Invitation to Provence (9 page)

“Well, I never thought I would hear from you again, Rafaella,” she said out loud, “and now here you are, all of a sudden rejoining the land of the living!”

She leaned back against the cushions, eyes closed, smiling as she remembered the good times they’d had together. They had been friends since they were girls, and in fact if it were not for Rafaella insisting on taking her to lunch at La Coupole in Paris, Juliette would never have met the man she eventually married.

It was long ago, when they were both young and glamorous and brimming with life and laughter. Rafaella had come up to Paris for a few days to stay with Juliette at her apartment in an old courtyard building in Saint-Germain.

Juliette’s place was constantly abustle with friends dropping in, messengers delivering bouquets, admirers stopping by. Invitations to cocktail parties, costume balls, and other grand events were stuffed casually into the edges of the huge seventeenth-century mirror above the black-marble mantelpiece, and Juliette’s first husband was stuffed into a tiny
boudoir just around the corner, where his mistress lived. Juliette’s two young children were always dashing in and out, chased by nannies, stealing chocolate bonbons from beribboned boxes and dropping them on the striped silk sofas, where they left ominous little brown stains at which Juliette just laughed, and an earlier batch of Pomeranians rampaged everywhere, snapping at heels and yapping constantly.

Rafaella had never understood Juliette’s miraculous ability to laugh at anything: a stain on a sofa, a bad haircut, an ugly dress. Juliette also had no taste and inevitably chose the wrong color or a fabric too clinging for her large figure. Unfashionable as she might appear though, she cut a swath through Paris, leaving a felled legion of broken hearts behind. Until she met Major Rufus Thomas and, like Rafaella with the Lover, gave him her heart.

Rafaella was with her that lunchtime in La Coupole. It was in March, too many years ago to count, with the sun struggling out of the clouds and a gusty wind whipping at their skirts. They ran shivering through the large glass revolving doors, laughing and smoothing their ruffled hair, hugging chubby little fox jackets around their throats, settling at the bar and ordering glasses of champagne. Rufus was two seats away, smart in his khaki British major’s uniform, his brown leather belt gleaming like his eyes.

“Like polished
marrons,”
Juliette whispered loudly, the way her whispers always were, and his eyes were in fact the color of chestnuts. They were also shiny with hope and longing. Rafaella was looking beautiful, her dark curls all wind-tossed and her blue eyes sparkling with fun, and at first Juliette thought the army officer was interested in her. He kept glancing at the two of them as they speared their oysters,
throwing back their heads and letting them slide down their throats with little moans of pleasure.

He was British though, and shy, so he said nothing. “I obviously have to take the initiative in this case,” Juliette whispered. Then, giving him that big smile of hers, she said, “Welcome to Paris.”

Rufus moved over the two seats, introduced himself, and said, “Now I feel right at home.”

By this time Juliette had eyes only for Major Rufus Thomas, so Rafaella swallowed her twelfth oyster, drained her glass, and went shopping on her own. In fact, Juliette remembered that was the day Rafaella had bought the spectacular red chiffon dress from St. Laurent’s second collection for Dior.

Late that evening, Juliette had drifted home with a soft look in her eyes that spelled trouble. Rafaella guessed that “trouble” had already taken place, and Juliette confirmed this in loud whispers in her bedroom as they changed for the party they were to attend that night.

“You wouldn’t believe his body,” she whispered, closing the door firmly against all comers. “He’s like a Greek statue, hard as marble, only more virile.” She giggled, with a reminiscent look about her that made Rafaella laugh, too. “Who knew the British were sexy?” she added. “I mean, all you hear is that they are cold and emotionally ruined at a young age by sadistic nannies and homosexual boarding schools. But not Rufus. He’s warm as a brioche straight from the oven and loving as a new puppy, all over me with licks and kisses.”

She took Rufus with her on her next visit to the château, and the two of them occupied the big room in the East Tower, hardly venturing out except when hunger became too much
or Rafaella sent Haigh up to complain that she needed company.

Juliette smiled, remembering how she and Rufus had glowed pink from their exertions. Their eyes had sent secret sexual messages, and they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Love and sex had permeated the very air around them.

