Her Own Rules

by Barbara Taylor Bradford

  The Lovebirds were preoccupied with the pile of rubble Sebastian had bought for her in Lourmarin. They were transforming it into a house. Eventually it was finished and they called it Vieux Moulin. I thought it was an imprudent waste of money But I said nothing. It was none of my business. And, after all, I now owned the château. The house of my dreams, if not the girl.

  I never did understand the attraction that heap of old stones held for Sebastian. An old mill, for God’s sake. But then I never did understand my father. Now it was too late. He had been dead and buried for five months.

  When I graduated from Exeter at the age of eighteen I went to Yale. Just as I was supposed to. Doing my Duty I was following in the footsteps of those other Lockes who had gone before me. The first was my great-great-grandfather, Ian Lyon Locke. I would probably be the last, since I had no son.

  I considered Yale to be a nuisance. It was preventing me from getting on with my life. All I wanted was to live at my château in Aix-en-Provence. I had been learning about my vineyards and my winery from Olivier Marchand, who had run everything for years. First for Sebastian. And then for me. It was my whole existence.

  At twenty-two I became master of my own fate.

  After graduating from Yale, I moved to the château permanently, where I worked alongside Olivier. I was passionately consumed by the land. My land.

  I was also passionately in love.

  When I was twenty-three I married her.

  Everyone thought she was eminently suitable. She was, when it came to pedigree. Eleanor Jarvis Talbot had the right lineage. She was Boston Old Money. Except that they didn’t have any. Not anymore. This didn’t matter to me. I had more than enough for both of us. Millions. In trust from my mother.

  Eleanor was a lovely pale blonde. Tall and willowy. And highly over-sexed. I slept with her on our first date and continued to do so all through the last year I was at Yale.

  Her cool, refined looks belied her sizzling nature. She was hot. Perhaps this was part of the attraction. She looked like a lady, behaved like a whore. When I was with her I was forever turned on just thinking about what we would do later. Actually, all we ever did was screw. Day and night, whenever we could. I was in seventh heaven, as they say. I couldn’t believe my luck.

  The family thought she was Miss Right. So did I. We were confused. Eleanor turned out to be Miss Wrong. From the very beginning the marriage floundered. Maybe it was partly my fault for not making her understand how much the château, the winery, and the running of the estate meant to me.

  We honeymooned in Morocco. I will never know what that country is really like. Not unless I make a return visit. I spent all of my time in bed. On top of Eleanor. Gazing down into her limpid gray-blue eyes. Or lying on my back. Staring up at hotel ceilings as she mounted me enthusiastically. She liked to do that. The dominant position appealed to her. “Let me fuck you,” she would say and she did. Over and over and over again.

  Then we came home to the château. And things changed. They had to change. I had a real life at the château. I had work to do. It was my Duty. But I cherished my Duty in this particular instance. I was bound to the land and the winery.

  The endless screwing had to lessen. But it didn’t stop entirely. Unfortunately, Eleanor was like a rabbit. She was inordinately miffed when she couldn’t get it all the time. Whenever she felt like it. She said I didn’t love her. I believed I did. But she wore me out. I was exhausted. I needed a rest from all that unimaginative mindless fucking. I soon realized I had very little to say to her. Almost nothing at all.

  This aside, she had no idea how to run a great château. Being a chatelaine meant nothing to her. Nor was she interested in learning how to be one. Her curiosity about what I did all day was nil. Her involvement in my working life was nonexistent. Then, after a year of marriage, another problem developed. She became fixated on my father. She couldn’t stop talking about him. His presence seemed to ignite her. She became overly animated, abnormally effervescent, almost raucous. In his absence, a despondency set in. She sulked. Threw tantrums.

  Eleanor still wanted to screw me endlessly. But my interest in her was waning with rapidity. Her preoccupation with Sebastian sent a message loud and clear. I knew she really wanted to screw my father instead of me. Or as well as me. Whichever. This knowledge proved disastrous for our sex life. It rendered me impotent.

