The Eden Inheritance (6 page)

She had thought it was over, but it was not. No, correction, she had known it would never be over but she had learned to live with it. Now it was all going to begin again. Thirty years had gone by and she had a new life now, the life she had built for herself and for Guy in this quiet Hampshire village. A life that had revolved first around him and then around the pursuits that were all she wanted now – her little shop, her home, her garden. A life that had been spared to her in spite of all the odds. It was not the life she had envisaged for herself. But it had not been so bad. In the curiously acquiescent way of those who have lived through hell, lived more in a few brief years than some people live in a whole lifetime, she had accepted it and been grateful. She had Guy. She had seen him grow up, which was more than she had expected during those dark days. She had her independence, which she prized above all else. She had her memories, precious ones as well as the distressing ones which she had chosen to close her mind to.

Now, suddenly, the chasm was threatening to open beneath her once more, the bolts on the dark door to the past that she had closed so firmly were scraping in their rusty housings.

This man, this German of whom Guy had spoken, might not of course be von Rheinhardt. The odds must surely be stacked against it being him. Yet Kathryn had the most dreadful feeling that it was.

The ogre had not been dead at all but merely sleeping. If Guy found him and managed to bring him to trial it would all come out, all the secrets she had fought to keep hidden. Well, there was nothing she could do about it now, except hope and pray.

The last of the fire fizzed and died. Kathryn shivered slightly as she moved out of the aura of warmth it had thrown, collecting the empty glasses and taking them into her little kitchen for washing. But she wouldn't do it tonight.

As she passed the mirror in the tiny hall, wood-framed, slightly crazed, bought at one of her beloved auction sales because it suited the cottage, her reflection leaped up to meet her and for a moment it seemed she was looking not at her fifty-three-year-old self but at the girl she had once been, just as if what Guy had said was true and she had not changed at all. The soft light in the hall miraculously removed every trace of crow's-foot and wrinkle, camouflaged the sprinkling of grey that was beginning to dull the bright golden brown of her hair at the temples, and she saw herself for a moment as she had looked then, all those years ago. Strange, she thought, that she should bear so few scars to tell the world of all she had been through. But then, she had been lucky. Others had not.

Oh Guy, Guy, why won't you leave it alone? she murmured to that other image, that other self. But the face in the mirror gave her back no answer other than the one he himself had given her.

He would do what he had to do, for himself, for his father and for the dynasty of Savigny. That he did not realise the demons he might be unleashing, the fact that he might be doing a disservice to all concerned, was neither here nor there. Apart from telling him the whole unvarnished truth there was nothing more that she could do now, and she shrank from that prospect. The man might not, after all, be von Rheinhardt. If he was not she would have broken her silence to no purpose.

Kathryn hoped fervently that the man was not von Rheinhardt.

The headlights of his car cut a swathe through the darkness as Guy navigated first the lanes and then the major roads on his way back to Bristol.

He drove more slowly than usual because his mind was busy and to drive fast, even on these quiet roads, required all his concentration.

His mother's reaction had been no more or less than he had expected – why should she change the habits of a lifetime and discuss with him now the things she had always resolutely refused to discuss? But he was disappointed all the same. Knowing her hatred of the Nazis, and this one Nazi in particular, he had hoped she might put her reticence aside when she heard there was a chance that von Rheinhardt might, at long last, be brought to face trial for his crimes. Surely, Guy had thought, she would want justice? Wouldn't that free her in some way from the ghosts of the past? But it seemed she did not want that. Not even the prospect of revenge had been able to persuade her to give up her secrets.

Well, at least he had told her what he intended to do – that he was going to take Bill's job in the Caribbean, if he could get it, and investigate the German at first hand. He wouldn't have wanted to begin something like that without telling her. Whether he had her approval or not. It was part of Guy's nature to like things straight and above board. He had hoped for her assistance, too – God knew he needed it – but that she had not been prepared to give. Well, he would have to look for the evidence he would need to establish the German's identity in another quarter. His grandfather would not be so unforthcoming, he was sure. He would go to France and talk to his French family. He had intended to do that anyway; Kathryn's refusal to help made it that little bit more necessary, that was all.