Then one day her husband showed up and there was a wham-bam knock-down, drag-out fight, with the husband confronting her with her indiscretions and she confronting him with his longtime mistress. Fortunately, Rafaella had managed to push Juliette out of the way before she could brain her husband with a raised wine bottle. “It’s a good vintage,
chérie”
Rafaella protested. “At least if you are going to hit him, do it with a table wine.” Then she’d sent Rufus out of the room and sat Juliette and the husband opposite each other. Because they were Catholic and divorce was out of the question, she’d brokered an almost-amicable separation with the appropriate financial settlement.

Meanwhile, Juliette and her children had moved in with Rafaella and
her
children. Rufus was a professional army man, as his father and his grandfather had been, but he was at the château as often as he got leave from his regiment. So, with Rafaella’s own long-abandoned husband permanently living in Paris, they had become one big, happy extended family at the château, with parties for the little ones as well as the grown-ups, and long, lazy summer days spent at the seaside villa at Cap d’Antibes with a myriad of friends to join in the fun.

Later, after her husband died, Juliette had finally married Rufus, daringly wearing white, with Rafaella as matron of honor, splendid as always in the red Dior chiffon. Juliette
had followed Rufus around the world on his army postings, and they were never apart until the day he died ten years ago, breaking her heart forever.

Ever since then, the East Tower room had been known as Juliette’s room. “I wonder if Rafaella has forgotten that,” Juliette said to herself now. “If so, then I’m about to remind her!” And she laughed a great, booming, jolly laugh. “Oh, the times we had,” she said, delighted. “And now just think, it will happen all over again. In fact, it’ll be quite the little Agatha Christie mystery, with everyone gathered at the big country house for a grand reunion, except this time they’ll know for sure the butler didn’t do it.” She laughed again, thinking of Haigh, with his stiff upper lip, in the role of the killer. Still, she had wondered about the murder in the past, and if the killer was really Felix? Or was it Alain?

She picked up the phone and, regardless of the six-hour time difference, dialed the château’s number, which she remembered clearly even after all these years.

Haigh answered, and when she said who it was, he said of course he knew it was her, nobody else ever called in the middle of the night and nobody else talked that loud, either. Then he put Rafaella on.

“Are you coming then?” Rafaella said, just as though they had seen each other last week.

“Of course I’m coming. You can’t have a grand family reunion without
me,”
Juliette said, grinning. She heard Rafaella’s sigh of relief and added, “But I want my old room back, the one in the East Tower with the view of the lake, and you’d better have Haigh ice the good champagne and not try to palm me off with the nonvintage.”

And Rafaella laughed and then their voices dropped into the soft, intimate tones of women friends who have a lot to talk over. Which they did for a couple of hours, despite the cost.

F
ELIX MARTIN INHABITED
the forty-fourth floor of the great glass-and-steel office tower that dominated the Hong Kong skyline. If you were crossing the choppy bay on the little Star Ferry that chugged back and forth between Kowloon and Central, the setting sun that glinted off all that bronze glass almost blinded you. But inside, of course, all was cool and there was no glare, only a muted bronze silence.

Felix wondered about that. How could silence be bronze? Still, it seemed tangible, a combination of light and the absence of sound. Everyone was gone for the night, and he was alone with only the dim whirr of the air-conditioning and the soft buzz of the bank of computers beating out the pulse of the world’s race for more money on the global stock markets. The computers flickered with a faint green glow, the tan leather sofas were hard-cushioned and uninviting for lounging, the steel lamps were sharp and angular and the light they cast was too dim to read by.

Who the hell had he paid to decorate this place, anyhow?
Felix wondered, staring out at the ferries and at the hurrying businessmen, small as ants below, on their way to the Tycoon Bar at the Mandarin Oriental for an evening drink to loosen up after the stresses of the day. Soon they would head home to face a new set of stresses—their wives who complained they didn’t see enough of them, small children who tore up the peace and calm of the household, sullen teenagers who demanded more and more “things” they absolutely “needed.”

