He removed his hand and shook his dark, handsome head. “Of course not. But there’s an untouched purity about you I can’t put into words.”
“Pure—that’s the way you see m
e?”
“You’re the most real woman I’ve ever met. No pretense or affectation. I don’t want that unique quality of yours to be blighted because of your relationship with me.”
“Spoken like a vintner,” she said to lighten his mood, but it didn’t work. “We don’t have a relationship, Raoul.”
“But we could have one,” he fired back. “I’ve told you about Angélique and the baby, but you haven’t shared a word about yourself. Is that because there’s someone else waiting for you when you return to the States? A man who wouldn’t like it to know you were here with me?”
She lifted her eyes. “No. No one.”
He raked a hand through his black hair. “Even if there isn’t, there have to have been many men who wanted a relationship with you.”
“Many?” She shook her head. “I’ve known two men whom I thought I could marry.”
“Why didn’t either of them work out?”
“When I was twenty and an undergraduate, I met a guy called Jim while on vacation in Carmel. He was a fun and easy-going cowboy from Nevada who lived on a cattle ranch. I eventually met his family and spent some time with him there. But hard as I tried, I couldn’t see myself adapting to the life he adored. It was obvious I didn’t love him enough.”
Raoul cocked his dark head. “You were young.”
“True. Four years later I met Nigel, a visiting professor from Cambridge, England. We worked together for two semesters. I fell in love with his accent first.”
Raoul smiled. “One of your quirks.”
“Yes, then I fell for him. He was brilliant and fascinating and wanted to marry me. Right before Christmas break we were planning a spring wedding. While he was teaching a class, a woman came in to his office. She claimed to be his wife and showed me pictures of the two of them with their children.
“Needless to say, I told him I never wanted to see him again. You don’t need to know how ugly it was. But after that experience, I don’t want to be hurt again like that. Not ever.”
“I’m sorry you’ve been through that kind of pain,” he murmured in a voice filled with a compassion she felt through to her insides. “Is that how you ended up in Switzerland?”
She looked up and searched Raoul’s eyes. “When I went to the head of the department and asked for a leave of absence, he told me I could do some research for Magda until the summer, and that brought me to Switzerland.”
“Dieu merci it did. But after what you’ve been through, I’m surprised you agreed to drive here with me.”
“Frankly, so am I, even with the prize you dangled in front of me.”
“That prize does exist, but whether it’s authentic will be for you to decide.”
Abby eyed him seriously. “Assuming you’ve told me the truth about your life so far, what was it about your wife that made you want to marry her? Why did it work for you?”
He took time answering. “Angélique de Dampierre was attractive and born into an aristocratic Burgundian wine family. Our family had known hers all our lives, but I didn’t begin spending time with her until three years ago. That was at the time when my father’s arthritis was advancing.
“One evening after a party where the Dampierre family was in attendance, he took me aside. In private he told me he was stepping down as the head of the estate and would be making me the head. I knew he’d been cultivating me for that position from the cradle. What I didn’t know was that he expected me to marry Angélique.”
Abby sat there in stunned disbelief. “Are you saying you entered into an arranged marriage?”
Raoul nodded. “He and René Dampierre had talked it over years earlier. The union of our two families would ensure stability and bring financial security for years to come. But my father said I had to be married first and Angélique, with her aristocratic background, would make the perfect vintner’s wife.”
“That sounds so feudal.”
“If you knew my father, nothing would surprise you. Once in a while the ruthless side comes out in him, making him a formidable opponent. I had no plan to marry anyone at the time and told him he should make Jean-Marc the heir. We had some violent quarrels and I threatened to leave the estate and move to Paris.
“In fact I was in the process of packing my bags when my mother got hold of me and posed an argument that forced me to listen. The doctor had told her my father didn’t have more than a year to live. She couldn’t abide anyone else in our difficult family taking over once he was gone. She said it had to be me in charge or the Decorvet estate would fall into ruin.
“My mother is a shrewd woman with a will of iron. She comes from an old aristocratic wine family too. She understands what it takes to keep the family on top. I knew deep down as I listened to her that she was speaking the truth. Once my father passed away, there would be chaos. My grandfather couldn’t possibly run things, and he’d die watching his fifty years of unceasing work as the patriarch fall apart.”