Gastien: From Dream to Destiny: A Caddy Rowland Historical Family Saga/Drama (The Gastien Series Book 2)

by Caddy Rowland

  As Mic had looked into those eyes, he had suddenly known that young man would be the best ami that he would ever have. He had known that he would love him and laugh with him, protect and plan with him, cry and commiserate with him. Most of all, he had realized that life would be richer having known him.

  Mic had smiled at the young man and raised his hand to beckon him in, but the young man had turned and hurried away. He is new and poor. He is embarrassed that he has no money to join us, Mic had realized. No matter. We will be brought together soon enough.

  Mic sat down his glass, leaning back in his chair. Eyes bright with tears, he smiled.

  “I thought you would never ask.”

  #######

  Thank you for taking time out of your life to read the story of Gastien Beauchamp. Although Gastien’s personal story ends here, the family story continues.

  CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE ON TO THE NEXT BOOK IN THE GASTIEN SERIES:

  Tristan Michel: Bloodline of Passion

  I hope you will continue to read the stories of this family. I dearly love writing them for you.

  -Caddy Rowland

  Here is an excerpt from Tristan Michel: Bloodline of Passion:

  Montmartre (Paris 19th Arrondissement), France 1909

  Tristan Michel sighed and quietly turned again in his bed. It was almost 4am! In just a few hours he needed to be up, getting ready to start the work day. So far this night sleep had eluded him. He tried not to wake his wife, Manon, with his restless tossing and turning. After all, she would have a full day tomorrow herself with the three children.

  Their oldest, Laure, was five and all girl. She was convinced she was a princess and fully acted the part. Both he and Manon knew they needed to stop spoiling her, but Manon did not have the heart; and Tristan Michel simply did not have the time.

  Besides, he reasoned, that was the woman’s responsibility. He had more than enough responsibilities at work, heading his own architectural firm. Buildings were going up almost faster than they could be planned in Montmartre, with Tristan Michel’s firm at the helm of the vast majority of them.

  Their middle child, Auguste, was three. He was a quieter child, but still a three-year-old. He could get into something within seconds, seemingly before one’s back was even turned.

  Benoit was the baby at two. Terrible two’s did not begin to describe what they were experiencing with him so far. Mon Dieu, that child had a pair of lungs on him! Tristan Michel was glad he did not have to deal with his tantrums all day long. He would shoot himself in the head if he did.

  Tristan Michel pressed his eyes shut tightly, praying for a few hours of sleep. Today was going to be hell. Two new bids were going out, three presentations had to be made, and groundbreaking was occurring on a major project deep within old Paris itself. By the time he caught up on paperwork and notes, he would be lucky if he got home by ten o’clock tonight.

  The culprit to his sleeplessness was the conversation with Mic last night about his father, Gastien. He had invited his father’s best ami out to dinner and finally confessed that he had been wrong in his judgment of Gastien. He then beseeched Mic to tell him everything that he remembered about his father and his life.

  He had wanted to ask Mic about his father for the last year or two. Once he finally got up the nerve to do so, he found that Mic was eager to share every memory, every detail.

  Getting home after midnight, Tristan Michel hurried to bed, only to find himself haunted by thoughts of Gastien.

  Gastien had never played it safe, Tristan Michel realized. His father had held a dream; had stopped at nothing to achieve it. Once there his father had constantly pushed the envelope of creativity, never caring if his paintings were accepted or ridiculed. He had been his own man, and damn the consequences.

  Tristan Michel sighed again. The hunger for excitement that had been whispering to him for the last several years was now a full blown scream; a scream that refused to be silenced, no matter how hard Tristan Michel tried to placate it.

  He tried to tell the scream that it was more important to be accepted and successful than to be excited. He explained that being conventional and down to earth were the kind of qualities that his wife, his family, and his associates admired and respected. Respect, he chided the scream, was something one had to work hard at to earn. Taking risky chances did not generally earn the type of respect and financial stability that being logical and hardworking did. Family and social responsibility – those were the things to keep at the forefront.

  The scream intensified. Tristan Michel lay awake listening to its persistent roar.

  Unlike his father, “safe” had always been important to him. Because his father had not provided a normal, stable family situation, he had been teased relentlessly at school. His mother Sophie’s family had never missed an opportunity to tell him how irresponsible his father was; how he mistreated Sophie and Tristan Michel himself by choosing not to allow them to live with him in his studio. He had known growing up that Gastien had loved him, but living with his mother at Aunt Odette’s and only going to stay at fathers for two nights a week had been hard.

  When he was a little boy, Tristan Michel had been crazy about his handsome father; however, it had seemed like his father just could not figure out how to relate to him. When he and his mother had visited, he had always felt glad when it was time go to bed at “Aunt” Cassie and “Aunt” Vic’s, so Gastien and Sophie could have the nights alone. His father had always worried that Tristan Michel would get into solvents or ruin a painting. Tristan Michel had wanted so badly to connect with his father, but it seemed more often than not things just fell apart.

