Jewels

“I didn’t do this by myself, you know. You must have given it a bit of help sometime too.”

“Oh, darling …” He leaned close to her again, knowing full well how much she had wanted another baby. And so had he. But they had both given up after the last three years when nothing happened. “I hope it’s a girl,” he said softly, and he knew she did, too, not to take Lizzie’s place, but to be a balance to Phillip. And William had never even seen his little girl, never known her before she died, and he longed to have one. Sarah secretly hoped, too, that in some way, the birth of the baby might heal Phillip. He had loved Lizzie so much, and been so different, and so angry, and so distant once they lost her.

William pulled himself out of his wheelchair, and laid down beside Sarah. “Oh, darling, how I love you.”

“I love you too,” she whispered, holding tightly to him, and they lay there together for a long time, thinking how blessed they were, and looking forward to the future.

Chapter 19

’M not sure.” Sarah frowned as she looked at the new pieces with Emanuelle. They had just been delivered from the same workshop Chaumet used, and Sarah wasn’t sure if she liked them. “What do you think?”

Emanuelle picked up one of the heavy bracelets in her hands. They were pink-gold bangles encrusted with diamonds and rubies “I think they’re very chic, and very well made,” she pronounced finally She was looking very stylish herself these days, with her red hair in a chignon, and a black Chanel suit that made her look very dignified, as they sat in Sarah’s office.

“They’re also going to be very expensive,” Sarah said honestly. It bothered her to charge too much for things, and yet good workmanship commanded incredible prices. She refused to cut corners, and use poor workmanship or bad stones. At Whitfield’s one bought only the best, it was her credo.

“I don’t think anyone will care,” Emanuelle said, smiling at Sarah as she lumbered across the room to look at one of the bracelets in the mirror. “People like paying for what they get here. They like the quality, the design They like the old pieces, but they like yours, too, Madame.” She still called her that, even after all these years. They had known each other well for eleven years now, ever since Emanuelle had come to help deliver Phillip.

“Maybe you’re right,” Sarah decided finally. “They’re beautiful pieces. I’ll tell him we’ll take them.”

“Good.” Emanuelle was pleased. They had spent the whole morning going over things. This was Sarah’s final trip to Paris, to have the baby. It was the end of June, and the baby was expected to arrive two weeks later. But William was taking absolutely no chances this time. He had told his wife months before that he had given his last performance as a midwife, and she was not doing that to him again, particularly after what he’d heard of her second difficult delivery when he was gone.

“But I want the baby to be born here,” she had said again before they left the château, and William absolutely wouldn’t hear it.

They had come to Paris to stay at the apartment they’d finally bought that spring. It had three lovely bedrooms and two servants’ rooms, a handsome salon, a lovely study, a boudoir off their bedroom, and a very pretty dining room and kitchen. Sarah had somehow managed to find the time to decorate it herself, and they had a lovely view of the Jardin des Tuileries, with the Seine beyond, from their bedroom.

It was also close to Whitfield’s, which Sarah liked, and to some of her favorite shops. And this time, they had brought Phillip with them. He was furious not to be at the château, or somewhere else, or even Whitfield, and he claimed that being stuck in Paris was boring. Sarah had hired a tutor for him, a young man who could take him to the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower, and the zoo, when she couldn’t. And she had to admit that for the past two weeks, ever since he’d been home, she could barely move. The baby seemed to have taken over her entire existence.

And Phillip was annoyed about that too. They had told him about the baby during his spring break, and he had looked at them with dismay and horror. And afterwards Sarah heard him tell Emanuelle he thought it was disgusting.

He and Emanuelle were very close, and the one thing Phillip did like was to go to the shop to visit her, and look at the things, as he did that afternoon when Sarah dropped him off with Emanuelle so she could do some errands. He thought some of the jewelry very nice, he admitted And she tried to tell him the baby would be nice, too, but he said that he thought babies were stupid. Elizabeth hadn’t been, he said sadly, but that was different.

“You weren’t stupid,” Emanuelle said gently as they ate madeleines and sipped hot chocolate in her office, after Sarah had gone to do some errands before she had to go into the clinic. “You were a wonderful little boy,” Emanuelle said gently, wishing she could soften him. He had grown up to be so hard, and so brittle. “And your sister was too.” Something now crossed his face as she mentioned her, and Emanuelle decided to change the subject. “Maybe it’ll be a little girl.”

“I hate girls”… And then he decided to qualify it.

“Except you.” And then he startled her completely. “Do you think you might marry me one day? I mean, if you’re not married yet by then” He knew she was already pretty old. She was twenty-eight, and he knew that by the time he could marry her she’d be almost forty, but she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, he thought, even prettier than his mother. His mother had been pretty good-looking, too, until she got big and fat with her dumb baby. Emanuelle told him he was too old to feel that way, at his age, he shouldn’t have been jealous of a baby, he should be excited about it, and about being a big brother. But he clearly wasn’t He wasn’t excited at all Emanuelle could tell he was very angry.

“I’d love to marry you, Phillip. Does this mean we’re engaged?” She beamed at him and offered him another madeleine.

“I guess so. But I can’t buy you a ring. Father never lets me have any money.”

“That’s all right. I’ll borrow one from the store in the meantime.”

He nodded and glanced at some of the things on her desk, and then he surprised her by what he said next, and he would have surprised his mother even more.

“I’d like to work here with you one day. Emanuelle … when we’re married.”

“Would you?” She looked amused, and then teased him a little bit. “I thought you wanted to live in England.” Maybe he’d discovered Paris wasn’t so bad after all. She wondered.

“We could open one there In London I’d like that.”

“We’ll have to tell your parents that sometime,” she said as she put her cup of tea down, just as Sarah walked into the room, looking absolutely huge but still very pretty, in a dress Dior had made for her that summer.

“Tell me what?” Sarah asked as she sat down, looking incredibly uncomfortable to Emanuelle, who hoped she never had a baby, and was fully prepared to make every possible effort not to. She had seen enough of Sarah’s deliveries to know that children were not something she wanted. She didn’t know how Sarah did it.

“Phillip wants to open a store in London. A Whitfield’s,” Emanuelle said proudly, and sensed instantly that he didn’t want her to tell his mother about their engagement, so she didn’t.

“That sounds like a nice idea.” She smiled at him “I’m sure your father would be pleased. I’m not sure I’d survive it however.” The last year, since their opening exactly a year before, had been absolutely exhausting

“We’ll have to wait till Phillip is old enough to run it.”

“And I will,” he said with a stubborn look Sarah knew well. She offered him a drive through the Bois de Boulogne, and he grudgingly left Emanuelle with a kiss on both cheeks, and a squeeze of the hand to remind her of their engagement.

They had a nice walk in the park after that, and he was more talkative than usual, chatting about Emanuelle, and the shop, and Eton and Whitfield. And he was patient with Sarah’s slow, cumbersome pace. He felt sorry for her, she looked so uncomfortable all the time now.

William was waiting for them when they returned to the apartment, and they had dinner at the Brasserie Lippe that night. Phillip always loved it. And for the next two weeks Sarah devoted herself to him, because she knew she wouldn’t have as much time once she had the baby. They were planning to go back to the château as soon as it was born, and the doctors said she could travel. They had even wanted her in the clinic a week before the baby was due, and she flatly refused, and told William that in the States people just didn’t do that. In France people went into private clinics a week or two before the baby was born, to be pampered and wait, and then they stayed another two weeks after. But she wasn’t going to sit in a clinic, no matter how fancy, and do nothing.

They stopped in at the shop every day, and Phillip was very excited when a new emerald bracelet came in, and on another afternoon when Emanuelle told them they had sold two enormous rings in one morning. What was even more amazing was that she had sold one of them to Jean-Charles de Martin, her lover. He had bought it for her, and had teased her mercilessly, pretending it was for his wife when he bought it. And then, as she grew angrier and angrier at him, he took the ring from the box, and slipped it on her finger. It was there now, and Sarah raised an eyebrow.

“Does this mean something serious?” Sarah asked, but she also knew how much jewelry he bought for his wife and girlfriends, at other jewelers.

“Only that I have a beautiful new ring,” Emanuelle said realistically. She had no illusions. But she had a few very interesting clients. Many of the men who bought from them, bought for their mistresses as well as their wives. They had complicated lives, and all of them had come to know that Emanuelle Bourgois was the soul of discretion.

They went back to the apartment late that afternoon, and Phillip went to the movies that evening with his tutor. He was a fine young man, a student at the Sorbonne, and was fluent in both English and French, and fortunately Phillip liked him.

It was already July by then, and Paris was hot and steamy. They had been there for two weeks, and Sarah was anxious to go home again. It was so beautiful at the château at that time of year. It seemed a shame to waste the summer in Paris.

“I wouldn’t call it ‘wasted’” William mused with a smile as he watched her. She looked like a beached whale as she lay on their bed in an enormous pink satin nightgown. “Aren’t you hot in that thing?” he asked, it made him uncomfortable just looking at her. “Why don’t you take it off?”

“I don’t want to make you sick, having to look at me like this.” But he rolled slowly toward the bed as she said it.

“Nothing about you ever makes me sick.” He was a little sad this time, not to be there when she had the baby. He felt a little left out of it, with her fancy Paris doctor, and the clinic, but it was William who wanted her there, because it was so much safer.

She fell into a deep, deep sleep that night, as he slept fitfully in the heat, and she woke him at four in the morning, when the pains came. He dressed carefully, and called the maid to help her, and then he drove her to Neuilly, to the clinic they had chosen. She seemed to be in considerable pain by the time they left, and she said very little to him on the short drive in his Bentley. And then they took her away from him, and he waited nervously until noon, fearing that things might be going as badly as they had the first time. They had promised to give her gas this time, and they had assured her that everything would be easy and modern. As easy as it could be for a woman having a nine-pound baby. And finally, at one-thirty, the doctor came out to him, looking very neat and prim, and smiling broadly.

“You have a handsome son, Monsieur.”

“And my wife?” William asked worriedly.

“She worked hard,” the doctor looked serious for a moment, “but it went very well. We have given her a little something to sleep now. You may see her in a few moments.” And when he did, she was draped in white sheets, and very pale, and very groggy, and she seemed to have no idea where she was, or why she was there. She kept telling him that they had to go to the shop that afternoon, and not to forget to write to Phillip at Eton.

“I know, my darling … it’s all right.” He sat quietly next to her for hours, and about four-thirty, she stirred and looked at him, and glanced around the room in confusion. He moved closer to her again then, and kissed her cheek and told her about their baby. William still hadn’t seen him yet, but all the nurses said. He was lovely. He weighed nine pounds, fourteen ounces, almost as big as Phillip, and William could only imagine from the look of her that it hadn’t been easy.

“Where is he?” she asked, looking around the room.

“In the nursery, they’ll bring him in soon. They wanted you to sleep.” And then he kissed her again. “Was it awful?”

“It was strange …” She looked at him dreamily, holding his hand, and still trying to focus. “They kept giving me gas and it made me feel sick … but all it really did was make me woozy, it seemed like everything was very far away, and I still felt the pain, but I couldn’t tell them.”

“Maybe that’s why they like it.” But at least they were both safe, and nothing dreadful had happened.

“I liked it better when you did it,” she said sadly, this was all so odd, and so foreign, and so antiseptic, and they hadn’t even showed her the baby.

“Thank you I’m afraid I’m not much of a surgeon.”

But they brought the baby in to them then, and all the pain was suddenly forgotten. He was beautiful and round, he had dark hair and big blue eyes, and he looked just like William. And Sarah cried when she held him. He was so perfect, such a wonderful little boy. She had wanted a little girl, but she didn’t mind now that they had him. All that mattered was that he was there, and he was all right. They had decided to call him Julian, after a distant cousin of William’s. And she insisted on William as his middle name, which his father said was foolish, but he reluctantly agreed Sarah cried when they took him away again. She couldn’t understand why they had to do that. She had her own nurse and her own room. She even had her own sitting room and her own bathroom, but they said it wasn’t sanitary to leave him there for too long. He belonged in the nursery with sterile conditions. Sarah blew her nose and looked at William after Julian was gone, and the emotions of the day overwhelmed her. And he suddenly felt guilty for bringing her here, but he promised to take her home quickly.

He brought Phillip to see her the next day, and Emanuelle, who proclaimed Julian beautiful when she saw him through a window. They wouldn’t let the infants visit with guests, and Sarah hated the place more than ever. And Phillip stared at him through the glass and then shrugged and turned away, visibly unimpressed, as Sarah watched in disappointment. He looked angry about the baby, too, and he wasn’t very kind to his mother.

“Don’t you think he’s sweet?” Sarah asked hopefully.

“He’s all right. He’s awfully small,” Phillip said disparagingly. And his father laughed ruefully, knowing what Sarah had been through.

“Not to us, young man. Nine pounds, fourteen ounces is a monster!” But there was nothing else monstrous about him, whenever they brought him to Sarah to feed, she could see he had the sweetest disposition. And after he nursed, he would lie nestled next to her, and as though a bell had rung, a nurse arrived instantly to remove him from her.

By the eighth day, Sarah was waiting for William when he arrived with a fresh bouquet of flowers, and she was standing in her sitting room with her eyes blazing.

“If you don’t get me out of here in the next hour, I’m going to take Julian and walk out of here in my nightgown. I feel perfectly well, I’m not ill. And they won’t let me get near my baby.”

“All right, darling,” William said, knowing this would come, “tomorrow, I promise.” And the next day, he took them both back to the apartment, and two days later they all went back to the château, as Sarah held Julian in her arms, and he slept happily in the warmth of his mother.

By her birthday, in August, Sarah was her old self again, thin and well and strong, and enchanted with her new baby. They had closed the shop for the month, Emanuelle was on a yacht in the South of France, and Sarah didn’t even have to think of business. And in September when Phillip went back to school, they went to Paris for a few days, and Sarah took the baby with her. He went everywhere with them and sometimes he slept peacefully in a little basket in her office.

“He’s such a good little boy,” everyone commented about him, he was always smiling and laughing and cooing, and on Christmas eve, he was sitting up and the whole world was in love with him. The whole world except Phillip. He looked angry each time he saw him. And he always had something disagreeable to say about him. It cut Sarah to the quick, she had been so hopeful that he would come to like him. But the brotherly affection she had hoped would come never had, and he remained distant and unpleasant.

“He’s just jealous,” William said, accepting what was, as he always did, unlike Sarah, who railed over what wasn’t. “That’s the way it is.”

“But it’s not fair. He’s such a sweet baby, he doesn’t deserve that. Everyone loves him, except Phillip.”

“If only one person dislikes him for the rest of his life, he’ll be a very, very lucky man,” William said realistically.

“But not if that one person is his brother.”

“Sometimes that’s the way life is. No one ever said brothers had to be friends. Look at Cain and Abel.”

“I don’t understand it. He was crazy about Lizzie.” She sighed. “And Jane and I adored each other when we were young.” And they still did, although she never saw her. Jane had remarried after the war, and moved to Chicago, and then Los Angeles, and they never came to Europe, and Sarah never went to the States, let alone California. It was hard to believe Jane was married now, to someone Sarah didn’t even know. It was just one of those things. As close as they had been, they had drifted apart. But she still loved her, and they wrote each other frequently, and Sarah always urged her to come to Europe.

But no matter what his parents thought of it, Phillip never warmed up to his baby brother. And when Sarah had tried to talk to him about it, he brushed her off, until she pressed him, and then he exploded at her. “Look, I don’t need another baby in my life. I’ve already had one.” It was as though he couldn’t try again, couldn’t open himself up to the risk and the loss and the caring. He had loved Lizzie, maybe too much, and he had lost her. And he had decided, as a result, never to love Julian. It was a sad thing for both children.

William and Sarah had taken Julian to meet his only grandmother, at Whitfield, shortly after he was born, and now they were together at Christmas. And the dowager duchess was enchanted with him. She said she had never seen a happier baby. He just seemed to radiate sunshine, and he made everyone laugh and smile who watched him.

It was a particularly nice Christmas at Whitfield that year, with all of them there. William’s mother was ninety-six now, and in a wheelchair, but always in remarkable spirits. She was the ultimate good sport, the kindest woman Sarah had ever known, and she still doted on William. He brought her a beautiful diamond bracelet that year, and she murmured that she was far too old for such a lovely thing, but it was obvious that she loved it and she never took it off the whole time they were there. And when they left after the New Year, she held William tightly to her and told him what a good son he had always been, he had always, always made her happy.

“Why do you suppose she said that?” William asked, with tears in his eyes as they left. “She’s always been so incredibly good to me,” he said, turning away, embarrassed to have Sarah see him cry, but his mother had really touched him. She had kissed Julian’s chubby little cheek as well, and Sarah, and thanked her for all the lovely presents from Paris. And two weeks later, she died quietly in her sleep, gone to meet her husband and her Maker, after a lifetime of happiness at Whitfield.

William was very shaken by her loss, but even he had to admit that she had had a good life, held a very long one. She would have been ninety-seven that year, and she had enjoyed good health all her life. There was much to be thankful for, as they all stood at the cemetery at Whitfield. King George and Queen Elizabeth came, her surviving relatives and friends, and all those who knew her.

Phillip seemed to feel her absence most acutely. “Does this mean I can’t come here anymore?” he asked, with tears in his eyes.

“Not for a while,” William said sadly. “It will always be here for you. And one day, it will be yours. We’ll try to come over for a bit every summer. But you can’t come here on holidays and weekends, as you did when Grandmother was alive. It wouldn’t be right for you to be here alone with the servants. You can come to La Marolle, or Paris, or stay with some cousins.”

“I don’t want to do any of that,” he said petulantly, “I want to stay here.” But William didn’t see how he could do that. In time, he could come here on his own, when he was at Cambridge. But that was still seven years away, and in the meantime, he’d have to be satisfied with occasional visits in the summer.

But by the spring, it had become obvious to William that he was not going to be able to be away from Whitfield as much as he expected. Not having any member of the family present there anymore suddenly meant that there was no one to watch over things and to make immediate decisions. He was startled to realize how many things his mother had actually done, and it was suddenly very difficult to run the place without her.

“I hate to do this,” he admitted to Sarah one night, as he read page after page of complaints from his estate managers. “But I really think I need to spend more time there. Do you mind terribly?”

“Why should I?” She smiled. “I can take Julian anywhere right now.” He was eight months old and still very portable. “And Emanuelle has the shop perfectly in control.” She had hired two more girls to work there, so all in all they were four now, and die business was extremely successful. “I don’t mind spending some time in London.” She had always liked it. And Phillip could join them at Whitfield for the weekends, which she knew would please him.

They spent the entire month of April there, except for a quick trip to Cap d’Antibes at Easter. They saw the Windsors at a dinner party, and Wallis made a point of mentioning that she had just bought some very pretty pieces from Sarah’s shop in Paris. She seemed very impressed with their things, particularly their new designs. All over London, people seemed to be talking about Whitfield’s.

“Why don’t you open one here?” William asked her one night as they left a party where three women had practically devoured her with questions.

