“I can instruct you on marriage, tomorrow, myself. The primary requirement for you, M. Montfort, is that you agree to bring the children up Catholic.”
“If we have any,” he’d been surprised to hear himself say, “why not?”
Hugh didn’t believe. But he wanted to. It would be nice, in the end, to have hope. To think he might see Georgie again, and his baby. . . .
And if there were children, by some miracle, Hugh wanted them to have hope, too.
“But the wedding—Tom won’t come,” Sophie said miserably.
“My dear child, Thomas won’t attend in any case. As your priest, I advise you to make the commitment before God, and continue on with your lives. It’s while he thinks he can stop this marriage that Thomas will be most opposed. After you’re wed, he’ll have to live with it. In my judgement, marrying sooner, rather than later, is your best chance to reconcile with your son.”
Sophie nodded, and stopped crying. Hugh took her back to the hotel. The priest had been shrewd. Perhaps faith in God wasn’t just for the credulous and the cowardly.
Hugh was pleased it was going to be a church wedding, but mostly, he was just glad that Sophie was going to be his.
“This is it.” Sophie’s voice pulled him from his thoughts. “Wengen.” She clutched at him. “Oh, Hugh. It’s so exciting.”
And, he realized, it was.
“Come in, come in, please.” Henrich Brandt bowed and smiled, and Gertrud clucked around them, taking Sophie’s fur coat and hanging it in their cloakroom. “You are very welcome. Coffee? Schnapps?”
“Coffee would be terrific,” Hugh said. It had been a long day, and he wanted to be sharp.
“It is so good to see you again, Frau Massot,” Heinrich said. His old eyes sparkled, and Hugh thought he meant it. “You are most welcome in our home. Do you like it?”
Sophie glanced around; it was a luxurious chalet, furnished, rather incongruously, with every kind of modern gadget. There was a Japanese-style waterfall in one corner of the sitting room, a huge gas fire with the effect of true flames, and a flat-screen TV on one wall.
“It looks very comfortable,” she said, truthfully.
“Ach, we’re getting old. We need to be warm, these days; we need soft edges, and baths that are easy to get out of. You helped us afford this. And later, we can get a nurse to come, whenever we wish.” Heinrich pumped Sophie’s hand again, enthusiastically. “You helped us afford all this, Frau Massot. It’s a wonderful deal for us. And the pieces for the party, they helped, no?”
“We saw pictures,” Gertrud chimed in. “Of the new stores.” She clapped her hands, like a child. “Beautiful . . . finally, the pieces, the jewels, are displayed as they deserve. And people notice. Vielen, vielen Dank . . .”
“But I am forgetting my manners.” Herr Brandt bowed to Hugh. “Herr Montfort, you are welcome here, also. If Mme Massot trusts you . . .”
He didn’t sound wildly enthusiastic.
“Thank you, sir. May I sit down?”
Hugh was waved to a seat; Sophie sat with him on a low-slung leather couch, which he found uncomfortable. On the other hand, Frau Brandt’s coffee was delicious—strong, and with a hint of cardamom. The Brandts nestled together opposite them, across a table of smoked glass; Hugh saw them clutching each others’ withered hands, and hoped that he and Sophie would wind up like that; other than the decor, perhaps, it was an engaging picture.
“We have come to make you a business proposal,” he said.
“I feared as much.”
Sophie and Hugh exchanged glances.
“The answer is no, Herr Montfort.”
“I see. May I ask why?”
The old man shook his head. “I have taken to reading the papers, sir, in the last couple of years. I have read of you, and your firm. And I have seen pictures of some of the . . . pieces,” he added disdainfully. “You will excuse me, but Gertrud and I do not wish to be involved in selling—forgive me—such ugliness. There are many women in the world today who do not even know what a parure is, who will wear tin alloys that masquerade as gold. . . .”
“Some of those necklaces were made of chicken wire,” Gertrud added, appalled. “Really, Mr. Montfort—how could you sell such things?”
Hugh was slightly taken aback. They made it sound like he’d been selling drugs.
