Peach (59 page)

Noel slid his arm around her and she rested her head against his shoulder, gazing out across the deserted lake. “I’d trade the medal for a kiss,” he suggested.

Peach looked up at him with a quizzical smile. “Since when did you have to trade anything to get a kiss from me?”

“I’d trade
anything
for a kiss from you,” he murmured, nuzzling her ear.

“Even the car?”

Noel laughed. “That’s unfair, Mrs Maddox—and, besides, you just said a kiss wouldn’t cost me anything.”

Why was it when he kissed her the real world seemed to disappear and he was alone with her in a warm fantasy world of his own making? Her skin was as soft as petals and as smooth as marble and he felt drunk on the scent of her. Noel pulled the pins from her upswept hair and ran his fingers through its luxuriant waves, kissing her pale eyelids, running a finger along the curve of her cheek, and then down, along the curve of her breast. Her eyes locked with his as he cupped her breast in his hand and then he bent to kiss her again. “Peach, Peach,” he murmured softly, “I love you so much.”

The back seat of the car was wide and soft as they lay down together and there was only a slow-flying heron over the river to witness their love-making. Peach’s body was warm and pliable and familiar under his. And afterwards as he held her, trembling, Noel thought he had everything he could ever want—he had Peach and de Courmont and his dream car.

The following week Peach started work on the advertising campaign she’d been planning for a year and a half. She travelled through Europe with a production team, first photographing the “Duke” high in the snowy Alps and then filming it winding down breathtaking mountain curves, skis strapped to its roof. They photographed the car outside the Hostellerie with a small mountain of chic leather cases being removed from its capacious trunk and in Paris in the courtyard of the de Courmont mansion with a beautiful long-necked Afghan hound peering from the back window. They filmed it in an aircraft hangar in between a sleek little Lear jet and a powerful Concorde, and they filmed it cruising the highways of Europe.

Noel had flown off to Detroit again and Peach was kept so busy she barely had time to think of him until she fell
into bed at night, alone in some hotel room. And, if she were lucky and the time difference permitted, she would call him, waiting anxiously until she heard his decisive voice as he said, “Hello, Peach.” He always seemed to know when it was her even before she spoke.

After a month they took the car over to London to film there and, reunited with Wil, she had less time than ever to think about Noel. She went with the crew to a turreted castle in the highlands of Scotland where they took pictures of the car parked by a salmon-filled river, while craggy-faced gillies held rods and creels, and over to the west of Ireland where horses and hounds and pink-coated huntsmen brushed past the elegant waiting de Courmont.

When she finally got back to their house on the Ile St Louis Peach realised that it had been almost two months since she’d seen Noel—and that she must be pregnant.

“I was just wondering,” she said to him over dinner that night, “if there is room in the ‘Duke’ for a stroller.”

“A stroller! What kind of image is that for the new de Courmont? It’s supposed to be fast, elegant, racy—you know for God’s sake, you created its image. What on earth made you ask such a question?”

“Would it spoil its racy, macho image to be seen putting a stroller in the back of the ‘Duke’? Because we may have to do that quite soon.”

Noel’s face went blank with shock. “Are you telling me you are pregnant?” he asked.

“Aren’t you pleased?” Peach eyed him anxiously, he wasn’t smiling, he just looked stunned, as though he had had nothing to do with it.

“Of course I’m pleased. It’s just that, well we hadn’t planned on this just yet …”

“Passion and planning are not always compatible.”

Noel grinned and she felt a sudden surge of relief.

“You’re right,” he said, getting up and kissing her, “when is it to be?”

“Seven months—in October.”

“Perfect,” exclaimed Noel, “the baby will be born just as we launch the ‘Duke’.” Noel swept her into his arms. “Of course I’m pleased, darling. It’s just hard to imagine myself with a son—or a daughter. I wish …”

“What do you wish?”

“I wish he would have a father he could be proud of.”

“Noel!” Peach stared at him, shocked. “Of course he’ll be proud of you. Why shouldn’t he be? Oh I know, it’s the orphanage thing, isn’t it? But if it bothers you so much, why have you never gone back there? Why haven’t you tried to find out who your parents were?”

“No. No, I couldn’t do that. I could never go back to the Maddox!”

“Well then,” said Peach gently, “you’ll just have to live with who you are. And if that’s good enough for me, it should be good enough for you—and your child.”

Peach drove her new car south down the highway, enjoying the notice it caused and making mental notes to tell Noel of the admiring comments when she stopped for petrol or a cup of coffee. Noel was a genius, he’d known exactly what he wanted and he’d got it and no one understood better than she did, that in a colossus of an industry like this, Noel’s
achievement hadn’t been easy. And now the “Duke” and their baby would be born in the same month.

It had been Noel’s idea that she leave Paris and escape to the calm and freshness of the coast, but at first Peach had been reluctant. It was three years since Leonie had died and though she had visited Jim and her sisters at the Hostellerie she had never returned to the villa. Lais had understood. “You’ll go there when you feel ready,” she’d said comfortingly. But as the car speeded up the hill Peach wondered if she were ready even now?