“In London? So soon?” They had only had the shop in Paris for two years, and it worried her a little to spread herself so thin, and she didn’t want to be forced to spend a lot of time in London. It was one thing if she was here with him, but an entirely different matter if she had to spend all her time dashing back and forth across the English channel. And she wanted to spend most of her time now with the baby, before he grew up and walked out of her life like Phillip. She had too strong a sense now of how fleeting were the moments.

“You’d have to find someone very good to run it. Actually”—William looked pensive, as though he was trying to dredge up a distant memory—“there used to be a marvelous man at Garrard’s. Very discreet, very knowledgeable, he’s young but a bit old-fashioned perhaps, but just what the English love, full of good manners and old traditions.”

“Why do you think he’d ever want to leave them? They’re the most prestigious jewelers here. He might be shocked by a new venture like Whitfield’s.”

“I always got the impression that he was a bit underrated there, sort of the forgotten man, but a very good one. I’ll stop in next week and see if I see him. We can take him to lunch if you like.”

Sarah grinned at him, unable to believe what they were doing “You’re always trying to get me into more trouble, aren’t you?” But she loved it. She loved the way he encouraged her, and helped her do the things she really wanted. She knew that without him she could never do it.

True to his word, William stopped in at Garrard’s the following afternoon, and bought her a lovely antique diamond ring. It was very old and very pretty. And while he did, he had spotted his man. Nigel Holbrook. They had an appointment for lunch with him at noon, at the Savoy Grill on the following Tuesday.

And the moment they walked into the restaurant, Sarah knew exactly who he was from William’s earlier description. He was tall and thin and very pale, with blondish gray hair, and a small, clipped mustache. He wore a well-tailored pinstripe suit, and he looked like a banker or a lawyer. There was something very elegant about him, distinguished and discreet, and he was extremely reserved as William and Sarah told him what they were thinking. He said that he had been at Garrard’s for seventeen years, since he’d been twenty-two, and it would be difficult to think of leaving them, but he had to admit that the prospect of a new venture like theirs intrigued him greatly. “Particularly,” he said quietly, “given the reputation of your shop in Paris. I’ve seen some of the work you do there, Your Grace,” he said to Sarah, “and it’s very fine indeed. I was quite surprised actually. The French can be”—he hesitated, and then went on—“shoddy sometimes … if you let them.” She laughed at the chauvinism, but she knew what he meant. If she didn’t watch the workrooms she used, they would be inclined to cut corners, and she never let them. She was pleased with what he’d said, and the reputation they were obviously earning.

“We’d like to be around for a long time. We want to do things right, Mr. Holbrook.” He was die second son of a British general, and had grown up in India and China. He’d been born in Singapore, and had become entranced with the jewels in India as a boy. And as a young man, he’d worked briefly in South Africa, with diamonds. He knew his business well. And Sarah agreed with William completely. He was exactly the man they needed in London. It was a totally different atmosphere here, and she sensed instinctively that they would have to move into it with more grace, less panache, and the kind of dignity that Nigel Holbrook had to offer. They asked him to call them when he’d thought about it, and a week later, Sarah was dismayed that he still hadn’t called them.

“Give him time. He may not call for a month. But you can be sure he’s thinking about it.” They had made him a very handsome offer, and no matter how loyal he was to Garrard’s, it was difficult to believe that he wouldn’t be tempted. If not, William was prepared to be truly impressed by how faithful he was to his current employers. Because he knew that he couldn’t possibly be making a salary anything like the one he’d just been offered.

As it happened, he called them at Whitfield, the night before they left. Sarah waited impatiently while William took the call, and he was smiling when he hung up. “He’ll take it”, he announced. “He’d like to give Garrard’s two months notice, which is damn decent of him, and then he’s yours. When do you want to open?”

“Good Lord … I hadn’t even thought of it… I don’t know … end of the year … Christmas? Do you think we really should do it?”

“Of course you should.” He always insisted on giving her all the credit. “I have to come back in a few weeks anyway, we can look for a location then, and speak to an architect. I know a good one.”

“I’d better start buying some new pieces.” She had been using the money she’d been making in the Paris shop to buy new pieces, and have new designs made, but now she’d need some capital, and she planned to use the money she still had from the sale of her parents, house on Long Island. And if London was anything like Paris, she knew they’d be making money quickly.

And then William said something she hadn’t even thought about. “Looks like Phillip’s got his shop,” he said with a slow smile as they made plans for their return to London.

“It does, doesn’t it? Do you suppose he’ll really ever do it?”

“He might.”

“Somehow I can’t imagine him coming into the business with us. He’s so independent …” And so cool, and so distant … and so angry about Julian …

“He might surprise you one day. You never know what children will do. Who ever thought I’d become a jeweler?” He laughed and she kissed him, and the next day, they went back to Paris.

Nigel flew to Paris several times in the next few months to meet with them, and talk to Emanuelle, and see the way the operation worked in Paris. They were actually talking about moving to a new store, business was so good, but Sarah didn’t want to press her luck, particularly now with the opening in London.

Nigel was extremely impressed with everything they were doing in Paris. He even began to grow rather fond of Emanuelle, who had accurately guessed long since that ladies were not entirely his passion. In fact, she didn’t think they were at all, and she was right, but she admired his impeccable taste, his excellent business sense, and his good breeding. She had spent the last several years trying to acquire more polish herself, and she particularly admired Nigel’s quiet elegance and incredibly good manners. They had dinner together whenever he came to town, and she introduced him to some of her friends, including a very important designer, who became someone very important in Nigel’s life. But most of the time, they turned their foil attention to business.

They had found a beautiful little store on New Bond Street, and William’s architect came up with some wonderful ideas. They were going to do everything in navy-blue velvet and white marble.

It was to open on December first, and they had to work like demons to do it. Emanuelle came over from Paris to help, leaving the best of her girls in Paris in charge of the store there. But the shop on Faubourg-St. Honoré took care of itself now. It was the shop in London that was the new baby.

The week before they opened they worked till midnight every night with a crew of tireless workmen, laying marble, adjusting lights, installing mirrors, tacking velvet. It was an incredible scene, and Sarah had never been so tired in her life, but she had never had so much fun either.

She had brought Julian to London with her, and they were staying at Claridge’s again, with a nanny They were too tired at night to make the long drive to Whitfield.

Everyone wanted to give parties for them, but they never had time. They never stopped for an instant, until their doors were finally open. They had invited four hundred relatives and friends, and another hundred of Nigel’s very best customers from Garrard’s. It was a gathering of the titled and the elite, and it made their opening in Paris two and a half years before dim by comparison. It was glittering beyond words, and the jewels Sarah had bought to open with absolutely staggered the people who saw them. She was, in fact, frightened that she had gone overboard, that the pieces she had bought were too important and too expensive Whereas she had some chic pieces in Paris that you could own without hiring an armed guard, in London. She had pulled out all the stops, and stopped at nothing. She had spent every penny left to her from the estate on Long Island, but as she looked around her as the first guests arrived, she knew it was worth it.

And the next day, when Nigel came to her looking stunned and pale, she thought something terrible had happened. “What’s wrong?”

“The Queen’s secretary has just been here.” She wondered if they had committed some ghastly faux pas, and she looked at William with a worried frown, as Nigel went on to explain his visit. “Her Royal Highness wishes to purchase something her lady-in-waiting saw here last night. We sent it over to the palace this morning, and she likes it very much.” Sarah listened in amazement. They had made it. “She’d like to buy the large pin with the diamond feathers.” It looked very much like the insignia of the Prince of Wales, and she had bought it from a dealer in Paris for an absolute fortune. The price tag she’d put on it herself had embarrassed her when she wrote it.

“Good Lord!” Sarah said, impressed by the sale, but what had impressed Nigel was something far more important.

“This means, Your Grace, that on our very first day in business, we have become Jewelers to the Crown,” which meant they had sold something to the Queen. Crown Jewelers were Garrard’s, who were the Queen’s official jewelers, and annually restored the Crown Jewels kept in the Tower of London. But this was a very important feather in their cap in London. “If the Queen wishes it, after three years, she can bestow a royal warrant on us.” He was overwhelmed, and even William raised an eyebrow. They had pulled off a major coup without even trying.

The Queen’s purchase got them off to a royal start, and the rest of the items they sold that month could have kept them in business for a year. Sarah was satisfied that she could go back to Paris and leave everything in Nigel’s capable hands. She could hardly believe it when they flew back to Paris after the New Year. Emanuelle had returned to Paris long since, after the London opening, and her Christmas figures were astounding.

Sarah also noticed that there was a friendly rivalry between the two stores, each one trying to outdo the other. But there was no harm in that. Nigel and Emanuelle genuinely liked each other. Besides which, Sarah wanted the two stores to be similar but different. In London, they sold fabulous antique jewels, many of them of royal provenance from the royals of Europe, and also a smattering of modern designs. They sold antique jewelry in Paris, too, but they also sold a great many new pieces that were both chic and striking.

“What new frontier now?” William teased her as they drove back to the château. “Buenos Aires? New York? Cap d’Antibes?” The possibilities were limitless, but Sarah was satisfied with what they had. It was manageable, and fun. It kept her busy, but she could still enjoy her children. Julian was eighteen months old by then, and keeping everyone around him very busy, as he climbed onto tables, and teetered on chairs, fell down stairs, and disappeared out the door into the garden. Sarah kept an eye on him constantly, and he was a handful for the local girl who came to help her. They always took her to Paris with them, and in London they hired temporary nannies. But most of the time Sarah liked taking care of him herself, and he loved to sit on William’s lap and speed around in the wheelchair.

“Vite! Vite!” he squealed, urging his father to go faster. It was one of his few words, but for him it was a good one, and he liked to use it often. It was a happy time for them. All of their dreams had come true. Their lives were busy and full and happy.

Chapter 20

OR the next four years, Julian and both shops kept William and Sarah extremely busy. Business in both places grew, Sarah gave in and agreed to enlarge the Paris store eventually, but they kept the London store the way it was in spite of their excellent business. It was elegant, discreet, and extremely important, and it suited the British. And both Emanuelle and Nigel had continued to do a splendid job of it. Sarah was well pleased as she blew out the candles on her cake on her thirty-ninth birthday. Phillip was at the château with them then, he was just turning sixteen, almost as tall as his father, and itching to get back to Whitfield. He was going to visit friends, and he had stayed on for Sarah’s birthday only because his father said he had to. She wanted him to stay and celebrate his own birthday with them, but he wasn’t interested in that. And he had managed to forget Julian’s fifth birthday in July as well. Family did not appear to be of major importance to Phillip. In fact, he seemed careful to avoid it. It was almost as though he had to put a barrier up, and he never let anyone cross it. When he left again, Sarah was philosophical this time. Over the years, she had slowly learned something from William.

“I suppose we’re lucky he comes here at all,” she said to William the day he left “All he ever wants to do is play polo, be with his friends, and stay at Whitfield.” They had finally agreed to let him go there alone on weekends and occasional holidays, and he could take friends, as long as he invited one of his teachers to go with him. It was an arrangement that seemed to suit everyone, most especially Phillip. “Isn’t it funny, how he’s so British, and Julian is so French?” Everything about the little boy was incredibly Gallic. He preferred to speak French with them, he loved his life at the château, and he much preferred Paris to London.

“Les anglais me font peur,” he always said. “English people scare me.” Which Sarah told him was silly, since his father was an Englishman, and he was English, too, although as the second son, he would never inherit the title. He would be merely Lord Whitfield when he grew up. Sometimes British traditions seemed incredibly quixotic. But she didn’t think Julian would ever care. He was so happy and good-natured, nothing ever bothered him, not even the indifference of his older brother. He had learned as a very little boy to steer clear of him, and keep to his own doings, and that seemed to suit them both to perfection. He adored his parents, his friends, his pets, the people who worked at the château, he loved visiting Emanuelle. Julian loved everyone and everything, and in return, absolutely everyone who knew him loved him

Sarah was thinking about it one afternoon in September, as she tended the flowers over Lizzie’s grave. She still went there regularly, kept it looking tidy, and she couldn’t help herself, she always cried when she went there It was incredible that after eleven years she still missed her. She would have been fifteen by then … so loving, and so sweet. … She had been a little bit like Julian, only softer, not as strong. … Sarah’s eyes were filled with tears as she cut back some of the flowers and patted the soft earth they grew on, and she didn’t hear the wheels of William’s wheelchair approaching. He hadn’t been quite as well recently. His back had been bothering him a great deal, and he never complained, but Sarah knew that the rheumatism in his legs had gotten worse during the past winter.

She felt his hand on her shoulder, and turned, the tears streaming down her cheeks, and she reached out to him, as he gently brushed the tears from her cheeks and kissed them. “My poor darling… ” He looked at the well-tended grave, “… poor little Lizzie …” He was sorry, too, that Sarah had never had another daughter, to bring her comfort, although Julian was a great source of joy to both of them, and he accepted Phillip for what he was. But he had never known his only little girl, and without ever having seen her face, he missed her.

Sarah turned, and finished her work, and then came to sit next to him on the ground, accepting his perfectly pressed handkerchief from him.

“I’m sorry … I shouldn’t, after all this time….” But always, always, she felt the little warm body next to hers, the little hands around her neck, until she had grown so still and had stopped breathing….

“I’m sorry too.” He smiled gently at her. “Maybe we should have another baby.”

She knew he was only joking and she smiled at him. “Phillip would really love that.”

“It might do him good. He’s a very self-centered young man.” Phillip had annoyed him this time, being so impatient and unkind with his mother.

“I don’t know who he takes after, you’re certainly not like that, I hope I’m not … Julian adores everyone … and your mother was so sweet. My parents were pretty nice too, and my sister.”

“There must have been a Visigoth king somewhere in my past, or a savage Norman. I don’t know. But Phillip is certainly Phillip.” All he cared about now was Whitfield, Cambridge, and the shop in London. That fascinated him, and whenever he was there, he always asked Nigel ten thousand questions, which amused the older man. He answered all of them, taught him what he knew about the stones, and showed him all the important points about the size, quality, clarity, and the settings. But Phillip had a lot of other things to do before he could think about going to work at Whitfield’s.

“Maybe we ought to go away somewhere this year.” Sarah was looking at William, and she thought he looked tired. At fifty-two, he had weathered a lot in his lifetime, and there were times when he looked it. He chased after her tirelessly, from Paris to London and back again. But the following year, when Julian started school in La Marolle, they would have to spend more time at the château. This was the last year they could really travel. “I’d really like to go to Burma and Thailand and look at some stones,” she said thoughtfully.

“You would?” William was surprised. She had gotten incredibly knowledgeable about stones in the six years since they’d started the business, and she was very choosy about what she bought and from whom. But because of that, Whitfield’s had an impeccable reputation. Business had grown in both London and Paris. In London, the Queen had bought from them again several times, as had the Duke of Edinburgh, and soon they were hoping to be able to hang a sign with the royal warrant.

“I’d love to go away. We could even take Julian with us.”

“How romantic.” William teased. But he knew full well that she always liked to have him near her. “Why don’t I organize something for the three of us then? And we should probably take a girl with us to help with Julian. We could probably get out to the Orient and back before Christmas.” It would be a long, long trip, and she knew it would be tiring for him, but it would do them both good too.

They left in November, and arrived back in England on Christmas Eve, when they met Phillip at Whitfield. They had been gone for more than six weeks, and they had endless tales to tell him about tiger hunts in India, and visits to the beach in Thailand, and Hong Kong, and temples, and rubies … and emeralds… and fabulous jewels. Sarah had brought an absolute fortune of beautiful stones back with her. And Phillip was fascinated by them, and all the tales they had to tell him. For once he was even agreeable to his little brother.

The following week, when Sarah showed all her treasures to Nigel, he was in awe of them. And assured her that she had bought well. And Emanuelle was thrilled with some of the Indian maharaja’s jewels she took back to Paris, and so were the ladies who bought them.

It had been a fabulous trip, and a productive autumn for them, but they were all happy to return to the château. The girl they’d taken with them had wonderful stories to tell her family, and Julian was thrilled to be back home, with his friends, as was Sarah. She had said very little about it, but while William’s health had improved on the trip, she had picked up a bug in India and just couldn’t shake it. It ravaged her stomach continually, and she did her best not to complain, but by the time they got back to the château she was worried. She didn’t want William to be concerned, and she tried to make light of it, but even once they were home she could barely eat. And finally, the next time they were in Paris in late January, she went to the doctor. He ran a few tests, and saw nothing serious and then he asked her to come back again. But by then, she was feeling a little better.

“What do you suppose this thing is?” she asked, truly annoyed by then. She hadn’t enjoyed a meal since November.

“I believe it’s very simple, Madame,” the doctor said calmly.

“That’s comforting.” But she was still annoyed at herself for catching it in the first place. Thank God Julian hadn’t gotten it, but she’d been careful about what he ate and drank. She didn’t want him to get sick there. But for herself, she had been a good deal less careful.

“Have you any plans for next summer, Madame?” he asked, with a small smile, and Sarah began to panic. Was he suggesting surgery? But that was seven months away, and then suddenly, she wondered But it couldn’t be. Not again Not this time.

“I don’t know … why … ?” she said vaguely.

“I believe you will be having a baby in August.”

“I am?” At her age, she couldn’t believe it. She was going to be forty in August. She had heard of stranger things before, and she was hardly over the hill. She still looked as she always had, but one couldn’t lie to the calendar. And forty was forty. “Are you sure?”

“I believe so. I would like to run one more test to be certain it is positive.” He did, and it was, and she told William as soon as the doctor called her

“But at my age … isn’t that absurd?” Somehow, this time, she was faintly embarrassed.

“It’s not absurd at all.” He looked thrilled. “My mother was much older than you are when she had me, and I’m perfectly fine, and she survived it.” He looked happily at her. “Besides, I told you we should have another child.” And this time, he, too, wanted a daughter.

“You’re going to send me to that dreadful clinic again, aren’t you?” Sarah looked at him ruefully and he laughed. There were times when she still looked like a young girl to him, she was a beautiful woman.

“Well, I’m not going to deliver it myself again—not at your age!” he said teasingly, and she screeched at him.

“See! You think I’m too old too. What will people think?”

“They’ll think we’re very lucky… and not very well behaved, I’m afraid,” he teased, and she had to laugh at herself. Having a baby at forty seemed a little foolish, but she had to admit, she was pleased too. She had enjoyed Julian so much, but he was hardly a baby anymore at five, and he would be starting school in September.

Emanuelle was a little startled when Sarah told her in March, and Nigel was faintly embarrassed by the news, but congratulated them very politely. Both shops were doing so well that they really didn’t need Sarah’s constant attention. She spent much of that year at the château, and as always, Phillip joined them there for the summer. He made very little comment about his mother’s pregnancy. He thought it was too nauseating to even mention.

This time Sarah prevailed on William not to make her go away. They compromised and he let her go to the new hospital in Orléans, which wasn’t as fancy as the clinic was, but it was very modern, and he was satisfied with the local doctor.

They managed to celebrate her birthday and have a good time, and this time even Phillip was very pleasant. He left for Whitfield the next day, for the last of his vacation before he went off to Cambridge. And the night he left, Sarah got very uncomfortable and after Julian went off to bed, she looked at William very strangely. “I’m not sure what’s happening, but I’m feeling strange.” She thought maybe she should warn him.