“I wanted to make money,” he said flatly. “And I divorced my job from my personal taste in jewellery, such as it is. Mayberry reflected my wish to make money for my shareholders, some of them pensioners relying on dividend income.”
They seemed unconvinced. But he was relaxing; this was, after all, a meeting, and meetings were what he was good at.
“My personal taste and yours may differ,” he said. “My home, for example, uses more antiques. . . .”
Gertrud giggled, a little shamefacedly.
“We used to, but now we want comfort,” she said. “But never does it hurt our jewels, Mr. Montfort.”
“And my own taste there is entirely the same as yours. In fact, I believe that you are the preeminent artists working in stones and precious metals today.”
“We are,” Heinrich said simply. “There is no question.”
Hugh bowed slightly. “When I wanted to buy House Massot, I visited the showrooms that Sophie had redesigned. I knew of the quality of your designs, of course, but once I saw them properly displayed, I was entranced. I bought a piece myself, even though I took a significant risk that it might make it into the business press and hurt my bid. And even though . . . ,” his eyes slid towards Sophie, “I had no woman in my life to give it to.”
Their eyes lit up with interest.
“Which piece?” Heinrich asked.
“An aigrette, an homage to the Tiffany piece.”
“I remember,” he said. “That was quite lovely.”
“I thought so. I paid almost a hundred thousand euros for it.”
“And you have never regretted the purchase,” he said, proudly.
Hugh smiled. “Indeed, I never have. And it is that level of beauty—or something approximating it—that I wish to sell.”
“We are to start a company,” Sophie said, “which will make multiple pieces, lines of jewellery, using the more inexpensive but natural stones, and which will sell only classic designs. There will not be any white or rose gold used, or any platinum or titanium; we will make purely traditional pieces. Of course, they will not be as perfect as the aigrette. But I want to bring fine, classic jewels to those who cannot afford the prices of House Massot.”
“We are preparing financing,” Hugh added. “And we wish you to be the chief designers; to design the signature collections and to train the younger designers who we will hire, at your direction.”
They glanced at each other.
“Mr. Montfort, we are getting old.”
“Mme Massot, you have provided for us so well, to live in our old age . . .we are looking forward to our retirement.”
“But aren’t you still employed at House Massot?”
“You are joking, no?” Heinrich’s old face creased further in disgust. “We resigned, Madame. As soon as we heard you were forced out.”
“And not only us. Mlle Claudette Chiron, and Edouard Peguy, they also resigned. Mr. Stockton cut salaries for the staff—”
“They are moving Mayberry collections in with House Massot.”
“They are trying to sack many of the expensive Massot designers, other than us. Lillian Brooks, they fired her . . .”
“If you would hire Mrs. Brooks, you may do so if you work for us. We would only give you a budget. The design, the materials, everything would be sourced through you,” said Hugh.
“I love jewellery,” Sophie said passionately. “When it’s truly beautiful. And it’s a dying art. If you work for us now—for a year, maybe two—you can train the next generation, you can ensure that your work will survive.”
“And meanwhile, we will see to it that you get the credit you deserve. For to
o long, you have toiled in anonymity. Our first collection would be entitled the Brandt Designs.” Hugh was extemporizing, but he saw the excitement on their faces; he ploughed on. “I will arrange a private exhibition at an exclusive London gallery. And we will invite the world’s press.”
“Like your party to relaunch House Massot?” Gertrud asked Sophie, timidly.
Sophie smiled. “Bigger, far bigger. That was only a practice run.”
“Give me two years,” Hugh asked them. “And I will give you two million dollars, U.S., plus five percent of the profit of the company.” He gestured at the room. “If you like this, you could buy more of them. Or hire some servants, perhaps. Be waited on hand and foot.”
“Servants!” Heinrich spluttered. But Montfort saw that the idea appealed to him.
“Why not? You have laboured all your lives and for an inadequate reward. You are comfortable now, certainly. But why not work just a little longer and go out in a blaze of glory? Why not become truly rich? And, all the while, allowing ordinary women to wear truly fine jewels. We will not be another Tiffany; we will make unique, elegant gems that do not look as though they rolled from a production line.”