The familiar square white house, its green shutters open to the warm evening sunshine, looked the way it always had. The white boulders by the iron gate and the stone urns of brilliant pink and scarlet geraniums flanking the double doors, the smell of mignonette and jasmine and the flare of colour from the hibiscus and bougainvillaea took Peach back to her childhood as she walked around the side of the house to the terrace. A beautiful white yacht, sails curved to the breeze, hung on the blue horizon like a painting. Towering dark cypresses punctuated the massed umbrella pines and silvery green olive trees on the headlands curving around the little bay. Nothing had changed. Except that the long cool terracotta terrace was empty. The blue cushions on Leonie’s chair were smooth and undented by the pressure of her head and no little brown cat ran to greet her, its paws skittering on the tiles.

Marianne bustled from the kitchen, beaming. “Here you are at last, Madame Peach, and I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you. It’s been lonely, with the mistress gone, though Monsieur Jim comes to see me every week, and your sisters come too. But it’s you who should be here, Madame Peach, you and your children, to give this place a bit of life.”

Peach felt sorry for the faithful old woman, guarding Leonie’s
house. Marianne’s own family lived in the village and she could so easily have given up and gone to live with her tall, strapping sons. But Marianne would never desert Leonie.

Peach stood at the door to her old room, staring at the narrow single bed that looked so small after their American king-size model, and at the tiny red table with its silver mirror, polished to a blinding gloss by Marianne’s never-idle hands. The photographs and her faded mementoes were still there, just as she’d left them on her wedding night, but this room didn’t belong to her any more. This was the room of a young, foolish, romantic girl who had refused to grow up. This was her past. She realised suddenly that it was the sort of room that Noel had never had.

Picking up her bag she trailed slowly along the corridor, peering into rooms, any of which she could have made her own. But Leonie had made her mistress of this house and it was Leonie’s room that should be hers.

The shutters were closed and the room seemed very still and mysterious in the grey darkness. Peach hesitated by the door—but there was nothing to be afraid of here, she’d shared many a night in Leonie’s big bed when she was a child, secure in her presence. Walking to the window she flung back the shutters, letting in a stream of golden sunlight, waking the room from its long rest. The statue of Sekhmet on its marble plinth caught the beam of light and the cool white bed stretched smooth and inviting. With a sigh Peach sat on the edge, running her hand across the simple white cotton quilt, remembering. Then, slipping off her shoes, she curled up on its comforting surface and closed her eyes, letting the warm sun erase the tiredness of the long drive from her cramped muscles, breathing the freshness of the scented air. It felt so good to be back, so very good. And what better place could there be to grow a baby?

*  *  *

The long summer months at the villa were the most tranquil Peach could remember. Noel spent as much time with her as he could, showing up even for just a night—playing hookey, he called it, with a triumphant grin. And Wil came for his school holidays, thrilled to be back at the villa and pleased and curious about the new baby. Lais and Ferdi came to stay, and of course Jim and Leonore were at the Hostellerie. At the beginning of September Amelie and Gerard arrived from Florida to be with her when the baby was born and at last the long gloom cast by Leonie’s death was dispersed.

The house was just as Leonie had left it, except now Peach’s old room had become Wil’s and the guest room next to hers had been converted into a new nursery.

“Why don’t you change it, decorate it in your own style like you did the Paris house?” suggested Noel, lying beside her in the white bed.

But somehow Leonie’s sparse, simple room needed nothing adding. It was complete. “Perhaps I will,” said Peach. “Maybe—some day.”

On the fifteenth of October in Paris, Charles Henry Maddox was born and in the same month the new luxury automobile the “Duke” was launched upon the world.

Noel’s expression was grave and tender as he looked at his new son. “You will be the first to be proud of bearing the name Maddox,” he murmured, stroking the baby’s dark head with a gentle finger. “I promise you that, my son.”

The familiar zing of excitement Detroit always gave him hit Noel as he drove from Metropolitan Airport to US Auto—or rather as he was driven to US Auto, for nowadays he rated a chauffeured limousine. He commuted the Paris/New York/Detroit route so often that he now kept a permanent suite at the Waldorf Towers in Manhattan for his frequent stop-overs. But in Detroit, the penthouse was still home. And, of course, the lakeside redwood A-frame cabin would always be his escape.

Not that he needed to escape—not now when so much was happening. It wasn’t just the staggering success of the “Duke,” it was the way he’d made Detroit sit up and take notice by producing a car in a mere three years instead of the usual five. Concept to sale room, the “Duke” had taken two years eleven months and nine days—a record in the industry. Of course it was a limited-production, custom-finished vehicle but, none the less, no one in the industry could match that, and it was all due to the way Noel had restructured the company.

Noel had gone into de Courmont with the blinkers of Claire Anthony’s corporate lessons removed from his eyes. Because it was a foreign company, in an odd way, he had felt the same rules didn’t apply, and because of that he’d come up with some startling answers. Noel blamed de Courmont’s decline on its financial officers, always over-eager to assume the benefit of short-term profits that in the long run were unrealistic. Time had run out with the failure
of the “Fleur” and de Courmont had been into a sharp downswing from which there was little likelihood of return. But there had been one startling benefit, brought about by Jim’s decision to raise money by getting rid of peripheral companies manufacturing and supplying parts, and selling off the real estate. Without the need to purchase from inhouse parts-suppliers, Noel found himself free to shop in the market place for the best price. Even with such a specialised high-quality machine as the “Duke”, the savings were a staggering thirty per cent.