Prelude to Heaven (25 page)

She laid a hand on his arm. “Can you not?”

The inference was clear, but he shook his head slowly, refusing to believe she meant him. Did she think that what he'd told her about Anne-Marie wasn't true? “Tess, you don't understand. I told you about me in the nursery that day—”

“I know what you told me.”

“And you don’t believe it?” He jumped to his feet and started to walk away, but her voice stopped him.

“Don't go.”

He stopped and forced himself to turn around. She had risen and her hands were stretched out to him, beckoning him back, and he took a step toward her. He felt like a moth blundering in the light, flying into the candle flame, knowing his fate and unable to resist it. He took another step toward her, then another.

The wind teased a curl that had fallen over her brow, and he reached out to brush it back. His fingertips trailed down her cheek and lingered there too long. Before he could think, before he could reason, his arms wrapped around her, he bent his head and kissed her.

The taste of her lips went to his head like strong wine, making him dizzy. Dormant for so long, desire now pounded through his body, and he lost whatever thin grasp he had on restraint. He pulled her closer, plunging his tongue into her mouth, savoring the sweet taste of her.

Her body pressed against him and her hands caressed his back, sending delicious shivers through his body. He tore his lips from hers and muffled a groan against her throat. But if he thought to walk away, he was mistaken, for her silky skin proved to be an even greater temptation than her lips, and he nibbled at the base of her throat, feeling her pulse race.

Lost in the maelstrom, he didn't feel the sudden resistance at first. But her hands came up between them to push him away and her frantic whispered words finally penetrated his drugged senses.

“Stop, Alexandre, you must stop.”

He forced himself to draw back, and it felt as if he were tearing himself apart. When she stepped back, his arms fell to his sides, and all the emptiness he’d felt before came rushing back.

“Jeanette's coming,” she whispered between gasps for breath.

“What?” He shook his head, trying to clear it.

“Jeanette's coming up the path, bringing the tea. I can hear the tea thing rattling.”

The moment Jeanette came into view and saw him, she stopped. Their eyes met for a moment, then she came and set the tray on the bench, mumbled something about not having enough milk, and departed again.

He drew a deep breath, striving to regain his control, waiting until Jeanette was out of earshot before he turned and faced Tess again. “I think you should go to Marseilles.”

She looked down at the ground, then back up at him, her green eyes wide. He could see pain in their depths—he could see it, he could feel it. “I don't want to go,” she said after a moment.

“You have to.” He watched her shake her head, and he began to feel a bit desperate. “If you knew the whole story about Anne-Marie, you'd go quickly enough.”

“No, I wouldn’t. I don’t care about that. The past doesn't matter. For...for either of us.”

“It doesn't matter? I killed my own wife and you say it doesn’t matter?”

She didn't answer, and he rushed on, “It was all my fault to begin with. I wanted a baby. I knew she was afraid, and I didn't care. We had moved into separate rooms...we'd never had separate rooms...and I tried to understand, tried to be patient, but one night she locked her door against me, and I couldn't take it anymore. I broke the door down.”

He turned to her. “Do you understand? I forced her.”

Tess felt her cheeks flush at hearing these intimacies between a husband and wife spoken aloud, but she knew all about being forced, and she knew Alexandre. She also knew what Jeanette had told her about Anne-Marie. “I think,” she said softly, “that I understand very well. I think you had never tried to do such a thing before. I think that you both lost your heads in—” She paused, blushing furiously. “In the heat of the moment. And I would wager that she never said no, but that she held it against you afterwards. Didn't she?”

“That doesn’t signify. She didn’t want me because she didn’t want a baby, and I ignored her wishes.”

His voice was filled with self-loathing, and her heart ached for him. “Why was she so afraid of having a baby?”