“I . . .” Heinrich licked his lips. “Will you excuse us?”
Sophie nodded. He rose, slowly, from his couch, holding out a hand to Gertrud; the two of them shuffled into the open-plan kitchen.
Hugh held his breath. It was odd; while he was waiting to find out if Sophie could love him, the jewellery business had held no fascination, but now that she was his, it was consuming him.
Was it healthy? Perhaps not; he had first been drawn by the need to obliterate his grief. Now Montfort wanted revenge. He kept replaying Pete Stockton’s gloating as he barked that Hugh was fired. He read the Wall Street Journal and the FT, and he watched the steady drip-drip-drip of articles chronicling the decline of Mayberry. Bad press. Nasty blind items. Shareholder flight. The stock, slowly but inexorably declining. The almost visible loss of confidence.
It angered him. So many years of hard, brutally hard work. All those long flights to Tokyo, all those months courting De Beers in South Africa. Montfort had built Mayberry. He had revived a dull, profitless little brand and made its shareholders rich. It had taken careful strategy, ruthless acquisition, trimming the fat and laying workers off. And in the process it had revolutionized an industry.
Now, something so trivial as a personal jealousy would destroy it. Pete Stockton was about to drive two formerly profitable houses into the ground.
Montfort wanted to punish the man. He wanted to avenge Sophie, and Tom, for her sake. And he was also tired of being number two. In fact, these days he was slightly ashamed that he had ever worked for any company in which he did not have a majority stake.
He wanted his own house. And the Brandts were key.
They came back into the sitting room. He was relieved to see they were smiling.
“Six percent, Mme Massot, and you have a deal.”
Sophie glanced at him. Hugh nodded.
“Deal,” he said. “Let’s go to work.”
Chapter 45
“Beautiful,” he said. He bent and kissed the hand of his bride. “Don’t you think so, Natasha?”
Natasha struggled with the cruel question. He smiled at her; he enjoyed watching her squirm.There were tears in her eyes, and she was biting down on her lip as she forced a smile.
“Yes, Pyotr,” she half whispered. “I do.”
Good. She was still obedient. He intended to test her. So far she had not strayed. She called him by his new name, Pyotr; it amused him to slip from one identity to another as he left his old life behind. She had led him to her relatives, and stuck to the story he’d fed her; Natasha had wanted to escape, and Pyotr had selflessly offered to help her; he had sacrificed all his own wealth on the altar of her desire.
Of course, her relatives in Espoo had welcomed Pytor with open arms. Especially the grandmother, Katrinka. Natasha was her favourite granddaughter, and she cooed and billed over Pyotr.
He was a saviour.
He was a hero.
And he was the favoured suitor for Natasha’s niece, Aud.
Natasha’s brother, Sven, had married a French girl from Nîmes, come back to Finland, and prospered. After the war, the French were desperate to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives, and one way to do it was to return, after rations and austerity, to glorious cooking. Marianne had relatives in the restaurant trade, and Sven made a fine living exporting Finnish delicacies: fresh fish, smoked meats, fermented honey. The entire family bought a large suburban house with a plot of garden.They owned a colour television and an American car. Sven supported his grandmother, his aging father, and one plump, plain daughter.
He had called her Aud after the great foundress of Iceland, Aud the Deep-Minded. Alas, the name was no more appropriate than Helen of Troy would have been. Aud was simple and boring. She helped her father in his store, showed no desire to attend college, and seemed to have no ambition other than to get an extra helping of pudding every night.
Sven tried to love his daughter. He had no idea why she had not turned out like Marianne, his stylish wife, or his long-lost sister Natasha, the passionate one who had eloped to Estonia with a rich banker so many years ago, both of them women who had been prepared to enter whole new worlds for love, to cast off the familiar and leap into the darkness. Aud just stood around, gaining weight and owlishly squinting at the television. She showed no interest in dressing up, or flirting with boys. For all her docility, Aud had an instinctive grasp of one thing: she was not attractive, and she would never be attractive. She gave up men as a bad job and dedicated herself to helping her father.
