Peach (33 page)

Jean-Paul looked at her, surprised. “You’re right, of course,” he said, “just think then, Peach, I’ll be managing a dream.”

Leonore laughed and Leonie realised suddenly that it was a sound she hadn’t heard much of lately. Leonore was looking especially pretty tonight in a simple blue and white printed cotton dress with a tight bodice that showed off her slenderness and a full skirt that swished gracefully around her pretty legs. And if she weren’t mistaken, Jean-Paul had
definitely noticed that fact. Leonie watched them, pleased, and then her eye met Caro’s.

“Plotting again?” asked Caro with a raised eyebrow.

“Leonie is always full of plots,” responded Maroc, “she re-writes the scenarios for all our lives.”

“She certainly re-wrote mine,” said Jim cheerfully. “I drove all the way back from Valenciennes at her request specially to be here with you all.”

“It was worth it,” Leonie smiled as he bent to kiss her. Jim was home again and she was happy.

Rain was falling steadily from a leaden sky and, from his fifth-floor apartment at the Ritz, Ferdi had a bird’s eye view of striped and spotted umbrellas hurrying along slick grey streets and the traffic surging round the Place Vendôme. Klaxons blared as impatient Parisian drivers battled against the elements and each other, but Ferdi barely noticed. His mind was on Peach.

Leonore couldn’t possibly have told Peach about their affair, yet Peach knew something. What happened between him and Leonore hadn’t been a
love
affair. There had been no romance—just a generous comforting gesture by Leonore, the only woman who could possibly understand his pain. That and a mutual sexual need. When he had received her message that she would prefer him not to try to see her again, he had understood it was over. Their physical and
mental longings had been assuaged. Then
why
had Peach said—so fiercely—that he should go back and
explain?

Ferdi paced the floor worriedly. He lay awake at night brooding about Leonore and trying to analyse his feelings for her. It was so different from what he felt for Lais. Lais had blazed into his life like a ray of pure sunlight, thawing him with her warmth. Until then his life had been a serious business, burdened with family obligations and duty. Born just as his father was killed, Ferdi was the only son in a family of sisters, but their frivolous activities had never been allowed by his mother’s family, the powerful Merkers, to intrude on his solitary life. As heir presumptive to the Merker iron and steel works with its factories spread throughout the Ruhr, Ferdi was groomed for his future role like a prince destined for the throne. His young life was bound by tutors force-feeding his brain with work until the work-ethic became the vital element. Physical instructors coached him in swimming, fencing, riding and gymnastics so that he would be strong and fit for his role as master of Merker. Ferdi had never known his father but he’d heard stories from his grandparents and from his mother, of Klaus von Schönberg’s capacity for hard work—and his gift for enjoying life. Klaus had been sensitive, Ferdi’s grandmother said, perhaps
too
emotional, but in the end he’d buckled down to a “proper life”. Ferdi had always wondered what she had meant by a “proper life”, but assumed it was the sort of life he too was destined for. The first crack in the superficial façade of the correct, well-educated young German born and bred to succeed in his duty had come with the outbreak of war. Ferdi’s refusal to take his proper place as head of the Merker factories had ripped through his family with a tidal wave of shock. For them
nothing
—not even so transparent an evil as Hitler’s—mattered more than maintaining Merker’s wealth and position. When he had been
drafted into the army and accepted only the status of a lower grade officer, his mother refused to speak to him. He had disgraced his family.

When he first saw Lais at the party in Paris her brittle façade of gaiety had seemed about to splinter and sensing her vulnerability Ferdi had been drawn to her. And when they had met again at the Hostellerie the powerful sexual attraction between them had merged into love.

Looking back Ferdi couldn’t remember much laughter in his life except when he was with Lais and he would trade the whole of the Merker empire to laugh again with her.

Then what should he do about Leonore? If he’d hurt her he hadn’t meant to. He cared about Leonore more now than any other woman in his life. He probably loved her. It was just that it was so different from the way he felt about Lais that he didn’t recognise it.

Striding to the desk Ferdi picked up his pen and paper. “My dearest Leonore,” he wrote, “Forgive me for not writing to you before and if I’ve hurt you then I’m sorry. I needed time to think about things—about
us
. I have never been able to bring myself to return to the Hostellerie since that night, but now, knowing you are there, I shall plan to visit you as soon as I am able in order to discuss our future. Please believe me, dearest Leonore—I didn’t mean to hurt you. Ferdi.”

Peach swung the telescope on Lais’s terrace towards the beach, focusing on the couple strolling at the edge of the waves. “It’s Leonore and Jean-Paul,” she called excitedly, “he’s just taken her hand, Lais. They’ve stopped to talk … oh, I believe he’s going to kiss her.”

“Peach!
It’s unfair to watch them.”

Reluctantly Peach swung the telescope around. “Do you think he wants to marry her?” she asked wistfully.

“They barely know each other.”

“But you don’t need to
know
each other to fall in love.”

Lais looked at her sister thoughtfully. “Perhaps that’s true,” she admitted, “but when you’re older Peach you don’t fall in love easily. And certainly not like you—with a man you’ve hardly met.”

Peach blushed angrily. “I
do
love Harry Launceton, why don’t you believe me?”

“Because I don’t think you know what love is,” replied Lais.

“And you do, I suppose!”

“It took me a long time, but yes, I do.”

Peach stared at her remorsefully. “Oh Lais, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that.”