He sat down and leaned forward to rest his forearms on his knees, his head hung low. “Her mother had been a midwife, and though Jeanette had usually been the one to assist, sometimes Anne-Marie had been called upon to help, and as a result, she’d seen a number of difficult births. Also, she'd had two miscarriages herself, and both were very painful for her. Shortly after we returned from Italy, a close friend of hers died giving birth, and after that, she wouldn't even discuss having children. She asked me to move my things into the adjoining chamber. I did, thinking it was a phase that would pass. That was eighteen months before she died.”

Tess knew Anne-Marie had caused Alexandre a great deal of pain, and she wanted the other woman to be wholly in the wrong; she did not want to see Anne-Marie’s side in this, yet she would be lying if she ever said these same fears had not lurked in the back of her mind during her pregnancy. Death in childbirth was a very real possibility for all women. But that was hardly Alexandre’s fault. “Is that why you think you killed her? Because she died in childbirth?”

“No.” He lifted his head, but he did not look at her. “There was more to it than that.”

“What happened?”

“After she learned she was with child, she refused to take care of herself. She didn't want the baby, she couldn’t even bring herself to admit she was to have one. She loved the winery and loved to assist with the winemaking, but I wanted her to stay out away. The stone stairs are steep and narrow, and I feared she’d take a tumble and be badly hurt. One day, when she was about seven months along, I found her coming up the stairs from the wine cellars. I was furious that she’d defied my wishes, and I'd had enough. I forbid her to enter the winery again.”

He paused, staring into space, and Tess knew he was seeing the moment he described, reliving it. “We stood there on the stairs, both of us shouting, saying things to each other—terrible things. I said I wouldn't have her taking any risks with my child. She said she'd never wanted to be a mother. I told her a cat would be a better mother than she. She accused me of loving a baby that hadn’t even been born yet more than I loved her, that the baby was all I cared about. I asked her why, if she hated the baby so much, she didn't pay Babette to rid her of it. She said...” His voice broke and he lowered his head into his hands. “She said she had. Babette had refused.”

Tess felt sick. She looked down at his dark head, bent in anguish, her heart breaking for him. “What did you say?”

“I was so angry. I wanted to hit her. God help me, I almost did. She dared me to do it. I grabbed her arms, I shook her. She called me a pig, I called her a coward. And she...”

“What?”

“She yanked away from me. We were on the stairs. I was so angry, I never thought...about where we were, until I watched her fall. She tumbled all the way down, over and over. She died three days later. So did the baby. My fault.”

Tess didn’t know what to say. She wanted to point out that it was an accident, and that accidents are no one’s fault. But others would surely have already told him that. She could have trotted out some of the comforting clichés her father had sometimes been forced to use in his role as a vicar. Those, too, seemed hopelessly cold comfort.

He stood up abruptly. “Now you can see why it would be best if you left.”

He started to walk away, but Tess rose and moved to stand in front of him. She reached up, cupping his face in her hands and forcing him to look at her. “All I see,” she whispered, “is the man I have always seen. The man who rescued me, who takes care of me, who is my hero.” She paused, caressing his face. “I love you.”

He wrenched free. “No, you don't. You can't. You should go with Henri and Jeanette. It would be best.”

He stepped around her and she watched him as he walked away. “I'm not leaving, Alexandre,” she called to his retreating back, but if he heard her what she said, he didn’t acknowledge it. He just kept walking.

***

Alexandre paid no heed to where his footsteps carried him, for Tess’s words ringing in his ears made thinking of anything but her impossible.

I love you.

She couldn’t mean it. Not really. It was gratitude, clearly mixed with some very misplaced hero worship. Deep down inside, he began to shake, and he realized with chagrin that he was afraid—afraid that she did mean it, and that he’d have to live up to it. And that he’d fail.

Hero? What a joke.

He stopped abruptly, realizing he was walking along a path he hadn't taken for three years, one he had vowed he would never take again. He was at the winery.

His steps faltered at the sight of the three stone buildings before him, but now that he was standing here, he was seized by an overwhelming need to go on. He resumed walking, and by the time he opened the door of the first building, his heart was thudding in his chest. When he grasped the rusted iron door handle, his palm was slick with sweat, and the door creaked loudly on its hinges when he pushed it wide.