All Sven wanted was for his only child to show some spark of life. Often, he felt like shaking her. Sometimes, he felt like shaking his wife. He was nothing like her: where could Aud’s bad genes have come from?
And then came the night that his life, and Aud’s, changed forever.
It was cold, pitch-black, the way October nights in Espoo often are. He woke, frightened, clutching his warm woollen blankets to his chest. A nightmare? No, he realized there was a thunderous banging on the door.
The police . . . ? Someone was dead . . . ? His store had been burned down ... ? Heart pounding, he pushed his wife away from him as she reached out to clutch at his nightshirt, tugged on his boots, and raced down the stairs. Aud had crept out of her bedroom; she watched from the landing as Sven wrenched open the door.
“Sven, let us in.” It was a plaintive cry. “I’m so cold. So cold . . .”
He stared. But the sight that met his eyes did not alter. There were two figures shaking with cold, their lips blue in the light of the street lamps, on his doorstep. One of them was a skinny, pale young man in a soaking-wet fur coat, his eyes dark and wild. The other was his sister.
“My God!” he said. “My God, Tasha! You’re alive—you’re here . . .”
Her teeth chattered. Sven pulled her to him in a bear hug, then almost recoiled. Her body was freezing, and there were crystals of ice in her hair.
“Aud!” he roared. “Marianne! Get down here. Aud, lay the fire. And then draw a bath. Marianne, get some roasted elk and my bottle of whisky. Hurry!”
As he hugged Natasha, the pale young man slipped quietly inside the house and shut the door. He looked up at Aud and said, in perfect Finnish, “Make that bath barely lukewarm, or we will get chilblains. The fire must wait until we have thawed.”
Sven’s mouth opened, then closed again. The man looked like a drowned ferret, his skin was pale with the chill and his eyes horribly red from lack of sleep. But he spoke with such confidence that he could have been the mayor condescending to pay Sven a visit.
“Who are you?” he muttered.
Tasha looked nervously at the stranger, who held her gaze coolly. He answered staring into her eyes, not even looking at Sven. It was not until a year later that Sven would recall that moment as odd.
“My name is Py
otr Vladekovich,” he said.
There had never been such a night in his household. His father and grandmother had never thought they’d see Natasha again. They were overwhelmed with joy, weeping and hugging her, blessing Pyotr and the gods that had driven him to make such a desperate attempt. As Natasha recounted the tale of their escape to her family, Pyotr announced that he would take the first bath. Sven was sure the water must have hurt, with the man close to hypothermia, but no sound came from the room. He brought out fresh clothes for his guest—his own best suit and shirt—and announced that he would buy him a new wardrobe tomorrow.
The man emerged, looking four sizes too small for Sven’s clothes, yet somehow neat and defying laughter. He said a quiet word to Tasha, and she instantly tore herself from her parents and followed him to the bathroom; Marianne selected a warm nightgown and robe for her, and fleece-lined slippers, then busied herself in the kitchen, delighted to see her husband so happy. Despite their good fortune, Sven had always missed his sister, and then there was the cloud over their daughter’s prospects. He had not smiled much lately. Here, in the world’s far north, winter was a serious business, and it was hard to find nuggets of joy in the long darkness. But tonight, with their guests in warm clothing, there would be a fire, and wine, and whisky from Scotland, rare roasted meat, and warm baked potatoes.
The family settled around the fire. Marianne served them on their laps. Tasha told the story, her teeth still now, sipping gratefully at the whisky, one eye on the blazing fire as though it were the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. How her husband had started to drink, then to beat her, and finally had threatened murder. How Pyotr, a merchant from the market square, had challenged him when he hit her. How the banker had threatened to call for the secret police. Escape had been their only option, and without papers there was only one way: to buy an old-fashioned sleigh, take what supplies they could and a pack of dogs, and set out on the long, wretched journey across the frozen wastes to Finland.
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