But why was she so anxious to block out the past? He couldn't understand it, never had been able to. In most matters she was as open and honest as he was, she didn't shy away from the unpleasant or try to avoid harsh reality. Just this one area was a closed book with her and nothing, it seemed, would make her turn the pages.

Guy's, breath came out on a long sigh. He hated upsetting her, but his mind was made up. He would not be able to rest until he discovered for himself if the German Bill had told him about was, in reality, Otto von Rheinhardt. Any other consideration must, in this instance, be relegated to the sidelines.

P
ALE WINTER SUN
filtered through the bare branches of the poplar trees surrounding the château. It lent a semblance of warmth to the pale stone walls and the dull red of the roof, it glinted on three storeys of unshuttered windows and threw poorly defined shadows in the shape of the twin towers which stood guard over the ancient building which was the ancestral home of the de Savignys and the centre of life for the village which bore their name.

In his study on the first floor Baron Guillaume de Savigny, sitting at his heavy old desk, looked up from the ledgers spread out before him and felt the pleasant diffusion of the sun warm his parchment-like skin through the glass of the window. A slight smile curved his once well-shaped but now thin lips and he turned his face towards the warmth. It was good to feel the sun; he hated being cold and in winter it seemed he was cold too often nowadays. For all the fires that were kept blazing in the grates and the central heating which he bad had installed, at enormous cost, in his private apartments a few years previously, the château could still be a draughty place. He had not used to notice it, of course; as a younger man he had poured scorn on those who complained when the warm summers of Charente gave way to the chill winds and sudden harsh frosts of winter. Now, in his eighty-fifth year, he viewed things differently. The cold which he had once shrugged off crept into his bones now and worsened the ache in his arthritic hip, legacy of a fall from a horse when he had been a young man. He dreaded to see the leaves begin to change colour on the poplars which half hid the château and on the walnut trees in the valley beyond, and in spite of the fact that he was in remarkably good health for his age he always found himself wondering, a little sadly, whether he would be there in the spring to see them grow fresh green again.

The thought was seldom more than a fleeting one; Guillaume de Savigny was not a morbid man. He enjoyed comfort too much, not just the physical comforts of warmth and feather beds, good food and a glass of his own cognac, but emotional comfort too. In his opinion time spent on worrying or being miserable was time wasted and he had a facility for ignoring circumstances or events likely to upset his contented equilibrium. When things went wrong he was always initially upset, offended almost, to think that fate could be so unsporting as to play such a backhanded trick on him, but before long he would adjust his thinking to accommodate the misfortune, whatever it might be, and life would continue much as before. This facility was, in Guillaume's opinion, his greatest strength, though there were others who regarded it as a weakness. Whichever, there was no doubt it had helped him personally come to terms with what might have been crushing blows to a lesser man and probably contributed to the remarkable state of his health, both mental and physical.

He eased the rosewood chair, upholstered with ivy-green leather, away from the desk and rose slowly, crossing to the window, a spare man of medium height in a tweed suit which had seen better days. It wasn't that Guillaume could not afford to spend money on his wardrobe – money was not, and never had been, a problem for the de Savignys. Rather he liked the comfort of the old and familiar and, like so many wealthy people, could see little point in unnecessary outlay. The suit was still good; Louise, his wife, who still retained the chic that epitomised the Parisienne, could badger him all she liked to exchange it for a new one, but Guillaume could be as stubborn as he was placid. He liked the suit, there was nothing wrong with it, he would wear it with whatever shirt he chose, the warmer and the more frayed the better, and if Louise didn't like it, then – too bad.