Felix did not have a wife, though there had been two possibilities in his earlier years, both of whom had followed the same “wife path” he’d described above. Except for one, the women he’d known had always wanted more. Grander houses, more designer clothes, bigger jewels. What they’d really wanted was more of
him.
They’d scrunched his soul until it felt so tight he’d wanted to kill them. And that was the end of any thoughts of marriage for him.

Felix, the rich bachelor, was known as quite a catch in Hong Kong society. His black hair was streaked handsomely with silver, he wore immaculately tailored pin-striped suits, and his shoes were handcrafted in London. He could make good small talk at a party, knew how to treat a lady, and not only gave generously to all the proper charities, he also bought tables for their gala balls and dinners. And he actually showed up, usually with someone important as well as beautiful on his arm. The words
confirmed bachelor
were whispered, but Felix was not gay. It was just that he’d had it with women. Except for sex, which of course he could buy. All he thought about, all he dreamed about—when he had that rare couple of hours of sleep that fate and time now allowed him—was making money. And making
more
money.

Unfortunately, sleep no longer seemed to factor in the “living” equation. The more he made, the less he was able to sleep, until he was at the point of sleep deprivation where his hands shook uncontrollably and sometimes his head spun, and he missed his footing, or he missed what someone had just said.

The invitation lay unopened in the exact center of his oversized desk. He stared out the window, waiting for the blip from the concierge desk downstairs that would tell him Jake Bronson had arrived, winging in like Mercury, bringing a message from his past. A past he no longer cared to think about, though in those hard waking moments, that three o’clock in the morning dead zone when his life seemed suspended while everyone else’s went rushing on, his mother, Rafaella, came to his mind as he’d last seen her, white-faced and trembling. It was not something he cared to think about now, and he wished he had not agreed to see Jake, though for a while there they had been almost like brothers.

Felix was in his early twenties when Jake arrived at the château. Alain had been there too, but Alain led his own secret life and wasn’t around so much. Mostly it was just him and Jake.

The internal phone blipped and he pressed the
ON
button. “Mr. Bronson is here to see you, sir,” the concierge said.

“Send him up.” Felix went and sat in the big leather chair, safe behind his impressive antique desk, and waited for whatever was to come, toying absently with the letter from the Bank of Shanghai that awaited his attention.

The outer door buzzed and he pressed
ENTER,
hearing
brisk footsteps crossing the marble hall, then the polite tap on his door.

“Entrez,”
he said in French because that was the language he had always spoken with Jake. He did not get up as Jake walked toward him, and Jake stood a few feet away, looking at Felix.

Taking him in, Felix thought uncomfortably, and no doubt comparing him to the last time he’d seen him. Meanwhile, Jake looked good, still lean, still with that thick, dark hair and his father’s big confident stride and those cool gray eyes that seemed to look right into your soul.

“How are you, Jake?”

“I’m well, thank you, Felix. And you?”

Felix nodded that he was okay and Jake grinned. “Still a man of few words, huh?”

“Like you, I prefer action.” Felix picked up a silver paper knife and slid its silky blade through his strong fingers.

“I told your mother I had to be in Hong Kong. She asked me to see you.” Jake eyed the knife through narrowed eyes.

Felix said nothing, looking warily at the cream envelope with the French stamps.

“You’re famous here, Felix,” Jake said. “In business circles, that is, though of course you also made a few headlines in your local newspapers when you were younger.”

Felix said nothing and Jake pushed further. “A pregnant girl found dead at the foot of a cliff? And you suspected of being the father of her child? And possibly of giving her that fatal push?”

Felix lifted his eyes from the knife. “If you are here just to provoke me, Jake, this conversation is terminated.”

Jake’s shoulders lifted in an exaggerated shrug. “Of course there was no DNA in those days. Nothing could be proven, but you, Felix, were unable to account for your whereabouts, and Alain was. What was your mother to believe?”

“Mother never gave me a chance,” Felix said angrily. “She never even listened to me. And why should she, when Alain was so convincing, placing the guilt on my shoulders. Mother could never see the truth about Alain, she was blinded by his charm, never saw the slime that was underneath. Until it was too late.”