by Susan Lewis
‘Then I’d like to meet him,’ Claudine said.
‘I doubt he’ll be there at this time of day,’ Lucien answered, letting her go and starting to stroll on down the hill. ‘He’ll be out checking the vines. He lives alone with his mother, Liliane. Armand’s wife died giving birth to their son, almost two years ago now, then his son died too. He took their deaths very hard. He does nothing but work in the wine caves and vineyards, or drink alone at the café. Even Monique has trouble persuading him into the château these days, and there was a time when he couldn’t refuse my sister anything. Speaking of Monique,’ he said, making an obvious effort to lighten the conversation, ‘Maman informs me you’ve become the best of friends.’
‘Ah, well,’ Claudine said, ‘I wouldn’t have put it quite like that myself. However, we shall be. One day. Now, come along, I’m going to race you to the bottom of the hill.’ And snatching the shoes off her feet, she sprinted on ahead of him.
Knowing he could outdistance her with the minimum of effort, Lucien held back, watching as her long legs flew through the grass, her red and grey checked skirt flapping about her knees, her scarlet silk blouse ballooning out behind her, her incredible hair rising on the wind.
He had hidden his surprise well when he first set eyes on her, for nothing François had told him on the telephone had prepared him for such incredible beauty – or such vivacity. But most intriguing of all was the effect she was having on him now. He had known her for barely more than half an hour, hardly a serious word had passed between them, yet for some reason he felt an overpowering protectiveness towards her. But that was crazy. What did he want to protect her from? His own brother?
Lucien frowned as he remembered François’ words. ‘She is not only vain, she is unspeakably trivial. She entertains such disgusting notions of romance that I can hardly bear to look at her. Far better that you had won the toss, Lucien, for you would know what to do with her. However, a pact is a pact, so you need have no fears about me fulfilling my duty. Unless, of course, I can persuade her to refuse me.’
François had never had much patience with women, particularly those who fell in love with him. And looking at Claudine through his brother’s eyes, Lucien could see that beside the worldly sophistication of Élise Pascale, Claudine might appear embarrassingly gauche. But there was more to her than François gave her credit for – or would allow himself to see. There was something that set her apart from other women, and it wasn’t just her extraordinary beauty. Everything about her seemed so natural, so lacking in artifice – admittedly qualities that François might not choose to find attractive – yet there was no denying she had a quick, intelligent mind and a ready wit, and she emanated such spirit, such tenacity, that Lucien was amazed that even François could remain immune. And even La Pascale couldn’t compete with the still youthful loveliness of that face or the tender smoothness of that honey skin … He felt suddenly saddened by the pain François would cause her, the heartache and the loneliness she would have to suffer, being married to a man like his brother. And because of the kind of woman she was, he could already see the hopeless struggle she would put up to make her marriage work. He hoped she had the courage, the stamina, to survive.
‘Don’t think I don’t realize you’re letting me win!’ she called back to him over her shoulder.
‘Of course I am!’ he shouted back.
As they were nearing the bottom of the hill, Claudine stopped and flopped down on the grass, trying to catch her breath. ‘You’re incorrigible, Lucien de Lorvoire,’ she gasped as he sat down beside her, his breathing as steady as if he had walked down the hill.
And you, he thought, looking at her with a sudden blinding realization, are a virgin. Why that thought had struck him now, he had no idea, but unprompted though it was, he knew it to be true. He gazed into her eyes – and suddenly he longed to be the one to take her, the one to introduce that unbearably sensuous body to the pleasures of love. To leave her to the indifference of François seemed a crime … yet wasn’t it an even greater crime that he should harbour such a thought after what had happened in the past? When they were both of them, François most of all, still paying the price for what had happened to Hortense?
‘Oh no, I’ve torn my stockings,’ Claudine complained, running a finger over the ladder that was snaking along her calf. ‘And again there! What a wreck I am! Oh, well, there’s nothing else for it, I’ll simply have to take them off.’
