“An interesting question.” Alex leaned back in his chair. “We’ll have to find out, won’t we?”
“Ledford won’t discuss this over the phone. He’ll come here.”
“Probably.”
“It’s a mistake, Alex. If it is Ledford, you shouldn’t have let him know you’re on to him.”
“He’ll be no problem. I’ve dealt with him before.”
“But you were on the same side.”
“He’s a bastard but not capable of any major mischief.”
“He could have changed.” Pavel grimaced. “He was different with you, and I believe you’re underestimating him.” He left the study.
Alex stared down at the yellow pad, doodling absently with a pen, drawing circles around the word Vasaro, underlining Wind Dancer, scrawling four question marks after the name Jonathan Andreas. Maybe Pavel was right and Alex was taking a risk. When he had spotted the possibility that Ledford was involved in the puzzle, his interest had escalated. His past dealings with the man had left a sour taste in his mouth, and he had looked forward to pulling this particular devil’s tail. But perhaps this god-awful boredom was clouding his judgment and leading him to take chances he wouldn’t ordinarily take.
Well, it was done now. If Ledford was involved, he now knew Alex was interested. Alex could only wait for Ledford to react.
Impatiently, he threw the pen aside, rose to his feet, and moved across the room to stand looking out the window at the snow-capped peaks of the Alps. The leaden gray sky hovered over the mountains while blacker clouds roiled in from the north. A storm was coming. It was the middle of June, and the storms should be over, but this year the weather throughout Europe had been unusual. Freak ice storms and torrential rains had deluged Italy and southern France and a blizzard had smothered Germany and Switzerland in snow just last month. Evidently St. Basil was going to be buffeted by yet another storm within the next few hours. Not that it mattered. The chalet was well stocked, had its own generator, and Alex rather liked the feeling of isolation created by banks of snow. He could adjust to society when necessary but preferred a solitary state. Even after all these years Pavel couldn’t understand why Alex didn’t share his gregariousness, his love for the company of others.
Yes, Alex thought, the fact that another storm was definitely on the way was of little importance.
“No!”
The agonized cry tore from Caitlin Vasaro’s throat as she looked in horror at the darkening sky to the north. She had prayed the weather report would be wrong. Dear Lord, how she had prayed. “Not now. Blast it, give me one more day.”
“Caitlin? What is it, dear?” Her mother’s concerned voice came from the breakfast table behind Caitlin. “Is something wrong?”
“Wrong? There’s a storm coming. The roses . . .” Caitlin whirled away from the window and ran toward the kitchen door. “All I needed was one more day, dammit. Why the hell couldn’t I have had one more day?”
“Can’t you wait until you finish your lunch? I spent two hours preparing—what difference will thirty minutes make?” A tiny frown marred Katrine Vasaro’s unlined face, and her expertly made-up lips pursed in disapproval. “You’re too thin. You can’t afford to miss another meal.” Her expression brightened. “Maybe the storm will go around us.”
Caitlin glanced at her mother in disbelief. “You’re worried about me missing a meal? Don’t you understand? It’s the roses. They’re not in full bloom yet and we’ll have to pick them anyway before the damn storm ruins them. Can’t you—”
Why couldn’t her mother understand? Caitlin wondered, exasperated. The roses weren’t their most expensive crop, but they were by far their most popular. After the other losses they had suffered earlier in the year, they were fortunate the bank hadn’t foreclosed on Vasaro two months ago. Caitlin had counted on the rose harvest to stall them a little while longer. She opened her lips to spit out the bitter words and then closed them again. It wouldn’t do any good. Vasaro had never meant much to her mother, who regarded it as a mere business and would be happier living in Cannes or Monte Carlo. As Caitlin flung open the door, she tried to control the unsteadiness of her voice. “No, I can’t wait until after I eat lunch, Mother.”
The next moment she was racing from the manor house and down the hill toward the road. Across the road the rose field stretched out before her as far as the eye could see, the half-open blossoms glowed deep crimson in the sunlight. The sheer velvet beauty of the rich crimson moved her greatly.
