A Bordeaux Dynasty: A Novel (64 page)

“Would you want to keep Esther with you?” Pauline asked, in a very small voice.

Louis-Marie was shocked by the question. As much as he knew about Pauline’s lack of maternal instinct, he found the question indecent. He adored his daughter and knew he was capable of raising her, but the choice wasn’t his. Thinking that Esther would no doubt be unhappy with Robert, his heart tightened. And then he was devastated by another thought, menacing and unavoidable: Pauline and Robert could very well decide to have a child of their own. Imagining Pauline pregnant, as he remembered her—adorable and youthful—was unbearable. He got up, quickly put on his robe, and left the bedroom.

Alexandre gestured at the waiter.

“This round is on me,” he told Marc.

They were sitting comfortably at the back of their favorite bistro. Alex leaned over the table and waved a finger under Marc’s nose.

“The bastard treated Antoine, my father-in-law, like dirt. The horrible things he said to him! And, you know, we’re talking about his wife’s father. My wife’s father. Antoine never should’ve been disrespected like that.”

Marc was only half-listening, but he gauged Alex. The moment now seemed right. Alex’s hatred for his adopted brother had taken on big enough proportions. He was ripe for revenge, Marc was certain of that.

“If you ask me,” he said, “that brother of yours needs to be taught a good lesson.”

“Oh yeah! If only I could. …”

“But you can.”

Alex shook his head, grimacing.

“No,” he said. “The guy is a thug. He’d kick my ass.”

Marc remembered that Jules had sent him to the hospital the year before.

“I’m not saying you have to go after him physically. There are other ways.”

Alex downed his cognac. He didn’t know what Marc was getting at.

“Your brother, there’s got to be something he particularly likes, right?”

Alex chuckled and said, “Yes. His vineyards.”

“So there …”

Alex frowned, intrigued.

Without waiting, Marc continued.

“The legal system let you down? Take the law into your own hands. When is harvest?”

“In a few days.”

Marc hesitated for a second. After all, Alex belonged to a family of wine producers. He might not appreciate the suggestion.

“I have an idea, but I’m not sure if it’s any good. I don’t know anything about vineyards. But I’d think that at this point in time, all those grapes must be particularly vulnerable. …”

“In the last days before the harvest,” Alex said and sighed, “it’s a huge worry for us. We’re terrified of violent storms, last-minute stuff …”

“I’m not talking about hail or locusts. But, you know … chemicals. …”

Alex again gestured at the waiter, who quickly refilled his glass. He was beginning to understand, and he was scared. He swallowed his saliva. Jules, as every other producer of great wine, despised the very idea of insecticides, and he had his personal theories on how to care for his crop organically.

“We spill a few cans of something toxic on a few well-selected parcels,” Marc continued. “The earth is really dry, and so it would spread down the hills. The two of us, we could take care of a pretty good area in no time.”

“Jules is watching over everything and everyone all the time,” Alex said, looking frustrated.

But the idea was beginning to appeal to him. Jules’s Achilles heel was the vineyards, no doubt about it.

“Your brother must sleep once in a while, I imagine?” Marc said. “At three in the morning, far from the castle, we’d be scot-free.”

Alex downed his cognac in one shot. He never would’ve come up with such terrible payback.

“And there are only two possible outcomes,” Marc continued. “Either he finds out about it right away and blows his top, or it leaves no trace but his wine is ruined. It’s a win-win situation, man!”

Marc burst out laughing, but Alex was still reluctant to go along with the idea. He’d grown up respecting the crop, in the strictest of traditions. But Marc’s plan was appealing because, while stabbing Jules’s heart, it also attacked his father’s image. And Aurélien had also ignored and scorned him. If they went ahead with the scheme, Alex would get even with both of them, without taking any risks.

“I don’t know what kind of pesticide or defoliant we’d want to use,” Marc said, “but I bet you know a thing or two about that stuff.”

His eyes lit up, Marc waited for Alex’s answer. There was a long silence that was only broken by the waiter bringing them drinks again.

“Of course,” Marc finally said with a look of disdain, “if you’re scared …”

Alexandre had been told far too many times that he was a coward. He could no longer stand being considered a loser.

