The Secret of the Villa Mimosa (13 page)

“But what I really am is a writer,” he said finally, over the steak frites. “I began on a local paper and after years of slaving, writing up village flower shows and the church fetes, I graduated to one of the national dailies. Then I branched out and wrote my first book about wine; then a guidebook to France; articles about European life for the American glossies. That sort of thing.”

There was so much food Bea couldn’t manage the cheese and salad, and she watched, astonished, as he wolfed his down and told her that he would make a decent living if only he didn’t keep funding it all to the Charity—that was what he called his vineyard—for new roofs and modern steel fermenting vats and new equipment.

“Then why do you do it?” Bea asked curiously. “Why bother trying to save an old vineyard when you’d be much better off financially without it?”

His nice gray eyes met hers seriously. “I feel an obligation. After all, it’s been in the family for almost two hundred years. I’ve got to get it into shape for the next generation, so there will be something for them to inherit.” He grinned as he added, “Of course, the roof is collapsing and the floorboards are rotting and for all I
know there’s deathwatch beetle in the beams as well. And the thirty hectares of vines have been neglected for a couple of decades. But it’s my ambition to restore it to its former glory. I want to produce a Grand Cru wine with an
appellation contrôlée
and then live out my remaining years in serious splendor.”

He grinned as he added, “I expect it to keep me broke for the next twenty years or so. That’s why I call it Château Charity—because I give it all my money.”

Bea laughed along with him. He was so cheerful and positive about what he wanted, and something in her yearned for that kind of strength.

They had finished their coffee, and it was getting late, but she invited him to come by the hotel that evening for a drink. “Come meet Millie,” she said. “I think you’ll like each other.”

She was waiting for him promptly at seven-thirty, wearing her prettiest dress, a short amber linen sheath whose color blended with her golden-tanned skin. Her soft copper hair hung in soft bangs, and her anxious brown eyes lit up when she saw him striding confidently toward her.

Nick’s curly hair was neatly combed for the occasion, and he wore a rumpled cream linen jacket, a white shirt, and jeans. Bea thought he looked great, though she noticed Millie eyeing him critically as she ordered him to tell her all about himself.

“Nick didn’t bring his résumé, Millie,” Bea protested. “He only came for a drink. Can’t we talk about the weather or something?”

“I never talk about the weather,” Millie said impatiently. “The weather is either good or bad, and then the conversation is finished. It’s
people
I’m interested in. Bea told me about your book, dear boy. And I have a terrible feeling you might be writing about some of my old friends. They were all rogues, you know. There’s something so fascinating about crime,” she
added with a delighted shiver, “though poor darling Bea doesn’t think so.”

Bea shot her a warning glance; she didn’t want Nick Lascelles to know what had happened to her. At least not yet.

But Millie seemed to find Nick so entertaining she decided he was staying for dinner. “It’s so nice for Bea to have a young friend,” she said, making Bea roll her eyes in embarrassment.

But Millie meant it. She watched them approvingly, thinking how animated and pretty Bea looked tonight, in the simple amber linen with the string of green and silver beads, picked up, she knew, for a few francs in the Antibes market. A girl like Bea didn’t need flamboyant clothes; she gave anything she wore an instinctive touch of elegance.

“Invite Nick again, dear girl,” she boomed as she said good night to him later. “I like having him around.”

Bea made a wry face at Nick. “I’m afraid you’ve got your orders,” she told him mischievously as she walked him to his car.

“Suits me,” he said, pleased. They stopped and looked uncertainly at each other. Then he leaned forward and kissed her lightly on each cheek. “Same time tomorrow night?”

She nodded, waving, as he climbed into his little red Alfa convertible and drove away. It had been a good day, she thought, the best since her accident.

The next day the real estate agent told her of another villa, old and run-down, and unlived in for years. “But it has everything Madame Renwick wants,” he said. “It has character, elegance—and a view of the sea. It has been owned by one family since it was built around 1920. No one has lived there for decades, but they’ve only just put it on the market. It’s a gem, off on its own on a hillside. But I warn you it will need work.” He
glanced superciliously at her and added, “Naturally, the price will reflect that. You can tell Madame Renwick the villa is a bargain.”

He showed Bea on the map how to get there and told her there was a
gardien
on the property who would show her around.

The morning air felt fresh and sweet after the previous day’s storms. Bea put down the top of the Mercedes and drove along the coast road, then up into the hills, enjoying herself, thinking more about Nick Lascelles than the house she was going to see. No doubt it would be another wild-goose chase. She just didn’t understand why Millie was so insistent on buying a villa anyway, and she almost wished it wouldn’t be suitable so they could call it a day. It was just another whim Millie would be sure to regret later.

She drove along the dusty white lane to the top of the hill, past a peeling pink stucco wall tumbling with roses and bougainvillea. She stopped the car at the big iron gates and pulled the old bronze bell set in a stone niche. She listened to it ring and stared up the drive curving into the distance between the trees.

No one came, so she pulled the bell again, waiting in the hot silence. There was no one around, no human noises of cars and machines. As she waited, she leaned against the pink stucco wall. It felt warm against her back, and she closed her eyes, listening to the chirrup of the crickets and the sigh of the wind in the tops of the tall old cedars and the endless drone of bees in the blossoms. The sun was hot on her bare arms, and the scent of wild rosemary hovered in her nostrils…. It was so wild and quiet, so secret…. She felt like the last person on this beautiful earth—

“Mademoiselle, I was told to expect you.”