There is no love like that snatched from beneath the shadow of the sword.
Where had she read those words? Oh, God, and how she did love Vasaro! She was suddenly conscious of how much she cared for every inch of the rich rolling fields, the orange and the olive groves, the vineyards. . . . Usually, she scarcely noticed the scents, but now in the sultry air the fragrance was overwhelming.
Beneath the shadow of the sword . . .
The sun was shining brilliantly and the sky overhead was a clear blue, but on the horizon hovered those ominous clouds.
Jacques D’Abler, her overseer, already had the workers streaming down the rows of rosebushes deep into the fields. All morning he had been watching the weather with the same anxiety as had Caitlin and acted as soon as the clouds edged the horizon. As she reached the rose field, Jacques was standing with legs astride on the bed of the ancient pickup truck, tossing down a huge wicker basket to each worker, cracking orders like the captain at the helm of his ship.
“Too bad,” Jacques said quietly.
“Don’t say that. It’s not going to beat us. We’re going to do it.” Caitlin’s green-gray eyes glittered fiercely up at him. She whirled toward Jean Baptiste Dalmas, who was picking in the row closest to the road. “Take the sedan and go to the Meunier farm and tell them we need their pickers for two hours. Only two hours.” She hurled the car keys to him. “Tell them we’ll pay them double. Hurry!”
Jean Baptiste bolted up the hill toward the driveway.
Jacques shook his head. “The Meuniers won’t release their people.”
“They might. They don’t grow roses and I need them. God, how I need them. We have forty-two workers. If they’ll lend us twenty more, we might make it.”
“How will you pay them?”
“I’ll find the money somewhere. Did you send someone to the village school to get the children?”
“Of course.” Jacques gestured at the children picking roses beside their parents in the field.
“I’m sorry.” She shook her head wearily. “I know you’ve done your best.”
“I hoped the weather report was wrong.”
“Me too.” She smiled tremulously. “Mother Nature seems to have it in for us this year.” She glanced at the darkening sky. “How long do you think we have?”
Jacques shrugged. “It’s moving slow. Maybe two hours . . . if we’re lucky.”
“We’re not lucky. We’d better count on one hour.” She looked at the men, women, and children working in the fields. Their experienced fingers picked the crimson roses and threw them into the baskets with feverish speed. She felt a thrill of pride. “An hour may be enough the way they’re working.”
“They know what losing the rose crop would mean to you. They’re your people, Caitlin.”
“Yes, they’re my people.” Her glance roamed the field. Guilleme Poiren, Pierre Ledux, Renée Boisson, Marianne Juniet, and many of the rest were like her own family. She had grown up with them, played in their parents’ cottages, chased after fireflies in secret nightly trysts in the orange groves. She had even acted as godmother to many of those children trailing after their mothers down the row of rosebushes. “I’ve got to get to work.” Caitlin grabbed a wicker basket from the bed of the pickup. “When the Meunier workers get here, set eighteen of them picking and keep two workers to help you empty the baskets. Be sure to keep those baskets emptied.” She strode down the row of rosebushes, set her basket down beside Renée Boisson’s, and began to pick the blo
ssoms.
Six-year-old Gaston came running past her with a basket, his small face alight with excitement. “Caitlin, we got out of school!”
“I know, Gaston. But now you must be very grown-up and help me for a little while. It’s very important.”
“Oui, I will pick more than anyone in the whole field.” He raced on down the row to where his mother, Adrienne Kijoux, was picking.
“Maybe it’s not so bad.” Renée didn’t look at Caitlin as she finished one more bush and moved down the row to start another. “What can one day matter?”
“The difference between a high yield of potent scent and a low yield of mediocre scent.” Caitlin was tossing blossom after blossom into the basket. “You know that as well as I do, Renée. For God’s sake, we’re even picking in the afternoon instead of the morning, when the scent would be strongest. We’ll be lucky if we—” She started to laugh. “Now I’m doing it. I told Jacques we couldn’t count on luck.” She cast an anxious glance at the sky. Were the clouds moving faster? She whispered, “But there doesn’t seem to be anything else to count on.”