“Maybe we should call the doctor.”

“I feel silly doing that. I’m not having pains. I just feel…” She tried to describe it to him as he watched her nervously. “I don’t know … kind of heavy … more than heavy … and like I want to move around all the time or something.” She had an odd sensation of pressure.

“Maybe the baby’s pressing on something.” This baby wasn’t quite as big as the others had been, but it was large enough to make her uncomfortable, and it had for weeks. And it never seemed to stop moving. “Why don’t you take a warm bath and lie down, and see how you feel then.” And then he looked at her firmly. He knew her too well, and he didn’t entirely trust her. “But I want you to tell me what’s going on. I don’t want you to wait till the last second, and then not make it to the hospital. Do you hear me, Sarah?”

“Yes, Your Grace,” she said demurely. He smiled at her, and left her to take her bath. And an hour later, she was lying on their bed, still feeling the same pressure. But by then, she’d decided that it was indigestion and not labor.

“Are you sure?” He questioned her when he came back to check on her again. There was something about the way she looked that made him nervous.

“I promise.” She grinned.

“Right. See that you keep your legs crossed.” He went back to the other room to look at some balance sheets from the stores, and Emanuelle called her from Monte Carlo to see how she was and they chatted. Her affair with Jean-Charles de Martin had ended two years before, and she was engaged in a far more dangerous one now, with the Minister of Finance.

“Darling, be careful,” Sarah scolded her, and her old friend laughed.

“Look who’s talking!” Emanuelle had teased her a little bit this time about being pregnant

“Very funny.”

“How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine. Fat, bored. And I think William is getting a little nervous. I’ll come in to the shop as soon as I can after you get back from your holiday.” As they were every year, they were closed for August, but they were going to reopen again in September.

They chatted on for a little while, and when they hung up, Sarah walked around the room again. She seemed to be making endless trips to the bathroom.

But each time she came out of the bathroom, she seemed to walk around the room again, and then she went downstairs and came back, and she was still pacing when William came back to their bedroom.

“What are you doing, for heaven’s sake?”

“It’s too uncomfortable to lie down, and I’m restless.” By then she had a sharp pain in her back, and she felt as though she were dragging her stomach along the floor. She went to the bathroom again and suddenly as she walked back into their bedroom, a huge pain roared through her, starting at her back, and making her want to bear down. All she suddenly wanted to do was stop where she was and push out the baby. The pain never stopped, it just kept pressing down on her, from her back to her stomach and downward. She could barely stand as she clutched a chair, and William instantly rushed to her as he saw her expression. He pulled her onto his wheelchair and lay her down on the bed with a look of terror.

“Sarah, you’re not doing this to me again! What happened?”

“I don’t know.” She could barely speak. “I thought … it was indigestion … but it’s pushing so hard … it’s… oh, God… William … the baby’s coming!”

“No, it’s not!” He absolutely refused to let it happen again, he left her for an instant, and wheeled across the room to call the hospital and ask them to send an ambulance. She was forty years old this time, not twenty-three, and he was not going to play games again with another ten-pound baby. But she was screaming for him when he hung up, and they had assured him they would come at once. They were twenty minutes away, and the doctor was going to come with them.

She clutched at his shirt as he reached her again, and clung to his hand. She wasn’t crying, but she seemed to be in terrible agony, and she looked surprised and frightened. “I know it’s coming… William … I can feel it!” She was shouting at him, it was all happening so hard and so fast and she had had no warning. Or at least, precious little. “I can feel the baby’s head … it’s coming now!” She screamed, and as she lay there, she was alternately pushing and screaming, and he quickly pulled up her nightgown, and saw the baby’s head just crowning, as he had seen before. Only the last time it had taken hours, and so much work, and this time, nothing seemed to stop it. “William … William …no! I can’t do this… make it stop!” But nothing was stopping this baby Its head was pushing its way relentlessly out of its mother, and a moment later there was a small face looking at him, and two bright eyes, and a perfect pink mouth shouting, as they both watched it. And instantly, William reached down to help her. He tried to get Sarah to relax and then to push again a moment later, and suddenly the shoulders were free and the arms, and then in a burst of speed, the rest of her body. It was a beautiful little girl, and she looked absolutely furious with both of them, as Sarah lay back on their bed with a look of amazement. They were both stunned by the sheer force of it. It had been so powerful and so quick. One minute she’d been talking to Emanuelle, and then suddenly, she was having the baby. And the whole delivery had taken less than ten minutes.

“Remind me never to trust you again,” William said huskily as he looked at her and then kissed her. He waited for the doctor to cut the cord, and wrapped them both in clean sheets and towels. Their brand-new daughter was slightly mollified by then, suckling at her mother’s breast, and giving her an occasional angry look about how rudely she’d been expelled from her cozy quarters.

They were both smiling and laughing when the doctor came twenty minutes later. He apologized profusely, explaining that he had come as fast as he could. But she was Sarah’s fourth child, after all, and there had been no way of knowing she would come so quickly.

He congratulated both of them, pronounced the baby to be perfect, cut the cord that William had neatly tied with a clean piece of string he’d found in his office. He complimented both of them on how well. They’d both done, and offered to take Sarah to the hospital, but admitted that she didn’t need it.

“I’d much rather stay home,” Sarah said quietly, and William looked at her, still pretending to be angry.

“I know you would. Next time I’m taking you to the hospital in Paris two months early!”

“Next time!” she said. “Next time! Are you joking? Next time I’ll be a grandmother!” She was laughing at him, and suddenly feeling more herself. It had been shocking, and briefly terribly painful, but it had actually been very easy.

“I’m not sure I’d trust you at that either,” he retorted, and went to let the doctor out. And then he brought her a glass of champagne, and sat watching her for a long moment with their new daughter. “She’s so beautiful, isn’t she?” He stared at her, at her mother’s breast, as he rolled slowly toward them.

“She is” Sarah smiled, looking up at him. “I love you, William. Thank you for everything.…”

“Anytime.”

He leaned over and kissed her. They called the baby Isabelle. And in the morning, Julian announced that she was “his” baby, entirely his, and they would all have to ask him if they could hold her. He held her all the time, with all the tenderness of a new father. He had all the emotions that Phillip never showed now, all the gentleness, all the love. He adored his baby sister. And as he grew, there was a bond between the two that no one could tamper with. Isabelle adored Julian, and he remained her loving brother, and fiercest protector. Even their parents could never come between them, and in a very short time, they learned not to even try. Isabelle belonged to Julian, and vice versa.

Chapter 21

HEN Phillip graduated from Cambridge in the summer of 1962, no one in the family was surprised when he announced that he wanted to go to work at Whitfield’s, London. The only startling thing was that he announced to all of them that he was going to run it.

“I don’t think so, darling,” Sarah said quietly. “You have to learn the business first.” He had taken courses in economics, and gemology during the summertime, and he felt he knew everything he needed to know about Whitfield’s.

“You’re going to have to let Nigel show you the ropes at first.” William added his voice to hers, and Phillip was livid.

“I know more now than that dried-up old fruit will know in his entire lifetime,” he spat at them, and Sarah got very angry.

“I don’t think so. And if you don’t take a backseat to him, and treat him with the utmost respect, I won’t let you work at Whitfield’s at all, is that clear? With your attitude, Phillip, you will not be an asset to this business.” He was still furious with her after several days, but he agreed to work for Nigel. For a while at least, and then he wanted to review the situation.

“That’s ridiculous,” Sarah stormed afterwards. “He’s a twenty-two-year-old boy, almost twenty-three, all right, but how dare he think he knows more than Nigel? He should kiss the ground he walks on.”

“Phillip has never kissed anything,” William said truthfully, “except if it got him what he wanted. He sees Nigel as no use to him. I’m afraid Nigel is going to have a hard time with Phillip.” They warned Nigel, before Phillip started working there in July, that he had full control, and that if he felt that their son was unmanageable, he had their permission to fire him. He was deeply appreciative of their vote of confidence for him.

His relationship with Phillip was certainly tenuous over the next year, and there were moments when he would have gladly killed him. But he had to admit that the boy’s business sense was excellent, some of his ideas good, and although he didn’t think much of him as a human being, he thought that in the long run he would be very good for the business. He lacked the imagination and the sense of design that his mother had, but he had all his father’s business acumen, he had already shown that in helping him to run Whitfield.

William’s health in the past six or seven years had been anything but good. He had developed rheumatoid arthritis where all his old wounds were, and Sarah had taken him to every specialist she could. But there was very little they could do for him. He had suffered so much, and been tortured for so long, that there was very little they could do now. William was brave about it. But he looked ten years older on his sixtieth birthday in 1963, and Sarah was worried. Isabelle was seven years old by then, and she was a little fireball. She had dark hair like Sarah, and the same green eyes, but she had a mind of her own, and a disposition that defied any possible contradiction. What Isabelle wanted was law, as far as she was concerned, and no one was going to tell her anything different. The only one who was ever able to change her mind about anything was her brother Julian, who adored her. And she loved him with the same unqualified passion, too, but she still did exactly what she wanted.

Julian was thirteen, and he still had the same easygoing disposition he had had as a baby. Whatever Isabelle did, to him, or anyone else, it amused him. When she pulled his hair, when she screamed at him, when she took the things he held most precious and broke them in a temper, he kissed her, he calmed her, he told her how much he loved her, and eventually she calmed down again. Sarah always marvelled at his patience. There were times when Sarah herself thought she might strangle her daughter. She was beautiful, and enchanting at times. But she was most emphatically not an easy person.

“What did I do to deserve all this?” she asked William more than once. “What did I ever do to get such difficult children?” Phillip had been a thorn in her side for years, and Isabelle made her furious sometimes. But Julian made everything better for everyone, he spread the balm that soothed everyone’s ruffled feathers, he loved and he kissed, and he cared, and he did all the right things. He was just like William.

Their businesses were still prospering. Sarah kept busy with both of them, and somehow she managed to be with her children, too, while working on jewelry designs, and combing the market for fine stones, and still buying occasional rare and very important antique pieces. They had become the Queen’s favorite jeweler by then, and that of many illustrious people in both cities. And it amused her how Julian studied her sketches now, and made little changes here and there, suggestions that actually worked very well. And from time to time, he designed an original piece, completely different from her style, and yet really lovely. Recently, she had had one of his designs made, and wore it, and Julian had been absolutely thrilled. As much as Phillip had no interest in design, and concentrated on the business side of what they did, Julian had a real passion for jewelry. They might make an interesting combination one day, William often said; if they didn’t kill each other first, Sarah added. And she had no idea where Isabelle would fit into the plan, except that she would have to have a very rich, tolerant husband, who would let her spend part of every day throwing tantrums. Sarah always tried to be firm with her, and tried to explain to her why she couldn’t do everything she wanted, but it was always Julian who finally made sense to her, who got her to calm down and listen.

“How is it possible I only have one reasonable child?” Sarah complained to William one afternoon in late November.

“Maybe it was some vitamin you were missing during pregnancy,” he teased, as she flipped on the radio in the kitchen at the château. They had just come back from seeing another doctor for him in Paris. He suggested a warm climate, and a lot of tender loving care, and she was about to suggest a trip to the Caribbean, or maybe even to California to see her sister.

But they were both startled when they heard the news. President Kennedy had been shot. And as they listened, and followed the news for the next few days, like the rest of the world, they found it deeply depressing. It all seemed so incredible, and that poor woman with her two little children. Sarah cried for them as they watched the news later on, on the television, and they marvelled at a world that could do a thing like that. But they had seen worse in their lifetime, the war, the tortures in the concentration camps… but still, they mourned the loss of this one man, and it seemed to cast a pall on both of them, and the world, almost until Christmas.

They went to visit the shop in London during the holidays, to see how Phillip was doing there, and they were pleased that he was getting along with Nigel. He was smart enough to have learned how valuable Nigel was to them, and now he argued with him less, and seemed to have made his own niche at Whitfield’s. He wasn’t exactly running it yet, but he was getting there. And their Christmas figures were beyond excellent, just as they were in Paris.

And then finally, in February, Sarah and William took the trip they had planned. They went away for a month, to the South of France. It was cool at first, but they went on to Morocco from there, and came back via Spain to see friends, and everywhere they went Sarah teased William about opening a Whitfield’s. She was worried about him most of the time. He looked so tired, and so pale, and he was so often in so much pain now. And two weeks after they got back, in spite of their pleasant holiday, William was feeling tired and weak, and absolutely terrified Sarah.

They were at the château when he had a mild heart attack. He had said. He wasn’t feeling well after dinner, a little mild indigestion, he thought, and then he started having chest pains, and Sarah called the doctor. He came from the hospital at once, far more quickly than he had when Isabelle was born, but by then William was feeling a little better. And when they checked him the next day, they said it had been a small heart attack, as the doctor said, “a kind of warning.” He explained to Sarah that William had been through so much during the war, that it had strained his entire system. And that the pain he was experiencing now only served to strain it further.

He said that William had to be very, very careful, lead a quiet life and take very good care of himself. Without hesitating, she agreed, although William didn’t.

“What nonsense! You don’t suppose I survived all that in order to spend the rest of my life sitting in a corner, under a blanket. For heaven’s sake, Sarah, it was nothing. People have heart attacks like that all the time.”

“Well, you don’t. And I’m not going to let you wear yourself out. I need you around for the next forty years, so you’d damn well better settle down and listen to the doctor.”

“Balls!” he said, looking annoyed, and she laughed at him, relieved that he was feeling better, but she wasn’t going to let him overdo it. She made him stay home all through April after that, and she was so worried about him most of the time, it actually made her feel sick. She was also sick about Phillip’s behavior to his father. The other two children had doted on him, and Isabelle absolutely adored him. She sat with him every day after school, and read to him, and Julian did everything he could to entertain him. Phillip had flown over from England to see him once, and only called once after that. According to the newspapers, he was much too busy chasing debutantes to be bothered with his father.

“He is the most selfish human being I know,” Sarah railed about him to Emanuelle, who always defended him. She had loved him so much as a child that she saw his faults less clearly than everyone else did. Nigel could certainly have catalogued a few of them, but nonetheless he seemed to have worked out a relationship of sorts with him, and the two worked very well together. Sarah was grateful for that, but she was still upset about his lack of attention to his father. And when he had come, he had looked at her in dismay, and told her that she looked worse than he did.

“You’re looking dreadful, Mother dear,” Phillip said coolly.

“Thank you.” Sarah was really hurt by his comment.

Emanuelle told her the same thing, the next time she came to Paris. She was practically green, she was so pale. It really worried Emanuelle to see her. But William’s heart attack had really frightened her. The one thing she knew in her life was that she couldn’t live without him.

By June, outwardly anyway, everything seemed to be back to normal. William was still in pain, of course, but he was resigned to it, and he seldom complained, and he seemed healthier than he had been before what he referred to as his “little problem.”

But Sarah’s problems seemed larger these days. It was one of those times when nothing went right and you never felt well. She had backaches, and stomachaches, and for the first time in her life terrible headaches. It was one of those times when the stress of the past months caught up with her with a vengeance.

“You need a vacation,” Emanuelle said to her. And what she really wanted to do was go to Brazil and Colombia and look at emeralds, but she didn’t think William was well enough to do it. Nor did she want to leave him.

She mentioned it to him the next afternoon and he sounded noncommittal. He didn’t like the way she looked, and he thought it was too much of a trip for her too. “Why don’t we go to Italy instead? We can buy someone else’s jewelry for a change.” She laughed, but she had to admit, she liked the suggestion. She needed a fresh start these days, she had been depressed lately anyway. Her change of life had come, and it made her feel old and unattractive. The trip to Italy made her feel young again and they had a wonderful time remembering when he proposed to her in Venice. It all seemed so long ago. Life had been good to them, for the most part, and the years had flown. Her parents were long gone, her sister had moved on to a new life, and Sarah had heard years before that Freddie had been killed in a car accident in Palm Beach, after he got back from the Pacific. It was all part of another life, a life of closed chapters. For years now William had been her whole life. William… and the children … and the stores. … She felt renewed when she returned from the trip, but annoyed at the weight she’d put on after two weeks of eating pasta.

She continued to gain weight for another month, and she wanted to go to the doctor about it, but she never seemed to find time, and she felt well otherwise, a lot better than she had two months before, but suddenly as she lay in bed with him one night, she felt a strange but familiar feeling.

“What was that?” she asked him, as though he might have felt it.

“What was what?”

“Something moved.”

“I did.”

And then he turned over and smiled at her. “What are you so nervous about tonight? I thought we took care of that this morning.” At least that hadn’t changed, even though she had. She was feeling better about things now. Thanks to William, the time in Italy had been incredibly romantic.

She didn’t say anything more to him, but she went to see the doctor in La Marolle immediately the next morning. She described her symptoms to him, all of them, and the fact that she had been certain she’d gone through the change of life four months before, and then she described the sensation she’d had the night before as she lay beside William.

“I know this sounds crazy,” she explained, “but it felt… it felt like a baby…” She felt like one of those old men with amputated legs who think they feel their knee itch.

“It’s not impossible. I delivered a baby last week to a woman fifty-six years old. Her eighteenth child,” he said encouragingly and Sarah groaned at the prospect. She loved the children that she had, handful that they were, and there was a time when she would have wanted more, but that time was no longer. She was about to be forty-eight years old, and William needed her, she was just too old to have another baby. Isabelle was turning eight that summer, and she was her baby.

“Madame la Duchesse,” the doctor said formally as he stood up to look at her after his examination, “I have the pleasure of informing you that you are indeed having a baby.” For a moment, he had even thought it might be twins, but now he was sure it wasn’t. It was only one, but a good-sized one. “I think perhaps at Christmas.”

“You’re not serious.” She looked shocked and for a moment she went pale and felt dizzy.

“I am very serious, and very sure.” He smiled at her. “Monsieur le Duc will be very pleased, I’m sure.” But she wasn’t even sure of that this time. Maybe after his heart attack he would feel differently. She couldn’t even imagine it now. She would be forty-eight years old when this child was born, and he would be sixty-one. How ridiculous. And suddenly, she knew with absolute certainty, that she couldn’t have this baby.

She thanked the doctor and drove back to the château, thinking of what she was going to do about it, and what she was going to tell William. The whole thing depressed her profoundly, even more than thinking she was going through the change of life had done. This was ridiculous. It was wrong at their age. She couldn’t do this again. And she suspected that he’d probably feel the same way. It might not even be normal, she was so old, she told herself. For the first time in her entire life, she considered an abortion.

She told William after dinner that night, and he listened quietly to all her objections. He reminded her that his parents had been exactly the same age when he was born and it hadn’t done him or them any harm, but he also understood how upset Sarah was. More than anything she was startled. She had had four children in her life, one had died, one had come as a late surprise … and now this, so unexpected, so late, and yet in his eyes so great a gift, at any time, he didn’t see how they could refuse it. But he heard her out, and he lay next to her that night and held her. He was a little shocked by how she felt, but he wondered, too, if she was just frightened. She had been through a lot before, and perhaps now it would be even harder.