The study was at the front of the château, overlooking the broad paved forecourt where in summer a fountain played. Now, in winter, it was still, the carved stone nymph that topped it gazing impassively down into the lichened bowl beneath. Beyond the forecourt stretched the lawns, an expanse of neatly trimmed green, and the drive, lined with tall graceful cypress, cut a grey swathe through them and the half-mile of parkland which separated the château from the main road into the village. It presented a scene of which Guillaume never tired, epitomising for him the timelessness of Savigny. For more than five centuries the château's walls had provided a refuge for his family and a linchpin for the community which depended upon them; it had survived the Revolution and two world wars, and he hoped and believed it would survive another five centuries – and that there would still be de Savignys living there to watch over it and continue the production of the cognac, made only from the vines on their own estates and sold to a discerning market under the name ‘Château de Savigny'.

As usual, the very relishing of the name filled him with pride and warmed his tired body with much the same glow as did the liquor itself, and he turned back to his desk without the slightest tinge of regret. He was less involved now than he had once been with the day-to-day running of the vineyard and the processes that produced the light elegant cognac for which the château was renowned; much of that responsibility had passed now to Henri Bernard, his son-in-law. But he still liked to keep his finger on the pulse. Henri was a good businessman, shrewd and dependable, but Guillaume had never quite been able to reconcile himself to relinquishing the helm to a man who was not, by birth, a member of the de Savigny dynasty.

If his own sons had survived the war perhaps he would have stepped down and handed over to them with more grace, perhaps not – he had had little time for either of them. Charles he had considered weak and Christian feckless, and Guillaume himself was a proud and stubborn man. But neither of his sons had survived. He had seen them both taken, and the fact that in their lifetimes they had both irritated him had become an irrelevance. Both had been posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre, but the honour had done little to compensate for their loss. His greatest hope now was that Guy, his grandson, might step into the breach when he became Baron. At present he had a restless streak, for which Guillaume blamed his English mother, Kathryn – among other things, not least of which was Charles' death. But Guy also had a strong sense of history and family loyalty and Guillaume believed that when the time came the inheritance would be safe in his hands. He had to believe it. Anything else would be a betrayal of family tradition.

It was more than a hundred years now since Guillaume's grandfather, the then Baron, had begun producing his own cognac and selling it to the most exclusive retailers in England and on the continent. It was he who had designed the distinctive engraved bottles with the heavily embossed labels, he who had laid down the ground rules which had, from the very outset, determined the quality – only grapes from their own fifty-hectare estate were to be used, no ‘buying in' even in lean years, the wine to be distilled on its lees and matured for twenty years in the dank cellars that lay beneath the château. Now the estate boasted seven stills and although their output was tiny compared with many of the big-name producers in the region, the quality was such that its reputation was assured.

Because of its excellence and because it was backed by de Savigny money the cognac production had survived every crisis turbulent history had thrown at it.

Just ten years after his grandfather's first bold venture, a plague carried by a louse, Phylloxera Vastatrix, had begun to devastate the vineyards of Charente and soon the vines were withering and dying where they stood. The setback had literally broken his grandfather's heart. He had gone out one day to inspect the damage and never returned – the estate workers had found him that night lying dead of a stroke in his beloved vineyard, and the talk in the village was that Château de Savigny cognac would now be sold out to one of the wealthy merchants who were moving in to take the devasted vineyards off the hands of those growers who could no longer make a living from their ailing vines. Not that the de Savignys needed the money, of course, they had sufficient reserves to ride out the storm, but young Louis was a banker, wasn't he, who had never shown the slightest interest in his father's pet project except to drink it!

‘Young Louis', however, had other ideas. He knew how much the production of his own cognac had meant to his father and he had no intention of letting it die with him. He arranged his business and banking duties to allow him more time at the château and picked up the mantle of responsibility for the vineyard which his father had let fall. For a while, like everyone else, he had searched for the right chemical to treat the precious French vines, but when this proved unsuccessful he joined an expedition to the New World to look for suitable plants to replace his own disease-ridden ones. A short time later he was back, triumphantly bearing rootstock which was to prove ideally suited to the chalky soil of Charente, men personally leading the replanting of the previously higgledy-piddledy vineyards in neat rows on the softly undulating hillsides.