  We divorced.

  It was costly. But worth it.

  And fortunately despite our sexual marathons, there were no children from this regrettable union.

  A glutton for punishment, I married my second wife when I was twenty-six.

  I met Jacqueline de Brossard in Aix-en-Provence. She was the daughter of a minor baron and lived in a nearby château. What attracted me to her initially was her familiarity with château life. And her knowledge of the land. Plus her gorgeous body. Her looks were plain. However, her splendid French chic and great style more than compensated for this inadequacy.

  Jacqueline de Brossard appeared to be the perfect mate. Ideally suited to me. We shared similar tastes. In most things. We were compatible. Nevertheless, our marriage scarcely outlasted the year. She had two all-consuming interests in her life. Spending my money was one of them. Infidelity the other. My second wife apparently did not wish to bed my father. As far as I knew. Merely every other man that crossed her path.

  We divorced.

  I vowed never to marry again.

  I was now living in sin.

  My paramour was an Englishwoman. Her name was Catherine Smythe. She was educated. Brainy. A bit of an intellectual. Fifty years ago she would have been termed a bluestocking. Catherine was an Oxford graduate. An historian of some repute. She had taught history, written about it, lectured on it.

  I thought she was outrageously good-looking. Red-haired, green-eyed, pale-complexioned.

  There were moments when Catherine reminded me of my Special Lady. Like the Special Lady’s daughter Vivienne, Catherine was older than me. By five years. That didn’t matter. I’ve always preferred older women.

  Catherine and I met in Paris in August of 1994. She was staying with an English journalist friend of mine, Dick Vickery. I assumed they were romantically involved. My assumption was incorrect. They were just good friends.

  She and I became more than just good friends in a matter of days. I liked brainy women. They stimulated me. Turned me on. Catherine was much better than a mindless screw. She was the ultimate.

  She came to stay with me for Christmas. It was then I asked her to move in with me. She agreed. We saw the old year out together, greeted the new one in. Drinking champagne on the chateau’s ramparts. Toasting each other. Getting drunk together.

  It seemed to me that 1995 held wonderful prospects. Especially with Catherine on the premises. Indefinitely.

  “I can’t promise you marriage,” I’d said to her over Christmas.

  “Marriage!” she had cried indignantly. “Who’s interested in marriage? Certainly not I. I’ve no desire to be legally bound to any man, present company included. I love my independence. I don’t aim to lose it.”

  So that was that.

  I had met my match.

  Seven months after our first encounter this clever woman still fascinated me. Apparently I still fascinated her.

  I moved away from the trees. Striding out, I headed for the château looming up in the distance, a great mass of stone.

  It gleamed palely on this February morning. Watery sunlight glanced off its many windows. The gray-tiled rooftops and turrets were dark smudges against the hazy blue sky.

  I paused, looked toward the château across sweeping green lawns, a formal garden and, just beyond the garden, the wide stone terrace of the château.

  It was the perfect spot from which to view the eighteenth-century edifice at any time of day. This morning it looked spectacular in the soft light, with the mist rising off the lawns.

  I was filled with satisfaction, knowing it was mine.

  I glance
d at my watch. It was almost nine o’clock. Time for breakfast with Catherine.

  I found her in the library. She had been working there since seven.

  “Aren’t you a love,” she said, looking up as I came in. “Bringing me breakfast, no less. Spoiling me.”

  “Your turn tomorrow.” I put the large wooden tray on the coffee table in front of the fire and sat down.

  She joined me a moment later. We sat drinking large cups of café au lait and eating warm, freshly baked croissants spread with butter and homemade raspberry jam.

  “Jack, these are lethal.”

  “You say that every day.”

  “Three minutes on the lips, six months on the hips,” she muttered, shaking her head. “I simply must go on a diet tomorrow.”

  “I like you the way you are.”

  “I’m getting fat, living here with you, Jack.”

  “Want to leave?”

