Invitation to Provence (22 page)

He sighed, thinking about what to do. He decided the first trick was to get her to listen to him. The second was to tell her the truth. The third was to explain that he could not have betrayed Rafaella’s trust, and the fourth was simply to throw himself on her mercy. Remembering that steely core under the soft blond exterior, he didn’t think he stood much of a chance. Unless, of course, she still felt the same electric pull between them that he did.

He walked past the fountain and sat on the front steps. Leaning back against the stone lion, he waited for Criminal to catch up to him. At least the dog was enjoying himself, keeping aloof from the yapping Pomeranians and the snooty Mimi and Louis. “Street dogs rule. Okay, Criminal,” he said, grinning as the dog came shooting up the drive. He trotted toward Jake, panted to a halt and dropped a bloodied rabbit at his feet, then he sat on his haunches and gazed triumphantly at him. Jake didn’t know whether to say “bad dog” or “good dog.” He finally settled for “clever dog,” then took the morning newspaper he’d picked up in the village, wrapped the poor rabbit in it, and took it to the kitchen.

Haigh frowned when he saw the bloody parcel. “Damned dogs,” he muttered, then added, “You’ll never see Mimi or Louis do that. That pair couldn’t catch a fly.” He permitted himself a small laugh. He stopped and looked up at Jake. “Thanks for last night,” he said. “Only you could have got rid of that bastard.”

Jake shrugged. “By now he’s back where he belongs.”

“Never to darken the château’s doors again,” Haigh said with a grin. “I always knew he was the one who pushed the girl over the cliff, despite the alibi. Alain always had an alibi for everything. He was a rotten kid and he grew up to be an evil man. Thank god Rafaella has finally faced up to it.”

Jake nodded. He was thinking about Felix. He believed he knew what had happened but he couldn’t say because he had no proof yet, though he was working on it.

“Anyone else up yet?” He helped himself to a cup of coffee and leaned against the counter, sounding as casual as he could.

Haigh gave him a sideways look. He knew who he meant. “Madame took breakfast in her room. And Madame Juliette has not yet emerged, though god knows those bloody little Poms must be bursting to pee, I only hope not on my Aubus-son. And Mademoiselle Clare took off for the village, I believe.”

“The bloody Pomeranians came with me for a walk so you needn’t worry.” Jake waited for him to tell him where Franny was, but Haigh was fussing over his trays of canapés for the “cocktail” that evening, humming an off-key little tune to himself that Jake recognized as the old classic “As Time Goes By.” He heaved a sigh. “Okay, Haigh, so tell me where she is,” he said at last.

Haigh lifted his head momentarily. “And who would that be, Mr. Jake?” His face was so studiedly innocent Jake had to laugh.

“Okay, I confess,” he said. “I’m looking for Franny.”

“Hummph.” Haigh went back to arranging triangles of phyllo pastry on a wooden chopping board. “You interested in her, then?”

“Let’s say we have some unresolved issues.”

Haigh snorted again. “Call it what you will, the result is the same. Anyhow, she’s taking a stroll around the garden. You might find her out by the lake.”

Jake gave Haigh a hearty slap on his back that sent his bits of pastry flying and brought irritated curses down on his head, but he was smiling as he jogged down the grassy path to the lake. The sun was high in the sky by now and the sweeping chestnut branches cast fluttering shadows at his feet. At the end of the shady tunnel the lake glittered green, and he recalled when he was a boy, running down here to catch a glimpse of Rafaella, hoping to spend time in her company, to listen to her stories of the Marten family, to hear her silvery laugh, to bask in her life-giving glow, and to melt inside when her Mediterranean-blue eyes looked into his.

Yet the woman he had married had been completely different from Rafaella. Amanda was a shy girl, quiet and delicately pretty, an academic with aims to become a professor of English, preferably at someplace like Princeton.

Jake stopped. He put his hands against a massive tree, stretching his tight hamstrings. He was a good runner, could still do a marathon with ease, though he no longer finished in the first dozen. Still, not bad for forty-four.

He straightened up and saw Franny on the red bridge,
leaning over the rail, gazing into the greenish water. He walked the last few yards and stood beside her. She glanced over her shoulder at him, then went back to studying the carp darting under the bridge. For a long minute neither of them spoke.