A rat scurried past him as he walked between huge empty vats, and cobwebs tickled his face. He paused at the other end of the windowless room, staring down the stone steps that led into the wine cellars, where the sunlight streaming through the door faded into inky blackness, but he could still see Anne-Marie tumbling down the steps.

“You were so afraid of dying,” he said aloud. “I know I am to blame and there is no way I can atone for that. I wanted to die, too, but then, I realized my penance was to go on living.” He paused, taking a deep breath. “I have been alone for so long, chérie. I don't want to be alone anymore.”

He turned away from the steps into the cellar and sat down on the dirt floor. He closed his eyes and thought of Tess. He thought of her arms wrapped around him, the taste of her lips, her whispered admission.

I love you
.

He already knew she possessed courage enough to have a dozen children and a heart big enough to love them all. He wanted to believe her heart was generous enough to love him as well.

He didn’t deserve that, and yet, he wanted her love because he loved her, too. It would be best for her if she left, and yet, he didn’t have the strength to fight her if she chose to stay.

But if she and the baby stayed, how would he take care of them? How could he live up to what they needed and deserved? He had nothing but a crumbling castle and a broken-down winery. Tess and Suzanne deserved so much more.

Opening his eyes, he looked around him, remembering his surroundings the way they’d appeared years ago, before he had turned his back on all of this and shut everything down. Hope suddenly flickered inside him, like a lamp lit in a dark window.

He rose and began to examine the equipment. The wine press, he knew at once, would have to be replaced. It had already been an ancient and horribly inefficient device, but the past three years of neglect had destroyed it beyond repair. In addition, several of the oak vats had been gnawed through by the rats and would have to be replaced. Other than that, everything still seemed to be in fairly sound condition. His hope flared higher.

He left the first building and entered the second one. Shelves of empty bottles lined the walls, covered with a thick film of dust. Crates of more empty bottles were stacked about the room, still waiting for the wine that had never filled them.

He went next to the brandy distillery, where he found everything in dismal condition. Both stills were gone—stolen, he supposed. Any brandy bottles that had been stored here were also gone, as was all the coal for heating the still fires.

But he pushed aside any glimmer of doubt. He didn't know if he could make wine again. Heaven only knew what condition the vines were in. But though there was a very strong possibility he would fail, he had to try. Tess had told him she and the baby would stay. If so, he had to be able to take care of them. They were his responsibility now.

What he needed most was money—to acquire a new wine press, to purchase other equipment and supplies, and to hire the necessary workers for pruning and tending the vines until next autumn. It was already too late to make any wine this year. Even if the vines had produced a decent harvest, which was doubtful, he could do nothing without a press and casks, and those would take weeks to acquire, even if he had the coin to buy them, which he didn’t.

He could raise capital by painting. Henri had said he was still receiving invitations to do exhibitions, which would bring in some money, but the real profit would be in the portrait commissions that would result from those exhibitions. At the height of his fame in Florence, he had done as many as three portraits a week.

If Henri could arrange it, he would go to Paris in early spring, then Florence, then London. Improvements to the winery could be made as the money came in, and they might manage a decent harvest in the autumn, depending upon the condition of the vines.

He left the distillery and went to the vineyards. The vines, though madly overgrown from three years of neglect and laden with unpicked fruit, showed no signs of disease. He pulled a few grapes from the nearest bunch, and popped one into his mouth. Not bad, he decided. All things considered, it might have made a drinkable vintage.

The sun was setting by the time he headed back to the château. He went in search of Henri immediately, and found his brother playing cards with Jeanette in the library. “Could I speak with you a moment?” he asked his brother. “There is something of vital importance I need to discuss with you.”

Henri set down his cards, answering Jeanette's inquiring look with a shrug, and followed his brother out of the house and across the courtyard, but when he realized where Alexandre was leading him, he stopped, laying a hand on his brother’s arm to stop him as well. “Why are we going to the vineyards? What is this all about?”