“Do you really not want this child?” he asked sadly, as he lay next to her that night, holding her in his arms as he always did when they went to sleep. He was sad that she didn’t seem to want it, but he didn’t want to press her.

“Do you?” She answered his question with one of her own, because there was a part of her that wasn’t sure either.

“I want whatever is right for you, my love. I’ll stand by whatever you decide.”

Hearing him say that brought tears to her eyes, he was always so good to her, so there for her, it made him even more precious. “I don’t know what to do … what’s right … part of me wants it … and part of me doesn’t …”

“You felt that way the last time too,” he reminded her.

“Yes, but I was forty then … now I’m two hundred.”

He laughed gently at her, and she smiled through her tears. “It’s all your fault. You’re really a menace to the neighborhood,” she said, and he laughed. “It’s a wonder they even let you walk the streets.” But he loved hearing it, and she knew it. The next day they took a long walk around the grounds, and inadvertently they reached Lizzie’s grave, and they stopped, and she swept some of the leaves away. She knelt for a moment, tidying things, and then suddenly she felt him very near her. She looked up and William was looking down at her sadly.

“After that … can we really take a life, Sarah? … Do we have a right to?” Suddenly she remembered the feel of Lizzie in her arms again, twenty years later … the child that God had taken away from them and now He was giving her another. Did she have a right to question the gift? And after almost losing William, who was she to decide who lived or died? Suddenly, with a wave of feeling, she knew what she wanted, and she melted into his arms and began to cry, for Lizzie, for him, for herself, for the baby she might have killed … except deep down, she knew she couldn’t. “I’m so sorry … I’m so sorry, darling….”

“Shhh … it’s all right … everything is all right now.” They sat together for a long time, talking about Lizzie, and how sweet she had been, this new child, and the children they had, and how blessed they were. And then they went slowly back to the château, she beside him, and he in his wheelchair. They felt strangely at peace, and filled with hope for the future.

“When did you say it was again?” he asked, feeling very proud suddenly, and very pleased, as he smiled at Sarah.

“The doctor said Christmas.”

“Good,” he said happily. And then he chuckled. “I can hardly wait to tell Phillip.” They both laughed and they went back to the château, laughing and talking and teasing, just as they had for twenty-five years now.

Chapter 22

HIS time Sarah stayed close to the château for most of her pregnancy, she could do her business from where she was, and she didn’t want to make a spectacle of herself in London or Paris. No matter what William said about how old his parents were, she still felt self-conscious about being pregnant at her age, although she had to admit, she enjoyed it.

And predictably, Phillip was absolutely outraged when they told him. He said it was the most vulgar thing he’d ever heard, and his father laughed out loud at him. But the other children were both pleased. Julian genuinely thought it was wonderful news, and Isabelle could hardly wait to play with the baby, and neither could Sarah.

She designed a few pieces of special jewelry before Christmastime, and was very pleased with the way they were made, and Nigel and Phillip bought some excellent new stones, and she was extremely impressed with their choices.

And this time, she didn’t argue with William about having the baby at home. They went to Paris, and she checked into the clinic in Neuilly two days before her due date. After her performance in ten minutes with Isabelle, William told her she was lucky he let her wait that long. She was extremely bored staying there, and she insisted she was twice the age of any of the other mothers But in a funny way, it amused both of them, and William sat with her for hours and played cards, and talked about the business. Julian and Isabelle had stayed at the château with the servants. And it was already almost a week after Christmas.

On New Year’s Day, Sarah and William drank champagne, she had been there for five days then, and she was so tired of it, she told him that if the baby didn’t come the next day, she was going to Whitfield’s. He wasn’t even sure it would do her any harm, but her water broke that afternoon, and by that night, the pains were strong and she was looking very distracted. They had just come to wheel her away from him, when she reached out and took his hand, and looked at him. “Thank you … for letting me have … this baby …” He wanted very much to stay with her, but the doctors had balked at that. It wasn’t the policy of the hospital, and given Madame’s age and the high risk involved, they thought it would be better if he waited elsewhere.

By midnight he hadn’t heard anything, and by four in the morning, he was beginning to panic. She had been gone for six hours by then, which seemed odd after Isabelle had come so quickly, but each baby seemed to be very different.

He went to the desk and asked the nurse again if she’d heard anything, and he wished he could go to find Sarah and see for himself. But they told him there was no news, and they would let him know when his wife had had the baby.

And by seven o’clock in the morning when the doctor finally came, William was frantic. He had done everything he could think of to pass the time, including pray. And he suddenly wondered if he had been mad to let her have this baby. Maybe it was too much for her. What if it killed her?

The doctor looked serious as he entered the room, and William’s heart sank when he saw him.

“Is something wrong?”

“No.” He shook his head firmly. “Madame la Duchesse is doing very well, as well as can be expected. You have a fine son, Monsieur. A very big boy, more than ten pounds. I’m afraid we had to perform a cesarean. Your wife tried very hard to deliver him, but she simply couldn’t.” It was just like when Phillip had been born, and he remembered how awful it had been. The doctor had threatened her with a cesarean then. And she had managed to escape it, and have five children. And now, finally, at forty-eight, Sarah’s baby days were over. It was a respectable career, William smiled in relief, and then looked at the doctor.

“Is she all right?”

“She’s very tired. There will be some pain from the surgery…. We will do what we can for her, of course… to make her comfortable. She can go home in a week or two.” He left the room, and William sat thinking about her then, about how much she meant to him, and the children she had borne … and now this baby.

It was late that afternoon when he finally saw her again, and she was half asleep, but she smiled at him, and she knew about the baby.

“It’s a boy,” she whispered to him, and he nodded, and smiled, and kissed her. “Is that all right?”

“It’s wonderful,” he reassured her, and she drifted off to sleep again, and then she opened her eyes suddenly. “Can we call him Xavier?” she asked.

“All right,” he agreed, and she had absolutely no recollection of it afterwards, but said she had always loved the name. They called him Xavier Albert, for his cousin the late king, Queen Elizabeth’s father, whom William had always been very fond of.

She stayed at the hospital for a full three weeks, and they brought the baby home triumphantly, although William teased her mercilessly about not being able to have another baby. He told her it upset him terribly, and that he had hoped she would have their sixth child on her fiftieth birthday. “We could adopt, of course,” he said on the way back to the château, and she threatened to divorce him.

The children were enchanted with Xavier, he was a huge, happy child with an easy disposition. Nothing seemed to bother him, and he liked everyone, but he still didn’t have the magic of his brother Julian. What he had was an open, happy nature. But he seemed to have a mind of his own, although fortunately, not such an extreme one as his sister.

And by the following summer, Xavier was constantly being dragged everywhere by everyone. He was always being held or taken somewhere by Julian or Isabelle or his parents.

But Sarah was less focused on the baby than she would have liked to be. William wasn’t well, and by the end of summer, he took up all her attention. His heart was giving him trouble again, and the doctor in La Marolle said he didn’t like the way he looked. And his arthritis was rampant.

“It’s such nonsense to be such a burden to you,” he complained to her, and when he could he took Xavier to bed with him, but the truth was that much of the time, he was in too much pain to enjoy him.

Christmas was sad and strained that year. Sarah hadn’t been to Paris in two months, or to London since before the summer. But she just couldn’t tend to her business then, and she had to trust Nigel and Phillip and Emanuelle to do it for her. All she wanted to do now was give William her full attention.

Julian spent every moment of his vacation with him. And Phillip even flew in from London on Christmas Eve, and they had a lovely dinner in the dining room, and even managed to go to church, although William wasn’t well enough to join them. Phillip noticed that he seemed to have shrunk somehow, he looked frail and gaunt, yet the spirit was still there, the strength, the grace, the sense of humor. In his own way, he was a great man, and for a brief moment that day, Phillip saw it.

Emanuelle drove down from Paris on Christmas Day, and she didn’t tell Sarah how shocked she was at the way William looked, but she cried all the way back to Paris.

Phillip left the next morning. And Julian was going skiing in Courchevel, but he hated to leave, and he told his mother that if she needed him, he would return immediately. All she had to do was call him. Isabelle went to spend the rest of her holiday with a friend in Lyon that she had met the previous summer. It was a big adventure for her, and the first time she’d been away from home for so long. But at nine, Sarah thought she was old enough to do it. She’d be back in a week, and maybe by then her father would be feeling better.

But he seemed to fail day by day. And on New Year’s Day, he was too weak to celebrate Xavier’s first birthday. They had a little cake for him, and Sarah sang happy birthday to him at lunch, and then she rushed back upstairs to be with William.

He had been sleeping most of the time for the past few days, but he opened his eyes when he heard her enter the room, no matter how quiet she tried to be. He just liked knowing she was somewhere near him. She thought about taking him to the hospital then, but the doctor said it would do no good, they could do nothing for him. The body that had been so battered twenty-five years before was finally wearing down, its parts broken beyond repair once and only pasted together for a time, and now that time was drawing to an end. But Sarah couldn’t bear the thought of it. She knew how strong his spirit was, and that eventually he would recover.

The night of Xavier’s birthday, she lay quietly next to William in their bed, and held him in her arms, and she felt him clinging to her, almost like a child, just the way Lizzie had, and then she knew. She held him close to her, and covered him with blankets, and tried to give him all the love and strength she could. And just before dawn, he looked up at her, and kissed her lips, and sighed. She kissed him gently, on the face, as he took his last breath and died quietly in the arms of the wife who had loved him.

She sat there like that, holding him, for a long time, the tears pouring down her face. She never wanted to let him go, to live without him. For a long moment, she wanted to go with him, and then she heard Xavier wail in the distance, and knew she couldn’t. It was almost as though he knew his father was gone. And what a terrible loss it was for him, for all of them.

Sarah laid him gently down, and kissed him again, and as the sun came up and long fingers of light crossed the room, she left him, and closed the door silently as she cried. The Duke of Whitfield was gone. And she was a widow.

Chapter 23

HE funeral was somber and serious, in the church at La Marolle, as the local choir sang the “Ave Maria,” and Sarah sat beside her children. Close friends from Paris had come, but the principal memorial service was to be held in London five days later.

She buried him beside Lizzie at the Château de la Meuze, and she and Phillip had argued about it all night, because he said that for seven centuries the dukes of Whitfield had been buried at Whitfield. But she wouldn’t agree to it. She wanted him there, with her, and their daughter, in the place he had loved, and where he had lived and worked with Sarah.

They filed silently out of the church, as she held Isabelle’s hand, and Julian put an arm around her. Emanuelle had come down from Paris, and she walked out of the church on Phillip’s arm. They were a small group, and Sarah served lunch at the château afterwards for everyone. The locals had come to pay their respects, too, and Sarah invited them in to lunch as well, those who had served him, and known him, and loved him. She couldn’t even begin to imagine a life now without him.

She looked numb as she walked around the living room, offering people wine, or shaking their hands, or listening to their stories about Monsieur le Duc, but this had been his real life, the life they had built and shared, over twenty-six years. It was impossible to understand now that it was over.

Nigel had flown over from London too. And he cried as they buried him, as Sarah did, and Julian held her in his arms as she cried. It was more than she could bear, seeing him there next to Lizzie. It seemed only yesterday that they had come here and talked about it … about her …. and about having Xavier, who was such a joy to her now. But the tragedy was, he would never know his father. He would have two brothers to care for him, and a mother and sister who adored him, but he would never know the man William had been, and it broke her heart to know that.

Two days later they all travelled to London together for the memorial service. It was filled with pomp and ceremony. All of his relatives were there, and the Queen was, too, and her children. Afterwards they all drove to Whitfield, where they had four hundred people to tea. Sarah felt like an automaton as she shook hands with everyone, and she turned suddenly when she heard someone say behind her, “Your Grace,” and heard a man’s voice answer. For a crazed moment, she thought William had entered the room, but she gave a start when she saw that it was Phillip. And for the first time she realized that her son was the duke now.

It was a hard time for all of them, a time she would always remember. She didn’t know where to go, or what to do to escape the anguish of what she felt. If she went to Whitfield, he would be there, and at the château even more so. If she stayed at the hotel in London, all she could do was think of him, and the apartment in Paris filled her with dread, they had been so happy there, and they had stayed at the Ritz on their honeymoon … there was nowhere to go, and nowhere to run to. He was everywhere, in her heart, in her soul, in her mind, and in each of them, whenever she looked at her children.

“What are you going to do?” Phillip asked her quietly as she sat at Whitfield one day, staring out the window. She had absolutely no idea at all, and suddenly she didn’t give a damn about her business, she would have given it to him gladly. But he was only twenty-six years old, he still had a lot to learn, and Julian was only fifteen, even if one day he wanted to run the shop in Paris.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. He’d been gone for a month by then, and she still couldn’t think straight. “I keep trying to figure it out, and I can’t. I don’t know where to go, or what to do. I keep wondering what he would have wanted me to do.”

“I think he would have wanted you to go on,” Phillip said honestly, “with everything … the business, I mean… and everything you used to do with him. You can’t just stop living.” But there were times when she was tempted.

“Sometimes I’d like to.”

“I know, but you can’t,” he said quietly. “We all have an obligation.” And his were heavier than most now. He had inherited Whitfield, Julian would never have any share in it. He would in the château, which he would share with Isabelle and Xavier, but that was the injustice of the English system. And Phillip had the burden of the title on his shoulders now, too, and all that that carried with it. His father had worn it gracefully and well, and Sarah was not quite so sure about Phillip.

“What about you?” she asked him gently then. “What are you going to do now?”

“The same things I’ve been doing,” he answered hesitantly, and then he decided to tell her something he hadn’t yet. “One of these days there’s someone I’d like you to meet.” It seemed an odd time to tell her, which was why he hadn’t. He had wanted to tell them about Cecily at Christmas, but his father had been so ill, he never mentioned it.

“Someone special?”

“More or less.” He blushed and answered vaguely.

“Maybe we could have dinner together, before I leave England.”

“I’d like that very much,” he said shyly. He was different from the rest of the family, yet she was still his mother.

She reminded him of it again two weeks later, when she was thinking about going back to Paris. Emanuelle had had some problems with the shop, and Isabelle had to go back to school. She had kept her at Whitfield with her, although Julian had returned weeks before, to go back to school.

“What about the friend you wanted me to have dinner with?” she prodded gently, and he was vague.

“Oh that. … you probably don’t have time before you leave.”

“Yes, I do,” she contradicted him. “I always have time for you. When would you like to do it?” He was sorry he had ever mentioned it, but she made him as comfortable as she could, as they made a date to go to the Connaught for dinner. And the girl she met there the following night didn’t surprise her at all, she only wished she had. She was so typically English. She was tall and spare and pale, and she almost never spoke. She was extremely well-bred, and totally respectable and the most boring girl Sarah thought she had ever met. She was Lady Cecily Hawthorne. Her father was an important Cabinet minister, and she was a very nice girl, incredibly proper and well-bred, but Sarah couldn’t help wondering how Phillip could stand her. She had absolutely no sex appeal, there was nothing warm and cozy about her, she was certainly not a person you could ever laugh with. And Sarah tried to mention that to him gently before she left the next morning.

“She’s a lovely girl,” she said over breakfast.

“I’m glad you like her.” He seemed very pleased, and Sarah found herself wondering how serious this was and if she should worry. Here she had a baby in diapers on her hands, and now she had to worry about daughters-in-law, and William was gone. There was no justice in the world, she moaned to herself, as she tried to look casual to Phillip.

“Is it serious?” she asked, trying not to choke on a piece of toast when he nodded. “Very serious?”

“It could be. She’s certainly the kind of girl you’d want to marry.”

“I can see why you think that, dear,” she said, trying to sound calm to him, and wondering if he believed her. “And she’s a lovely girl… but is she enough fun? That’s something to think about. Your father and I always had such a good time together. That’s an important thing in a marriage.”

“Fun?” he said, with a look of astonishment. “Fun? What difference could that possibly make? Mother, I don’t understand you.”

“Phillip.” She decided to be honest with him, and hoped she wouldn’t regret it. “Good breeding isn’t enough. You need something more… a little character, someone you want to jump in and out of bed with.” He was old enough to hear the truth from her, and it was 1966 after all, not 1923 Young people were going to San Francisco and wearing bedspreads and flowers in their hair, surely he couldn’t be that stuffy. But the amazing thing was that he was. He seemed appalled as he looked at his mother.

“Well, I can certainly see you and Father did a lot of that, but that doesn’t mean I intend to choose my wife by those standards.” She knew at that exact moment that if he married this girl, he would be making a terrible mistake, but she also knew that if she told him that, he’d never believe her.

“Do you still believe in a double standard, Phillip? That you play with one kind of girl, and marry another? Or do you really like the serious, well-bred ones? Because if you like playing with the sexy, fun ones, and you marry a proper one, you could be in for a lot of trouble.” It was the best she could do under the circumstances, but she could see he got it.

“I have my position to think of,” he said, sounding very annoyed with her.

“So did your father, Phillip And he married me. And I don’t think he regretted it. At least, I hope not.” She smiled sadly at her eldest son, feeling as though he were a total stranger.

“You were from a perfectly good family, even if you were divorced.” She had told them all long ago, so no one else would. “I take it you don’t like Cecily then?” he asked icily, as he stood up and prepared to leave the table.

“I like her very much. I just think that if you’re thinking about marrying her, you need to think seriously about what you want in a wife. She’s a very nice girl, but she’s very serious, and not very outgoing.” Sarah had always known he had a passion for racier girls “on the side,” from tales she’d heard in London and Paris. He liked to be seen and photographed with the “right” kind of girls, but at the same time, he enjoyed the others. And there was no doubt that Cecily was one of the “right” ones. But she was also a very dull one.

“She’d make an excellent Duchess of Whitfield,” Phillip said austerely.

“I suppose that’s important. But is it enough?” She felt compelled to ask him.

“I think I’m the best judge of that,” he said, and she nodded, hoping he was right, but convinced that he wasn’t.

“I only want what’s best for you,” she told him as she kissed him, and he went into the city then, and she went back to Paris that afternoon with her two younger children. She took them back to the château, and left them with Julian, and then she went back to Paris for a few days to attend to business, but her heart wasn’t in it anymore, and all she wanted to do was go back to the château and visit his grave, which Emanuelle told her was morbid.

It took her a long time to feel like herself again, and it was only that summer that she felt halfway normal. And then Phillip announced to them that he was marrying Cecily Hawthorne. Sarah was sorry for him, but she would never have said so. They were going to live in his London flat, and spend a great deal of time at Whitfield. She would keep her horses there, but Phillip assured his mother that she could use the hunting box whenever she wanted. He and Cecily were taking over the main house of course. He never even mentioned the other children.

Sarah didn’t have to make any wedding plans. The Hawthornes did all that, and the wedding was held at their family seat in Staffordshire. The Whitfields arrived en masse, and Sarah took Julian’s arm. It was a Christmas wedding, and she had worn a beige wool Chanel suit for the wedding breakfast.

