A Bordeaux Dynasty: A Novel (68 page)

She’d put on one of Jules’s wool sweaters to try and hide her pregnancy a bit. In spite of her condition, she still looked like a college girl. Jules held her tight, in a protective reflex, and felt guilty for what he’d done.

“I had tons of meetings,” he said. “And the roads are really bad.”

Mr. Varin was standing, and Jules went over to shake his hand.

“I got here early,” Varin said, “because I wanted to look over some documents with you. But I took the liberty of talking about it with Louis-Marie in your absence. I hope that wasn’t a mistake.”

Jules gave his brother a grateful look.

“I’m glad you did,” he told the notary. “Please, Mr. Varin, sit down.”

He absentmindedly added a log to the fire. He’d been amused by Varin’s worried look, but he tried to reassure him. “Louis-Marie loves paperwork, and I let him take care of that as much as possible, especially now that he’s going to be staying at Fonteyne.”

Varin, his mind at ease, produced a businesslike smile and said, “I’m very happy to hear you’re getting some help.”

He meant that sincerely. Beyond his personal interests and his fees, he felt a special affection for Fonteyne.

“Did Auber call to say he was staying home?” Jules asked. “You’d have to be nuts to drive out there tonight. If you want, Mr. Varin, we can put you up for the night. …”

Satisfied with the intensity of the fire, Jules stood up just as Dominique walked in with a tray. She poured the Margaux carefully and passed around little pieces of toast with goat cheese.

Jules sat next to Laurène on the chesterfield. He noticed that she looked tired and took her hand. He grazed the engagement ring he’d given her in Aurélien’s presence one evening the year before. The young woman snuggled against him.

The sound of an engine, muffled by the snowfall, announced Auber’s arrival. A couple of minutes later, the good doctor appeared at the library’s door.

“You’re a courageous man,” Louis-Marie greeted him.

“I’m used to it. … And I put chains on my tires.”

“Is it still coming down hard?” Jules asked, shaking the physician’s hand.

“It’s actually getting worse. I’ve never seen anything like this in November before.”

Happy to have made it in one piece, Auber glanced around. He always liked coming to Fonteyne. And on this night, the large library, filled with its old books, seemed even more hospitable than usual.

“You look a bit off, my dear,” he said to Laurène as she came to greet him.

He frowned, concerned with the young woman’s extreme pallor. Jules, on the other hand, seemed in great shape, and Auber smiled at him.

“I don’t think I’ll ever have you as a patient,” he said.

“Especially since patience isn’t exactly his forte,” Louis-Marie said with a chuckle.

He thought Jules had a triumphant, joyful air he hadn’t seen on him in a long time.

Auber took advantage of the light atmosphere to say to Jules, “I have a message for you. … Alexandre would like to speak with you, whenever you like, whenever you’re not too far from the hospital. …”

A heavy silence descended on the entire room. Auber took a sip of Margaux and set his glass down silently. Laurène squeezed Jules’s hand, and it warmed him. And he could feel Dominique’s eyes on him.

“Okay,” was all he said.

Everyone realized how hard it had been for Jules to utter that simple word, but he’d accepted. Auber stifled a sigh of relief. Jules’s psychological state had worried him these past few weeks. He was the only one who knew what had happened that night in the field, while the entire trauma department believed that it was some wild drunk who’d beat up poor Alexandre so terribly. And since the latter hadn’t refuted that version, he was the object of the nurses’ constant and exasperating compassion. Alex had missed alcohol terribly at first. Robert and Auber had talked at length about it. And, with each passing day, Alex’s stubborn silence gave way to a gloomy stupor. Every time he visited Alex, Dr. Auber noticed that while physically he was doing better, his psychological condition worsened. And so Alex’s sudden request concerning Jules that morning had pleasantly surprised the physician. That was the main reason he’d braved the snowstorm.

Fernande appeared at the library’s door and said, “Dinner is served.”

In the dining room, the heavy velour drapes had been shut, and Clothilde had started a fire. Dominique lit some of the tall candles, knowing that Jules liked how the flames reflected on the woodwork. They all sat at the table with a feeling of well-being, delighted to savor Fernande’s famous cod raviolis.

“My God, the food is good here,” Varin told Jules with a blissful smile.

