The Woman From Paris
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Epilogue
Reading Group Guide
Discussion Questions
Enhance Your Book Club
A Conversation with Santa Montefiore
Acknowledgments
About Santa Montefiore
To my children, Lily and Sasha, with love
1
Hampshire, 2012
T
he beginning of March had been glorious. The earth had shaken off the early-morning frosts, and little buds had emerged through the hardened bark to reveal lime-green shoots and pale-pink blossoms. Daffodils had pushed their way up through the thawing ground to open into bright-yellow trumpets, and the sun had shone with renewed radiance. Birdsong filled the air, and the branches were once again aquiver with the busy bustle of nest building. It had been a triumphant start to spring.
Fairfield Park had never looked more beautiful. Built on swathes of fertile farmland, the Jacobean mansion was surrounded by sweeping lawns, ancient bluebell woods, and fields of thriving crops and buttercups. There was a large ornamental lake where frogs made their homes among the bulrushes and goldfish swam about the lily pads. Towering beech trees protected the house from hostile winds in winter and gave shelter to hundreds of narcissi in spring. A nest of barn owls had set up residence in the hollow of an apple tree and fed off the mice and rats that dwelt on the farm and in the log barn, and high on the hill, surveying it all with the patience of a wise old man, a neglected stone folly was hidden away like a forgotten treasure.
Abandoned to the corrosion of time and weather, the pretty little folly remained benignly observant, confident that one day a great need would surely draw people to it as light to lost souls. Yet today, no one below could even see those honey-colored walls and fine, sturdy pillars, for the estate was submerged beneath a heavy mist that
had settled upon it in a shroud of mourning. Today, even the birds were subdued. It was as if spring had suddenly lost her will.
The cause of this melancholy was the shiny black hearse that waited on the gravel in front of the house. Inside, the corpse of Lord Frampton, the house’s patriarch, lay cold and vacant in a simple oak coffin. The fog swirled around the car like the greedy tentacles of death, impatient to pull his redundant body into the earth, and on the steps that led down from the entrance his two Great Danes lay as solemn and still as a pair of stone statues, their heads resting dolefully on their paws, their sad eyes fixed on the coffin; they knew intuitively that their master would not be coming home.
Inside the house, Lady Frampton stood before the hall mirror and placed a large black hat on her head. She sighed at her reflection, and her heart, already heavy with bereavement, grew heavier still at the sight of the eyes that stared back with the weary acquiescence of an old woman. Her face was blotchy where tears had fallen without respite ever since she had learned of her husband’s sudden death in the Swiss Alps ten days before. The shock had blanched her skin and stolen her appetite so that her cheeks looked gaunt, even if her voluptuous body did not. She had been used to his absences while he had indulged his passion for climbing the great mountains of the world, but now the house reverberated with a different kind of silence: a loud, uncomfortable silence that echoed through the large rooms with a foreboding sense of permanence.
She straightened her coat as her eldest son, now the new Lord Frampton, stepped into the hall from the drawing room. “What are they doing in there, David?” she asked, trying to contain her grief, at least until she got to the church. “We’re going to be late.”
David gazed down at her sadly. “We can’t be late, Mum,” he said, his dark eyes full of the same pain. “Dad’s . . . you know . . .” He looked to the window.
“No, you’re right, of course.” She thought of George in the hearse outside and felt her throat constrict. She turned back to the mirror and began to fiddle with her hat again. “Still, everyone will be waiting, and it’s frightfully cold.”
A moment later her middle son, Joshua, emerged from the drawing room with his chilly wife, Roberta. “You okay, Mum?” he asked, finding the emotion of such an occasion embarrassing.
“Just keen to get on with it,” David interjected impatiently. Joshua thrust his hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders. The house felt cold. He went to stand by the hall fire, where large logs entwined with ivy crackled in the grate.
“What are they doing in there?” his mother asked again, glancing towards the drawing room. She could hear the low voice of her youngest son, Tom, and her mother-in-law’s formidable consonants as she held forth, as usual unchallenged.
“Grandma’s demanding that Tom show her how to use the mobile telephone he gave her,” Joshua replied.
“Now? Can’t it wait till later?” Her chin trembled with anguish.
“They’re finishing their drinks, Antoinette,” said Roberta with a disapproving sniff. “Though I’m not sure Tom
should
be drinking with his history, should he?”