Isabelle was wearing a sweet white velvet dress, with a matching coat trimmed in ermine, and Xavier was wearing a little black velvet suit from La Châteleine in Paris. Julian looked incredibly handsome in his morning coat, as did Phillip. And the bride looked very nice in her grandmother’s lace dress. She was a little too tall for it, and the veil sat oddly on her head, and if Sarah had had someone to gossip with, like Emanuelle, who hadn’t come, she would have admitted that she looked awful, like a great dry stick of a girl, with no charm and no sex appeal whatsoever. She hadn’t even bothered to wear makeup. But Phillip seemed very pleased with her. The wedding was the week before Christmas, and they were spending their honeymoon in the Bahamas.

Sarah couldn’t help wondering what William would have thought of them. It depressed her as she went back to Claridge’s that night, that she didn’t like the first daughter-in-law she had, and she suddenly wondered if she’d have any better luck with the others.

It was an odd life. These children, who did such strange things. Who led their own lives, in their own way, with people who appealed to no one but themselves. It made her even lonelier for William as they flew back to Paris, and drove to the château. It was the first Christmas they’d spent without him … a year since he’d died … and Xavier would be two years old on New Year’s Day. Her mind was full of memories as they drove home. But as she pulled up slowly in front of the château at dusk, she saw a man standing there, who looked so familiar to her and yet so different. She wondered if she was dreaming, as she stared at him. But she wasn’t. It was he … and for a moment he looked as though he had barely changed. He walked slowly toward her with a gentle smile, and she could only stare at him. … It was Joachim.

Chapter 24

S Sarah stepped out of the Rolls in front of the château, she looked as though she had seen a ghost, and in some ways, she had. It had been almost twenty-three years since she’d seen him. Twenty-three years since he’d kissed her good-bye, and taken his troops back to Germany. She had never heard from him again, or known if he had lived or died, but she had thought of him often, particularly when she thought of Lizzie.

She stepped slowly out of the car, and he looked at her long and hard. She had changed very little. She was still a beauty. She looked more dignified now, her hair was only a little gray. She had turned fifty that year, but looking at her, it was hard to believe it.

“Who is that?” Julian whispered. The man looked very strange. He was thin and old and he was staring at their mother.

“It’s all right, darling. He’s an old friend. Take the children inside.” He picked Xavier up, and took Isabelle with him, and they went into the château, looking over their shoulders, as Sarah slowly approached him. “Joachim?” she whispered, as he came slowly toward her with the smile she knew so well. “What are you doing here?” He had waited so long to come. And why now? There was so much to tell him, and to ask him.

“Hello, Sarah,” he said quietly, taking her hands in his own. “It’s been a long time … but you look very well.” She looked much more than well. Just seeing her again made his heart beat faster.

“Thank you.” She knew he was sixty years old then, but the years hadn’t been kind to him. Yet they had been kinder to him than to William. He was still alive, and William was gone now. “Would you like to come inside? We’ve just come back from England,” she explained, sounding suddenly like a hostess with a long-expected houseguest, “from Phillip’s wedding.” She smiled, their eyes still searching each other beyond what she was saying.

“Phillip? Married?”

“He’s twenty-seven now,” she reminded him, as he opened the door for her, and he followed her in. They were both suddenly painfully aware that he had once lived here.

“And you have had other children?”

“Three,” she nodded, and then she smiled. “One very recently, Xavier will be two next week.”

“You have a baby?” He looked visibly startled and she laughed.

“You don’t look nearly as surprised as I did. William was quite a good sport about it.” She didn’t want to tell him William had died, not yet at least. And then she realized that Joachim didn’t know William had ever returned. There was so much she had to tell him.

She invited him to sit down in the main salon, and he looked at the room, so full of memories for him. But looking at her was even more remarkable, and he couldn’t stop himself from staring. It stunned him to realize that if he had come the day before, she might still have been in England.

“What brings you here now, Joachim?”

He wanted to say “you,” but he didn’t. “I have a brother in Paris. I came to see him for Christmas. We are both alone, and he asked me to come.” And then, “I have wanted to see you for a long time, Sarah.”

“You never wrote to me,” she said softly, and she hadn’t written to him. But looking back now, she wasn’t sure she would have, even if she had known where to find him. Perhaps once, but it would have seemed unfair to William.

“Things were very difficult right after the war,” he explained. “Berlin was a madhouse for a long time, and when I was able to make my way back this way, I read in the newspapers of the remarkable survival of the Duke of Whitfield. I was very happy for you then, I knew how much you had wanted him to return. I didn’t think it was appropriate for me to write to you after that, or to come to see you. I thought about it sometimes. I was in France several times over the years, but it didn’t seem right, so I never came to see you.” She nodded. She understood only too well. In some ways, it would have been very strange to see him. There was no denying what they had both felt for each other then. They had managed to keep it in check, fortunately, but one couldn’t pretend that the feelings hadn’t existed.

“William died last year,” she told him sorrowfully. “Or actually, this year, on January second.” Her eyes told him how lonely she was without him. And again, he couldn’t pretend ignorance. It was why he had finally come now. He had never wanted to interfere with her life with him, knowing how much she loved her husband, but now that he knew he was gone, he had to come, to satisfy the dream of a lifetime.

“I know. I also read that in the paper.”

She nodded, still not understanding why he had come, but nonetheless happy to see him. “Did you remarry eventually?”

He shook his head. “Never.” She had haunted him for more than twenty years, and he had never met another woman like her.

“I’m in the jewelry business now, you know.” She looked amused, and he raised an eyebrow.

“Are you?” This time he seemed genuinely surprised. “That’s something new, isn’t it?”

“Not anymore. It was after the war.” She told him about all the people who had come to them to sell their jewelry and how the business had grown after that. She told him about the Paris store, and Emanuelle running it, and about the store in London.

“That sounds quite amazing. I’ll have to go and see Emanuelle when I’m in Paris.” And then, as he said it, he thought better of it. He knew she had never really liked him. “I imagine the prices are a little rich for my blood. We lost everything,” he said matter-of-factly. “All of our land is in the East now.”

She felt sorry for him. There was something desperately sad about this man. There was something beaten and terribly lonely about him. She offered him a glass of wine, and went in to check on the children. Isabelle and Xavier were having dinner in the kitchen with the serving girl, and Julian had gone upstairs to call his girlfriend. She wanted to introduce them to Joachim, but she wanted to talk to him for a while first. She had the odd feeling that there was a reason why he had come to see her.

She went back into the living room to see him again, and when she did, he was looking over the books. And after a moment she saw that he had found the book he had given her, twenty years before, for Christmas. “You still have it.” He looked pleased, and she smiled at him. “I still have your photograph, on my desk, in Germany.” But that seemed sad to her too. It was so long ago. There should have been someone else on his desk by now, and not Sarah

“I have yours too. It’s put away.” But his photograph had had no place in her life with William, and Joachim knew that. “What do you do now?” He looked distinguished, and not poor, but he didn’t look either as though he had a great deal of money.

“I am a professor of English literature at the University of Heidelberg.” He smiled, as they both remembered long conversations about Keats and Shelley.

“I’m sure you’re very good at it.”

He set down his wineglass then and moved closer to her.

“Perhaps it’s wrong of me to have come, Sarah, but I have thought of you so often. It seems only yesterday since I left here.” But the truth was, it wasn’t yesterday, it was a lifetime. “I had to see you again … to know if you remember, too, if it means as much to you still, as it did to both of us then.” It was a lot to ask, and her life had been so full, and apparently his so empty.

“It’s been a long time, Joachim … I have always remembered you.” She had to be honest with him. “And I loved you then. I did, and perhaps if things had been different, if I hadn’t been married to William … but I was … and he came home. And I loved him very much. I can’t imagine loving another man again, ever.”

“Even one you had loved before?” His eyes were filled with hope and lost dreams, but she couldn’t give him the answer he wanted.

She shook her head sadly. “Even you, Joachim. I couldn’t then, and I can’t now … I am married to William forever.”

“But he is gone now,” he said gently, wondering if he had merely come too early.

“Not in my heart, just as he wasn’t then. I was grateful then, and I am now. … I can’t be any different, Joachim.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, looking like a broken man.

“So am I,” she said softly.

The children came in to them then. Isabelle looked adorable as she curtsied to him, and Xavier raced around the room, happily destroying whatever he could, and eventually Julian came down, too, to ask if he could go out with friends, and she introduced him to Joachim.

“You have a beautiful family,” he said when they left again. “The little one looks a little like Phillip.” Phillip had been just that age during the Occupation, and she could see his fondness for her son in his eyes. … and for Lizzie…. She knew he was thinking of her then, too, and she nodded. “I think of her sometimes, too … in some ways, she was like our baby.”

“I know.” And William had thought so too. He had told her that he’d been jealous of Joachim, because he had known Elizabeth, and he hadn’t. “She was so sweet… Julian is a little bit like that. And Xavier once in a while.… Isabelle is her own person.”

“She looks it.” He smiled. “And so are you, Sarah. I still love you. I always shall. You are exactly as I thought you might be now … except perhaps more beautiful … and still as good. Perhaps I wish you were not quite so much so.”

She laughed softly in answer. “I’m sorry.”

“William was a very lucky man. I hope he knew it.”

“I think we both did. It was too short a time …I only wish he’d had longer.”

“How was he after the war? The newspapers said his survival was miraculous.”

“It was. He was very badly damaged, and he was tortured.”

“They did terrible things,” he said, without hesitation. “For a time, I was ashamed to say I was a German.”

“All you did was help your men while you were here. The rest was done by other people. You have nothing to be ashamed of.” She had loved him, and respected him, in spite of their divergent positions.

“We should have all stopped it long before. The world will never forgive us that we didn’t, and they’re not wrong. The crimes were inhuman.” She couldn’t disagree with him, but at least they both knew that his conscience was clear. He was a good man, and he had been an honorable soldier.

Eventually, he stood up and looked around the room again, as though wanting to remember every inch, every detail, when he left her. “I should go back to Paris now. My brother will be waiting.”

“Come back again,” she said as she walked him outside, but they both knew he wouldn’t. She walked him slowly to his car, and when they reached it, he stopped and looked at her again. The hunger in his heart was etched in his eyes as he longed to touch her.

“I’m glad I came to see you again … I have wanted to for so long.” He smiled, and gently touched her cheek as he had once before, and she leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, touched his face, and then slowly took a step backwards. It was like taking a last step from the past back to the present.

“Take care of yourself, Joachim….”

He hesitated for a long moment, and then nodded. He got back into his car, with a small salute, and she didn’t see the tears in his eyes as he drove away. All she could see was his car … and the man he had once been. All she could think of were her memories of William. Joachim had left her life years before. He was gone. And there was no place for him anymore. There hadn’t been in years. And when she couldn’t see the car anymore, she turned and went back inside to her children.

Chapter 25

HEN Julian graduated from the Sorbonne with a degree in philosophy and lettres in 1972, Sarah was extremely proud of him. They all went to the ceremony, except Phillip, who was busy in London buying a famous collection of jewels, which included an important tiara. Emanuelle went to the graduation, looking very dignified in a dark-blue Givenchy suit, and a wonderful set of sapphires from Whitfield’s. She had become an important woman by then. Her affair with the Minister of Finance had long since been an open secret. They had been together for several years, and he treated her with respect and affection. His wife had been very ill for years, his children were grown, and they weren’t doing anyone any harm. They were discreet, he was very kind, and she truly loved him. He had bought her a beautiful apartment on the Avenue Foch several years before and she entertained with him, and people begged to be invited to their parties. All the most interesting people in Paris seemed to go there, and her position as the manager of Whitfield’s was an object of fascination and great interest. She dressed impeccably, and her taste was glorious, as were the jewels she had carefully acquired herself over the years, as well as those he gave her.

Sarah was grateful that she was still working for her, particularly now that Julian was coming into the business. He had great taste and a wonderful sense of design, and a fine eye for extraordinary jewels, but there were many things he didn’t know about running the business. Emanuelle was no longer working on the floor selling, and hadn’t been in a long time; she had an office upstairs, she was the directrice générale, and her office was directly across from Sarah’s. They left their doors open sometimes, and shouted across the hall, like two girls in a dormitory doing homework. They had remained close friends, and only their friendship, her children, and her ever-increasing workload had helped Sarah survive William’s death. It had been more than six years, and for Sarah, they had been brutally lonely.

Life wasn’t the same without him, in countless major ways, and all the small ones. All the laughter they had shared, all the thoughtful little gestures, the smiles, the flowers, the deep understanding, the shared or even diametrically opposed points of view, his endless good judgment, and limitless wisdom, they were all gone now, and the ache she felt was almost physical, it was so painful.

The children had kept her busy over the years, Isabelle was sixteen, and Xavier seven. He was into everything, and Sarah often wondered if he was going to survive his childhood. Sarah found him on the roof of the château, or in caves he created near the stables, testing electric wires, and building things that looked as though they might easily kill him. But somehow he managed to get through it, and his energy and ingenuity intrigued her. He had a passion for rocks, too, and he always thought he had just found gold or silver or diamonds. The moment anything glimmered in the soil, he would pounce on it and proclaim he had found a bijou for Whitfield’s

Phillip had children of his own, a boy of five and a girl of three, Alexander and Christine, but Sarah admitted only to Emanuelle that they were so much like Cecily, they were of very little interest to her. They were sweet, but very wan and pale, and they were not very exciting, or very endearing. They were distant and shy, even with Sarah. Sarah brought Xavier to play with them at Whitfield sometimes, but he was far more enterprising than they were, and always got into too much mischief, and it was obvious eventually that Phillip wasn’t anxious to have him.

In fact, Phillip wasn’t fond of any of his brothers or his sister, nor was he interested in them, except Julian, whom Sarah sometimes feared Phillip hated.

He was unreasonably jealous of him, so much so that she worried that with Julian entering the business, Phillip might do something to hurt him. She suspected that Emanuelle feared it, too, and she had already urged her to watch him. Phillip had once been her friend, her charge when she was young and her life had been less sophisticated than it was now, and in some ways she knew him even better than Sarah. She knew what viciousness he was capable of, what slights he feared, and what revenge he wrought when he thought someone had crossed him. In fact, it amazed Emanuelle that after all these years, Phillip was still getting on with Nigel. It was an unusual union between them, a marriage of convenience of sorts, but it was very obviously still working.

But Phillip hated how much Julian was loved, by his family, by his friends, even by his women. He took out the most attractive gills in town, they were always beautiful and fun and glamorous, and they adored him. Even before Phillip was married the women he took out were always a little bit sleazy. And Emanuelle knew he was still attracted to that kind of woman when his wife wasn’t around. She had seen him in Paris with one of them once, and he had pretended she was his secretary and they were there on business. They were staying at the Plaza Athénée, and he borrowed some of their flashiest jewelry to let her wear for a few days, and he had asked Emanuelle if she would be good enough not to tell his mother. But the jewelry looked pale on her, she looked tired and used, and the ridiculously short clothes she wore were not even stylish. She just looked cheap, and Phillip didn’t seem to notice. Sarah was sorry for him. It was obvious to her by then that he wasn’t happy in his marriage.

But Phillip was not missed at Julian’s graduation.

“So, my friend,” Emanuelle asked Julian as they all left the Sorbonne, “how soon do you begin work? Tomorrow, n’est-ce pas?” He knew she was teasing, because she was coming to the party his mother was giving for him that night at the château, and all his friends were going to be there.

The boys were staying in the stables and the girls were sleeping in the main house and the cottage, and the additional guests were staying in local hotels. They were expecting about three hundred people. After the party, he was going to the Riviera for a few days, but he had promised his mother he would go to work on Monday.

“Monday, I promise.” He looked at Emanuelle with huge eyes that had already melted many hearts. He looked so much like his father. “I swear …” He held up a hand officially, and Emanuelle laughed. It would be fun to have him at Whitfield’s. He was so handsome, women would buy anything from him. She just hoped he didn’t buy for them. He was incredibly generous, as William had been, and terribly kindhearted.

Sarah had offered him her Paris flat, until he could find his own, and he was looking forward to staying there. She had just given him an Alfa Romeo as a graduation present, which would surely impress the girls. He offered to drive Emanuelle to the château in it that day, after they had lunch at the Relais at the Plaza, but she had promised to go with Sarah.

Isabelle rode down to the château with him instead, and he teased her about her long legs and her short skirts, as she piled into the car, looking more like twenty-five than sixteen.

And as Julian often said about her, she was trouble. She flirted with all his friends, and had gone out with several of them. He was always amazed that his mother didn’t take a stronger position with her. But ever since his father had died, she was softer with all of them. It was almost as though she didn’t have the strength or the desire to fight them. Julian thought she let Xavier run wild, too, but all he ever did was set firecrackers off in the stables and frighten the horses, or chase the farm animals into the vineyards. Isabelle’s misdeeds were far more discreet, and a lot more dangerous, if what his friend Jean-François said was true. She had driven him to a frenzy recently on a ski weekend in St Moritz, and then she had slammed the door in his face, a fact for which Julian was grateful, but he also knew that soon she wouldn’t be slamming doors, she would be leaving them open.

“So,” he said, as they drove south on Route 20, toward Orléans. “What’s new with you, any new boyfriends?”

“No one special.” She sounded very cool, which was unusual for her. Normally, she loved to brag to him about her latest conquests. But she was more secretive these days, and she was getting prettier by the hour. She looked like their mother, but in a more sultry, smoky way. Everything about her suggested passion and immediate gratification. And her underlying innocence only served to make the invitation more tempting.

“How’s school?” She was still going to school in La Marolle, which he thought was a mistake. He thought she should go away to school, perhaps to a convent. At least he had been smart enough to be discreet when he was her age; he looked all innocence, and pretended to play tennis after school, while he was actually having an affair with one of his teachers. No one had ever discovered them, but eventually she had gotten serious, and she had threatened to commit suicide when he finally left her, which really upset him. And after that it was the mother of one of his friends, but that had been complicated, too, and after that, he realized it was easier chasing virgins than dealing with the complications of older women. But they still intrigued him anyway. He was totally omnivorous when it came to women. He adored them all, old, young, beautiful, simple, intelligent, and sometimes even ugly. Isabelle accused him of having no taste, and his friends said. He was always horny, which was true, but no great sin as far as Julian was concerned. He was, and happy to oblige at any moment.

“School is stupid and boring;” Isabelle answered him, looking petulant, “but it’s over for the summer, thank God.” And she was furious they weren’t going anywhere till August. Her mother had promised her a trip to Capri, but she wanted to stay at the château until then. She had things to see about there, alterations they wanted to make on the Paris store, and repairs that needed to be made on the farm and the vineyards.

“It’s so boring-being here,” she complained, lighting a cigarette, taking a few puffs and tossing it out the window. He didn’t think she really smoked, she was just trying to impress him.

“I used to love it at your age. There’s so much to do, and Mother always lets you have friends to stay.”

“Not boys.” She glowered at him. She adored him, but sometimes he didn’t understand anything, especially lately.

“Funny,” he teased her mercilessly, “she always let me have boys over.”

“Very funny.”

“Thank you. Well, at least it won’t be boring tonight, my dear. But you’d better behave yourself, or I’ll spank you.”

“Thanks a lot.” She closed her eyes and slid down in the seat of his Alfa Romeo. “I like your car, by the way.” She smiled at him. Sometimes she really liked him.