“You guys should keep a close eye on Fernande if you want to keep on eating her wonderful meals,” Dr. Auber added.

“You’re the one who should keep a close eye on her!” Jules replied.

“Well,” Auber said, “she won’t listen to me. She takes her medication for two days and then she decides that the meds make her tired and she throws everything in the garbage can. It’s not the meds that make her tired, it’s her condition!”

“Did you talk to Lucas about it?” Dominique asked.

“Of course, I did. But she’s not listening to him either. Fernande can be hard-headed at times.”

This understatement made Jules and Louis-Marie laugh. In reality, Fernande had always been stubborn as a mule.

“Okay,” Dominique said. “I’ll take care of it. I’ll try to convince her.”

Jules gave his sister-in-law a smile. No one spent more time with Fernande than her, and their endless conversations as they worked together in the kitchen had made them very close.

“Is your wife supposed to be back here soon?” Varin asked Louis-Marie.

There was a short pause, and then Louis-Marie responded blankly, “We’re all going to be here for Christmas.”

Varin didn’t dare ask anything further, and he and Auber shared a quick glance. Keeping up with the Laverzac family’s ups and downs was no easy task.

The sound of a stampede upstairs made Dominique look up. She figured the twins had decided to jump out of bed and run to the window to check out the snowstorm. She smiled imagining them, their noses against the windowpane, eyes wide with wonder.

Fernande came in to serve the turbot with morels, saying that the storm was getting even worse. Jules, who didn’t have to worry about his vineyards this time of year, simply shrugged.

“I like winter,” he said with a grin.

Louis-Marie started to laugh and said that his brother liked all four seasons, as long as he spent them at Fonteyne.

“You never go on vacation?” Auber asked.

“Go where?”

“I don’t know … Down south … where it’s hot.”

“It’s hot around here in the summertime. Very hot!”

Dominique started to laugh as she pictured Jules dressed as a tourist, standing at the foot of the Great Pyramids, longing for Fonteyne. She turned to her sister and was startled by her worn-out expression.

“You’re not feeling well?”

Dominique stood up, and so did Auber, while Laurène stammered, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. …”

Jules hurried over to his wife and picked her up, whispering soothing words in her ear.

“Take her upstairs,” Auber said. “To her bed.”

Laurène’s face was ashen, and she shut her eyes. Jules went up the stairs so rapidly the doctor had difficulty keeping up with him. When Laurène was in bed, Auber asked Jules to leave the room.

“How long have you been in pain?” he asked Laurène gently.

For a few hours she’d been trying to ignore the sharp, regular pain. After examining her, Auber realized that she was going to give birth soon.

Jules fetched Auber’s bag from his car, struggling against an icy wind that made the snow swirl around him. Auber had called for an ambulance, while knowing that it would probably not arrive in time. Labor was already well underway, and Laurène was writhing in pain, screaming. She’d had contractions all afternoon long, but refused to accept that it could be a premature delivery. She’d wanted to talk to Dominique, but she was busy with Fernande in the kitchen, absorbed with dinner preparations. Jules wasn’t there, and she didn’t feel comfortable talking to Louis-Marie about it, and so she’d mostly lain in bed, convinced that her pain would go away on its own. Not wanting to behave like a spoiled child, she’d promised herself to take Dr. Auber aside at some point during the evening to talk to him privately about it, without alarming anyone before then. And in order to remain brave, she’d clung to the notion that her child couldn’t possibly be born four weeks before term. But now, she was overwhelmed by suffering and terror, crushing Auber’s hand in hers.

Down on the ground floor, everyone had settled in the library, keeping quiet. Not wanting to hear anything, Louis-Marie shut the room’s door, while Dominique snuck upstairs, convinced that she could make herself useful. There was something reassuring about Auber’s competence as well as his vast experience as a physician, but Jules was still anxious. He kept walking to the window to look at the storm raging outside. Varin and Louis-Marie decided to play chess. Lucas came in to ask if there was anything he could do.

