‘Stop it—I won’t let you say such things about him!’ protested Alexa, clinging to denial. ‘You don’t know him, Immie. I do.’
Imogen looked at her. ‘Do you?’ she said.
Alexa closed her eyes. Inside her lids, a thousand images and memories replayed themselves.
Then, ‘Yes, I do,’ she said, as she opened them again and let her gaze rest unflinchingly on her condemning friend. ‘Guy is not like that. I know. I know you didn’t like the way he came and went, but I’ll tell you, and I’ll tell you again and go on telling you, I was OK with it. It suited us both.’
Imogen just nodded. ‘Right. So will it suit you when he swans back into your life and suggests picking up again where you left off, because his honeymoon’s over?’
For a moment as brief as the stab of a knife emotion leapt in Alexa’s throat. Then, very carefully, she answered.
‘That isn’t Guy. Whatever the reasons he’s marrying—and for all I know he’s loved her for years and has been waiting for her to grow up—’ She ignored the derisive snort from Imogen at this fairy-tale explanation. ‘He’ll treat her honourably. Why shouldn’t he?’
Imogen just looked at her. ‘Because,’ she spelt out, ‘he didn’t treat you “honourably”, that’s why. And, Alexa, you’re no Carla Crespi—she’s as hard as nails and must have ambition written all the way through her like a stick of rock. So what excuse was there for the way he treated you? Apart from the excuse you keep coming up with? Saying you liked being treated like that! OK, OK, I won’t go on about it any more—I’ll just leave you to find out the truth for yourself. Because I’ll bet you, hand on heart, that that painted little doll he’s marrying won’t keep him between her sheets. I will bet you the sum of one hundred pounds—cash down, Alexa—that he’ll be running to another woman, wedding ring on his finger or not!’
‘You’re wrong,’ said Alexa. Her teeth were gritted, her throat tight.
But Imogen had only levelled her remorseless gaze on her. ‘One hundred pounds. On the table. And I,’ she said, ‘am going to win it.’
Hairpin bends snaked along the mountain side, heading towards the pass into Switzerland, away from the ducal schloss and his future bride. Guy drove fast and furiously, the powerful engine of his low, lean car eating up the curves along with the miles. The concentration it required to negotiate the precipitous Alpine road was a welcome—necessary!—diversion for his mind.
How the hell had he ended up in such a damnable situation?
But the question was pointless. Rhetorical. He knew very well how—had played it out a thousand times in his head. It didn’t matter how he cut it, marrying Heinrich’s daughter was the safest way to protect Rochemont-Lorenz. And protecting Rochemont-Lorenz was his job. His purpose. Just as it had been his father’s and his father’s before him, for over two hundred years. The weight of dynasty, destiny, pressed down upon him.
As he climbed the pass his eyes were bleak. It was nothing new, carrying such a weight. And for some it had been far worse than his burden. Only two generations ago his great-great-uncle Lorenz had liquidated his assets a week before the Anschluss of Germany with Austria, banking the remainder in a Swiss vault rather than let the Nazis sequester it. The gesture hadn’t gone unpunished, and his great-great-aunt had become a widow, her husband ‘disappeared’ into Nazi prison camps.
Her sister-in-law had divorced the husband she’d loved to marry one of Hitler’s top cronies, who’d fancied such a prestigious wife, in order to halt any further ‘disappearances’ in her branch of the family—and to preserve what she could of the Polish branch of the bank, first from Nazi and then Communist despoilation.
After the war another cousin had courted Stalin, funding Russian industry despite his father-in-law being despatched to the gulags for being a ‘dissident intellectual’ with his academic work suppressed. Even in less drastic times personal fulfilment had always been put aside for the sake of what was best for Rochemont-Lorenz.
His own father had wanted to be a professional sportsman—but what use would an Olympic rower have been to the family? So he’d become a banker instead—steering the family fortunes through the EC corridors of Brussels and Strasbourg and the opening up of the former Eastern bloc, and marrying a woman he did not love because it was a match that profited the family, whose perpetual requirements outweighed the petty emotions of individual members. Petty, transient emotions, that would not last if they were starved sufficiently, denied sufficiently.
Emotions as petty as desire. And more than desire…
That waterfall of pale hair, the slender, graceful body, the porcelain skin, and those grey, luminous eyes widening in wonder as the moment came upon her…
Guy’s hand gripped the gear lever, shifting up to match the engine speed. What use to think of such things? To remember a time when he’d been free—free to have Alexa in his life? That was in the past. In the future was following in his parents’ footsteps. Doing as they had done. He took another hairpin, faster than he should, as though by driving fast he could escape the inescapable, and thought about his parents’ marriage. Neither had loved the other, but they had married all the same, and made a pretty good job of it along the way. Respect and consideration went a long way in a marriage.
Would it do the same for his?
The question hung in the high mountain air.
And found no answer.
Only as he glanced upwards, seeing an eagle soaring on thermals, came the sure and certain knowledge that such freedom as the eagle had would never be his again.
Ahead of him, the dark mouth of the road tunnel started to open, swallowing all that entered. He depressed the accelerator and let himself be swallowed up.
‘It’s good that she is so young.’ The voice speaking was beautifully modulated, and it was impossible to tell from it what its owner thought—other than the words expressed.
‘Too young.’ Guy’s answer showed all too clearly his disquiet.
His mother paused momentarily in her needlework. Outside on the parterre an
autumn leaf eddied intermittently. The sky was grey above the Loire château, but there was still light in the air, and the ornamental trees marching along the boundary of this section of the gardens still held their leaves, despite the season. Along the gravel, a peacock strolled disconsolately, his tail furled.
‘It’s an advantage,’ Claudine de Rochemont said. ‘It will make her impressionable to your charms. It would be good for her, Guy, if she fell in love with you. It would not be hard for you to make that happen, you know.’ Green eyes, so similar to her son’s, rested on him.