“So do I. It was nice of Mother to do that.”

“Yeah, she’ll probably make me wait till I’m ninety.” Isabelle thought her mother was unreasonable with her. But anyone who stood in the way of what she wanted, in her eyes, was a monster.

“Maybe you’ll have passed your driver’s license by then.”

“Oh, shut up.” There was a joke in the family about what a terrible driver she was. She had already damaged two of the old junk heaps at the château, and she claimed it was because they were so impossible to drive, and it had nothing to do with her driving. But Julian knew better, and he wouldn’t have let her touch the steering wheel on his precious Alfa Romeo.

They reached the château long before his guests, and Julian went for a quick swim, and then went to see if he could help his mother. She had hired a local caterer and there were long buffet tables everywhere, several bars, and a canopy over an enormous dance floor. There were two bands, a local one, and a big fancy one from Paris. Julian was thrilled and touched that his mother was giving him such a fabulous party.

“Thank you, Maman,” he said, and put an arm around her, still wet from his swim. He stood tall and handsome beside her, dripping wet in his swim trunks. Emanuelle was standing next to her, and she pretended to swoon when she saw him.

“Cover yourself, my dear. I’m not at all sure I can handle having you at the office.” And neither would anyone else. She made a mental note to watch her girls. She wasn’t at all sure that Julian wouldn’t take them off to his apartment after lunch. She knew he had a bit of a naughty reputation. “We’re going to have to do something very imaginative at work to make you look ugly.” But the truth was that it couldn’t be done, he oozed charm and sex appeal. As restrained and repressed as his brother was, Julian was everything he wasn’t.

“You should get dressed before your guests arrive.” His mother smiled at him.

“Or perhaps not,” Emanuelle whispered. She always enjoyed an attractive body and enjoyed teasing him a little bit. It was harmless after all, she was an old friend, and he was just a child to her. She had just turned fifty.

Julian was back downstairs long before the guests, having spent half ah hour with Xavier while he was getting dressed explaining to him about cowboys in the Wild West. For some reason Xavier was obsessed with Davy Crockett. He was fascinated by American things, and had told someone in school that he was really from New York, and only in France for a year while his parents did business.

“Well, my mother is!” He had defended himself afterwards. He wanted to be American more than anything. Having never known his father, and seeing very little of Phillip these days, he seemed to feel no kinship whatsoever with the British. And while Julian was clearly French, Xavier found it far more exciting to pretend he was from New York, or Chicago, or even California. And he talked constantly about his Aunt Jane and the cousins he didn’t even know, which amused Sarah. She often spoke English to him, and he spoke it very well, as did Julian, but nonetheless with a French accent. Julian’s English was better than his, but still one could tell that he was French, unlike Phillip, who sounded so relentlessly British. And Isabelle didn’t care where she was from, as long as it was somewhere far removed from all her relations. She wanted to be separate from all of them, so she could do exactly what she wanted.

“I want you to be a good boy tonight,” Julian warned Xavier as he went to join his friends. “No wild tricks, no getting hurt. I want to have fun at my party. Why don’t you go watch TV?”

“I can’t,” he said matter-of-factly. “I don’t have one.”

“You can watch the one in my room.” Julian smiled at him, impossible as he was, he really loved him. Julian had been like a father to him, and he really enjoyed being with him. “I think there’s a soccer game on.”

“Great!” He shouted as he headed back to his brother’s room, humming Davy Crockett.

Julian was still smiling to himself when he ran into Isabelle on the stairs. She was wearing a white, almost see-through dress that barely reached her crotch and covered her stomach with chain mail.

“Cardin?” he asked, trying to sound cool.

“Courrèges,” she corrected, looking arch and far more dangerous than she knew. She was walking trouble.

“I’m learning.”

But so was Sarah. When she saw her, she sent her back upstairs to put something else on. And Isabelle slammed every door in the house on the way, as Emanuelle watched her, and Sarah sighed and helped herself to a glass of champagne.

“That child is going to kill me. And if she doesn’t, Xavier will.”

“You said that about the others too,” Emanuelle reminded her.

“I did not,” Sarah corrected. “Phillip disappointed me because he was so distant and so cool, and Julian worried me because he slept with the mothers of all his friends and thought I didn’t know. But Isabelle is an entirely different creature. She refuses to be controlled, or to behave herself or listen to reason.” Emanuelle couldn’t disagree with her. She would have hated to be the girl’s mother. Seeing Isabelle always made her grateful she had never had children. Xavier was another story though, he was impossible but so warm and cuddly that you couldn’t resist him. He was like Julian, but freer and more adventuresome. They were an interesting bunch, the Whitfield crew. And none of them saw Isabelle emerge again in a zebra-striped leotard and a white leather skirt that was even worse than what she’d worn the first time. But fortunately for her, this time Sarah didn’t see her.

“Having fun?” Sarah asked Julian hours later when she saw him. He looked a little drunk, but she knew no harm would come to him. No one was driving anywhere, and he had worked so hard to graduate from the Sorbonne. He deserved it.

“Maman, you’re terrific! This is the best party I’ve ever been to.” He looked happy and dishevelled and hot. He’d been dancing for hours with two girls who were causing him to make an impossible decision. It was an evening filled with blissful dilemmas.

And for Isabelle too. She was stretched full-length in the bushes near the stables with a boy she had met that night. She knew he was a friend of Julian’s and she couldn’t remember his name. But he was the best kisser she had ever met, and he had just told her he loved her.

Eventually, one of the servants saw her there, and whispered something discreetly to the duchess, who suddenly appeared miraculously on the path to the stables, with Emanuelle, pretending to stroll along and enjoy a casual conversation. And when Isabelle heard her, she scurried away and the two women looked at each other and laughed, feeling both old and young at the same time. In August, Sarah was going to be fifty-six, although she didn’t look it.

“Did you ever do things like that?” Emanuelle asked. “I did.”

“You only did them with Germans during the war,” Sarah teased her and Emanuelle corrected her firmly.

“That was to get information from them,” she said proudly.

“It’s a wonder you didn’t get us all killed,” Sarah scolded her thirty years later.

“I would have liked to kill all of them,” she said with feeling.

Sarah told her then about Joachim turning up just after Phillip’s wedding. She had never told her that before, and Emanuelle was annoyed.

“I’m surprised he’s still alive. A lot of them were killed when they went back to Berlin. He was pretty decent, as Nazis went, but a Nazi is a Nazi is a Nazi.…”

“He looked so sad, and so old… and I guess I disappointed him bitterly. I think he thought he’d come back, with William gone, and everything would be different. But it could never have been.” Emanuelle nodded. She knew how much Sarah had loved William. She had never looked at another man since he died, and she didn’t think she would again. She had tried discreetly to introduce her to a few friends after a few years had gone by, but it was obvious that she had no interest. She was only interested now in her business and her children.

The party ended at four A.M. with the last of the young people falling into the swimming pool as the bands left, and finally winding up in the château kitchen at dawn while Sarah cooked them scrambled eggs and served them coffee. It was fun having them there, she liked having them around, and lately she was glad that she had had some of her children so late in life. So many of her friends were lonely and alone, instead she would have them around her forever. They would drive her crazy probably, but those who knew her well, knew that she enjoyed it.

She went to her own room at eight o’clock, and smiled when she saw Xavier sleeping soundly on Julian’s bed. The television was still on and there was nothing on the screen but snow, and a continuing recording of the “Marseillaise.” She went in and turned it off, took off the Davy Crockett hat and smoothed his hair, and then she went to her own room and slept till noon.

Sarah and Emanuelle had lunch before she went back to Paris. They had a lot to talk about. They were expanding the Paris store again, and lately Nigel had been saying they should think of doing that in London. They still had their royal warrant, and were officially Jewelers to the Crown. In fact, in recent years, they had sold to many heads of state, several kings and queens, and scores of Arabs. Business was excellent, in both stores, and Sarah was excited about Julian coming into the business.

He started, as promised, the following week, and everything went smoothly until they closed in August. He went to Greece then with a bunch of friends, and she took Xavier and Isabelle to Capri. They loved it there. They loved the Marina Grande and the Marina Piccola, and the square, and going to the beach clubs like Canzone del Mare, or some of the more public ones. Isabelle had been studying Italian in school, and with a smattering of Spanish under her belt, too, she considered herself a great linguist

They all had a good time, staying at the Quisisana, and eating ice cream in the square, and Sarah couldn’t restrain herself from checking out the jewelry shops. She found the prices high, but some of their pieces very pretty. There wasn’t much for her to do there, except eat and read and relax, and spend time with the children. And she felt there was no harm in letting Isabelle go down to the beach club by herself in one of the beach taxis everyone took. She met her there later in the morning with Xavier, who always wanted to visit the little donkeys.

And one morning, when Isabelle went on ahead, Sarah and Xavier stopped a little longer on their way to the square, to do some shopping. They reached the Canzone del Mare just in time for lunch, and Sarah looked everywhere for her daughter, but she couldn’t find her. She was beginning to panic until Xavier found her sandals under a chair, and followed her trail into a little cabana. They found her there, with the top of her swimsuit off, with a man twice her age holding her breast, moaning, as she held the ominous bulge in his bikini

For an instant, Sarah only stared, and then without thinking she grabbed Isabelle by the arm and dragged her out of the cabana.

“What in God’s name do you think you’re doing in there?” She raged at her and Isabelle burst into tears, as the man emerged trying to regain his composure as he wrapped himself rather unsuccessfully in a towel. “Do you realize my daughter is sixteen years old?” she said to him in a venomous voice, trying to keep control of herself with difficulty. “I could call the police.” But she knew that the one she should give them was her daughter. She was only trying to frighten him so he didn’t do it again, and she saw that she had hit her mark from his expression. He was a very attractive man, from Rome, and he looked like something of a playboy.

“Signora, mi dispiace … she said she was twenty-one. I am so sorry,” he apologized profusely and looked regretfully at Isabelle, sobbing hysterically as she stood next to her mother. They went back to the hotel, and Sarah suggested in icy tones that she spend the rest of the afternoon in her room, and then they would talk about it again. But as she went back to the beach with Xavier she knew she had to do more than talk now. Phillip and Julian were right. Isabelle needed to go away to school. But where? That was the question.

“What were they doing in there?” Xavier asked with curiosity as they passed the same cabana again, and Sarah shuddered at what she’d seen.

“Nothing, darling, they were playing silly games.”

She kept a short rein on Isabelle after that, and the rest of the holiday wasn’t quite as much fun. But by the next day, Sarah had made several phone calls. She had found a wonderful school for her, near the Austrian border, close to Cortina. She could ski all winter there, speak both Italian and French, and learn to control herself a little better. It was an all-girl school, and there was no brother school nearby. Sarah had asked very clearly.

She told Isabelle about it on the last day of the vacation, and she went through the roof predictably, but Sarah stood her ground, even when Isabelle cried. It was for her own good. If she didn’t do it, she knew that Isabelle was going to do something very stupid before too long, and maybe even get pregnant.

“I won’t go!” she raged. She even called Julian at the shop in Paris. But he stood behind his mother this time. And after Capri, they went to Rome to buy her what she needed. The school term was starting in a few days, and there was no point taking her back to France to get into more trouble. Sarah and Xavier delivered her there, and she looked mournful as she saw the place. It was very pretty, and she had a big, sunny room of her own. The other girls looked very nice. They were French and English and German and Italian, two Brazilians, an Argentine girl, and one from Tehran. It was an interesting group, and there were only fifty girls in the school. Isabelle’s school in La Marolle had given it the highest recommendation, and the headmaster had congratulated Sarah for her good judgment.

“I can’t believe you’re leaving me here,” she wailed, but Sarah couldn’t be moved. They left her there, and Sarah herself cried all the way to the airport. And then she and Xavier flew to London to visit Phillip. After leaving her son with his nephew and niece for lunch, she went directly to the London store. Everything seemed fine. She had lunch with Phillip, and she was startled to hear him make several nasty remarks about his brother.

“What’s that all about?” Sarah asked candidly. “What’s he done to get you so annoyed?”

“He and his damn stupid ideas about design. I don’t understand why he has to meddle in that sort of thing,” he ranted on at her, and she answered quietly.

“Because I asked him to. He’s very talented with design. Far more than you and I, and he understands important stones and what you can and can’t do with them.” He had recently set a maharaja’s emerald that had been over a hundred carats, and anyone else would have cracked it. But Julian understood exactly what to do with it, and had overseen every single moment it spent in the workroom.

“There’s no harm in his doing that. You’re good at other things.” Sarah reminded him. He was wonderful at dealing with the royals, and keeping them foremost in that market. Stuffy as he was, they loved him.

“I don’t know why you defend him all the time,” Phillip said irritably.

“If it’s any consolation, Phillip,” she said, refusing to rise to the bait, but disappointed at how jealous he still was. He was worse than ever. “I always defend you too. I happen to love both of you.” He didn’t answer her, but he looked slightly mollified as he asked about Isabelle, and told her he’d heard very good things about the school.

“Let’s hope they work a miracle,” Sarah said softly.

And as they walked back to his office, she noticed a very pretty girl leaving the building. She had long, shapely legs, and wore a very short skirt, that looked like something Isabelle would wear, and she gave him a knowing glance that concealed very little. He looked furious with her while trying to pretend not to know her. The girl was new and had no idea that Sarah was his mother. Stupid bitch, he thought to himself, but in an instant, Sarah had seen the look that passed between them, although she didn’t say anything to him. But he felt obliged to explain it to her, which made their situation even more obvious to Sarah.

“It doesn’t matter, Phillip. You’re thirty-three years old, what you do is your affair.” And then she decided to be brazen anyway, “Where does Cecily stand these days?” He looked shocked and actually blushed at the question.

“I beg your pardon. She’s the mother of my children.”

“Is that all?” Sarah eyed him coolly.

“Of course not, I … she … she’s away at the moment. For heaven’s sake, Mother …that was just a joke, that girl flirting with me.”

“Darling, never mind.” But he was still obviously up to his old tricks, sleeping with tarts, the girls with whom he had “fun,” as he used to say, while being married to the other. She was sorry for him that he hadn’t been able to find both in one, but he never complained to her, so she let the matter drop, and he was relieved.

And the next day, she and Xavier flew back to Paris, where Julian met them at the airport. On the short trip Sarah told her son about seeing the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London with his father when she first met him.

“Was he very strong?” Xavier asked, always fascinated to hear about his father.

“Very.” She assured him. “And very good, and very smart and very loving. He was a wonderful man, sweetheart, and you’ll be like him one day. You already are, in some ways.” And so was Julian.

They had dinner with Julian in Paris on the way home, and he was happy to see them and hear about Isabelle, and the store in London. She said nothing about her encounter with Phillip, or his comments about Julian. She didn’t want to stoke the fires that already raged between them. Eventually Sarah drove back to the château with the car she had left in Paris. Xavier slept during the trip in the car, and she looked at him from time to time, asleep beside her, thinking how lucky she was to have him. While other women spent occasional Saturdays with their grandchildren at her age, she had this enchanting little boy to share her life with. She remembered how distressed she had been when she first found out she was pregnant, and how reassuring William had been … and her late mother-in-law, who had called William a great blessing. And so he had been to everyone who had known him for his entire life, and now this child was to her … her own very special blessing.

Chapter 26

SABELLE wrote to them as seldom as she could, and only when her preceptors forced her to, and she complained bitterly about the school when she did write. But the truth was, after the first few weeks, she loved it. She loved the sophistication of the girls she met there, the places they went, and she loved skiing in Cortina. She met even more interesting people there than she did in France, and although the school kept a short rein on her, she managed to make a lot of friends in the racier Roman set, and she was always getting letters and phone calls from men, which the school made every effort to discourage, but couldn’t stop completely.

But by the end of her first year, Sarah saw a marked change in her, and Emanuelle saw it too. Isabelle wasn’t necessarily better behaved, but she was a little more reasonable and a great deal more worldly. She had a better idea of what she could and couldn’t do, and how to behave with men without giving them an open invitation. In some ways Sarah was relieved, and in others she was worried.

“She’s a dangerous girl,” she said to Julian one day, and he couldn’t disagree with her. “She always reminds me of a bomb about to go off. But now it’s a much more complicated one … maybe a Russian one … or a very delicate missile …”

Julian laughed at the description of his sister. “I’m not sure you’ll ever be able to change that.”

“Neither am I. That’s what scares me,” his mother admitted. “And what about you?” She had been waiting for weeks to see him. “I hear you’re doing a little business with one of our best customers.” They both knew who she meant, and he wondered if Emanuelle had told her. “La Comtesse de Brise is a very interesting woman, Julian, and much more dangerous than your sister.”

“I know,” he confessed with a grin, “she scares me to death, but I adore her.” The late comte had been her third husband in fifteen years, and she was thirty-four years old, and she devoured men. And all she wanted now was Julian. She had bought half a million dollars in jewels in the past month, and she could certainly afford to pay for them, but she was still coming back for more, and die biggest jewel she wanted was him, as her plaything.

“Do you think you can manage that?” she asked him honestly. She was afraid he might get hurt, but so was he, so he was careful.

“For a while I play very carefully, Mother, I assure you.”

“Good.” She smiled at him. They were a busy lot, all of them, with their mischief and their mates, and their affairs. She only hoped Isabelle would make it through the second year of her finishing school in Switzerland. And in fact, she finished the year, and flew home on the day of Whitfield’s twenty-fifth anniversary party, which Sarah was giving at the château, for seven hundred guests from all over Europe. Every possible kind of press would be there, there would be fireworks, and most of Europe’s crowned heads, absolutely everyone who was anyone had been invited. Emanuelle and Julian had helped her organize everything. And Phillip and Nigel and Cecily were flying in for the party.

It was glorious. Everyone who was supposed to came, the food was exquisite, the fireworks extraordinary, and the jewels beautiful, most of them theirs. It was an absolutely perfect evening, and a major victory for Whitfield’s. The press raved, and even before they left, they all came to congratulate Sarah for her major coup, and she in turn thanked and congratulated all the people who helped her to put on the party.

“Has anyone seen Isabelle?” Sarah asked, already late into the night. She hadn’t been able to pick her up at the airport herself, but she had sent someone to pick her up and bring her to the party. She had seen her and kissed her when she arrived, before she was dressed, but she hadn’t seen her since then. The crowd was simply too large and she had too much to do to go and look for her. She had barely been able to find Phillip and Julian for most of the evening. Phillip had deserted his wife as the evening began, and seemed to spend a lot of time with a model who had done several ads for them, and he had been telling her how much he liked them, while dancing with her, and Julian had been very busy chasing some of his latest conquests, one of them married, and two of them slightly overaged, and all the others dazzling girls that every man in the place envied him, especially his brother.

They had sent Xavier to stay with friends for the night, so he wouldn’t get into too much mischief, although at nine and a half he was behaving better. Davy Crockett was no longer the thing. But James Bond was what really made him happy. Julian bought him every gimmick he could find, and had already snuck him into two of the movies.

