Celebration

‘He was a bastard. I watched it happen, and I saw poor Catherine beginning to cling to him. She was getting better, coming back to life, and she needed love more than anything else. Valentine Gordon was hardly the man to give her love, of course, but she didn’t understand that. He was just warm, and full of life, and touchable. Of course she compared him with Charles, always silent, with that terrible, set, disgusted face.’

The rest of the story came out in a rush, as if she couldn’t wait to get it over and done with.

‘Then the inevitable happened. Valentine gave a party, to celebrate the end of the vintage. He always does – did. Catherine wanted to go and – oddly, I thought, although I understood later – so did Charles. There was a great deal of drinking. There always is, when Valentine is around. Then,’ Juliette sighed, and shrugged, ‘Charles saw them together, somewhere. Not in bed, I don’t think, but I suppose doing something that turned his suspicions into certainty. Instead of confronting them there and then, in private, he slipped away and waited until they came back to the party.’

She put her hands over her eyes as she spoke, as if she couldn’t bear to remember the scene.

‘Then, in front of what felt like the entire population of the Médoc, he stood up and accused Valentine of stealing his wife. And challenged him to a duel.’

Bell’s mouth fell open in amazement.

‘A duel?’

‘That was more or less Val’s reaction. In fact I can still hear exactly what he said into the awful silence in the room. It was “Jesus Christ, a fucking duel. This is the twentieth century, Baron. Why don’t you just come over here and smash my face in?” Charles didn’t, of course. I wish he had. Instead he turned around and walked out, leaving Valentine standing there with Catherine like a ghost beside him. Val tried to laugh it all off, rather shakily, but I think he was wishing then that he had taken up the challenge.’

Bell said sharply, ‘Not all that reckless after all,’ and Juliette smiled at her.

‘It’s quite right that your sympathy should be with Charles, but you mustn’t assume that it was cowardly of Val to refuse the pistols at dawn or whatever crazy idea it was that my brother had. He just thought it was irrelevant. Not the way to solve a problem.’

Bell knew that she was right. But the vivid image of Charles waiting to fight in the grey light of some misty-wet meadow excited her, perversely. Suddenly she wanted him very much.

‘Then what?’ she asked Juliette dully.

‘After the party, the next day or the day after, Catherine packed up her things and went away. We saw no more of Valentine, and I heard a little later that he had gone back to California. That’s all, Bell.’

‘And you hate him.’

Juliette smiled at her again, a resigned, crooked smile that surprised Bell.

‘Hate Valentine? No, he’s not the kind of man that you can hate very easily. And what was happening here was nothing to do with him, really. He just treated Catherine as he treats all women. As he will certainly treat you.’ Juliette’s face darkened at the thought. ‘But Charles hates him. Charles is a passionate man, and is capable of passionate extremes. Val Gordon is clever to stay away from him.’

Juliette stood up, swaying a little. ‘Now do you understand tonight?’ Bell nodded dumbly. ‘Then I must go to bed. I’m drunk, and I can’t bear to think any more about Christophe.’

Bell lay down wearily on the white bed and let the held-back tears come. Poor Charles. Poor Charles and poor Catherine. That life should be so cruel. No wonder the pain in his eyes had reminded Bell so sharply of her father. It was the old pain of inconsolable loss, the pain that frightened Bell herself so much.

Oh God, how could she have been naïve enough to think that she could warm that hurt away? She had failed once in her life, and this time all she had had was three pathetic days. And at the end of those she was going away to Valentine Gordon.

It was the cruellest, bitterest coincidence. No wonder. Oh, no wonder.

At last Bell fell asleep with the jaunty striped blazer all wrinkled up underneath her and the ivory bangle digging a red weal into her wrist.

She was woken up by the sun pouring cruelly in through the undrawn curtains and the sound of someone tapping at her door. It was Marianne, with a breakfast tray. She stopped dead when she saw Bell, her eyes and mouth wide open with surprise.

‘I must have dropped off,’ Bell said feebly, trying to raise a smile.

‘Oui, Madame. Monsieur le baron, he asked me to say that there is not much time. The airport …’

‘I know. Thank you.’

The coffee was hot and mercifully strong. Bell gulped it down as she packed her bag. A hot shower helped her headache, and clean clothes made her feel almost human again. But her face was dead white, with all yesterday’s pink, happy glow gone.

At last there was another knock at the door.

‘Charles …’ He was standing there, looking as distant as when he had first greeted her on the Château steps. ‘Charles, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, about it all. About everything.’ She buried her face against his chest, and then felt the blissful relief of his arms going round her.

‘Valentine Gordon is a dangerous man,’ he said stiffly, and she felt a little clutch of apprehensiveness at the weeks that lay ahead. How could she go out there, alone?

‘I won’t go, I won’t go,’ she told him in desperation. Stobbs didn’t matter. Her job didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except Charles.