Lais smoked her cigarette saying nothing.

“I know I’m young, and I know that I’ve never even spoken to Harry,” whispered Peach, crouching at Lais’s knee, “but it must be love, Lais. What else can it be? I just want to touch him, to be by his side, to listen to his voice,
smooth his silken hair. I know what it will feel like when he kisses me. I’ll melt away inside and I’ll want him never to stop … Isn’t this love, Lais?”

Their eyes met as Lais said, “Only you can tell, Peach. And if you think it’s love, then take it. Take all you can from it—it may not last.”

Jean-Paul d’Aureville was a man who knew what he wanted. He was thirty-nine years old and with his busy gregarious life running a luxury hotel he had so far avoided marriage to one of any number of willing and beautiful Brazilian girls. In Rio Jean-Paul was known as a bit of a playboy, always throwing parties on his boat or dinners for two in Rio’s most intimate restaurants. The dark-haired beauties and their eager mamas considered Jean-Paul quite a catch and he had become famous over two decades for eluding their nets. And now here he was, falling for the tall blonde cousin he’d known since he was a child—and he couldn’t even tell if she cared.

He sat alone at the corner of the Terrace Bar, sipping a dry Martini and waiting for Leonore. She had promised to have dinner with him, warning him that she would probably be late. “I’ll wait,” he’d promised—he who never waited for anyone. Yet the anticipation of seeing her was pleasurable. He was actually
enjoying
waiting for Leonore. “You’re too mysterious,” he’d told her that first night when they were alone on the terrace at the villa, “so cool and calm and efficient. But there’s another side to you that you’re not letting anyone see.”

“You’re imagining things, Jean-Paul,” she replied avoiding his eyes, “or maybe you’re confusing me with my sister. Lais is the multi-faceted character.”

“Lais is as easy to read as an open book,” he contradicted,
“there’s no confusion in my mind. Is there in yours, Leonore?”

He must have triggered a signal on some painful nerve end because Leonore glared at him, stricken, and then hurried back in to the lighted salon and Leonie’s other guests.

He’d apologised the next day, prising her away from what seemed a million and one urgent commitments, by simply brushing them aside. “You can’t fool me with your excuses,” he’d grinned, “you forget I run a hotel too. Leave it all and have lunch with me.” To his surprise Leonore accepted. They ate at a tiny village restaurant high in the hills above the coast, sitting for hours beneath a shady grape arbour, protected from the hot sun by its dense glossy leaves, eating fresh figs and goat’s cheese and sipping a clean, stinging white wine, while Leonore talked.

She told him about Lais and how Lais had always been the one who claimed all the attention, how she’d always protected Lais, how much she loved her and how it tore her apart to see Lais play-acting nightly at the bar, pretending it was all the way it used to be. “I would do anything,” Leonore said passionately,
“anything
to turn back the clock.”

“Clocks can’t be turned back,” he said gently, taking her hand and feeling her flinch from the contact. “You have to go forward adapting as best you can to the new circumstances. Life is made up of changes, strokes of fate, circumstance, destiny—call it what you will.”

“You don’t understand,” Leonore had said pulling her hand away.
“Lais was in love!
Truly in love this time. But when she was shot Ferdi never came back for her, he thought she was dead …”

Jean-Paul waited for her to say more but Leonore’s voice trailed off and she sat there, eyes cast down at the purple fig on her neglected plate, her smooth blonde hair pulled back into a white ribbon, looking a troubled young girl.

“Leonore?” he asked. “Why did you never marry?”

Her shocked amber eyes met his. “But Ferdi wanted to marry Lais,” she blurted out and then, realising what she’d said, she blushed, turning her head away but not before he’d seen the glimmer of a tear on her lashes.

So that was it! Jean-Paul didn’t need her pathetic admission fleshing out with details—he understood. He waited a few moments and then said, “It was all a long time ago, Leonore. Life goes on and love changes, sometimes at a faster pace than you might think. Why not try living in the present—not the past or the future—but right now? Here we are in a sunny arbour up in these lovely hills with a view of the whole beautiful Mediterranean coast below, drinking cold wine and eating delicious fruit—and just being with each other. Being with you at this moment brings me as much pleasure as I’ve ever known. Can’t you try just to enjoy the day? And enjoy being with me?”

Leonore smiled gratefully as she answered, “Of course I’m happy with you, Jean-Paul.”

Since then he’d spent as much time with her as she would give him. Leonore told him it was the first time in all her years running the Hostellerie that she’d ever delegated her work to others and she was a little put out to notice that the hotel seemed to run just as smoothly without her there. But then she began to enjoy “playing truant”, as she called it. Together they toured the length of the coast, driving over the border into Italy for dinner, looping back via fishing villages and hillside hamlets, pausing to admire local monuments and the works of struggling artists, making a purchase here and there, bickering happily over their choices. And he’d kissed her once or twice—lightly. But it wasn’t like brother and sister.

Jean-Paul sipped his Martini and glanced at his watch.
Leonore was already a half-hour late. No matter, he would wait.

Leonie stared aghast at Leonore. Of all the things she could have told her, this was the most unexpected. She had been filled with happiness and relief, seeing Leonore blossom in the company of Jean-Paul these past few weeks. When Leonore said she had something important to tell her Leonie had hoped that maybe she had come to confess her love for Jean-Paul. It would all have been so perfect … but now this desperate tale of her passion for Ferdi and their sad
affaire
.