  “No, of course not, you fool,” she replied swiftly, affectionately, laughing as she spoke. “This place is compelling.”

  “I thought it was me.”

  “It is. You and the château. Jack, I’ve come across something really fascinating, in one of the old books I found. I think I know where the name Château d’Cose might have come from.”

  I pricked up my ears. Leaned forward. I was suddenly more alert. The origin of the château’s name had always baffled Sebastian. Olivier Marchand had been unable to throw any light on it. Neither had any of the old-timers who had worked here for years. Documentation barely existed. It was a mystery.

  “Speak,” I said. “Tell me, Catherine.”

  “As I mentioned, the book is old. It carries a series of paintings of about thirty famous people from the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. The spelling of those periods, reproduced in the book, is quaint—”

  “What do you mean by quaint?” I interrupted.

  “For example, Rabelais is spelled Rables. Buckingham, as in the Duke of, is spelled Boucquin can. The Queen of Spain is la Reine Despaigne, instead of D’Espagne. And the Queen of Scotland, which correctly is la Reine d’Ecosse shows up as la Rene de Cose. Therefore, I think that d’Cose, the name of this château, is a bastardization of de Cose, and somehow refers to Scotland.”

  I stared at her. “That would be peculiar. An odd coincidence. If you’re right. Malcolm Lyon Locke, the founding father of the dynasty, was a Scotsman. Is there any reference to my château in the book?”

  “No. None at all. As I just said, it’s a picture book really, showing different paintings of . . . well, shall we call them celebrities of the day. Rabelais, the writer, the Duke of Buckingham, Mary Queen of Scots, etcetera, etcetera. And, of course, the spelling of the latter’s name caught my eye at once.”

  “Keep digging. Maybe you’ll find something else that makes reference to Scotland. Maybe this was her place?”

  Catherine shook her head. “I doubt it. Mary was mostly in the Loire Valley when she was growing up. And after she married the Dauphin of France, she was at the legendary Chenonceaux, the home of the king. She was with Henry II, his mistress Diane de Poitiers, his wife Catherine de Medici, and their son Francis II, who was the Dauphin. The petite Reinette d’Ecosse she was usually called in those days, the little Queen of Scotland. Poor sad thing she was in the end. And she met such a grisly death. Had her head chopped off—”

  The ringing of the telephone next to Catherine’s elbow interrupted her. Reaching for it, she said, “Château d’Cose. Bonjour.”

  There was a moment of silence before Catherine went on, “Oh hello, Vivienne, how are you?”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I took the phone from Catherine, sat down in the chair she had vacated.

  “Hi, Viv,” I said. “How’re things?”

  “Fine, thanks. Jack, I’d like to come over to see you.”

  “When?”

  “This morning.”

  “That’s impossible,” I said quickly. I’d caught something in Vivienne’s voice. I knew when to protect myself from her.

  “What about this afternoon then? Or this evening?” Vivienne pressed. “It’s very important. Really it is.”

  “Viv, I can’t. Not today. I got problems. Stuff to deal with.”

  “You can spare half an hour. Surely. For me.”

  “Can’t, Viv. Olivier has people coming. We’ll be tied up. All day. Winery business,” I lied, improvising as I went along. I’d known her forever. Since I was six. Something was troubling her. I could tell. It echoed in her voice. Instinct made me keep her at arm’s length. Otherwise she’d rope me in.

  “I really need to talk to you, Jack,” she murmured in a warmer, softer voice. “About something that concerns us both.”

  Viv could beguile when she wanted to, didn’t I know that. Swiftly, I said, “It’ll have to wait.”

  “Not necessarily. Perhaps we can talk on the phone.”

  “I don’t know when.”

  “We can do it right now, Jack. Listen to me for a moment, please.”

  “But—”

  “No buts, Jack. I’ve finished the Brontë book, as you know, and now that I’m not so concentrated on my writing, the matter of Sebastian’s death has broken through into my consciousness. It does—”

  “Oh God, Viv! Not that old turkey! Again. Let it drop!”