Lucien’s eyes lit up, and leaning back on one elbow, he snapped off a blade of grass and put it between his teeth, ready to watch.
Claudine eyed him dangerously, and laughing, he rolled onto his stomach while she unhooked her suspenders.
‘Is your father with you at Montvisse?’ he asked, gazing through the columns of vines which spread across the hillside in front of him.
‘Not at the moment, he’s in Paris. He’s coming back sometime this week, though. Do you know him?’
‘Of course. I knew your mother too. You’re very like her.’
She gathered up her stockings and pushed them into her skirt pocket. Then, sitting cross-legged facing him, she said, ‘What about François? Did he know my mother?’
‘Yes. He was very fond of her as I remember.’
‘It’s strange, isn’t it?’ she mused. ‘I mean, how fond François is of my parents when he seems to despise me.’
Lucien turned onto his back to look at her, and studied her remarkable face for some time before, fighting back a sudden surge of anger, he said, ‘It’s not you that François despises. It’s …’
‘Yes?’ she prompted.
He sat up, and throwing away the blade of grass, he said, ‘There’s a lot you don’t know about François, Claudine. I only wish you could have met him before …’
‘Before what?’
He looked at her as if in some way assessing her. ‘Obviously your father hasn’t told you,’ he said, and this time she detected the anger in his voice. ‘But maybe Beavis doesn’t know. I thought François had told him, had explained, but …’
‘Explained what? Lucien, you’re talking in riddles.’ Then she cried out as he suddenly grasped her shoulders, and his frown was so like François’ that she found herself cowering away.
‘Why are you marrying him, Claudine?’ he growled. ‘Why?’
‘Lucien, you’re hurting me!’
‘Why?’ he repeated, tightening his grip. ‘What is it that’s driving you into this marriage? Surely it’s not your father, he wouldn’t force you to do something you found repellent. And you do find him repellent, don’t you?’
‘No! Yes! I don’t know! Lucien, please –’
‘The truth!’
‘Then the truth is that, yes, at first I did.’
‘And now?’
‘I don’t know. All I know is that I’m going to marry him.’
‘He’ll hurt you, Claudine.’
‘I can look after myself.’
‘Don’t be naive. François isn’t like other men, you must have seen that already. You won’t be able to manipulate him, you …’
’I don’t want to manipulate him, I want to many him. I can’t explain it, I don’t even understand it myself, but I want to be his wife and I want to have his children. That’s what he wants of me, isn’t it? To have his children?’
‘Thats all he wants of you, Claudine.’ He leaned forward, staring into her face. ‘Don’t do this to yourself, Claudine. Go back to England and forget you ever met him. Go now, before it’s too late.’
‘I can’t!’ she cried. ‘I can’t leave. I already love him.’
Lucien stared at her. She stared back, so shocked by what she had said that the whole world seemed to have suddenly careered to a halt. All she was aware of was the strange buzzing in her ears and the pressure of Lucien’s fingers on her arms.
Finally he let her go, but his eyes were still on hers as he said quietly, ‘Is that true?’
She lowered her head, and eventually she shook it.
‘But you said it.’
‘I know.’
Long minutes passed. ‘Lucien,’ Claudine said at last. ‘If François wasn’t always the way he is now, did the change have anything to with a woman? Was it by any chance someone called Hortense?’
It was some time before Lucien spoke, and to her relief the humour was once again beginning to flicker in his eyes. ‘You are incredible, Claudine. How do you know about Hortense? Or should I say, what do you know about Hortense?’
‘Nothing. Except that she was described to me at a dinner party as “poor, poor, Hortense”.’
Lucien looked at her, his eyes resting on her full, shapely lips. It was with a relief bordering on disloyalty that he realized Beavis must have believed François’ account of what happened that night with Hortense – or he would never have agreed to the marriage. It wasn’t that he had ever seriously doubted his brother, but – contrary to what everyone thought – he had not actually been there that night, and there had always been that nagging suspicion … For he, like the rest of the de Lorvoire family, knew there was a dark side to François that rendered him capable of almost anything.