  Then, at about age eight, the teasing at school and in the neighborhood had begun. School mates and older kids said mean things about his father, making Tristan Michel ashamed. The other kids had gossiped constantly about his strange artist Papa who did not love his wife and son enough to let them live with him. It was hinted that he did bad things with other women and was involved in a bohemian lifestyle.

  At first, Tristan Michel had refused to believe those ugly things. He hadn’t even really understood what they were implying. Then one day when he was ten, he got out of school early and decided to surprise his father by visiting his studio. Tristan Michel had walked in to find his father with a female on her knees in front of him, his trousers unbuttoned. His father had forgotten to lock the door.

  All of a sudden, Tristan Michel had understood the things the older children were saying. For the first time in his life, he began to believe the things both those children and his family said about his father.

  As time went on, Gastien had developed both alcohol and drug habits that made him even more unreliable. Plans had often been made to be together, only to have his father forget to pick him up; or if Gastien did remember, he would be drunk when Tristan Michel showed up at Gastien’s studio for the day.

  When Tristan Michel was sixteen, Gastien had gotten very ill. Tristan Michel’s mother, Sophie, had stayed with Gastien until he was well. When she had returned back home a week later, she became ill herself.

  Within the week she had died, at age 34. Tristan Michel had blamed his father, even though his head told him that even if they had lived a normal life she would have died anyway. She still would have been around Gastien during his illness and caught sick.

  His family had applied even more pressure to Tristan Michel, encouraging him to embrace their family side and turn his back on Gastien. They had taken a boy who was crushed with sorrow and used that sorrow to finally turn him fully against his father.

  When Gastien returned to Odette’s after grieving, Tristan Michel had told him that he did not want to see him anymore. He simply watched as his father seemed to implode into himself. Gastien had begged him not to do that, not to ask him to stay away; but Tristan Michel had remained unmoved.

  A few minutes later, he had gazed out the window as his father crumpled to his knees out front and wept. When the urge to run to him had hit
Tristan Michel, he had hardened his heart, turning away to get on with his life; a life that did not include irresponsible bohemians.

  He had hated his father for his addictions and for making his mother die. At least, he had thought he did. In a blind rage, Tristan Michel had destroyed each and every one of his father’s paintings after he had died; before Mic had a chance to rescue any of them. Every one – except for Azure. That huge painting still hung from the high ceiling of Mic’s home and studio below Tristan Michel’s firm. Thank God he had not had the ability to get it down, or that would have been destroyed, too.

  When he thought of all the work he had sent to be burned he wanted to cry. Never mind that now it would not be considered “weird” but cutting edge. It would probably be worth a fortune in just a few years.

  Tristan Michel did not care about that. He had more money than he needed. What he did care about was that he had nothing to remember his father by.

  Ashamed, he remembered the last time he had seen his father. Tristan Michel had visited Gastien a few years after he had told his father he did not want to see him anymore. His guilt had made him walk over there on the off chance that he had been wrong, and his father was not an addict. Gastien had been high, making Tristan Michel feel sanctified in his convictions.

  Trying to make amends, Gastien had given him a spectacular oil painting of Sophie with Tristan Michel nursing at her breast. It was probably the finest, most perfect portrait Gastien had even done; and he was damn good at portraiture!

  Tristan Michel had left; then slashed up the painting, throwing it in the gutter a little way down from his father’s studio. He had known his father would probably find it. He had hoped it would break whatever pieces of Gastien’s heart might still be intact.

  Mic, furious about Gastien’s work all being destroyed, did not talk to him for years. Mic had loved Gastien deeply and he did not easily forgive someone destroying his ami’s work. Mic living in his studio below Tristan Michel’s firm made it awkward and uncomfortable. They ran into each other coming and going many times every week.

  Mic had originally lived upstairs, because his father had given Mic the upstairs studio. Before Gastien had died, though, he legally gave Mic the downstairs studio where Gastien worked and lived, the storage space next to it, and the grounds. He had willed the upstairs studio to his son.

  They had only recently begun greeting each other.

  Because of the turbulent relationship with his father growing up, Tristan Michel clung to family and any normalcy he could find. Tradition had always been important to him. He vowed that he would be a stable and dependable provider, always making sure he was a family man.

  Lately, however, the hunger to know more about his father grew in intensity, while at the same time discontent started to grow in his brain. He was now 28 years old. He had a lovely, reserved French wife, three beautiful healthy children, and an extremely successful business.

  That should have made him happy. Instead, he could not help but wonder if that was all there was to life.

  Everything was so predictable! Where was the excitement; the challenge? Was every day going to be the same as the last one, until he finally grew old and died? His father had not settled for routine. He would have shuddered to know his son did not have the courage to really do something that stood out in his chosen field.

  This discontent and wondering about what had made his father the man he had been, were what finally drove him to ask Mic out to dinner last night. He took Mic to Le Procope in the heart of Paris, where both Mic and Gastien had worked as servers when they were about eighteen. Tristan Michel had admitted to Mic that he had been wrong about his father and begged Mic to tell him the story of Gastien.

