Leonie (83 page)

“Nonsense.” Gilles’s tone was brusque. “I’m not tired. Perhaps I could meet my grandchildren soon. Bring them out on the yacht for the day tomorrow, I think they’d enjoy it.”

“I’m sure they would.” Amélie moved her chair slightly closer so that she could see him better. Her mother’s lover met her glance coolly. His eyes were like Gérard’s only darker and the gaze more intense, but that might be because of poor eyesight. He was still a handsome man but with the air of fragility that denotes a longtime invalid. Yet his shoulders were broad and she could see the powerful man he had once been. “Forceful and ruthless” was
how Léonie had described him and perhaps he had been with her. But now he was just a man growing old alone, the victim of a crippling stroke.

“We’ll leave you now, Father; this has been enough for one day. We’ll be back tomorrow with the children.”

“Early,” said Gilles eagerly, “come early.”

“We’ll be here for breakfast,” said Amélie laughingly. “The children will look forward to it.”

She walked around the desk this time to shake his hand, averting her eyes from the wheelchair, which he obviously hadn’t wanted her to see.

Amélie’s hand was cool in his; Monsieur looked into her eyes and was swept back into a world of memories by her glance—the same as Léonie’s.

“Until tomorrow then,” she said, bending impulsively to plant a kiss on his cheek.

Gilles watched the two of them walk hand in hand across the study, turning to wave to him from the door. So his son had won where he had lost! His fingers moved softly across the place where Amélie had kissed him. But he wasn’t finished yet. Oh, no! He hadn’t lost yet; in fact, the game was just beginning.

Hoskins delivered the note personally, driving from Monte Carlo to the inn and waiting for the reply. Léonie was alone. She could see Jim from the terrace in a little boat out off the Point, fishing, and Gérard and Amélie had taken the children into Nice for the rest of the afternoon.

The big blue car with the crest on its door was parked in the lane and Hoskins waited impatiently for her answer.

She glanced again at the heavy plain white card with the simple engraved “de Courmont” across the top. His writing was a little less firm but nonetheless familiar and it still sent a stab of fear through her heart.

“Léonie,” it said, “I think we must meet and talk over this situation. I’m sure you will agree that there is much to be said. Would you do me the honor of having a drink with me on the yacht this evening, say at 6:30? Gilles.”

She paced the terrace agitatedly. There was a terrible fascination in the idea of meeting him again. She put a hand to her hair—would he still think her beautiful?
What was she thinking?
She couldn’t meet him.
She wouldn’t!
Yet he was right. Of course they
must meet and discuss the situation—weren’t their children planning to marry? She looked at the words again, they were innocuous enough, but she didn’t trust them. Gilles was clever; there had never been a time when he hadn’t been plotting. And she was sure he hadn’t finished with her yet.

She turned off the terrace and into her bedroom. A beam of sunlight bounced off the statue of Sekhmet and Léonie paused in front of it for a moment, gazing into its sightless eyes. She put out a tentative hand and touched the familiar figure; the stone was warm from the sun, as warm as flesh.

Chocolat rolled over sleepily on the bed where she was taking a nap, but for once Léonie ignored her. Taking out a sheet of note-paper she wrote quickly. “I will be there—Léonie.” And before she could change her mind she hurried up the path and handed it to Hoskins.

He touched his cap and thanked her. “Monsieur said I should come back at six o’clock to pick you up, madame,” he said as he climbed into the car. “I shall be here promptly.”

Léonie stared after the car as it drove off down the lane followed by a cloud of dust. Monsieur had known she would come.

–
• 73 •

Léonie wound the soft belt around her waist and smoothed the skirt of the simple apricot linen dress. Her reflection in the mirror showed a slender woman, casually chic, with smoothly brushed blond hair and a wide-boned, alert face, sleekly golden from the sun. It was in this same room that she had prepared to meet Monsieur as a young girl. She had gone to meet Monsieur on the yacht, just as she was doing now. Only then he’d made love to her. She picked up the small white leather purse and looked inside. The revolver looked delicate, nestled in the white lining of the purse, only its blackness seemed lethal. She snapped the bag shut and put it under her arm. She was ready.