‘If you’re concocting some story to fob me off with, Lucien,’ Claudine remarked, ‘then may I remind you that it was your idea that we should always tell each other the truth.’
Lucien shot her a look from the corner of his eye. ‘It’s because I have no wish to lie to you that I can tell you nothing about Hortense,’ he said. ‘Besides, I haven’t actually admitted that it was Hortense who was responsible for changing François.’
Claudine leapt to her feet. ‘What a thoroughy infuriating person you are!’ she declared. ‘But I shall find out, I promise you.’
‘And I can promise you that you will only find out the truth when François himself decides to tell you,’ Lucien replied, pulling himself to his feet. ‘Now, what do you say to leaving our exploration of the village until another day? We’ve been gone for some time now, and Maman will start to fret.’
‘I could always,’ Claudine said, as they rounded the top of the hill and started the descent to the car, ‘ask Tante Céline about Hortense. Or any other hostess in Paris, come to that.’
‘Yes, you could,’ he acknowledged, ‘but I think you know as well as I do that you won’t discover the truth from them.’
Claudine was silent then, and by the time they rounded the bend in the drive leading to the château – rather more sedately than they had driven down it, since Lucien was now behind the wheel – she was so deep in thought that she didn’t notice the large black Citröen parked outside the door until Lucien pulled alongside it and casually remarked that François had returned.
Her immediate impulse was to leap into the driving seat and speed off into the sunset, but she somehow managed to control herself, and walked round the car with studied calm.
‘Aren’t you coming inside?’ Lucien said.
‘I don’t think so,’ she answered casually, getting into the driving seat and slamming the door. ‘Tante Céline will be wondering what’s happened to me.’
‘You can always telephone.’
Realizing he was teasing her, she poked out her tongue. Then, leaning forward to restart the engine, her hand suddenly froze. She knew, even before she lifted her head, that he was there. She looked up, aware of the pulsating heat in her chest. He was standing on the steps of the château, watching her. He seemed immense in the long, dark coat that hung from his shoulders, and even at a distance the scar on his face appeared livid and menacing. The smile faded from her lips, and she was profoundly glad she was sitting down, for every muscle in her body seemed to have turned to jelly. Then, to her relief, Lucien was bounding up the steps to greet his brother, slapping him on the back and calling him all manner of insulting names.
By the time François turned back to her, Claudine was fully in control of herself, and stepping as majestically as she could from the car, she walked towards the brothers and held out her hand to François.
Taking it, he said, ‘It is a pleasure to see you again.’
Biting hard on the sarcasm that was longing to spring from her lips, she smiled and said, ‘Thank you. I trust your stay in Paris was a pleasant one?’
‘Moderately so.’
His apparent indifference to the silence that followed, coupled with his pointed failure to invite her inside, inflamed her temper so that her cheeks started to burn with it. ‘As I am clearly no longer welcome, perhaps I had better go,’ she said – and immediately regretted the peevish resentment in her voice.
‘Perhaps Lucien would like to see you back to your car.’ François nodded to his brother, then turned on his heel and started back up the steps to the château.
‘François!’ As he turned, she thought she caught a flicker of amusement pass between the brothers, but she was too angry to care. ‘I would like you to see me to my car, if it’s not too much trouble,’ she snapped.
Sensing that his presence was no longer required, Lucien disappeared inside the château while, stuffing his hands into his trouser pockets, François strolled lazily back down the steps. He stood in front of her, gazing down into her eyes. ‘You have every right to expect an apology for my lack of communication this week,’ he said, surprising her so much that she actually jumped. ‘And naturally, I do apologize. It is my intention to call on you first thing tomorrow, so that perhaps we may get to know one another a little better. As for my manners, I hope you will find them a little less offensive than when we last met. For that I apologize also.’