“I know where we can find exactly what we need,” he said, slowly.

As soon as he’d uttered that sentence, he felt as though he’d jumped off a cliff. Trying to work up the guts to do it, he thought of his wife and his sons, who Jules kept away from him, of Valérie Samson, to whom he’d given so much money for absolutely nothing. He recalled the night of the wedding he hadn’t been invited to, when Jules held his head under the cold water jet in the barn, and then that pretentious little employee who took him back to Mazion. Finally he thought of the castle where he had grown up and could no longer go to because of his father’s bastard.

He got up and said, “Let’s go!”

Jules hated social gatherings, but there was no way he could’ve avoided making an appearance at Maurice Caze’s party. He arrived at ten, set on not spending more than thirty minutes. Caze greeted him cheerfully, with great pats on the back. Jules knew almost all the guests but had to put up with a bunch of unnecessary introductions, as Caze was giddy at having the owner of Fonteyne under his roof.

In small clusters, people chatted about the approaching harvest or the municipal elections that were going to take place soon. Maurice’s daughter, Camille, was still in awe of Jules. She’d attended his wedding, eyes filled with tears like many other young women, and she was delighted to see that he was already going out without his wife. She took him away from her father and led him to the buffet.

“It’s so nice of you to come by,” she said.

“Your father is my godfather,” Jules politely replied. “Don’t forget that.”

He accepted a glass of champagne, and as he was about to take a sip, someone hit his arm, hard.

“I am so sorry!” Valérie Samson said joyfully.

Jules forced himself to smile.

“Let me get you another glass,” she said. Then, turning to Camille, she said, “I think that your father needs you. …”

Camille’s father was waving at his daughter from across the room. She walked away, annoyed to have to leave Jules with Valérie.

“The Cazes are adorable,” she said. “And so nouveau riche. …”

“You’re wrong. Their fortune isn’t that recent.”

“What’s certain is that they like flaunting it.”

Jules took a glance around the room and said, “You don’t like the decoration? That’s odd, since this place looks like your office.”

His smile was mocking but still pleasant, and she was amused by it.

“My profession requires that kind of décor,” she said. “My house is very different, but you don’t want to see it.”

“You’ve never invited me, as far as I know.”

“Yes, I did. For dinner, the other day. But you turned me down. Remember?”

He then did something he usually never indulged in: He gave her a long head-to-toe.

Immobile, she waited until their eyes met and said, “Did I pass the test? Do you now regret not having spent that evening with me?”

Jules looked for his cigarettes, but then remembered she hated Gitanes.

“Would you give me one of your fine cigarettes?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said, opening her purse. “I’ll give you anything you want.”

She started to laugh, pushing back her superb red hair.

“I must be a little different from the women you usually meet,” she said. “I’m sure that none of them has ever hit on you like I do. But, of course, I’m only kidding. I’m too old for you, young man.”

He made a vague hand gesture and once again looked around him. Without a doubt, Valérie Samson was one of the most attractive women here. He wondered if she behaved differently in private, whether she dropped that provocative act of hers. As though she’d read his mind, she suddenly put on an adorable, almost timid expression.

“I can tell that little Camille is trying to join us,” she said quickly. “I have about fifteen seconds to convince you to join me for dinner, just once. Please … ?”

At that same moment, Jules felt Camille’s hand on his shoulder. Valérie Samson spun on her heels and began chatting with two of her colleagues. Absentmindedly, Jules followed Camille around the room, sharing a few pleasantries with fellow wine producers, munching on a canapé. After thirty minutes or so, as he’d planned, he went over to the Cazes and excused himself. He spent a few minutes in the yard searching for what he was looking for. Valérie’s car had a parking sticker with her name and “District Court Attorney.” It was, no surprise, a black Porsche. Jules took out one of his business cards and wrote “One of these days, I promise” on the back, without signing it. He then slipped the card under the Porsche’s windshield wiper.

