‘Louis,’ she bit out abruptly. ‘Is this about getting your own back on your father?’
He should lie. Come up with another typical quip. Instead, he heard himself respond.
‘Maybe. A little. You know, before last night I hadn’t thought about Rainbow House in years. Did you know I usually travelled with her? Backwards and forwards between Chateau Rochepont and the UK? Did you also know that Rainbow House is where my mother died?’
Died; suicide. Pot-ay-to; pot-ah-to.
He tried to stuff back the pain he’d thought long since buried. Play it down as he had in the past. But, for once, it didn’t seem to fit back in its dark, wretched cage. Instead, he plastered a smile on his mouth and pretended he didn’t hear the way Alex had sucked in a breath and shot him a look of pure horror.
‘I didn’t know that.’ Somehow that made him feel better. ‘Is that why you haven’t taken on her legacy all these years?’
‘Partly.’
He hadn’t been able to bear it. Taking on the legacy of a woman who could have achieved so much more. Who had chosen to take her own life when she could have followed her passion for the Lefebvre Trust; who had chosen to leave her desperate, seven-year-old son behind.
His only consolation was the fact that only he and his father, and whoever had discovered her that day, knew the truth. It wasn’t in anyone’s best interests to disclose such facts. The last thing Rainbow House would have wanted was negative media attention. Covering up his mother’s suicide had been the one decent thing his father had ever done. And even that hadn’t been for altruistic purposes.
‘Her name was Celine, but you already know that.’ He had no idea why he was still speaking. Why he was telling her things he’d never uttered to another soul. But it was like a faulty tap and now he’d opened the faucet he couldn’t shut it off again.
‘She didn’t have the greatest life. She was pretty but rather naïve when she met Jean-Baptiste. By the time she found herself pregnant with me, she was nineteen. My grandfather on my father’s side was only too keen to unite two aristocratic families while my grandfather on my mother’s side believed that Jean-Baptiste was doing the honourable thing in marrying Celine.’
‘And that was a bad thing?’ Alex was cautious.
‘With hindsight my mother was too young, too innocent to handle a man like my father. She would have been better off without him, but an unmarried pregnant woman was still a scandalous thing, especially in this area, back then. My grandfather just wanted to be sure that Celine and her son and rightful heir to the Delaroche estate—me—would be acknowledged.’
‘Were you close?’
‘Very.’ And suddenly he was fighting off a slew of unwelcome emotions. It was enough to evoke so many memories, but he would not remember her soft voice, her contagious laugh or the fresh scent of her hair when she’d hugged him. He would not remember how they’d spent every single day together, out on walks along the section of Canal du Midi where the chateau was, or collecting pine cones in the surrounding woods. And he would not remember how she’d taught him about the birds and their songs, only for him to have to teach her all over again when he was six and had discovered she’d got it all wrong.
He could not remember it. He’d long since found that detonating those flashbacks in the deepest, darkest caverns of his soul had been the most effective way to eradicate them.
‘Jean-Baptiste was as vile a husband as he was a father.’ Louis flipped the subject quickly. ‘What you saw that night is only a glimpse of it. He’s a bully and a coercer. Gradually, systematically, he beat my mother down until she felt she was worthless.’
‘She couldn’t leave him?’
‘We talked about it. We agreed how different life would be without Jean-Baptiste’s money or connections, and we concluded how much easier it would be to breathe without his restrictions. That last trip to Rainbow House was to be her final one. When she flew back we were going to leave. Then she...died.’
He understood why she’d had to be free of his father, but he could never forgive her for choosing such a way out. For not simply packing a bag for them both and fleeing in the dead of night. For leaving him behind.
‘I’m sorry for your loss, Louis.’
Her words wrenched him out of whatever black pit he’d been sliding into. He fell silent, old grief washing over him. And then, for the first time, a hint of something resembling a soothing calm.
He stared at Alex.
Was that because of her? He couldn’t be sure.
She was watching him warily. Opening her mouth, then hesitating and closing it again.
‘What is it, Alex?’
She bit her lip.
‘For what it’s worth, your father isn’t as loved by the Delaroche board as you, or the media, seem to think.’
He didn’t know what flooded through him then.
‘What do you mean?’