Till We Meet Again (87 page)

To Eve, it was as if Bruno were invisible. She neither put out her hand to him when he arrived, nor did her eyes so much as pass over his face. She did not ignore him, because to ignore him would have been to admit his existence. She simply did not show, by any sign whatsoever, that he was present at this gathering, and she did it so skillfully that, except for Bruno, not one of them noticed.

Now that the formalities were over, Bruno escaped the château to go for a walk in the woods nearby. Armand Sadowski had left to drive Tony Longbridge and his parents, Penelope and Gerald, to Rheims, where they would catch a train for Paris. Jane, who was staying overnight, had gone upstairs to take a nap.

“Have you thought … yet … about what you’re going to do?” Delphine finally ventured to ask Eve. Until her mother made some decision about her future, she couldn’t possibly leave her here all alone, yet in a week she was due to begin work on a new film of Armand’s.

“Yes, I have,” Eve answered, her voice unexpectedly purposeful. Freddy and Delphine exchanged surprised glances. Until now, Eve had been wrapped in her heartbreak, as if it were a hooded cloak of solitude. She had not broken down and wept, as they had half expected, but refusing their company, she had spent a great deal of time alone in her rose garden, finishing the mulching she had started just before Paul’s death.

“I’m going to follow the plans your father and I made for the winter,” Eve said quietly. “If I had died, that’s what I would have wanted him to do. I’ll fly back to California with you, Freddy, and stay, as we planned, until I join Delphine and Armand in Barbados. After the Christmas vacation I’ll return to Paris and do all the things we’d intended to do. The only change will be at the Ritz—I’ll take a smaller suite. Early next spring, of course, I’ll come back here where I’m needed. While the vines sleep I can travel; when they wake, I must be home.”

“But … can you run the business … alone?” Delphine asked.

“I won’t be alone, darling. Most of the men who were here when we arrived after the war are still well and working. Some who were sent to Germany didn’t come back; some, like the cellarmen, the three Martin cousins, were executed by the Gestapo, but they’ve been replaced by members of their family. No one single man in the House of Lancel is indispensable, not even the
chef de cave
. Yet together they are the key to the growing of the grapes and the making of the wine. I’ll have to hire someone to organize and supervise and oversee them, someone to run the House of Lancel as your father did. I’ll find the best man in Champagne, even if I have to steal him away from my competition. Don’t forget, I’ve learned more than a little about this business in the last six years—it was a crash course for me as well as for your father. If the house of any
Grand Marque
depended totally on certain particular people, how long do you think it would survive? Champagne makes strong widows, Delphine.”

“Mother! How can you talk like that?”

“Because it’s true. Read the history of the wine and you’ll understand. It teaches you to be realistic. And next summer, I hope you’ll all come and visit me and bring the children—after all, Valmont belongs to you now, not just to me.” Eve’s voice, although it was roughened with weeping, was strong and resolute. The denuded vines around Valmont would bear fruit in the spring, as they had every year for centuries. This elemental, unchangeable process gave her courage to look ahead and imagine a future without Paul. Without the vines she would be lost—but she would never be without them.

“As far as I’m concerned,” Freddy said, “Valmont doesn’t belong to me at all. I can’t imagine owning it.”

“But it does. And after you, to Annie. When the notary comes tomorrow to read us the will, there shouldn’t be any surprises. One-third will come to me, the other two-thirds, by law, must be divided among you, Delphine … and Bruno. When I die, the House of Lancel will belong to the three of you equally, and when you die, to all of your children. If none of you, or none of them, wants to be involved in the business, or if you disagree about how it should be run, remember that it can always be sold. Land in Champagne never lacks for buyers.”

“Don’t be morbid, Mother!” Delphine protested.

“It’s not morbid to talk about death, darling. It’s uncomfortable, because it forces you to realize that you won’t live forever, but when land is concerned, it’s never irrelevant. In any case, it will always be Lancel champagne that is made from our vines, no matter who owns the land. The name will be immortal so long as the grapes are tended.”