Renée gave her a sympathetic look as she moved on.
Caitlin worked quickly, her heart pounding, her mouth dry, trying not to focus on anything but the next blossom to be picked. The air was becoming hotter, more humid, more difficult to breathe. The pickers on all sides of her were unusually quiet. Ordinarily, the harvesting was accompanied by chatter, gossip, the rare philosophical discussion, but now even the children were silent.
Where the hell were those Meunier workers?
Jacques moved through the rows, exchanging empty baskets for the full ones, carrying the brimming baskets of blossoms to the pickup truck, and emptying them into the huge tubs.
“Caitlin?”
Caitlin glanced up to see her mother standing beside her, a tentative smile on her lips. “I know you were upset with me, and I want to help. I realize I won’t be very fast, but I want to do my part.” Katrine moistened her lips. “May I share your basket?”
Caitlin’s eyes widened in surprise, and for the first time since she had seen the storm clouds felt the urge to smile. Katrine stood there in her perfectly tailored white Dior slacks and silk blouse, every dark hair of her chignon in place, her carefully manicured fingernails painted the most fashionable shade of mocha, and her expression as earnest as that of a small child begging a treat.
By the saints, this was all she needed, Caitlin thought desperately. Mother was having a guilt trip and Caitlin was expected to make everything all right. For an instant she was tempted to refuse Katrine and send her back to the house.
“I used to pick the flowers when I was a child.” Katrine smiled uncertainly and said again, “I want to help.”
Caitlin hesitated before smothering a resigned sigh. “Of course you can share my basket. We need all the help we can get.”
Katrine’s smile widened happily, and she began to pick the blossoms with precise movements. “It’s really quite nice down here, isn’t it? I remember when my father lifted me on his shoulders and carried me through the fields. You never knew your grandfather, Caitlin. He was a big man and he laughed a lot. I wish you . . .”
A gust of cool wind touched Caitlin’s cheeks, and she lifted her head to gaze at the horizon, no longer hearing Katrine’s chatter. The clouds were writhing and seething.
Jacques paused beside her, carrying an overflowing basket of rose blossoms. “Jean Baptiste is back.”
Caitlin turned toward him, her heart leaping with hope.
Jacques shook his head. “The Meuniers wouldn’t release the workers. Their lavender is in bloom and they need them.”
“Damn!” Caitlin glanced anxiously at the sky again.
“Wind.” Jacques’s gaze followed her own. “Strong wind. It’s going to be a mean one.”
Caitlin’s teeth sank into her lower lip. “Fifteen minutes?”
“Ten.” Jacques strode down the row toward the truck.
Ten minutes. And so far they had barely managed to harvest a quarter of the field. Caitlin felt the panic begin to rise within her as she reached out blindly to the bush in front of her and began to pick again. The minutes were flying; her fingers couldn’t keep pace.
The wind quickened, tugging at her short tan curls, bringing the scent of rain and roses to her nostrils.
The sun disappeared and the fields were bathed in that queer golden light that precedes the storm.
Caitlin could hear an uneasy murmur, like the rustle of dry leaves, from the pickers as they worked faster.
The first low rumble of thunder sounded.
Her fingers fumbled frantically, as if they had never before harvested a blossom.
Caitlin was conscious of her mother’s voice speaking to her, but she could no longer distinguish the words.
Jacques shouted to the workers to bring in their baskets.
She kept on picking.
A large raindrop splattered on her cheek and tickled its way down her neck.
“Caitlin.” Jacques’s voice was very gentle beside her. “The storm has come. Let me take your basket to the truck.”
Caitlin looked up at him in wild protest.
The golden haze had disappeared and the field was cloaked in shadow. The wind tore at Jacques’s short gray-peppered hair and flattened his white chambray shirt against the powerful muscles of his chest. “Give it up, Caitlin. You know the workers won’t stop until you leave the field.”
