Her Own Rules

  “Merci.” Turning to Meredith, he said, “I don’t know about you, but I’m ravenous.”

  “Yes, I am too.”

  As he led her across the library in the direction of the dining room, Luc explained, “I asked Mathilde to make a fairly simple lunch. Vegetable soup, plain omelette, green salad, cheese, and fruit. I hope that’s to your taste.”

  “It sounds perfect,” Meredith answered, looking at him.

  Luc smiled at her warmly, took hold of her arm, and led her into the dining room, where Mathilde was waiting to serve lunch.

  Suddenly Meredith did not care what she had told him about herself. She knew he would not judge her; she trusted him.

  And she felt safe with Luc de Montboucher.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  After lunch Luc took Meredith on a tour of the park in which Clos-Talcy stood. As they walked they talked about a variety of things, but eventually the conversation came back to his grandmother. Luc told her several amusing stories about Rose de Montboucher, keeping her thoroughly entertained.

  At one moment she said, “The way in which you speak about Grand-mère Rose really brings her to life for me. I wish I’d known her.”

  “You would have enjoyed her,” Luc answered, glancing at Meredith. “She was a true original. Strong of character, spirited and courageous, and she truly ran our family. Ruled it with an iron hand. In a velvet glove, of course.” He chuckled, continued. “My father loved to tease her, and when her birthday came around he always used to lift his glass and say, ‘Here’s to that great man whose name is Rosie,’ borrowing the line from Voltaire.”

  “Who said those very words to Catherine the Great, when he met her in Russia for the first time,” Meredith remarked. “She’s one of my favorite characters in history, and I’ve read a number of biographies about her. She was strong and courageous too. And she made her own rules.”

  “That’s true, she did, but then most strong women do do that, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, they do . . . sometimes they have to, because they have no other choice.”

  Luc took hold of her arm and led her down a side path, heading for the orchard ahead of them. “In 1871, when my great-great-grandfather acquired Talcy from the Delorme family, he built the fishpond over there. It’s actually fed by the stream that flows through the wood, and it was a marvelous bit of engineering on his part.”

  They came to a stop by the edge of the pond, and Meredith peered down into its murky depths. “There really are fish in it,” she said, sounding surprised.

  “Of course. When I was a little boy I used to fish here. My sisters and I all had rods and lines, and sometimes Grandma Rosie joined us. She was rather good at fishing.”

  “I can just imagine.” There was a silence between them as they walked around the pond, turned, and headed toward the woods. After a moment, Meredith murmured, “Your grandmother was a great influence on you, wasn’t she?”

  “Oh yes. She brought us up, you see. My mother died in childbirth, giving birth to our little brother Albert, who was premature. He also died that same week. It will be thirty-three years ago this summer, to be exact.”

  “How sad for you and your sisters . . . for your whole family.”

  “Everyone took it very hard, especially my father. He never remarried, and I believe he mourned my mother until the day he died.”

  “When was that, Luc?”

  “Almost two years ago. He wasn’t very old, only seventy-one, which is no age at all these days. He dropped dead suddenly of a stroke. He was in the stables, didn’t know what hit him, thankfully. It would have been terrible if he had been an invalid, he was a very active man, a great sportsman.”

  “And your grandmother? When did she die?”

  “In 1990 at the age of ninety. She was wonderful right to the end, not a bit senile or decrepit, and she was very active, had all of her faculties. Oh yes, she was still the boss around here. One night she went to bed and never awakened, just died in her sleep, very peacefully. I was glad of that, glad she didn’t suffer. Neither did my father, for that matter.”

  “I think that’s the best way to go, with your boots on, so to speak,” Meredith said, thinking out loud. “Or when you’re asleep, as your grandmother was. Dying of old age is the most natural thing.” Meredith turned to Luc, smiled at him. “That painting of her in my sitting room is very lovely, isn’t it? I was trying to figure out how old she was when it was painted.”