The yacht lay at the far end of the small pier, isolated from other smaller boats in its deep-water mooring. It was exactly six-thirty as Léonie stepped onto the gangway and walked along the familiar deck. Memories flooded back to her and she stood for a moment looking around. Up there was where, in that first summer together, they had sunbathed naked and she had fed him fruit for lunch, and they had dived from the platform into the bluest of seas. They had paced these decks many a starlit night after a long languorous dinner sparked with champagne and before he had carried her off into that spartan bedroom where they had devoured each other in an excess of passion.

Fear gnawed at her stomach, a tiny irritating scratching that at first forced her to press her hand against her middle to try to stop it, but then flooded through her so that she leaned against the deck rail, trembling. No one was around and she knew that she was alone on the boat with Monsieur. He was waiting for her in the saloon. What was he going to say? What was he going to do?

Léonie pulled herself together. Maybe she was wrong and he
wasn’t plotting anything at all, perhaps he was just a tired, sick man. But if he weren’t? She tucked the small white bag more firmly under her arm and squared her shoulders. Flinging back her head and raising her chin, she strode toward the study.

Monsieur was standing by the table and on the wall behind him hung Alain Valmont’s portrait of her. She might have known, she thought bitterly. He leaned heavily on the silver-topped cane in his right hand; a wheelchair waited—ominously—by his side. Apart from the cane and his new thinness, the clock might have been swept back almost thirty years and, standing by the doorway, Léonie caught her breath. It wasn’t fear she felt, it was the old magic. As her eyes adjusted to the shadowy room she saw the new lines of illness and pain on his face, the faint trembling of his hand gripping his cane. But his eyes were the same unreadable deep dark blue, gazing into hers with the old intensity. Monsieur’s physical distress had not affected his mind—or his emotions.

“Léonie.” His voice was cool and courteous, but hoarser than of old. “I’m glad you came.”

She waited for him to catch his breath before continuing.

“You look as lovely as ever, of course. That color was always my favorite on you.”

Léonie still stood by the door, half-in and half-out. “Won’t you come in? As you can see I have the champagne waiting.”

The bottle of Roederer Cristal sat in a silver cooler, filmed with chilly droplets. His cigar smoldered in the ashtray and a thin line of rich blue smoke pierced the air. Leaning heavily on his cane, Monsieur held out a hand to her. “Please, Léonie, you’ve come this far.…”

Hesitantly Léonie moved into the room, walking carefully, as if she were on a tightrope. She could see the strain on his face as he waited for her and she realized that he must have made a supreme effort to be standing when she arrived. Avoiding his hand, she took a seat opposite him, watching without any sense of triumph at his helplessness as he lowered himself into the big green leather chair—the same one she had chosen for his study in the house on the place Saint-Georges.

“So,” said Monsieur, pouring champagne into the waiting crystal flutes, “the tables are turned since your first visit to this yacht, Léonie. Do you remember that day? You were a poor and desperate young girl abandoned by her lover.
You
were helpless and
I
was the strong one. Well, look at me now. Some would say it’s God’s revenge, I suppose—if you believe in God.”

“I’m not here to talk about the past, Monsieur, or about us.”

Gilles lifted the glass and held it toward her. “I’m sorry, I can’t get up again to bring it to you.” Her hand brushed his as she took the glass and the small contact sent a response through each of them.

Léonie sat down quickly. She sipped the delicate champagne and watched him over the rim of the glass.

“Léonie, if you would come back to me, everything would be all right again, you know. You’ve got strength enough for two—with you I would be my old self.”

His gaze was almost fanatical in its intensity and he leaned forward in his eagerness, gripping the top of the cane with a faintly trembling hand.

“Don’t you see, Léonie, I need you now, and you need me—although you pretend you don’t. I know you feel what I feel, you always have.”

Léonie’s voice was firm and icily calm. “You’re talking nonsense, Monsieur. And as I said before, I’m not here to discuss our lives, I’m here to talk about our children.”

“Léonie, forget the past, forget everything except you and me. I’m asking you to come back to me … we’ll be together again, you’ll live like a queen. I’ll give you anything you want. Just say you’ll come back to me. I need you, Léonie.”

Now
he needed her.
Now
he’d do anything to make her stay. Anger swelled inside her, exploding into trembling points that shook her physically.

