with our wedding photographs. Here I was in all my young glory, the sweet little bride in a short, white-silk dress holding a posy of white roses, gazing up at her handsome groom through eyes that saw no one but him.

  My adoration of Sebastian was so patently obvious, and so touching, I felt my throat tighten with the remembrance of our years together as husband and wife.

  I leaned back, staring into space, thinking.

  We were married in July of 1980. The summer of my twenty-second year. This was just after I had graduated from Wellesley.

  Once Sebastian and I had become lovers the previous year, I had not wanted to go back to college. Instead I had wished to stay with him, to travel with him, to be at his side all the time.

  He would not hear of my dropping out. In no uncertain terms, he had told me I must complete my education and graduate. That was when we had had our first really major row. Naturally, we had patched things up in no time, since neither of us ever harbored a grudge.

  Still, I have no trouble recollecting the way we had locked horns about that particular issue, and with such ferocity we had both been shaken by my head-strong stubbornness, forceful manner, and dogged determination to get my own way He won. I lost. But Sebastian conceded that he had met his match. As for me, I was astounded at myself. I had not known I could be such a hellion.

  Ever since our affair had started I had hoped he would ask me to marry him. Nonetheless, I was caught off guard and surprised when he did so. He had always gone on so alarmingly about the age difference of twenty years. This was something which had never bothered me in the slightest; he was young and boyish in so many different ways, I never thought of him as being older than I.

  “Who are we going to get to give you away?” he had asked a few weeks before the wedding.

  In the end we had decided that Jack should do it. We had grown up together, he and I, and he was the next best thing I had to a brother.

  The marriage took place at Laurel Creek Farm, in front of a local judge who was a long-standing acquaintance of Sebastian’s. The ceremony was held in the beautiful walled rose garden. It was simple and short, and once it was over there was a luncheon in the marquee on the lawn for the friends and family who had attended. Later that afternoon Sebastian and I had driven into New York City for dinner, glad to escape, to be alone, and married at last.

  The following morning we set out for Africa, where we were to spend most of our honeymoon.

  Ou
r first stop was London and Claridge’s Hotel. Sebastian had booked a suite for us there, and we were staying for two weeks. He had certain business matters to attend to, and he had also wanted to get me rigged-out properly for our impending African sojourn. “You must have the right clothes, Vivi, you must be comfortable. We have to combat the heat, the sun, the constant travel, and the cold at night,” he had explained to me.

  I had only been to London twice, both times with my mother and Gran Rosalie, and it was a special treat for me to be back there again with my husband.

  I met many of Sebastian’s friends; we went to smart luncheons and elegant dinners; we attended the opera in Covent Garden, and saw several plays in the West End. I relished every minute of it. I was madly in love, and so it seemed was he. We spent a lot of time in bed giving pleasure to each other. He made love to me most expertly, spoiled me outrageously, dressed me fashionably, and showed me off proudly.

  At one point, during the first week of our stay, Sebastian took me on our special shopping expedition for the appropriate clothing for East Africa, our next destination. He bought me lightweight cotton pants, cotton safari jackets, short-sleeved cotton shirts, as well as four pairs of really good soft leather boots and several large-brimmed felt bush hats for protection against the sun.

  At the end of the two weeks in London we flew to Nairobi. This was to be our base for the three or four months Sebastian had planned for us to stay. And as long as I live I will never forget those months in Kenya. I was besotted with my husband, thrilled to be his wife, to share so many things with him, but I was also captivated by Africa the moment I set foot there. It was one of the most spectacularly beautiful places I had ever been to in my life, and I was awestruck.

  Sebastian knew Kenya extremely well, and it gave him a great deal of pleasure to show me his favorite spots, the areas he loved the most, and which had enticed him back time after time. And how truly magical they were.