Eve smiled gently at her daughters. She’d needed many hours in the rose garden to begin to face her life without Paul, and she knew that no matter how detailed her plans, they could not protect her from a never-ending loss. But that was the price you paid for a never-ending love. You could not have it both ways.

Bruno sat on a tree trunk in a clearing in the forest, in a place of deeply slanted light, aware, in a way that was entirely new to him, that he was at a moment in his life when he could say to himself, “This is the best it can be.” The future held a parade of glorious events that rose before him as clearly as if this woodland were enchanted, but he had no urge to count them, no need to dwell on all the earthly
delights that his father’s death now made possible for him. It was enough, just for now, to think about Marie de La Rochefoucauld. Less than three weeks ago, on her birthday night, her admission that she talked about him with her friends had let him know that she loved him. A girl like Marie would never speak her heart more plainly than she had that night.

In the days following her party he had seen her frequently, and with his new understanding of her emotions, he could tell that in her demure, queenly, old-fashioned way she was waiting anxiously for him to respond to her. She hid her eagerness almost well enough so that if she had not already betrayed herself, he might still be in the condition of anxiety and self-doubt that had existed from the time he met her.

Marie de La Rochefoucauld was his for the asking, Bruno knew, as he stretched his legs and his arms, exhausted with so much joy. From the instant she had admitted that she could not keep him to herself, he had begun that training in obedience he had promised himself to impose on her. He kept her waiting, dangling, hoping, and uncertain, while he employed all his deliberate and powerful charm to make her fall more deeply in love with him. In the last week her glances had begun to reveal her state of mind. A questioning anguish escaped her clear gray eyes in certain moments during which Marie believed that he wasn’t looking at her. Whenever Bruno spied that anguish, he became remote and superficially polite for a half hour, long enough to confuse and worry her, but not so long that she had reason to ask him what was wrong. Even before the news of Paul’s death, Marie’s universe began to be ruled by Bruno’s moods. He had all the time in the world, he told himself in triumph, to bring her to the point of nervous despair, if he desired, but now that he knew it was possible, it was not yet necessary to test his power.

He would arrange their engagement, Bruno decided, as soon as he returned to New York, since nothing stood in the way of his return to France. They would fly back to Paris together in a few weeks’ time, so that he could meet Marie’s parents. Her mother would want to begin to plan the great wedding at which all the noble clans to which they belonged would gather to see them united. He imagined that the ceremony would take place in the spring—soon enough, since it was inevitable that in the fullness of time Marie was destined
to become the peerless Vicomtesse Bruno de Saint-Fraycourt de Lancel. She would exist to please him; together they would found a dynasty.

But not here in Champagne. He never wanted to see Valmont again. Only this funeral, so bitterly delayed, so long-awaited, so prayed-for, could have brought him back to this province for even a day. Let whoever chose to live here do so, burdened with all the alarms and worries of a peasant. Let anyone maintain Valmont, so long as he himself received his fair share of the profits of the House of Lancel.

Perhaps it was time to go back to the château, Bruno thought, lazy distaste tainting his perfect happiness. He hated to get up and abandon his thoughts when everything he had ever wanted was finally within his grasp, but there was a damp chill in the forest air. “This is the best it can be,” he repeated to himself, knowing that this moment would return again and again throughout his lifetime. A breeze sprung up as the leaves in the clearing started rustling behind him.

A hand, huge, rough, clapped over his mouth, forcing his head back. An arm, heavily muscled, tightened brutally around his neck. Other hands grabbed his arms, jerked them ferociously behind his back and fastened them tightly together. Hoisted to his feet, forced relentlessly forward, Bruno had to walk or fall. His captors marched behind him, so close that he felt their breath on his nape.

“You should never have come back,” muttered a male voice that Bruno didn’t recognize. “Never return to the scene of the crime. Don’t you know that?”

“Remember the three Martins? Remember the men you denounced to the Gestapo? We are their younger brothers,” a second voice whispered, barely audible over the crumbling of autumn leaves under their feet.

Now a third man spoke, almost as softly. “We were coming to find you the day your father arrived home from the war, but you disappeared.”