  Luc’s brow furrowed as he said, “I’m not exactly sure. However, she’d just married Arnaud de Montboucher, my grandfather, and come to live at Talcy when she sat for the portrait. So she must have been in her early twenties.”

  “That’s what I thought. She reminds me of somebody, I’m not sure who.”

  “My sister Natalie favors her, but you’ve never met Natalie. Or have you?”

  Meredith laughed, shook her head, “No, I haven’t.”

  “Natalie resembles Grandmother physically, she’s really rather beautiful, but she’s not like her in character. Neither is Isabelle. I’m the one who inherited Rose’s basic character,” Luc confided.

  “She really put her imprint on you, didn’t she?”

  “Absolutely. I have come to realize that I think like her, and I have a tendency to do things the way she did. When someone really influences you in childhood, you carry her imprint. Always, I think. It’s like an indelible stamp. And who was it who put their imprint on you, Meredith?”

  “No one did,” she answered almost fiercely, and bit her lip, suddenly aware that she had sounded angry. Speaking in a softer tone, she went on. “I just muddled through on my own, doing the best I could, teaching myself. Nobody influenced me. There was no one in my life to do that, no one at all, I was completely alone.”

  They had stopped walking a few seconds before, had paused near one of the fountains, now stood face-to-face as they spoke. The sadness invading her touched Luc; he wanted to reach out, pull her into his arms. But he did not dare. He was about to say something comforting to her, when she suddenly smiled. The bereftness vanished instantly.

  Meredith said, “But there was someone later, when I was a bit older . . . eighteen. Amelia Silver. She showed me how to do certain things, taught me about antiques and art. She had wonderful taste and was very artistic, actually and her husband, jack, influenced me in certain ways, too.”

  “Are the Silvers still living in Connecticut?”

  “Oh no, they’re both dead. They died years ago, over twenty years ago. Sadly, neither of them was very old.”

  “I’m sorry. They were like family, weren’t they?”

  She nodded, half turned away from him. “I was twenty-two when Jack died, twenty-three when Amelia followed him to the grave. I had them in my life for only a few years.”

  Aware that the sadness had surfaced again, Luc took hold of her hand. “Come on, let’s walk down to the ornamental lake, it’s so picturesque, one of the prettiest parts of the park.”

  By the time they reached the lake situated at the far side of the house, Meredith was beginning to feel unwell. A wave of nausea passed through her and a peculiar kind of exhaustion seemed to settle in her bones. Unexpectedly, she thought she was going to collapse, and she grabbed hold of Luc’s arm, said in a faint voice, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I feel awful. Nauseated, and suddenly very tired.”

  Luc looked at her in concern. “I do hope you’re not getting the flu, that Agnes hasn’t passed on any germs.”

  “I doubt it, and Agnes wasn’t ill.”

  “No, but her family was. Do you think it was the wine at lunch? Could that have upset you?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t drink very much. Anyway, I remember now that I felt a bit queasy when I arrived in Paris on Tuesday night. I’d spent the morning wandering around an old ruined abbey in Yorkshire, and it was bitterly cold. That night I thought that I’d probably caught a chill. But I was all right the next morning, so perhaps I’m just tired
in general, run down.”

  “Perhaps. Let us return to the house. You must rest for the remainder of the afternoon.” So saying, he put his arm around her and together they walked back to the château.

  Luc accompanied Meredith upstairs to her rooms and fussed around her. He made her take off her boots and forced her to lie down on the sofa. After adding more logs to the fire, he brought her a thick cashmere throw and laid it over her.

  “Don’t go away,” he said, smiling down at her. “I’ll be back in a few minutes with a pot of hot lemon tea laced with honey. It’ll do you the world of good . . . one of Grandma Rosie’s cures.” He left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

  Meredith leaned her head back against the pile of soft velvet cushions and closed her eyes; she was so sleepy, she could barely keep her eyes open.

  She must have dozed off, for she awakened with a start when Luc bent over her and moved a strand of hair away from her face. This intimate gesture on his part startled her for a moment, and then she realized that she did not mind that he did this. It suddenly seemed perfectly natural to her.