Antoinette bristled and walked over to the window. “I think today, of all days, Tom is entitled to consume anything he wants,” she retorted tightly. Roberta pursed her lips and rolled her eyes at her husband, a gesture she wrongly assumed her mother-in-law couldn’t see. Antoinette watched her arrange her pretentious feather fascinator in front of the mirror and wondered why her son had chosen to marry a woman whose cheekbones were sharp enough to slice through slate.
At last Tom sauntered into the hall with his grandmother, who was tucking the telephone into her handbag and clipping it shut. He smiled tenderly at his mother, and Antoinette immediately felt a little better. Her youngest had always had the power to lift her high or pull her low, depending on his mood or state of health. A small glass of wine had left him none the worse, and she ignored the niggling of her better judgment that knew he shouldn’t consume any alcohol at all. Her thoughts sprang back to her husband, and she recalled the time he had managed to telephone her from the Annapurna base camp just to find out how Tom was after a particularly bad week
following a breakup. She felt her eyes welling with tears again and pulled her handkerchief out of her pocket. George had been a very
good
man.
“You haven’t turned the heating off, have you?” exclaimed the Dowager Lady Frampton accusingly. “
I
never let it get so frightfully cold!” In her long black dress, wide black hat, and mink stole Margaret Frampton looked as if she were off to crash a Halloween party rather than attend her only son’s funeral. Around her neck and wrist and dripping from her ears like elaborate icicles was the exquisite Frampton sapphire suite, acquired in India in 1868 by the first Lord Frampton for his wife, Theodora, and passed down through the generations to George, who had loaned it to his mother because his wife refused to wear such an extravagant display of wealth. The Dowager Lady Frampton had no such reservations and wore the jewels whenever a suitable occasion arose. Antoinette wasn’t sure Margaret’s son’s funeral was quite such an occasion.
“The heating
is
on, Margaret, and the fires are all lit. I think the house is in mourning, too,” she replied.
“What a ridiculous idea,” Margaret muttered.
“I think Mum’s right,” interjected Tom, casting his gaze out of the window. “Look at the fog. I think the whole estate is in mourning.”
“I’ve lost more people than I can count,” said Margaret, striding past Antoinette. “But there’s nothing worse than losing a son. An
only
son. I don’t think I’ll ever get over it. At the very least, one would expect the house to be warm!”
Harris, the old butler who had worked for the family for more than thirty years, opened the front door, and the Dowager Lady Frampton stepped out into the mist, pulling her stole tighter across her chest. “Goodness me, are we going to be able to get to church?” She stood at the top of the stone stair and surveyed the scene. “It’s as thick as porridge.”
“Of course we will, Grandma,” Tom reassured her, taking her arm to guide her down. The Great Danes remained frozen beneath the weight of their sadness. Margaret settled her gaze on the coffin and thought how terribly lonely it looked through the glass of the hearse.
For a moment the taut muscles in her jaw weakened, and her chin trembled. She lifted her shoulders and stiffened, tearing her eyes away. Pain wasn’t something one shared with other people.
The chauffeur stood to attention as Tom helped his grandmother into one of the Bentleys. Roberta followed dutifully after, but Antoinette hung back. “You go, Josh,” she said. “Tom and David will come with me.”
Joshua climbed into the front seat. One might have thought that his father’s death would unite the two women, but it seemed they were still as hostile as ever. He listened to his wife and grandmother chatting in the back and wondered why his mother couldn’t get along with Margaret as well as Roberta did.
“That woman is so trying,” Antoinette complained, dabbing her eyes carefully as the cars followed the hearse down the drive and through the iron gates adorned with the family crest of lion and rose. “Do I look awfully blotchy?” she asked Tom.
“You look fine, Mum. It wouldn’t be appropriate to look polished today.”
“I suppose not. Still, everyone’s going to be there.”
“And everyone is going to be coming back,” grumbled David from the front seat. He didn’t relish the idea of having to socialize.
“I think we’ll all need a stiff drink.” She patted Tom’s hand, wishing she hadn’t referred to alcohol. “Even you. Today of all days.”
Tom laughed. “Mum, you’ve got to stop worrying about me. A few drinks aren’t going to kill me.”
“I know. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have mentioned it. I wonder who’s come,” she said, changing the subject.