‘And for the way you snubbed me a moment ago?’
His austere face became even more unsightly as he drew his heavy brows together. ‘Again, I must ask your forgiveness. But you seemed so relaxed in my brother’s company, and so appalled when you saw me, that I have to confess I was jealous. Childish of me, I know, but there it is.’
‘You are a liar!’ she declared. ‘You couldn’t give a damn … Where are you taking me?’ she demanded, as he slipped a hand under her arm and started to walk her away from the château.
‘To your car, of course,’ he answered.
‘Don’t patronize me!’ she shouted, wrenching herself from his grip.
‘Am I to spend the entire afternoon apologizing, Claudine?’
She wanted to sting him with words, to kick him even, but his use of her name had a sudden, deeply disturbing effect on her, and for a moment she was powerless.
‘Let me tell you,’ he said, as he opened her car door. ‘You are every bit as beautiful with your hair spilling about your face like that, and with no make-up and no stockings on, as you were the first time I met you. So you are wrong to say I couldn’t give a damn. I would have to be either insensate or dead to remain impervious to you.’
She was so stunned that she could do nothing more than slide speechlessly into her car.
‘I will send the chauffeur to collect you at Montvisse tomorrow. We shall take out the horses. You do ride, I take it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Would eight o’clock be too early?’
‘No.’
‘Then I shall look forward to the pleasure of your company.’
Dumbly she started the engine as he walked away.
‘François,’ she called, as he started to mount the steps.
He turned back, the thick line of his brows raised in mild irritation.
‘Thank you for the compliment.’
‘It was nothing.’
And it wasn’t until she reached the end of the drive that she realized that that was precisely what he meant.
François found Lucien in the dining-room, helping himself to fruit from the generous bowl on the huge mahogany table. The long windows at the far end of the room looked out over the steep meadow at the front of the château, and in the distance, through the trees, he could see Claudine’s car as she drove along the forest road towards Chinon. Charolais cows were grazing in the shade of the forest, and two gardeners marched back a
nd forth across the bank, cutting the grass.
The dining-room was a large room, but the wood-panelled walls, frescoed ceiling and worn rococo furniture gave it a feeling of intimacy, as did the paintings depicting scenes from the de Rassey de Lorvoire military past, and the crumbling stone fireplace, which at this time of year was regularly filled with fresh flowers. It was the room where the family took all their meals, including breakfast, and Lucien and François often came here to talk.
‘So,’ François said, closing the door behind him, ‘I am glad to see you looking so well, Lucien.’ He sat on one of the high-backed dining chairs and stretched out his long legs to rest his feet on the table. ‘What brings you home?’ he enquired, as he reached out to pull a grape from the bunch closest to him. ‘If my information serves me correctly, the Spanish war is far from over.’
‘Your information is correct. The Basque country is having a pretty rough time of it just now.’ Lucien shrugged, then bit into an apple. ‘The Nationalists will win, of course.’
‘Of course.’
‘Don’t you care?’
‘The only thing that concerns me is that my brother might lose his life fighting on the losing side.’
‘But it would be all right for me to die if I were on the winning side?’
‘Lucien, if you are asking for my permission to die, then I withhold it, unconditionally.’
‘Then, to oblige you, mon frère, I shall do my best to stay alive. But the fight continues, and I shall remain on the side of those whose cause I judge to be worthy.’
‘Very commendable. And if France should need you?’
‘Then of course it would be my patriotic duty to return to my regiment.’
‘A soldier and a patriot. You put me to shame, Lucien.’
At that Lucien gave a shout of laughter. ‘Shame! You don’t know the meaning of the word, François. But tell me, do you think France will have need of its army?’
‘If you’re asking me whether there will be a war in Europe, then how could I possibly know?’
‘Because, François, you know everything. And you have been seen only this week at both the Élysée Palace and the Foreign Office.’