  Now here he lay, unable to sleep. He finally understood that, although the relationship between his mother and father was nonconformist, they both went into it willingly. Sophie and he had loved each other deeply, and had done their best to make their son secure. She had known and accepted that Gastien would have other women. His father had made that clear from the start.

  Tristan Michel could finally accept that, regardless of how others believed, Gastien and Sophie had the right to have lived how they chose. As an adult, he was starting to see that the family had been wrong in not minding their own business. They were actually the ones to cause the disruption and heartache, not his father.

  Thinking about how crazy his mother and father had been for each other, he felt jealous. For underneath the scream in Tristan Michel’s head was a dark, urgent whisper. This whisper told him that, by denying Gastien’s passion that ran in his veins, he was missing out on one of the greatest pleasures in life: fabulous, raw, urgent sex.

  At times he fantasized about Manon becoming wanton, actually devouring his penis in her mouth…or what it would be like to experience more than one woman in his lifetime. Oh, the things he would like to do with a woman, if he could ever let himself go enough to do them!

  He scolded himself for those undisciplined thoughts. Manon would never succumb to such whorish activities, nor would he want her to. Decent men and women treated sex as sacred.

  Non, he was not going to lower himself to his father’s standards in regard to sexuality. Sex with a woman he treated with respect was enough, merci beaucoup! Humans were not animals.

  He forcefully pushed the lewd images from his mind.

  Thoughts immediately went back to Gastien and his art. That art had always been done with complete abandon. Tristan Michelle knew that not only had Gastien been full of passion, his father had been full of courage.

  He himself always played it safe. When was he going to take a chance, do something really new, like his father had? Would he wait until it was too late? Would his destiny be to be forgotten because of mediocrity?

  He knew Gastien would not want that. He would want his flesh and blood to do something to set the world on its backside and then spin it! He would have wanted his son to have the balls to stand up and say, “I will no longer play it safe!”

  Tristan Michel constantly read with longing about the tall buildings that were being built in New York City and Chicago. They called them “skyscrapers”. What a thrill to be able to actually design and be involved in the building of those towering giants! He had carried dreams of giant, tall buildings in his head since he was about nine years old.

  Tristan took a shaky breath. Closing his eyes, he made a vow. I am going to do it. I am going to design the buildings that I daydream about and see in my sleep. I am not going to play it safe any longer! My wife may be upset, but it is her place to support me. I am going to sell my firm and start new.

  Tristan Michel began planning. While it was true that some new design would be accepted in France, the true trendsetters for architecture were not in Europe any longer. The cutting edge in architecture was now across the ocean, where new ideas were commonly embraced.

  And why not? Compared to Europe, the USA was a new country. It made sense that a new country would have shiny, new buildings; the tallest the world had ever seen.

  Suddenly, he knew the only place he could go to make his dreams come alive. The decision was made. Tristan Michel was moving his family, and his future, to the United States of America.

  To be continued

  CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE ON TO THE NEXT BOOK IN THE GASTIEN SERIES:

  Tristan Michel: Bloodline of Passion

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  Books by Caddy Rowland:

  Psychological Thriller/Drama

  Sex & Death & Rock ’n Roll

  Candy

  There Was a House Saga

  House of Pleasure

  House of Pain

  House of Trickery

  House of Shame (Conclusion)

  The Avengement Series

  Stiletto

  Solace

  Seduction

  Shame

  Historical Fictio
n/Drama/Family Saga

  The Gastien Series

  Gastien: The Cost of the Dream

  Gastien: From Dream to Destiny

  Tristan Michel: Bloodline of Passion

  Giselle: Keeper of the Flame

  Gastien: Circle of Destiny

  Fanpage: http://www.facebook.com/authorcaddyrowland(hit the like button)

  Blog: http://www.caddyrowlandblog.blogspot.com/

  Author Email: caddyauthor@gmail.com

  Glossary

  Ami/Amie: Male friend (ami) Female friend (amie)

  Arrondissement: Borough or section of the city

  Au Lapin Agile: The Nimble Rabbit. Oldest cabaret in Montmartre

  Avant garde: Pushing borders of the norm or status quo, experimental or innovative works of people in art, culture or politics.

  Avocat: Attorney

  Baekeoffe: Sliced potatoes, onions, lamb, beef and pork marinated overnight in white wine and juniper berries, seasonings varied. Slow cooked all day in a ceramic casserole dish.

  Baguette: Long, thin loaf of French bread with crisp crust.

  Bâton de Jacob: Éclair with caramel icing on top

  Bezique: A French card game

  Bite: Cock (vulgar) (pronounced more like beet)

  Bois Durci: Sawdust and animal blood, heated and pressed into shape, then painted.

  Bonjour: Good day

  Bonsoir: Good evening

  Boudoir: Females private bedroom

  Bourgeois: Middle class (especially upper middle class)

  Brouillade de truffles: Omelet with truffles (eggs whisked gently with a lot of butter and truffles).