Finally he said, “I’m sorry, Franny. I know what you think, but I was caught in a dilemma. I couldn’t tell you the real reason I wanted to meet you because I would have been breaking Rafaella’s trust. The invitation was to be her surprise.” Franny turned her shoulder away from him. “I apologize,” he added humbly. “I know what you must be thinking, that I used you, took advantage of you, but that’s not the way it was. I liked you, Franny Marten, the minute I saw you telling off Marmalade’s owner. I liked your spirit, I liked your independence. I knew how tough your life had been, how dedicated you were. And when I found out how deeply you cared about your animals, I liked you even more.”

He sighed, not knowing if she was even listening. “When you took such good care of my ankle, I felt just like the German shepherd whose life you saved. And I liked it, I like the way you were concerned about me, the way you cared.”

He put his hand on her shoulder but Franny shrugged it away. She moved two steps along the bridge. He followed. She frowned and walked briskly over the bridge to the gazebo, where she slumped onto the old blue sofa, twisting her head round so she could gaze at the water.

Jake pulled up a chair. He sat opposite, leaning forward elbows on his knees. He held a white rose he’d picked from the bushes that grew so lavishly around the gazebo.

“Franny,” he said after a few minutes of tense silence, “are you ever going to speak to me again?”

“No,” she said.

Baffled, Jake stared at the back of her blond head. He couldn’t blame her. After all, she barely knew him, and certainly knew nothing about him, except what he’d told her about the cabin and about Criminal. To her, he was a man who’d conned his way into her life and into her bed. He thought he’d better do something about it, even though he hated talking about himself. He’d never revealed his wounds and his fears to anyone, but if he wanted her, that was what he had to do.

H
E SAT QUIETLY
looking at her, wanting to stroke her long hair back so he could look into her face, but he knew she wouldn’t allow it. All he could do was try to explain who he was. “When I was sixteen,” he said, “I came to live here at the château and met Rafaella. She was my father’s lover and the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I was the most bitterly lonely kid you’d ever meet, living in my dreams and hopes of escape from the hacienda, rekindled every time Lucas, my father, came home. But he didn’t come to be with me, he only came to rustle up some fresh polo ponies for his rich customers.

“Then when I was sixteen, Lucas finally realized I was ignorant. I guess he thought he’d better do something about
me, and typically he dumped me on Rafaella, then left us both to get on with it while he traveled the world playing polo. And he played well, a ten scorer, the highest, one of the best in the world. Of course I can’t blame him for wanting to pursue his career, but I do blame him for forgetting he had a son, and also for what he did to Rafaella.”

Jake eyed Franny’s indifferent back. He wasn’t even sure if she was listening, but he needed to tell her. And he was telling her things he had never told anyone else, not even Rafaella, who knew who he was in his soul. Nor Amanda, whose personal philosophy had been that the past was the past, never to be retold, and they should live for the moment.

“Rafaella saw a lonely boy who didn’t know who he was or where he was going in life,” he said, speaking quietly. “The first time she saw me, she opened her arms and kissed me. I tell you, Franny, I thought I would die from that kiss, though it was nothing more than a gentle, affectionate embrace. I was in love with her from that moment on. I would have done anything for her, died for her, even. And I still would. Which is why I kept secret about her invitation and also why I had to let her know the truth about Alain and finally get him out of her life.”

He shrugged. He still couldn’t tell if she was listening but he’d gotten this far so he figured he might as well tell her the rest. “Anyhow,” he said, “Rafaella taught me to be a civilized human being, she taught me how to behave in society. After all, I knew nothing except how to chow down with cowboys and ride a horse. She found me tutors, found out what I wanted from life. She knew I was in love with her, and I knew she was crazy about my father. There was a sort of neutral ground between us, an acceptance that this was the way
things stood and the way they always would, but that didn’t stop us from loving each other. She was like a mother to me, and I was the callow youth in the throes of first love.

“Things between her and my father came to a head after another year. He took it out on me, told me to get out and make my own way in the world instead of living off him. So I packed my few things and I went. I never saw him again.”

