A Gown of Thorns: A Gripping Novel of Romance, Intrigue and the Secrets of a Vintage Parisian Dress (11 page)

‘Nothing to understand. My father wore the symbol above his knuckle. He was a musician and poet, and a specialist in Celtic languages. In the ancient Ogham script, this symbol means “strife”. When I was twelve, he died very suddenly. Nine years later, I had it inked onto myself because I was coming up to my graduation and it hit me – he should have been there and I needed him with me.’ She spoke fast, to get the explanation done before her voice cracked. ‘I hadn’t even heard of Chemignac.’

‘Come, see this.’ Laurent led her out of the lab, across a yard paved with limestone, stopping at a circular wall inside which grew a blackthorn. Its tortured trunk hinted at great age. A crop of unripe sloes peppered its branches. He picked one off, gave it to her. ‘Bitter tasting on the tongue, until the October frosts. The name “Chemignac” comes from an ancient word older than the French language and means “crooked one”.’ He gestured to the tree. ‘There were thorn trees here before there were vines and we have a family motto: “Tend the vines or the thorns will return”.’

‘They have,’ she said, stepping up onto the low wall, ignoring the barbs against her bare shoulders. ‘My mother’s maiden name was Thorne. I’m Shauna Thorne Vincent and can be lethally sharp. Careful how you handle me, Laurent de Chemignac. Tell you what, I’ll ask Isabelle to invite my mother here, and we’ll ask her if my father’s tattoo had anything to do with your family. Agreed?’

His answer was to lift her down and kiss her until the sun slipped below the horizon. He led her to a fold of the meadow, where they lay in the grass. At first, they stared up at the moon, as yet barely visible against the sunset. As it gained definition, they turned to each other. Removing their clothes, helping one another without embarrassment, without coyness, they gloried in the readiness of their flesh. They made love, knowing it was love, though the why and the how eluded them.

I
n the winery office
, Rachel Moorcroft finally allowed herself to turn the light back on. She’d whacked the switch when Laurent and Shauna came in, hardly breathing for upwards of forty minutes while they held their mutual admiration party on the other side of the door.

‘Madame la Scientifique!’ Rachel mocked. She’d been using Laurent’s computer, assuming he’d stay out among the vines until dark. He’d swallowed her line about the amazing job offer in California, so she didn’t want it known that she in fact had no job to go to and was sending her CV out to recruitment firms specialising in leisure and holiday employment.

Rachel has a nasty side
… Too right. Laurent should know better than anyone, as they’d seen every side of each other during the months they’d been lovers. Crashing together like cymbals whenever they could get away – two honed, hungry bodies, equally matched. Never a relationship? What, when you put it under a microscope, was a relationship? Weren’t relationships what people reached for when white-hot sex fizzled out and neediness took over? There’d come a moment with her and Laurent when the flames had flickered down and she’d caught a glimpse of the future…

Laurent had wanted her. Course he did. She could pretty much crook her finger for any man, any time. But the primal, self-protecting part of her knew he’d never commit. And so, she’d done what she always did. Given him the elbow before he could do it to her. It had been harvest time, two years back, and a Portuguese temporary worker had been her willing decoy. Laurent had shrugged and moved on, but she’d always thought he’d come back to her.

Instead, he’d sacked her. ‘Locking a girl in the tower room, a guest of my aunt’s too, you went too far, Rachel.’

‘Can’t you take a joke, Laurent? She didn’t mind.’

‘Shutting people up and running away edges too close to sadism for my taste. You’re dangerous, Rachel – to Shauna, to me, to Chemignac.’

Bloody, holy Chemignac had always been her true rival. Though Shauna Vincent, who only had to step out in the sun or a drop of rain before she had to be rescued, was running a close second. ‘“I have a BSc in biomedical science and a master’s in being a know-it-all and fainting”.’ Rachel’s whining impersonation of Shauna gave way to her own private-school guttural. ‘And I’ve got first-class honours in sticking the spanner in other people’s spokes.’

She’d disliked Shauna from the first. No, even
before
she’d clapped eyes on her at the railway station, thanks to Madame Duval’s eagerness for the meeting. ‘Elisabeth’s girl, I can’t wait! I feel already she belongs here.’

Nobody had ever told Rachel she belonged here. She’d tried to be friendly when she first arrived, smiling, ‘making nice’, but somehow the older folks had never taken to her.

‘I wonder if she’ll be auburn, like her mother!’ Isabelle had been fizzing like a little girl promised a doll, inspiring Rachel to plan a brilliant joke. She’d take the pony cart instead of the car; ‘Because we all know that gingers love a bit of afternoon sunshine!’