  “I won’t, I can’t. Listen to me. Sebastian’s death does not sit well with me, not at all.”

  “He committed suicide,” I snapped.

  “I accept that. But I need a reason why he did it. I need to know. Only then, when I have a resolution, will I be at peace about it. And at peace with myself.”

  “No one can give you a reason. Only Sebastian knows. He took that secret to the grave with him.”

  “Not necessarily,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been thinking—”

  “What about?” I cut in, groaning inside. How well I knew that tone of hers. It spelled trouble.

  “About his life. What he was doing in the last six to eight months of it. Who he was with. And just as importantly, how he was behaving. You know, what frame of mind was he in? Was he troubled? Or happy?”

  “He was happy. The day you had lunch. So you claim.”

  “He was.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “That’s a stupid question, Jack. I knew him intimately. He was happy. Look, I remember how I felt that day, truly I do. And I was pleased for him, pleased he was about to start a new life.”

  “He was?” I was startled. “What do you mean by a new life?”

  “There was a woman, Jack, a new woman in his life. He was in love, and he was planning to marry her.”

  Flabbergasted, I exclaimed, “You gotta be kidding!”

  “I’m not. He told me he was planning to marry in the spring. In fact, he wanted me to meet her and he invited me to the wedding.”

  “That’s sick,” I said.

  “No, it’s not. We were always close. Very, very close. Anyway, don’t digress.”

  Ignoring this admonition, I asked, “Who was the woman?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t tell me her name. That’s the problem. If I knew who she was, I could go and see her. Obviously you never met her, since you sounded so surprised when I mentioned her.”

  “I didn’t even know about her.”

  “Did Luciana?”

  “No. I’m sure. She would’ve told me.”

  “Someone must have met her, Jack, and that’s what I’m leading up to. I want to talk to people who worked with Sebastian on the charities in Africa.”

  “Why the African charities?”

  “Because Sebastian said he met her there,” Vivienne explained. “He said she was a doctor. A scientist. I want to talk to a lot of people who were involved in his life and activities, in order to get a better perspective about him in that six-month period.”

  “People might resent that. They might clam up,” I pointed out. “
They are very loyal to him. To his memory.”

  “I know. But I have the perfect reason. I’m writing a profile about him for the Sunday Times Magazine. Sandy Robertson okayed it last night. I’m planning an in-depth profile about the world’s greatest philanthropist . . . who was probably the last of the breed. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to see you, Jack. I’d like to get your impressions of him during those last few months last year.”

  “Vivienne, that’s ridiculous! Why can’t you just let it drop.”

  “I can’t. I wish I could. Rationally, intellectually, I do accept his suicide. Emotionally, I cannot. At least I can’t accept that he would kill himself when he was so happy, so positive about the future. It just doesn’t sit well with me, I keep telling you that. There’s something wrong here, something terribly amiss. Something strange must have happened after we’d lunched on that Monday. I just know it in my bones.”

  “And you aim to find out? Is that it? Hey, Viv, I have the perfect reason. The lady dumped him.”

  “Perhaps she did. That’s certainly a possibility, I won’t argue with you there, Jack. But I don’t believe Sebastian would take his life because of a woman, not the Sebastian I know.”

  “And I know nothing. I can’t help. Not with the profile.”

  “You might think of something, if you wrack your brains. If you really think hard about it, think back to those months last summer.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “The day of the funeral, Cyrus suggested I should write a book. A biography of Sebastian.”

  “The keeper of the flame! Is that your new role, honey?”

  “Don’t be sarcastic, Jack, it doesn’t become you. And I might do it. I just want to be sure I can be absolutely objective about Sebastian. Writing the profile will give me a good idea about that. It’ll be a sort of test.”

  “Who are you planning to interview, Viv?” I asked.

  “His colleagues at Locke Industries and at the foundation. One person will lead to another, that’s how it usually works. I’ll soon understand who knew him the best, knew certain sides to him. I hope to talk to Luciana too.”