He looked at Franny. She had buried her face in her arms. “Rafaella kept in touch,” he said. “Years passed but I never saw her again either, and then a couple of months ago she invited me to the reunion. At first I wasn’t sure. I was afraid today’s reality would not live up to my perfect memories, but then I knew I had to come, I had to protect Rafaella. I admit I wanted to check you out. I needed to know you weren’t some grasping woman who’d be out to take Rafaella for everything she could get, because Rafaella came first in my life. But then I met you and everything changed.” He stared anxiously at Franny’s indifferent back. She said nothing and he sighed and carried on.

“I went to Hong Kong to ask Felix to come home. He refused. I found out that later that night Alain had come to see Felix, probably to ask for money. Felix refused and I believe Alain killed him. So you see,” he said quietly, “why it was necessary for me to check out all the guests, even Rafaella’s own sons. And now you know the reason for the ugly scene last night.”

He thought he saw a softening in Franny’s back, a relaxing of the shoulders, a droop of her neck, but still she said nothing.

“Via Felix, I traced Little Blue,” he said. “I knew as soon as I saw those eyes that she was Rafaella’s granddaughter. I
followed up the background, found out that Felix was definitely the father. I arranged for her to come here to meet her French grandmother, and I’m hoping she will bring back at least some of the joy to Rafaella’s heart.”

He heaved a sigh. “And what about coming back to the place I’d always called home in my memories?” He shrugged. “My fears were unfounded. Rafaella was exactly the same, still beautiful, still vibrant, but she was a lonely woman. My father had left her years before. I never knew the full story, though I knew he’d died. I never really had a father so it was no loss to me, but I never asked Rafaella how she felt. That’s her secret, and no doubt one she’ll take to her grave.”

Franny looked at him over her shoulder. “How awful,” she whispered. “What on earth did you do when you left the château?”

He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, staring at the rose he was twisting in his big hands. “I joined the navy, got accepted at Annapolis. After graduation and a few years on nuclear subs I was recruited for Naval Intelligence. I loved the life, loved the comradeship and its ‘clear and present danger.’ I was a risk taker
par excellence,
and ultimately that became my downfall.

“I want to tell you about my wife, Franny. Her name was Amanda and I met her at Harvard, at the Widener Library of all places. I was there taking some courses and she was studying for a master’s degree in English. She was brainy, kind of an intellectual prodigy, still only nineteen and already with a B.A. in her pocket. And god, she was beautiful.”

He put his head in his hands, staring down at the floor. “I can still see her sitting at that desk with the reading lamp
flashing a green glow over her pale face. She was petite, very slender with long dark hair and brown eyes that I always teased her were like a spaniel puppy’s, soft and warm and intelligent all at the same time. She wore skinny black turtle-necks and short skirts and black tights with clompy black boots. I told her she was a throwback to the old Beat Generation, the Juliette Grecos and Simone de Beauvoirs of this world, and she agreed she probably was.”

He sighed. “We were married before the semester was over. I wrote Rafaella to tell her because I knew she was the only one who would really care. She sent us a wedding gift, a magnificent old silver candelabra I’d always admired. I have it still, up at my cabin. I never look at it without thinking of her.”

“And of Amanda,” Franny said, understanding.

He nodded. “Amanda knew I was in Intelligence but she didn’t know the risks. We never talked about them. Two years after we were married she told me she was pregnant. I didn’t know how to react. What did I know about babies? You’ll learn, she told me, laughing at me, and I knew I wanted to have a daughter exactly like her.

“We were in Tunisia, taking a little vacation and we went out that night to celebrate. My guard was down because I thought there was no need to worry. I wasn’t even on a mission. We drove round a corner and I saw the roadblock, a barrier with gasoline poured all around. We skidded on the gas, hit the barrier … and the car exploded. It was deliberately planned by counterintelligence to kill me. Instead they killed my wife and my unborn child. And I was barely alive when I should have been very dead. And believe me, Franny, I wished I was.”

He looked bleakly at her, a man reliving a nightmare. He felt her hand on his, stroking him gently, the way she’d stroked the injured dog.

“I still blame myself,” he said. “I’ve gone through all the permutations of how I should have been more alert. Amanda trusted me so completely and I failed her. There’s no way to find forgiveness for that.”