“Don’t you understand, Monsieur, I hate you for what you’ve done to me. I will never come back to you. I’m a happy woman, I have a husband who loves me—really loves me, Monsieur, not just someone who wants me with some obsessive madness. And I love him. My life is full and now that I have my daughter and my granddaughters, I could wish for nothing more.”

Léonie’s voice was low, her rage controlled, and Monsieur recoiled from her words as though she had struck him.

“I’m here for only one purpose, to discuss my daughter and your son.”

“
Your
daughter?” The words were spat from his mouth venomously. “Only
your
daughter, Léonie? Aren’t you forgetting something?”

Did he really believe that Amélie was his child, or was he just tormenting her? There was no way to tell, as usual his face was unreadable.

“Amélie is Charles d’Aureville’s daughter … and let’s not forget about Charles d’Aureville.”

Monsieur shrugged away the vague threat. “That’s a long time ago, forgotten in the past. Amélie is the present, very much the present. Only you know whose child she is, but by all that’s logical, she’s mine.”

“Logic never played any part in our lives, Monsieur, and it’s too late to use it now. Am I to understand then that you are not going to allow Gérard and Amélie to marry because of this—this ridiculous claim?” The champagne slopped from her glass onto her skirt as she placed the glass on the table with a trembling hand.

“Not at all, Léonie. I’m delighted that they are to marry. Just think, Amélie will be a member of my family … at last. I daresay we’ll be seeing a lot of each other once she marries Gérard. Think of it, after all these years of waiting, she’ll be mine.”

Léonie stiffened. His expression was so triumphant that she knew he was plotting something. It was the look he had always had when he was winning.

“Of course,” he went on, “it would be so much nicer if you were with me, too. We could be one big happy family. There are those nice children—they’ll be my grandchildren, too, now. Yes, I’ve learned a lot since Charles d’Aureville, I was younger and more impetuous then.… There are other ways to achieve one’s ends besides killing. I’ve learned—the hard way—to bide my time. There are infinite ways to torture people … a word here, a suspicion there.… It would be easy to turn such young minds against their mother—poor little things, neglected by her. And poor Gérard, his wife is always so busy when he is away on business, she’s seen here, there, and everywhere, perhaps with a certain man. It’s all so easy, Léonie. I can arrange everything. Unless, of course, you come back to me.”

He watched her face, waiting for a reaction, but her expression was remote, her eyes looked unseeingly beyond him, as though peering into the future he presented.

“Those poor little girls,” he murmured, “those poor, poor little grandchildren.” His smile told her that he knew he was winning.

The small gun was very black in her capable soft-skinned hand
and Monsieur stared at it in surprise. She couldn’t be serious, not his Léonie. She was using it to scare him.

Monsieur’s laugh rang across the room, a joyless expression of contempt. “You’d never get away with it,” he said mockingly, “and anyway, you’d never do it. Just think of the headlines: ‘Léonie murders lover—daughter to marry his son.’ ” It was so funny, so terribly funny. How could she point the gun at him like that, she was so close to him now.

“You can’t manipulate my life any longer,” she whispered, her face next to his. “It’s enough, I can’t take it anymore.”

Monsieur’s laughter ceased abruptly. Her face was calm and purposeful as she lifted the gun and placed it at his temple. It felt cold against his skin and fear flashed through him.

My God, she meant to do it, she was going to kill him. Thrusting out his arm, he gripped her by the wrist. Léonie pulled back her hand, and he lurched forward clumsily. He almost had it though, almost. His grip tightened—even crippled he was still stronger than she. His heart fluttered and skipped a beat and he gasped as his hand fell numbly back into his lap. His heart was vibrating, it was pushing agonizingly against his chest, he couldn’t move! Oh, God, not again, not again. His whole chest was banded with burning steel. Why didn’t she help him, why? His lips tried to frame the words but couldn’t, he couldn’t say it now, she would never hear it. Léonie, Léonie don’t you know I love you? Help me.

The gun fell from her nerveless hand and lay, gleaming and forgotten, on the soft rug. His body was contorted in agony, his face mottled, and he was gasping for breath. She leaned closer, straining for the words that never came. Oh, God, what was happening? Wouldn’t there be pills somewhere? Léonie looked down at the gun. Only moments ago she had been prepared to pull the trigger. She looked back at him. His dark blue eyes waited for whatever she was about to do.