“We intend to teach you a lesson,” grunted the man who had spoken first. “Move!”

In his plunge into terror, Bruno was able to understand only that they were skirting the path toward the cellars. Not one human soul was visible anywhere in the landscape, as the late autumn light grew dimmer. The giant hand over his mouth kept him silent, grinding his lips painfully into his teeth.

“You thought you’d gotten away with it, didn’t you? You thought that you had destroyed the only men who knew about
Le Trésor.”

Frantically, Bruno tried to shake his head.

“Don’t deny it. We know it was you,” the third voice muttered in his ear, its merciless edge only sharpened by its reined-in softness.

“There was another key,” the second voice said in a hideous whisper. “The key belonged to my brother, Jacques, the oldest of the Martins. Your grandfather trusted him as he trusted the others. Except for your father, you had the only other key. There have never been more than three keys to
Le Trésor
in the history of Valmont.

“Jacques saw a German convoy one night, near the cellars. He followed, hid, and watched the soldiers carrying champagne into their trucks. The next day he went to
Le Trésor
and discovered that it was empty. He was afraid that someone might blame him or our brothers, until he understood that it could only be you who had sold the Germans the secret of Valmont. He told us everything, and gave us the key for safekeeping.

“When the Gestapo came for our brothers,” the wolfish whisper continued, “we realized that you had had them murdered. We could not act because your Nazi friends protected you. After the war, your father never spoke to anyone of
Le Trésor
. He knew who the real thief was. We respected his shame. We respected his grief. We knew you’d return one day. He must have known it too.”

Now they entered the huge, well-filled cellars, deserted by any workers, and hurried toward the far wall where the entrance to
Le Trésor
was hidden. Bruno struggled with insane strength, but he was as helpless as a piece of meat in the butcherly efficiency of their grip. One of them pressed on a chalk surface, and the wall swung open, the lock of the hidden door shining as brightly as it had when Bruno’s grandfather first entrusted him with the secret of Valmont. A key was put in the lock, and the door of
Le Trésor
swung wide.

One of the Martins turned on the lights and closed the thick, hinged blocks of chalk behind them, muffling all noise.

The three men dragged Bruno through the vast, empty cellar. His feet scraped the ground. He had gone limp with knowledge, yet his eyes were still open, still aware, as they propped him up against the back wall. They moved quickly
away from him under the battery of lights. The cousins un-slung the rifles that hung from their shoulders, lifted them and took aim.

Three shots rang out. The Martins walked slowly toward the body on the cement floor. One of them turned Bruno over with his shoe, looking at the sightless eyes, the mouth that had been opened to scream. He had been dead before he hit the floor. Another of them took out a piece of paper on which he quickly scribbled the words,
Réglement de comptes
.

“Account paid in full,” he said slowly, and laid the paper on Bruno’s chest. They turned to leave, slipping their hunting rifles back over their shoulders.

As the door to
Le Trésor
swung shut behind them, one of the Martins said to the others, “Tomorrow we must send the key and arrange to let the police know where he is. There will be no further investigation … not when they read the note on his body. It would not be fair to Madame de Lancel, otherwise. There would be an endless search and he would never be found.”

“His bones should not lie at Valmont. They desecrate it,” said another of the cousins.

“I agree,” the third Martin said. “Nor is it good for people to believe that there is no final accounting. That man lived too long.”

Delphine and Armand persuaded Eve to rest before dinner, and went upstairs with her, while Freddy remained downstairs in a small salon with Jane, who had finished her nap. They were trying to catch up on the threads of their lives that were cut when Freddy and Tony had left for Los Angeles, five years earlier.

“I hated it bitterly when you two left,” Jane complained. “What was the good of having snared you as a sister-in-law if you were going to live so far away?”

“Well, now you’ve got Tony back,” Freddy said, “and, believe me, he looked a lot more fit today than the last time I saw him. Being a squire again has made a great difference. And that nice girl he says he’s marrying … 
and
giving up liquor. I’m happy for him.”