Her eyes shot open, and she stared at the
gardien.
He was old and frail, in bright blue work overalls. The sleeves of his blue shirt were rolled back, revealing sinewy arms and hands gnarled from decades of physical
labor. His face was deeply lined, and the blue eyes looking back at her had the faded innocence of another, more peaceful era. He removed his battered straw hat and bowed politely.

“It is a pleasure to see a visitor here again, mam’selle,” he told her as they walked up the drive together. He looked pleased when she answered him in French. “It has been a long time since anyone came here. Too long.” He sighed deeply. “A lifetime, it seems.”

Their footsteps crunched on the gravel as they turned the curve in the drive, and then the house came into sight.

Bea stopped dead in her tracks. Her legs refused to walk, and her eyes to believe what she was seeing, and her heart suddenly pounded so hard it hurt. She stared at the beautiful pink villa. At the tall windows with their faded green shutters, at the big double doors standing open with a glimpse of the shadowy hall beyond, and at the columned portico with wide marble steps.

The sunny day receded, and she felt herself tremble.

The ghostly scent of mimosa was in her nostrils, though it was the wrong season and none was in bloom. The sound of songbirds filled her ears, though none were there. Was it just déjà vu? A combination of all the villas she had seen over the past weeks and her own imagination and longing? Or was she really looking at the house of her dreams?

“Et voilà.
The Villa Mimosa,” the old man told her proudly. He glanced, concerned at her. “Are you ill, mam’selle? Please, please, come inside. The sun is hotter than you think. It is unwise to be without a hat….” He hurried off to fetch a glass of water.

She was alone in the hall. The hair at the nape of her neck prickled, and goose bumps rose on her arms.

She knew this house. She knew exactly how the rooms were arranged: dining room to the left, grand salon to the right, and at the back of the house the long room with its many windows leading onto the arched terrace overlooking the sea.
The floors were a cool pink-veined marble, and in front of her rose a graceful, curving staircase, leading up to a wide gallery.

“The staircase banister is made from a very rare wood,” the
gardien
said, handing her a glass of water. “From the tropics somewhere. It was built specially.” He was eager for her to like it. “Everything is of the best, mam’selle, as you can see.”

Bea walked slowly through the villa, feeling as though she had stepped into her dream. Even though the plaster was flaking and the old wallpapers were stained and peeling, it was just as beautiful as she had known it would be. She shivered, asking herself
why
she should know. What trick of fate had brought her here? Could it have been the
future
she had seen in her dream?

“I have worked here since I was just a boy, a gardener’s lad,” the old
gardien
said. “For Madame Leconte. She married the Foreigner soon after, and then they went to live abroad.” He hesitated, trying to recall, but he was old, and his memories were vague. “When Madame returned,” he said finally, “she was pregnant. She wanted the child to be born here, in France, in this house that she loved so much. And that was her undoing.”

He sighed deeply, remembering. “Her husband doted on her. I never saw a man behave like that. He treated her like a precious piece of Limoges porcelain. And all for nothing. Two weeks after the baby was born, she was dead.”

A thrill of horror ran down Bea’s spine. “Dead? How?”

“She fell, mam’selle. Down the precious staircase that he had built specially to please her. Her husband, the Foreigner, left immediately after the funeral. He never lived here again.”

Bea shuddered, looking at the fatal staircase. She
imagined the woman crashing down it onto the marble floor below.

Yet despite its tragic history, she did not find the house frightening. It was like an enchanted villa in a fairy story, protected by its high walls and tall cedars and pines, its thickets of thorny damask roses and the mimosas that gave it its name. She thought that it was like a sleeping castle, waiting to be discovered by the prince who would bring it back to life.

She walked outside and sat on the marble steps, closing her eyes, trying to recapture her dream, imagining she was that child again….

The marble steps were cool against her bare legs…. The sky darkened ominously, and she held her breath, waiting for the sinister sound of footsteps on the gravel.

But when she opened her eyes, it was just to see that the sun had gone behind a cloud as another storm approached. She glanced up, startled, as a flock of mewling gulls flew overhead, and she then remembered the song of a hundred birds in her dream. She turned anxiously to the old caretaker. “M’sieur, where are the songbirds?”

He looked at her, astonished. “Why, mam’selle, how do you know about that? There have been no songbirds here since the 1930s, when the aviary was destroyed.”

Bea’s velvet brown eyes darkened with fear. “Then if there are no songbirds,” she whispered anxiously, “how can I remember them?”

13

“O
f course it’s just coincidence,” Millie said, peering anxiously at Bea. They were sitting in the gardens of the hotel, and Bea had just poured out the whole story of finding the Villa Mimosa, the villa in her dream.

“You’ve looked at so many houses, dear child, they’ve all blurred together in your mind. I sometimes get that déjà vu feeling myself and I will admit it’s eerie to feel as though you know a place when you know you’ve never been there before.”

Bea looked at her, scared. “Perhaps I have been there before, Millie. What if I lived there before—before my accident?”