As he drove home, he wondered what had possessed him to do that. He had no intentions of cheating on Laurène, didn’t feel at all like having an affair, even though that woman really
was
different from the others, and she
was
attractive in an odd way. Still, he’d played along with her. Exactly like his father on that point, Jules had never turned his back on the chance of sleeping with a beautiful woman. But he was married now. He had responsibilities toward Laurène and, even more so, the obligation not to cause her pain. She’d made herself sick over Frédérique’s child, worried about her sister’s distress, and was making extraordinary efforts to live up to the high expectations at Fonteyne. Above everything else, she was wildly in love with Jules, and everyone could see it. Going out with another woman, no matter how beautiful, even for just a drink, would be shameful.

He thought so much about Valérie Samson that he felt discouraged and guilty by the time he arrived home. He regretted the impulse that had made him slip a promise, vague though it was, under the attorney’s windshield wiper. But he almost managed to convince himself that he’d done it out of spite for Alex, humiliating him even more by hitting on the one who’d represented him in court. He smiled at the notion while going up the stairs. Laurène wasn’t sleeping. She was reading in bed, Botty snug against her.

The dog raised his head, slipped out of bed, and went over to his master. Jules scratched his head, before pointing at Botty’s own bed by the fireplace. Then he kissed his wife with such passion it made her laugh.

“So,” she said, “how was your evening? Was Maurice as loud as usual? And that daughter of his, was she all over you?”

“I hate those parties,” Jules said, lying next to her in bed.

He was still dressed and smelled of cigarette smoke and cologne. She wrapped her thin arms around him and began to kiss him. He put a hand on his wife’s stomach. He was moved each time he thought of their baby. He very much felt like making love to Laurène but was hesitant.

“Do you feel like it?” he whispered. “If you don’t, I’ll completely understand, you know. …”

Laurène snuggled against him, a bit clumsy as always, but up for it.

Jules took a look at the alarm clock once again. It was four in the morning and he was completely awake. In the last days before the harvest, he never slept much. He decided to just get up. He explained to Laurène that—no—he wasn’t trying to get away from her when he tiptoed out of their bedroom, but that he preferred walking around in the fields or working on some file instead of simply lying awake in the dark.

He took a shower and got dressed. He felt like walking before making himself a pot of coffee. He came out of the castle through the main door and took a deep breath, the air saturated with wonderful odors. Fall was here and the grapes were waiting to be picked. Jules decided to start his tour on the west side of the estate, his favorite.

The air was cool and he began to walk faster to warm up. Even when Aurélien was alive, his morning walks had been a solitary affair. That was when he meditated, letting his mind go free, coming up with ideas for the future development of Fonteyne. Sometimes he went beyond the estate’s limits, admiring a neighbor’s plot he dreamed of one day owning.

He turned toward the woods and Fonteyne disappeared behind the trees. It was still pitch-black, but Jules knew all the paths by heart. When he came out of the woods, he stopped in his tracks. At the top of the hill ahead of him, about one hundred yards away, he made out the glow of a flashlight. He looked harder and managed to distinguish two silhouettes moving in an odd way. He waited a moment, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. If he tried to approach them, he was going to make himself seen. Torn, he knew that this was potentially a very dangerous situation. He went back into the woods and started running. He had to get around the hill and, doing that, he’d go by Lucas’s house. He stopped there, out of breath, and knocked at the door. Fernande, a light sleeper, opened almost immediately. Jules ran up to the bedroom and shook Lucas awake.

“Come with me! Hurry!”

Lucas jumped out of bed and was dressed in a minute. Downstairs, in the kitchen, Fernande was coughing.

“What’s going on?” she asked as soon as she got her breath back.

Jules gestured for her to keep quiet, and both he and Lucas got out of the house, Lucas carrying his rifle.

“There are two guys in the vineyards, with a flashlight,” Jules said. “They were on top of lot twenty-seven. Meet me there as fast as you can.”

Jules darted past and soon outran Lucas. He knew that something dramatic was going on. An uncontrollable fear prevented him from breathing normally, and he had to slow down a bit. He forced himself to walk, trying to make as little noise as possible. The two silhouettes were hunched over a metallic can. Jules stopped for a second to try to identify the unusual odor around him. He heard muffled laughter, and then recognized the unpleasant smell of a concentrated chemical product.