Sarah had left a dress out for Isabelle. She had bought her a diaphanous pink organdy gown from the Emanuels in London, and she was sure that Isabelle would look like a fairy princess in it. She hoped that she wasn’t lying under a bush somewhere in that dress. She laughed to herself at the thought. But when she finally found her, there was no bush in sight, and she was dancing very sedately with an older man, and deep in conversation. Sarah glanced at her approvingly, and then waved to her and moved on. Her entire family looked wonderful that night, even her daughter-in-law, wearing a dress by Hardy Amies, and a hairdo by Alexandre. The Château de la Meuze looked like a fairyland. More than ever, she wished that William could see it. He would have been so proud of them, and maybe even of her … they had worked so hard on the château for so long. It was impossible to believe that it had ever been less than perfect, let alone ramshackle and rundown, as it had been when they found it. But that was all so long ago. Twenty-five years since Whitfield’s had begun … thirty-five since they had found the château on their honeymoon. Where did the time go?

The reviews of the party in the press were extraordinary the next day. Everyone agreed that it was the party of the century, and wished Whitfield’s another hundred years, as long as they were invited to the next anniversary party. And for the next few days, Sarah basked in the glory of the party. She saw very little of Isabelle during those days, who was catching up with old friends At eighteen she could drive, and enjoy greater freedom than she had in earlier years. But Sarah still wanted to keep an eye on her, and she was worried one afternoon when she couldn’t find her.

“She went out in the Rolls,” Xavier explained when she saw him.

“She did?” Sarah looked surprised. She was supposed to drive the Peugeot station wagon they kept for her, and other people at the château. “Do you know where she went, sweetheart?” Sarah asked him, thinking probably just to the village

“I think she was going to Paris,” he said, and sauntered off. There was a new horse in the stables and he wanted to see it. He still liked to pretend he was a cowboy sometimes, when he felt like it. The rest of the time he was an explorer.

She called Julian at the store and asked him to keep an eye out for her in case she came in. And sure enough, an hour later, she walked in, looking like a customer, in a very pretty emerald-green dress, and dark glasses.

Julian saw her on the camera in his office upstairs, and came downstairs to the shop as soon as he saw her.

“May I help you, Mademoiselle?” He asked in his most charming voice, and she laughed. “A diamond bracelet perhaps? An engagement ring? A little tiara?”

“A crown would be very nice.”

“But of course.” He continued to play the game with her. “Emerald, to match your dress, or diamond?”

“Actually, I’ll take both.” She beamed at him, and he asked her casually then what she was doing in town.

“Just meeting a friend for a drink.”

“You drove two hours and ten minutes for a drink?” he asked. “You must be very thirsty.”

“Very funny. I had nothing to do at home, so I thought I’d come up to town. In Italy, we used to do it all the time. You know, go to Cortina for lunch, or to go shopping.” She looked extremely sophisticated and very beautiful. She was truly a knockout.

“How chic,” he teased. “It’s a shame people aren’t as amusing here.” But he knew she was going to the South of France in a few weeks, and stay with one of her friends from school, in Cap Ferrat. She was still very spoiled, but undeniably very grown-up now. “Where are you meeting your friend?”

“The Ritz, for a drink.”

“Come on,” he said, coming around the counter. “I’ll drop you off. I have to take a diamond necklace to a viscountess.”

“I have my car,” she said coldly, “well, actually, Mother’s.” And he didn’t ask any questions.

“Then you can drop me off. I don’t. Mine is sick. I was going to take a taxi,” he lied, but he wanted to see who she was meeting. He went to the wrapping desk and picked up a very impressive box and put it in an envelope and followed Isabelle outside, and got in her car before she could object. He chatted as though it were perfectly normal for her to come to town to see a friend, and he kissed her when he left her at the front desk, and pretended to talk to the concierge, who knew him well and went along with the pretense.

“Can you pretend to take this box from me, Renaud? Just throw it away after I leave, but don’t let anyone see you.”

“I should give it to my wife,” he whispered back, “but maybe she’d expect more than the box. What are you doing today?”

“Following my sister,” he confided, still pretending to give his instructions. “She’s meeting someone at the bar, and I want to make sure it’s okay. She’s a very pretty girl.”

“So I saw. How old is she?”

“Just eighteen.”

“Oooh laaaa …” Renaud whistled sympathetically, “I’m glad she’s not my daughter … sorry …” he apologized quickly.

“Do you suppose you could go in and check if she’s sitting with anyone yet? And then I can go in and pretend to run into them by mistake. But I don’t want to waste it before he gets there.” He assumed she was meeting a man, it was unlikely she would drive two hours each way to meet a girlfriend.

“Sure,” Renaud agreed readily, just as a large bill slipped into his palm for good measure, but he was happy to help this time. Lord Whitfield was a nice guy, and a great tipper.

Julian pretended to write an extensive note at the concierge’s desk, and Renaud was back in a minute. “She’s there, and my friend, you got trouble.”

“Merde. Who is it? Do you know him?” He was beginning to fear it was some mafioso.

“Sure do. He’s here all the time, or at least a couple of times a year, working on some woman. Old women sometimes, young ones other times.”

“Do I know him?”

“Maybe. He bounces checks at least twice a trip, and never tips anyone unless someone else is looking.”

“He sounds charming.” Julian groaned.

“He’s poor as dirt. And I think he’s looking for money.”

“Great. Just what we needed. What’s his name?”

“You’ll love it. The Principe di Venezia e San Tebaldi. He says he’s one of the Princes of Venice. He probably is. There are about ten thousand of them over there.” Not like the British, or even the French. The Italians had more princes than dentists. “He’s a real jerk, but he looks good, and she’s young. She doesn’t know the difference. I think his first name is Lorenzo.”

“How distinguished.” Julian was anything but encouraged by what he had just heard.

“Just don’t expect a tip,” his friend reminded him, and Julian thanked him again, and sauntered into the bar, looking distracted and very / businesslike, and incredibly aristocratic. He was the Real Thing, Renaud always said, and he knew. He was right, of course, and Julian looked it. Not like the Prince of Pasta, as he called him.

“Oh, there you are … sorry…” Julian said as he pretended to bump into her with a huge grin. “I just wanted to kiss you good-bye.” He glanced over at the man she was with, and smiled broadly, pretending to be absolutely thrilled to meet him. “Hello… terribly sorry to interrupt … I’m Isabelle’s brother, Julian Whitfield,” he said easily, extending a hand, looking comfortable and relaxed, as his sister squirmed slightly. But the prince wasn’t bothered at all. He was charming and unctuous and oily.

“Piacere … Lorenzo di San Tebaldi. … I’m so happy to meet you. You have a most charming sister.”

“Thank you. I completely agree.” He kissed her lightly then, and apologized for leaving, but he had to get back to the shop for a meeting. He left without ever looking back, and despite his brilliant performance, Isabelle knew instantly that she was in big trouble.

Julian winked at the concierge on his way out and then he hurried back to the office. He called his mother as soon as he got in, but the conversation was not reassuring.

“Maman, I think we may have a bit of a problem.”

“What is it? Or should I say who?”

“She was with a gentleman, of I’d say about fifty years, whom according to the concierge at the Ritz, is well known to him, and a fortune hunter of sorts. He’s very pretty, but he ain’t much, as they say.”

“Merde,” Sarah said bluntly at the other end. “Now what do I do with her? Lock her up again?”

“She’s getting a little old for that. It won’t be easy this time.”

“I know.” She gave an exasperated sigh. Isabelle had been home for all of two days and she was already in trouble. “I really don’t know what to do with her.”

“Neither do I. But I don’t like the looks of this guy.”

“What’s his name?” As though that mattered.

“Principe Lorenzo di San Tebaldi. I think he’s from Venice.”

“Christ. Just what we need. An Italian prince. My God, she’s such a fool.”

“I can’t disagree with you there. But she sure is a knockout.”

“More’s the pity,” her mother exclaimed in despair.

“What do you want me to do? Go back and drag her out of there by the hair?”

“I probably should ask you to do that. But I think you should leave her alone. She’ll come home eventually, and I’ll try to reason with her.”

“You’re a good sport.”

“No.” Sarah confessed. “I’m just tired.”

“Well, don’t be discouraged. I think you’re terrific.”

“Shows what you know.” But she was touched by the kind words, she needed them to fuel herself for the battle she knew would come when Isabelle came home, which she did, with the Rolls at midnight. It meant she had left Paris at ten o’clock, which was pretty reasonable for her. But still, her mother was far from pleased as Isabelle walked across the main floor of the château, and Sarah came downstairs to meet her. She had heard her come in, and she had been waiting.

“Good evening, Isabelle. Did you have a nice time?”

“Very, thank you very much.” She was nervous, but cool, as she faced her mother.

“How’s my car?”

“Very nice … I … sorry, I meant to ask. I hope you didn’t need it.”

“Actually,” Sarah said calmly, “I didn’t. Why don’t you come into the kitchen for a cup of tea. You must be tired after all that driving.” All of which scared Isabelle even more. This was fatal. Her mother wasn’t screaming, but her tone was frigid.

They sat down at the kitchen table, and Sarah made her an infusion of mint, but Isabelle didn’t give a damn about it, as she sat there. “Your brother Julian called me this afternoon,” Sarah said after a moment, and then looked into her daughter’s eyes.

“I thought he would,” Isabelle said nervously, playing with the cup with her fingers. “I was just meeting an old friend from Italy… one of the teachers.”

“Really?” Her mother said. “What an interesting story. I checked the guest list, and he was here the other night, as someone’s guest. The Principe di San Tebaldi. I saw you dancing with him, didn’t I? He’s very handsome.” Isabelle nodded, not sure what to say to her. She didn’t dare argue with her this time, she just waited to hear what her punishment was, but her mother had more to say to her, which was agony for Isabelle as she waited.

“Unfortunately,” Sarah went on, “he has a rather unattractive reputation…. He comes to Paris from time to time … looking for ladies with a bit of a fortune. Sometimes he does very well, and sometimes not so well. But in any case, my dear, he is not someone you want to go out with.” She didn’t complain about his age or the fact that Isabelle had gone to town without permission, she tried to talk to her reasonably and point out that her friend was a fortune hunter, and Sarah thought that might impress her, but it didn’t.

“People always say things like that about princes, because they’re jealous,” she said innocently, but still too frightened to enter into armed combat with her mother. Besides, she knew instinctively that she would lose this one.

“What makes you think so?”

“He told me.”

“He told you that?” Sarah looked horrified. “Doesn’t it occur to you that he is saying that to you to cover himself, in case people say things about him? That’s a smoke screen, Isabelle. For God’s sake, you’re not stupid.” But she was about men, she always had been, and particularly this one.

Julian had made several more phone calls that afternoon, and everyone said the same thing about Isabelle’s new friend. He was trouble.

“This is not a nice man, Isabelle. You have to trust me this time. He’s using you.”

“You’re jealous.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“You are!” She shouted at her, “Ever since Daddy died you don’t have anyone in your life, and it makes you feel old and ugly and you are … and you just want him for yourself!…” It was a torrent of words, and Sarah stared at her in amazement, but she spoke to her calmly.

“I hope you don’t believe that. Because we both know it’s not true. I miss your father terribly, every moment, at every hour of the day”—tears filled her eyes at the thought of it—“but not for a moment would I replace him with a fortune hunter from Venice.”

“He lives in Rome now,” Isabelle corrected, as though it mattered, as her mother pondered the overwhelming stupidity of youth. Sometimes it absolutely staggered her what a mess they made of their lives. But on the other hand, at the same age, she hadn’t done much better with Freddie, she reminded herself, trying to be reasonable with her daughter.

“I don’t care where he lives.” Sarah was beginning to lose her temper. “You will not see him again. Do you understand me?” Isabelle did not answer. “And if you take my car again. I’ll call the police next time to bring you back. Isabelle, behave yourself, or it won’t go well with you! Do you hear me?”

“You can’t tell me what to do anymore. I’m eighteen.”

“And a fool. That man is after your money, Isabelle, and your name, which is much more powerful than his. Protect yourself. Stay away from him.”

“And if I don’t?” she taunted her. But Sarah had no answer. Maybe she should send her to stay with Phillip at Whitfield for a while, with his incredibly boring wife and children. But Phillip would be no better an influence on his sister, with his secretaries, and his tarts, and his little games. What was wrong with all of them? Phillip was married to a woman he didn’t care about, and probably never had, except that she was respectable, and Julian slept with absolutely every woman and her mother, if possible, and now Isabelle was half crazy over this four-flusher from Venice. What had she and William done, she asked herself, to create such unreasonable children?

“Don’t do it again,” she warned Isabelle. And then she went upstairs to her room, and a little while later she heard Isabelle’s door slam.

Isabelle behaved herself for a week, and then she disappeared again, but this time in the Peugeot. She insisted she went to see a friend in Garches, and Sarah couldn’t prove otherwise, but she didn’t believe her. The atmosphere was tense until she left for Cap Ferrat, and after she did, Sarah heaved a sigh of relief, though she didn’t know why. The Côte d’Azur was hardly on another planet. But at least she was staying with friends, and not with that cretin from Venice.

And then Julian sent her the newspapers from Nice and Cannes and Monte Carlo when he was there for a weekend. They were full of stories about the prince of San Tebaldi and Lady Isabelle Whitfield.

“What are we going to do with her?” Sarah asked him in despair.

“I don’t know,” Julian answered her honestly. “But I think we’d better go down there.” They did the following week, when they both had time, and they tried to reason with her together. But she refused to listen, and she told them bluntly that she was in love with him, and he adored her.

“Of course he does, you little fool,” her brother tried to explain to her. “He can only guess at what you’re worth. With you in his hand, he can sit on his ass forever.”

“You make me sick!” she screamed. “Both of you!”

“Don’t be so stupid!” he shouted back. They took her to stay at the Hotel Miramar with them, and she ran away. She literally disappeared from the face of the earth for a week, and when she returned, Lorenzo was with her. He apologized profusely to both of them for being so thoughtless, for not calling them himself… as Sarah’s eyes shot daggers at him. She had been sick with worry, and didn’t dare call the police, for fear of the scandal. She knew Isabelle had to be with Lorenzo. …

“Isabelle was so upset …” He went on … and now he humbly begged their forgiveness…. But Isabelle interrupted him, and addressed her mother directly.

“We want to get married.”

“Never,” her mother said bluntly.

“Then I’ll run away again. And again. Until you let me.”

“You’re wasting your time. I never will.” And then she turned her attention to Lorenzo. “And what’s more, I will cut off every cent she has.” But Isabelle knew better.

“You can’t. Not all of it. You know that what Daddy left me comes to me when I’m twenty-one, no matter what.” Sarah was sorry she had ever told her, but Lorenzo looked extremely cheered by the news, and Julian looked sick. It was so obvious to everyone. Except Isabelle, who was too young to understand it. She was an eighteen-year-old girl with no experience about life, and hot pants, it was a hell of a combination. “I’m going to marry him,” she announced again, and Sarah was intrigued that Lorenzo said nothing. He was letting his bride-to-be fight her own battles and his, an omen of things to come, Sarah wanted to remind her.

“I will never let you marry him.”

“You can’t stop me.”

“I’ll do everything I can,” Sarah vowed, and Isabelle’s eyes blazed with anger and hatred.

“You don’t want me to be happy. You never did. You hate me.” But Julian deflated her balloon this time.

“Try that on someone else. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.” And then he turned to his future brother-in-law, hoping to appeal to his reason, or his sense of decency, if he had either, but clearly he didn’t.

“Do you really want to marry her this way, Tebaldi? What’s the point?”

“Of course not. It tears at my soul to see you all like this.” He rolled his eyes, and looked ridiculous to everyone but Isabelle. “But what can I say … I adore her. She speaks for both of us … we will be married.” He looked as though he were about to break into song and Julian didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“Don’t you feel foolish? She’s eighteen years old. You could be her grandfather, or almost.”

“She is the woman of my life,” he announced. And actually the only remarkable thing about him was that he had never been married. It had always paid to keep moving until now. This time the profits were a lot bigger, if he could land little Lady Whitfield, whose family owned the biggest jewel business in Europe, as well as their lands, and tiles, and original holdings. It was quite a purse. No prize for an amateur. But Lorenzo wasn’t.

“Why don’t you wait, if you’re both so sure?” Julian tried again, but they both shook their heads.

“We can’t … and the disgrace …” Lorenzo looked as though he were about to cry. “I just spent a week with her. Her reputation… and what if she gets pregnant?”

“Oh, my God.” Sarah sat down heavily in a chair. The mere thought of it almost made her sick. A child of his in her family would be even worse than poor Cecily’s two colorless children. “Are you pregnant now?” she asked Isabelle directly.

“I don’t know. We didn’t take any precautions.”

“How wonderful. I can hardly wait to hear the result of that in a few weeks.” There was always abortion, of course, but that wasn’t the issue now. The issue was marriage.

“We want to get married this summer … or at the very latest, at Christmas. At the château,” she said, as though he had schooled her, and he had. He wanted a big lavish wedding, so they couldn’t get rid of him easily. And they couldn’t anyway. Once they were married, it was forever. He was Catholic, and he was going to marry Isabelle in the Catholic Church in Rome, after they were married at the château. He had already told her it was his only condition. The only thing that mattered to him, he said, was to be truly married in the eyes of God, and he had even cried when he said it. Fortunately, Sarah hadn’t had to hear him.

They had fought and discussed and argued and shouted well into the night, until Julian was hoarse, Sarah had a headache the size of the hotel, and Isabelle almost fainted, as Lorenzo called for ice and smelling salts and damp towels. And finally Sarah gave in. There was no choice. They would elope anyway, if she didn’t. She was sure of it. And Isabelle swore they would. She tried to get them to wait a year, but they wouldn’t do that either. And Lorenzo kept insisting that it was better to do it now, in case she really was pregnant.

“Why don’t we wait and find out?” Sarah suggested calmly. But they wouldn’t even agree to wait till Christmas, by the end of the evening. Lorenzo had accurately gauged the full measure of their hatred, and he knew that if he didn’t force the issue soon, they would find some way to get rid of him and it wouldn’t happen.

So before the night was out, they all agreed to late August, at the château, with a handful of close friends, no one else, and no press. Lorenzo was disappointed not to have the big wedding they deserved, but he promised her a fabulous party in Italy, which her mother assured her he wouldn’t pay for.

It was a bitter night for her, and for Julian. But Isabelle left the room, and went to stay at Lorenzo’s hotel with him. There was no stopping her now. She was hellbent on her own destruction.

The wedding was small, but tastefully done, at the Château de la Meuze, with only their close friends in attendance. And Isabelle looked lovely in a short white dress by Marc Bohan at Dior, and a big picture hat to go with it. And Sarah was deeply grateful for the fact that she wasn’t pregnant.

Phillip and Cecily came from England for the wedding, Julian gave her away, and Xavier carried the ring, while Sarah wished he would lose it.

“You look thrilled,” Emanuelle said in an undertone, as they sipped champagne in the garden.

“I may throw up before lunch,” Sarah said mournfully. She had watched them be married in her own garden, by a Catholic priest and an Episcopal bishop. It was doubly official then, and doubly disastrous for Isabelle. And throughout the day, Lorenzo gushed, and grinned, and charmed everyone, and made toasts, and talked about how he wished he could have met the great Duke, Isabelle’s father.