She looked at the pickers standing silently, watching her. If she kept on working, they would stay in the field by her side even through a deluge and pick wind-ruined and water logged blossoms.
Their loyalty brought tears that were quickly slapped away by the stinging wind.
She straightened and wiped her hands on the front of her jeans. “Take the basket.” Her voice was uneven, and she had to steady it before she raised it to ring out over the rumble of thunder. “It’s over. We’ve done our best. My deepest thanks to each of you. Hurry and take shelter.”
Men, women, and children ran down the rows, tossing the last of their loads of blossoms onto the bed of the truck before setting off at a trot for the village over the hill.
“I think we did very well, don’t you?” Katrine asked complacently as she started toward the truck.
Not well enough, Caitlin thought numbly, moving slowly after her mother. Not nearly well enough.
“Hurry, Caitlin.” Katrine’s pace quickened as the rain began to fall in torrents. “I don’t know why I didn’t think to bring my umbrella. Now I’ll have to go to Cannes to the hairdresser tomorrow.”
Caitlin watched as Jacques tied the tarpaulin over the bed of the pickup truck. “You go on up to the house, Mother. I’ll go with Jacques to the processing shed.”
“If you’re sure.” Katrine shivered delicately. “I do hate to get wet. It must be the feline in me. I’ve always thought if I were reincarnated, I’d like to be a white Persian. I can see myself lolling on a huge satin pillow with a topaz collar to match my eyes. . . .” She glanced back over her shoulder. “Did I help a little, Caitlin?”
Caitlin smiled with an effort. “You helped a great deal, Mother. Now go on up to the house and change those clothes. We don’t want you catching cold.”
Katrine nodded. “I’ll make you a nice hot meal. One of my lamb specialities.” She set off toward the manor, picking her way as daintily as the Persian to which she had compared herself.
Jacques had finished tying down the tarp and jumped from the bed of the truck as Caitlin came up. “Not as bad as it could be.”
Caitlin looked back at the field now being ravaged by wind, beaten unmercifully by the downpour. Her aching sense of loss had nothing to do with the devastation of the harvest itself. Something fragile and beautiful was being destroyed before her eyes, something that was part of her roots, heart, and memory.
“Coming?” Jacques climbed into the cab of the truck.
“You don’t need me. I’ll walk up to
the shed in a little while.”
He watched her standing in the rain, her jeans and T-shirt plastered to her tall, thin body, her eyes filled with pain. He didn’t argue. He knew it would do no good. “You’ll make up your loss when you market your perfume.” His gentle smile was a flash of white, uneven teeth in his wrinkled brown face. “And there’s always the new growth next season.”
But they both knew that some of these bushes would not survive a storm of this ferocity after their roots had been weakened by earlier storms that had battered them. And, as for the perfume, how could they market it when every franc went toward just surviving? Still, Jacques would not give up hope, and neither must she. She had learned through bitter experience that if you wanted anything in this world, you had to hold on with bulldog tenacity until you got it. They had lost and won many battles over the years; this was only one more. Caitlin nodded. “When I sell my perfume.”
She stepped back to the side of the road and waved him on. Jacques put the truck into gear and the vehicle lumbered down the gravel road curving up toward the long stone buildings that lay beyond the manor house.
Caitlin ran to a hillside shelter. She sat in wet grass and drew up her legs, linking her arms around her knees. The storm was denuding the rosebushes with a cruelty the pickers would never have shown. Some bushes were being uprooted by the wind, and crimson blossoms were lying everywhere, beaten into the mud, carried by the rivers of water gushing down the rows toward the road.
The storm continued for another hour, and Caitlin sat it out watching the destruction, waiting for the end.
Late in the afternoon the rain finally stopped, and a weak, watery lemon-yellow sun came out from behind the clouds. Caitlin stood up and moved slowly down the hill. They had lost at least half the bushes in the field.
But Caitlin hadn’t stayed to be a guest at the wake. She had remained because she needed the reassurance that no matter how tortured by circumstance or nature, Vasaro always survived. The earth was always waiting to be nourished and come alive again.
Reap the Wind Page 2