  “I put the tea here on the ottoman,” he said, his voice low, concerned still. “Drink some of it while it’s hot. Now I shall go and let you rest.” He squeezed her shoulder.

  “Thank you, Luc, you’re so kind. I’m sorry I cut short our walk, but I—”

  “Think nothing of it,” he said swiftly “It’s not important.”

  “Would you turn off the lamp, please?”

  “Of course. Now rest.” He left the room.

  Meredith turned on her side, lay curled in a ball under the cashmere throw, staring into the fire’s bright flames. The logs hissed and crackled and sparks flew up the chimney. She raised her eyes at one moment and gazed for a long time at the portrait of Rose de Montboucher.

  The afternoon light was fading rapidly, the room filling with shadows, but the roaring fire and its dancing flames introduced a rosy glow. In the soft incandescent light it seemed to Meredith that the painting of Rose came alive. Her face was full of life, her delphinium-blue eyes brilliant, sparkling with joy, and the red-gold curls framed the sublime face like a halo of burnished copper. How beautiful she was . . . so radiant.

  Meredith’s eyelids drooped. She drifted on a wave of warmth. Her mind was filled with that face . . . memories jostled for prominence . . . fragmented into infinitesimal pieces. She fell into a deep sleep. And she dreamed.

  The landscape was vast and it stretched away endlessly, as far as the eye could see, miles and miles of desolation. There was something oddly sinister about this place where there were no trees and nothing bloomed on the parched, cracked earth.

  She had been walking and walking for as long as she could remember. It seemed like forever. She felt tired. But some inner determination pushed her forward. She knew they were here somewhere. The children. She had followed them here. But where could they be? Her eyes darted around. The land was empty; there was nowhere for them to hide.

  Help me to find them, please. Oh God, help me to find them, she pleaded. And immediately she understood that her prayers fell on arid ground. There was no God here. Not in this empty void. It was godless, this netherworld.

  And then unexpectedly she saw something moving near the pale rim of the far horizon. She began to run. The cracked dry earth suddenly gave way to mud flats and her shoes squelched and sank into the mud and sometimes stuck and her progress was slowed. She persisted. Soon the land was dry again. She ran and ran.

  The specks on the horizon grew closer and closer, loomed up in front of her as if they had jumped backward. She saw a young boy holding a girl’s hand. Just as they had drawn closer to her, now they withdrew, moved forward again, and rapidly so. She ran, almost caught up to them once more. They walked on slowly, the two of them, still hand in hand, perfectly in step. She called out to them, called for them to wait for her. But they did not. They went on walking as if they had not heard her. The sky changed, turned a strange grayish-green, and a high wind began to blow, buffeting her forward. Suddenly the boy flew into the air, as if blown upward by a gust of wind. He disappeared into the sky.

  The little girl was alone now. She suddenly turned around and began to walk toward her. Meredith hurried forward to greet the girl, so wan, so pathetic, with her pale, pinched face and big sad eyes. She wore black stockings and shoes, and a heavy winter coat. There was a small black beret on her head and a long striped scarf was wrapped around her neck. The label pinned to the lapel of her coat was huge. The girl pointed to it. Meredith peered at it, trying to decipher the girl’s name written there, but she could not.

  Suddenly, taking her by surprise, the girl began to run away. Meredith tried to run after her but her feet were stuck, encased in the mud. She cried to the girl to come back, but she did not stop, just went on running and running and running until she was gone out of the landscape.

  There was a cracking sound and then a terrible noise like shell fire and everything exploded around her . . .

  Meredith sat up with a jolt. Her face and neck were bathed in sweat. She was disoriented, and it took her a moment to get her bearings. Then she realized she was in Grandma Rosie’s sitting room at Talcy.

  Outside, a storm was raging, lightning streaking through the darkening sky, thunderbolts rattling the windows. She shivered and huddled under the cashmere throw Luc had wrapped around her earlier, stared at the fire, grown low in the grate. And the fear was there inside, ravaging her.