“He’s a bit much, isn’t he?” Phillip said, for once making his mother laugh with his understatements. “Pathetic.”

“And then some.” In comparison to him, Cecily was Greta Garbo. That was two now she didn’t like. But Cecily only bored her. Lorenzo she hated, which broke her heart as well, because it meant that she would never be close to Isabelle while she was married to Lorenzo. It was no secret how they felt about her husband.

“How can she even think she loves him?” Emanuelle asked in despair. “He’s so obvious … so greasy …”

“She’s young. She doesn’t know about men like that yet,” Sarah said with infinite wisdom. “Unfortunately, she’s going to learn a great deal in a very short time now.” It reminded her again of her experience with Freddie Van Deering. She would have liked to spare Isabelle that, and she had tried, but it was no use. Isabelle had made her choice, and everyone in the world but Isabelle knew it was a poor one.

The wedding party stayed till the end of the afternoon, and then Isabelle and Lorenzo left. They were going to Sardinia for their honeymoon, to a new resort there, to see his friend the Aga Khan, or so he said. But Sarah imagined there were a lot of people whom he said he knew who were going to disappear into thin air over the next few years, if he lasted that long. And she hoped he wouldn’t.

After they left for the airport, in a hired Rolls-Royce with a driver, the family sat gloomily in the garden, thinking of what she’d done, and feeling that they’d lost her forever. Only Phillip seemed not to care too much, as usual. He was chatting quietly with a woman who was a friend of Emanuelle and Sarah. But for the rest of them, it was more like a funeral than a wedding. Sarah felt somehow as though she had failed not only her daughter, but her husband. He would have been devastated if he could have seen Lorenzo.

Sarah heard from her very briefly when they reached Rome, and then not a sound from her until Christmas. Sarah called once or twice and sent several letters, and Isabelle never answered. She was clearly angry at all of them. But Julian spoke to her once or twice, so at least Sarah knew she was all right, but none of them had any idea if she was happy. She didn’t come home at all the following year, and she didn’t want Sarah to go there, so she didn’t. Julian flew to Rome to see her once. He said she looked very serious and very beautiful, and very Italian, and according to their mutual bank, she was spending an absolute fortune. She had bought a small palazzo in Rome, and a villa in Umbria. Lorenzo had bought a yacht, a new Rolls and a Ferrari. And as far as Julian could see, there was no baby on the horizon.

They came back to the château for Christmas after the first year, but grudgingly, and Isabelle said nothing to any of them, but she gave her mother a very pretty Buccellati pearl-and-gold bracelet. She and Lorenzo left on Boxing Day to go skiing in Cortina. It was difficult to fathom what was happening with them, and she didn’t even open up with Julian. But it was Emanuelle who finally ferreted out the truth. She flew to Rome, after a business trip to London to see Nigel and Phillip, and afterwards she told Sarah that she thought Isabelle looked dreadful. She had circles under her eyes, she was rail thin, and she never laughed anymore. And each time she saw her, Lorenzo wasn’t with her.

“I think there’s trouble there, but I’m not sure she’s ready to admit it to you. Just be sure to leave the door open, and eventually she’ll come home. I promise.”

“I hope you’re right,” Sarah said sadly. The loss had weighed on her terribly. For all intents and purposes, in the past two years she had lost her last surviving daughter.

Chapter 27

T was an agonizing three years later, before Isabelle came back to Paris again. They came when Sarah invited them to Whitfield’s thirtieth-anniversary party at the Louvre. They had taken over part of it for a party. It had never been done before, and Emanuelle had had to use her government connections to get permission. The entire area around it was going to be closed, and it was going to take hundreds of museum guards and gendarmes to make it work. But Sarah knew it would. And Lorenzo knew it was an event not to miss. Sarah was stunned when they accepted. Isabelle and Lorenzo had been married for five years by then, and Sarah had almost resigned herself to the distance between them. She concentrated her energies and her affection on Xavier and Julian, and Phillip to some extent, as little as she saw him. He’d been married to Cecily for thirteen years by then, and his affairs were hinted at in the press, but never confirmed, usually, Sarah suspected, out of respect for his position. The Duke of Whitfield, according to some, was allegedly pretty dicey.

The party Sarah gave was the most dazzling Paris had ever seen. The women there were so beautiful it took your breath away, and the men so important, you could have run five governments from her central table. The President of France was there, the Onassises, the Rainiers, the Arabs, the Greeks, every possible important American, arid all the crowned heads of Europe. Everyone who had ever worn jewelry was there, and a lot of young women who hoped to. There were courtesans and queens, the very rich and the very famous. It made the party five years before look paltry in comparison. No expense was spared, and Sarah herself was thrilled when she saw it. She sat back quietly in victory, looking at all of it, as a thousand people dined and danced and drank and cavorted for each other’s benefit and that of the press, and undoubtedly many misbehaved in assorted ways, although no one knew it.

Julian had brought a very pretty girl, an actress Sarah had read about in a recent scandal, which was an interesting change for him. He had recently been going out with a startlingly pretty Brazilian model. He never lacked for girls, but he always behaved well. They loved him when they arrived and when they left. One couldn’t ask for more. Sarah would have liked to see him choose a wife, but at twenty-nine, there seemed to be no sign of it, and she didn’t press him.

Phillip had brought his wife, of course, but he spent most of the evening with a girl who worked for Saint Laurent. He had met her in London the year before, and they seemed to have a lot in common. He always cast an eye on Julian’s girls, and he had noticed the actress, too, but never got around to introducing himself, and then they got lost in the crowd. It took him ages to find Cecily afterwards, chatting happily to the King of Greece about her horses.

Isabelle was one of the most beautiful women there, Sarah was pleased to note. She was wearing a skintight black Valentino dress that revealed her figure dazzlingly, her long black hair cascaded down her back, and she wore a remarkable diamond necklace and bracelet, with matching earrings, that Julian had loaned her. But she didn’t even need the jewels. She was simply so beautiful that people stared at her, and Sarah was pleased that she had come home for the party. She had no delusions about why they’d come. Lorenzo worked the crowd that night, chasing royals, and constantly posing for the papers. Sarah noticed, as did his wife, who eyed him quietly, but Sarah said nothing. She sensed easily that something was wrong there, and she waited for Isabelle to say something, and she never did. She stayed late and danced with old friends, particularly a well-known French prince, who had always liked her. There were so many men who would have loved to pursue Isabelle, she was twenty-three years old, and so beautiful, but she had been gone for five years, married to Lorenzo.

Sarah took them all to lunch the next day at Le Fouquet’s, to thank them all for helping her with the party. Emanuelle was there, of course, and Julian, Phillip and Cecily, Nigel, his designer friend, and Isabelle and Lorenzo. Xavier was already away by then. He had begged for months for Sarah to let him visit old friends of hers in Kenya. She had resisted him at first, but he was so persistent, and she was so busy with their anniversary party plans, that she had finally let him go, and he had thanked her profusely. At fourteen, all he wanted was to see the world, and the farther away the better. He loved being with her, and he loved France, but he had a constant craving for the exotic and the unknown. He had read Thor Heyerdahl’s book four times, and he seemed to know everything about Africa, and the Amazon, and every possible place in the world no one else in his family ever wanted to go to. He was definitely his own man, a bit of William in some ways, a bit of Sarah in others, he had some of Julian’s warmth, and a lot of William’s fun. But he had a sense of adventure, and a passion for the rugged life that no one else in his family shared with him. The rest of them much preferred Paris and London and Antibes, or even Whitfield.

“We’re a very dull group compared to him.” Sarah smiled. He had already written her half a dozen letters about the fabulous animals he’d seen. And he was already begging to go back, if she’d let him.

“He certainly doesn’t get it from me.” Julian grinned. He was far happier on a sofa than a safari.

“Or me.” Phillip laughed at himself for once, and Lorenzo immediately launched into an endless tale that bored everyone, about his dear friend the Maharaja of Jaipur.

They had a nice time at lunch, in spite of him, and afterwards they all went their separate ways, and the Whitfields all said good-bye to their mother. Julian was going to Saint-Tropez with friends for a few days to rest after all their work on the mammoth party, and Phillip and Cecily were flying back to London. Nigel was staying in Paris for a few days with his friend. Emanuelle was going back to work, as Sarah was eventually. Only Isabelle lingered after lunch. Lorenzo said he had to pick up something at Hermès, and wanted to see friends. They weren’t leaving for another day, and for the first time in years, Isabelle seemed to want to talk to her mother. She hesitated when they were finally alone, and Sarah asked her if she’d like another cup of coffee.

They both ordered espresso, and Isabelle came to sit next to her. She had been at the other end of the lively table, but there was something deeply unhappy in her eyes, and she looked at her mother miserably finally, as tears filled her eyes and she tried to fight them.

“I don’t suppose I have the right to say anything now, do I?” she asked ruefully, and Sarah gently touched her hand, wishing she could take away her pain, that she could have shielded her from it from the beginning. But she had long since learned the hard lesson that she couldn’t. “I can’t really complain, since you all warned me.”

“Yes, you can.” Sarah smiled. “One can always complain.” And then she decided to be honest. “You’re unhappy, aren’t you?”

“Very,” Isabelle admitted, wiping a tear from her cheek. “I had no idea what it would be like … I was so young and so stupid … you all knew. And I was so blind.” It was all true, but it made Sarah sad anyway. There was no consolation in being right this time. Not at her child’s expense. It broke her heart to see her so unhappy. She had tried to resign herself for years to barely seeing her anymore, but nonetheless it had always been painful. And now, seeing how unhappy she had been, her estrangement from them seemed even more wasted.

“You were very young.” Sarah excused her. “And very stubborn. And he was very shrewd.” Isabelle nodded miserably, she knew that only too well now. “He played you like a violin to get what he wanted.” He had played all of them, he had forced their hand, and enticed Isabelle to marry him. It was easy to forgive Isabelle, but not as easy to forgive Lorenzo. “He knew what he was doing.”

“More than you know. As soon as we got to Rome, and he got what he wanted, everything was different. It seemed like he already had the palazzo picked out, he said everyone had them there, everyone of any consequence, and we’d need it for all our children, and the villa in Umbria too. And then he bought the Rolls … and the yacht … and the Ferrari … and then all of a sudden I never saw him anymore. He was always out with his friends, and I started seeing things in the paper about him and other women. And every time I asked him about it, he just laughed and said they were old friends, or cousins. He must be related to half of Europe,” she said grimly, looking straight at her mother. “He’s cheated on me for years. He doesn’t even hide it anymore. He does what he wants, and he says there’s nothing I can do. There’s no divorce in Italy, and he’s related to three cardinals, he says he will never divorce me.” She looked hopeless as she sat there. Sarah had no idea that it had come to that, or that he had dared to be so blatant. And how dare he come here, and sit with all of them, come to her party, pursue her friends, after abusing her daughter. She was livid.

“Have you asked him for a divorce?” Sarah looked worried as she stroked her daughter’s hand, and Isabelle nodded.

“Two years ago, when he had a passionate affair with a well-known woman in Rome. I just couldn’t take it anymore. They were all over the papers. I just couldn’t see the point of playing the game anymore.” She started to cry openly then. “I’ve been so lonely.” Sarah hugged her then, and Isabelle blew her nose and went on with her sad tale. “I asked him again last year. But he always says no, that I must resign myself to the fact that we’re married forever.”

“He wants to be married to your bank account, not you” He always had, and according to Julian, he had been very lucky. He had stashed a lot of the money Isabelle had given him and continued to make her pay for everything. But she wouldn’t have cared about that so much if she’d loved him. But she hadn’t loved him in years. When their first passion burned away, and it had quickly, there had been absolutely nothing left, except ashes. “At least you haven’t had children with him. If you can get out of it at all, it will be less complicated this way. And you’re still young, you can have them later.”

“Not with him,” Isabelle said bleakly, lowering her voice still further as they sat at the table, and the waiters kept a discreet distance. “We can’t even have children.”

This time Sarah looked stunned. Up until then, nothing had really surprised her. “Why not?” He had even threatened that Isabelle might be pregnant when he wanted to marry her, it had been his main reason for not waiting until Christmas. And he wasn’t that old. He was fifty-four then, William had been older than that when they had Xavier, and not even in good health, Sarah thought warmly. “Is there something wrong with him?”

“He had severe mumps as a child. And he’s sterile. His uncle told me. Enzo had never told me anything. And when I asked him, he laughed. He said I was very lucky, it was built-in birth control. He lied to me, Maman … he told me we would have dozens of children.” The tears spilled over on her cheeks again and again. “I think I could even stand being married to him, no matter how much I hated him, if we had children.” There was a longing in her heart that nothing would fill now. For five long years she had had no one to love, and no one to love her. Not even her family, whom he had caused her to fight with.

“That’s no way to have children, dear,” Sarah said quietly. “You don’t want them to grow up in misery.” But she didn’t want her own daughter living in it either.

“We don’t sleep with each other anymore anyway. We haven’t in three years. He never comes home anymore except to pick up his shirts, or get money.” But something Isabelle had said had caught Sarah’s attention, and she made a mental note of it for later. The Principe di San Tebaldi was not quite as slick as he thought, but almost. “I don’t care anymore,” Isabelle went on. “I don’t care about anything. It’s like being in prison.” And she looked it. In the daylight, Sarah saw that Emanuelle had been right when she went to Rome, and now she knew why. Isabelle looked wan and pale, and desperately unhappy, and with good reason.

“Do you want to come home? You could probably get a divorce here. You were married at the château.”

“We married again in Italy,” Isabelle said hopelessly. “In the church. If I got a divorce here, it wouldn’t be legal in Italy, and I could never get married again anyway. It would be illegal. Lorenzo says I just have to resign myself to my fate. He’s not going anywhere.” Once again, as he had before, he really had them over a barrel, and Sarah didn’t like it. It was worse than her first marriage had been, by far, or certainly similar to it. And her father had gotten her out of it. She knew she had to find a way now to help her daughter.

“What can I do to help you? What do you want, my darling?” Sarah asked sadly, “I’ll speak to my attorneys at once, but I think you may have to bide your time with him. Eventually there will be something he wants more than you, and maybe we can bargain with him.” But she had to admit, it wouldn’t be easy. He was a tough one.

Isabelle looked at her oddly then. There was something she wanted very much. Not as much as a divorce, or a child, but at least it would give her life some meaning. She had been thinking of it for a long time, but given die estrangement between them, she felt she couldn’t ask her.

“I’d like a store,” she whispered, and Sarah looked surprised.

“What kind of store?” Sarah imagined she meant some kind of boutique. But she didn’t.

“Whitfield’s.” She was absolutely certain.

“In Rome?” Sarah had never even thought of it. The Italians had Buccellati and Bulgari. She had never even considered opening in Rome, but it was certainly an intriguing idea, although Isabelle was a little young to run it. “It’s an interesting idea. But are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“What if you succeed in divorcing him, or you simply decide to leave, divorced or not, then what do we do?”

“I won’t. I like Italy. It’s Lorenzo, and my life with him, that I hate. But it’s wonderful there.” Her face lit up for the first time. “I have terrific friends, and the women are so chic, they wear tons of great jewelry. Mother, it would be a huge success, I promise.” Sarah couldn’t disagree with what she said about the Italian women, anyway, but it was a new idea to her, and she had to digest it.

“Let me think about it. And you think about it too. Don’t enter into this hastily. It’s an enormous amount of work, and a tremendous commitment. You’ll work very hard, endless hours. There’s more to this than dressing up. Talk to Emanuelle … talk to Julian…. You have to be very sure before you do this.”

“It’s all I’ve wanted for the last year, I just didn’t know how to ask you.”

“Well, you have.” Sarah smiled at her. “Now let me think about it, and talk to your brothers.” And then she grew serious again. “And let me think about how I can help you with Lorenzo.”

“You can’t,” Isabelle said sadly.

“You never know.” In her heart of hearts, Sarah suspected that all it would take was money. In the right way, at the right time. She just hoped the moment would come soon, so Isabelle didn’t have to be married to him for much longer.

They sat and talked for another hour and then walked slowly back to the store arm in arm. It warmed Sarah’s heart to feel close to her again, she hadn’t in years, not since she was in her teens and losing her had been so painful. In its own way, it had been almost as sad as losing Lizzie, because in many ways, Isabelle had been dead to her. But she was back now, and Sarah’s heart felt lighter.

Isabelle left her outside the shop, and went to have tea with an old friend, a girl she had gone to school with who was just getting married. Isabelle envied her her innocence. How nice it would have been to start over. But she knew there was no hope of that for her. Her life, empty as it was, would end with Lorenzo. At least if her mother let her open the store, it would give her something to do, and she could concentrate on that, instead of sitting at home and hating him, and crying every time she saw a baby, as she thought of the babies she would never have. She could have lived without children if she loved him, or without his love if she had a child to console her, but to have neither was a double punishment, and sometimes she wondered what she’d done to deserve this.

“She’s too young,” Phillip said absolutely when Sarah called him. She had already discussed it with Julian and he thought it was an intriguing idea. He liked some of the old Buccellati things, and many of the new designs young Italian designers were doing. He thought they could do something very exciting in Rome, different from both Paris and London, each of which had their own style, and their own clients. London had the Queen and the old guard, and Paris had the flash and the dash, the chic and the very rich, and the nouveau riche. And Rome would have all the greedy stylish Italians who devoured jewelry.

“We could get someone to help her run it, that’s not important.” Sarah brushed his objections aside. “The real question is if Rome is the right market.”

“I think it is,” Julian said quietly, on the same call with them.

“I think you don’t know what you’re talking about, as usual,” Phillip snapped, and Sarah’s heart ached. He always did that. Julian was everything he wanted to be, and everything he wasn’t. Handsome, charming, young, adored by everyone, and particularly by women. Phillip had become increasingly stuffy over the years, so much so that he almost seemed to dry up, and instead of being sensual, he was sneaky. He was forty years old, and much to her chagrin, Sarah thought he looked more like fifty. Being married to Cecily hadn’t helped anything, but it had been his choice, and she was still the kind of wife he wanted, respectable, dull, well-bred, and usually absent. She spent most of her time in the country with her horses. And she had just recently bought a horse farm in Ireland.

“I think we should get together on this,” Sarah said matter-of-factly. “Can you and Nigel come here, or do you want us to come to London?”

In the end, they decided that it was simpler if Nigel and Phillip came to Paris. Isabelle and Lorenzo were gone by then, and the five of them argued for three days, but in the end, Emanuelle won. She pointed out that if William and Sarah hadn’t been courageous enough to try something new and different, and almost outrageous then, there would be no Whitfield’s. And that if they didn’t continue to grow and expand, one day there wouldn’t be again. They were entering the eighties, an era of expansion. She felt they had to look to Rome, maybe even Germany. New York … the world did not begin and end in London and Paris.

“Point well taken,” Nigel said. He was looking well these days, distinguished as he always had, and Sarah dreaded thinking that he would retire one day. By then, he was in his late sixties. But unlike her son, Nigel was still thinking ahead, reaching out into the world, trying out new ideas, and daring to move forward.