In the dining room, Fernande took away the wild rabbit terrine, which no one had had time to taste. She decided to put together a tray of pastries to go along with the coffee, now essential. Extremely emotional at the thought of the birth, she saw the presence of Dr. Auber as a sign of fate. Louis-Marie, Robert, and Alexandre were born at Fonteyne. Lucie Laverzac never would’ve agreed to give birth anywhere else but the castle. That Jules’s first child would come into the world under this roof had symbolic value, Fernande was convinced of that.

It’s as if it’s going to make up for his own birth.
… she thought.
To erase the nightmare. … He doesn’t know everything yet, but I’ll talk to him once the baby is here. …

She headed for the library, where she walked in quietly. She served Jules last and whispered in his ear, “Everything is going to be fine, you’ll see.”

The look of worry he gave her broke her heart. To her, he now looked like he was ten or twelve years old again, with the same large, hopeful eyes. She caressed his hair, trying to fix his too-long curls. She’d been the Laverzac boys’ only feminine presence, and while she deeply loved all four of them, Jules had always been her favorite. She knew that he was suffering from being powerless while his wife was in agony upstairs.

She stepped out of the library, making sure that the door was shut tight, and crossed the hallway in a hurry so as not to hear Laurène’s screams. But as she reached the office, she realized that no more sound was coming from upstairs. She backtracked, not sure what to do, and put a hand on the staircase’s railing. And from the landing upstairs came Dominique’s voice.

“It’s a girl! Both are doing great!”

Feeling dizzy, Fernande had to sit on the first step. She gestured at Dominique to not bother with her and then got up, out of breath, trying not to cough. Jules stormed out of the library and rushed up the stairs, squeezing Fernande’s shoulder so hard as he went by that he almost crushed it. When he opened his bedroom door, Auber was holding the newborn in his arms, as Clothilde rolled the dirty towels into a ball. Jules ran to Laurène, overflowing with joy, relief, and gratitude.

“You’re going to smother her!” Auber said. “She needs to rest. It was pretty rough-going for a while. …”

He held the baby out to Jules’s. Jules gazed at his daughter for a while, silent, before deciding to reach out to her. He picked up the infant with infinite care and rested her on Laurène’s shoulder. Then, he knelt down by the bed to contemplate his wife and his baby girl.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

Laurène managed to smile at him. She was so proud to have given him this gift that for a second she forgot about her exhaustion. Before falling asleep, she took in Jules’s gaze, which was filled with all the tenderness in the world.

The ambulance, which finally arrived at three in the morning, returned empty. Jules had insisted so strongly that both Laurène and the baby remain at Fonteyne, Auber had ended up relenting. But he insisted that a nurse be hired as soon as possible. Before being able to head for the spare room that awaited him, Auber had to have a celebratory drink with the Laverzacs. He emphasized Laurène’s courage and then mentioned that it had been ten years since he’d delivered a baby in the mother’s own home.

“I hate it,” he admitted. “If something goes wrong, you’re completely helpless.”

He made a promise to himself to have a talk with Laurène as soon as she felt better. She’d taken unnecessary risks and behaved very immaturely.

“I can’t understand why your wife didn’t go to the clinic as soon as she began feeling pain early this afternoon. Especially since this is her first! Craziness …”

Hearing that, Jules immediately felt bad. When Laurène felt the first signs of labor, he was making love to Valérie Samson. If he’d been at Fonteyne, she would’ve told him about the contractions.

“You’ve got a weird look on your face,” Louis-Marie said to him. “Are you terrified at the thought of being a dad?”

“For a preemie,” Auber said, “she’s superb and doing great. But I still say that a short stay at the maternity ward …”

“No way,” Jules said. “She’s staying here and so is Laurène. I’d rather bring over an entire medical team if you really think it’s necessary.”

As he poured himself some more champagne, he was suddenly overtaken by the memory of Officer Delgas, recalling what the old police officer had told him that he knew about Jules’s own birth, about his mother’s efforts to find a father for him. About the sordid shack where she died, and the two-month-old starving baby crying next to the body.

He shut his eyes, livid.

Louis-Marie grabbed his arm and said, “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine. …”

Jules made an effort to get ahold of himself. He clinked glasses once more with Auber and Varin, both barely able to keep their eyes open at this point. He never gave his origins much thought. His life had begun and would end at Fonteyne.

“So,” Louis-Marie said, “what’s my little niece’s name going to be?”