  Closing her eyes, she tried to push the fear away, not understanding why she was so frightened. She was here at the château, perfectly safe from the violent storm raging outside.

  And then it came to her. She knew why she was so fearful. It was the dream. The dream that had recurred so many times in her life. She had not dreamed it for years now. Suddenly, the old, familiar dream had come back to haunt her, to frighten her again, as it always had in the past.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Once she had returned to Paris, Meredith’s thoughts frequently focused on her weekend at Clos-Talcy. And most particularly, Luc de Montboucher was at the center of her reflections.

  She liked him, more than liked him, in fact, and his kindness to her had left a lasting impression.

  Kindness had always been important to Meredith, perhaps because she had experienced so little of it in her life. None at all when she had been a child, and growing up without kindness had made her acquire a carapace of iron. Only Mrs. Paulson had been able to break through this tough protective shell; and then, of course, the Silvers, when she had gone to work for them at Silver Lake.

  And just as kindness was important to a child, so it was to a grown woman, and especially a woman over forty. But this characteristic aside, she found him extremely attractive as a man.

  Luc was very good-looking, darkly handsome and fine of feature, but that was not his most important asset as far as she was concerned. Just a pretty face had long ago ceased to hold her interest.

  She admired his intelligence and talent, and his integrity which instinctively she knew was unassailable. He also had a good sense of humor, and she discovered they liked so many of the same things—good books, classical music, a glass of icy champagne in front of a blazing fire on a wintery night, not to mention houses built on water, stained-glass windows, and the delicate paintings of Marie Laurencin. All in all, Luc was an impressive man and she was glad she had met him, glad she had accepted his invitation to go to the château in the Loire.

  They had driven back to Paris early on Monday morning, and she had spent most of the afternoon with him and Agnes out at the Manoir de la Closière in Montfort-L’Amaury going over the changes they wanted to make. That evening Luc had taken her to dinner at the Relais Plaza, and the night before they had eaten at Grand Vefour.

  They had laughed a lot over the past few days, and she had begun to realize what an enormous impression he was making on her, and just how much she really did care about him.

  Meredi
th had known Luc only a week, but he was already under her skin, and she knew she was going to miss him when she returned to New York. In her mind she was already planning her next trip to Paris. There was business to attend to in Manhattan; also, she had to sign the initial documents for the sale of Hilltops to the Morrisons. And she couldn’t wait to see Cat, to hug her, fuss over her, and celebrate her engagement to Keith.

  But all of this would take only ten days at the most, she had calculated, and then she would fly back on the Concorde. In any case, she was needed in Paris because of the remodeling and renovation of the old manor house. The three of them had agreed on Monday that it must be modern and up-to-date in every way, while still retaining its basic character and charm. And of course it required her decorative imprint, the look and the stylishness that proclaimed it to be a creation of Havens Incorporated.

  In the quietness of her hotel suite the previous night she had wondered what would happen after the inn was finished; she had an immediate answer for herself. The inn would take a whole year to complete, therefore she would be spending a great deal of time in this city. Paris. The City of Light. And of lovers.

  Things will work themselves out, she reassured herself in the early hours of the morning. A long time ago Meredith had come to understand that life had a way of taking care of itself.

  Day by day, step by step, she decided, as she prepared for bed. It’s the only thing I can do, and we’ll see what happens. Everything must take its normal course.

  Meredith knew only too well that a relationship that looked promising could quite easily come to naught, fizzle out in a flurry of recriminations and bad feeling. After all, that had happened with Reed Jamison. Her face had changed at the thought of him. What an unpleasant encounter that had turned out to be in the end. But then, Reed and Luc were as different as any two men could be, poles apart, and anyway, to make comparisons was foolhardy, even odious.

  Luc was so straightforward, so honest, she believed she would always know exactly where she stood with him. No game-playing there. And he was a thoughtful, responsible, mature man whom she knew respected her; certainly she respected him.