Rachel was honest enough to admit that her loathing of Shauna went beyond mere jealousy. Shauna was a Sheffield lass. She’d been to comprehensive school. You could tell it from the way she spoke, and yet she had a masters degree. Letters after her name. A future, while Rachel, private school-educated from the age of four, had bombed out of everything – A-levels, university. As her parents never tired of reminding her, ‘You had it all on a plate and what are you? A stable-girl!’

Being near Shauna Vincent was like having sand rubbed into your sunburn. And now she’d pinched Laurent, too.

The fax that had come through as Laurent and Shauna walked in was one page long: handwritten in confident scrawl, signed ‘Mike’. The crested letterhead belonged to LJKU, Lancashire John Kay University, which sounded to Rachel like Nerd Central. ‘Mike’ was presumably ‘Professor M. Ladriss, Head of the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences’. Try saying that after six vodka-and-limes. Rachel read it through again and contemplated what to do with it.

D
ear Shauna
,

I’ve been texting you, getting no answer, then I remembered you’d provided a fax number. Major changes here – the senior research post at Cademus Labs has come free. Allegra Boncasson left me a message saying she doesn’t need the experience or the money after all. Certainly, she doesn’t need the latter, as her father is one of our country’s less scrupulous banking fat cats. I’m furious, as you can imagine. You accused me during our painful interview on the last day of term of kow-towing to financial interests in backing Allegra for the post. Wrong – I backed you, but did not know then that Mr Boncasson had slipped Cademus £100,000 for research into skin-cell regeneration, no doubt to hide some of his obscene bonus from the taxman while giving his daughter a leg up. I know I can trust you not to share such dangerous opinions with anybody, by the way. Come home NOW. I can hold the job open a while, but not forever. Mike.

R
achel’s
first thought was to make confetti of the message, until it occurred to her that Shauna would fly after this chance, forgetting her promise to stay till the end of harvest. With her departure, Laurent might change his mind about her, Rachel’s, future here. On the other hand, tearing it up and depriving Shauna of her big chance would feel very good indeed. Studying the letterhead’s mock-heraldic crest, she thought, why not choose a third way?

After thinking it through with closed eyes, she wrote along the bottom of the fax: ‘No longer at this location. Try Paris. Shauna was last seen loitering in Place Pigalle.’ The mention of Pigalle, one of Paris’s red light districts, should give Professor Ladriss food for thought. Grinning, Rachel added, ‘She should do well there. What she lacks in erotic technique she makes up for in va-va-voom.’ She signed it, ‘Laurent, Comte de Chemignac.’ Putting the page into the fax, dialling the number printed across the top, she pressed ‘send’ and sat back. Once the fax had gone through, she tore it into tiny pieces and dropped it into the bin. The downside was, she now had to put up with smug Ms Vincent for the rest of her time here. The upside was that she’d single-handedly redrawn Shauna’s future. She could now amuse herself by putting the spanner into that burgeoning romance. Laurent was so wary of love, so unsure of his own claim to happiness, it shouldn’t be difficult.

D
akenfield
. They’d moved her to a recovery ward. New staff, new inmates. They tutted when she called the occupants of the other beds ‘inmates’. Miss Thorne had insisted they reduce her morphine and though the penalty was grinding discomfort, her brain no longer felt like warm jelly. She was desperate to be allowed home. The need to be back among her books, her music, her furnishings, was becoming a fixation. From her narrow bed she could see the night sky. The institutional window had a broken blind and so, during sleepless nights, she could plot the journey of the moon. A three-quarter moon had lit the deaths of Henri and the others and enabled her to escape. She hated a waxing moon. That bold, blank stare taunted her. Seemed to say, ‘You got away all right. Pity about the others.’

I
n his apartment
in the château, his table awash with old black-and-white photographs, Albert de Chemignac studied the face of Yvonne, the woman he’d desired and hated. The woman who had surrendered to Henri within days of meeting him.

The girl looking after Isabelle’s grandchildren – Albert couldn’t pronounce her first name – was English like Yvonne. Red-haired like Yvonne. Green-eyed like Yvonne. Had she been a little taller, she could have
been
Yvonne. He wanted her away from here before memories swarmed, like wasps from a ruptured nest.

O
n the steps
of the tower, a figure climbed through the dark, drawn by an overpowering desire to feel a violet silk gown against her skin. A forbidden, hexed thing imbued with sadness and grief. But irresistible.

O
ut in the meadow
, Shauna and Laurent lay serene in the night air. The strident calling of owls criss-crossed in the woods and among the nooks of the winery. Shauna said at last, ‘I ought to go in. They’ll wonder.’

‘When the next owl hoots, we’ll get dressed.’

From that moment on, the Chemignac owls were strangely silent.

A
nother Sunday
. Shauna woke at dawn, as she often did now that she and Laurent were lovers. With a drawn-out ‘Uhhh’ she reached for him, then remembered that the empty space beside her meant he’d returned to his own bed, in his own apartment. Or more likely, he was up, working. Sighing for the day they could legitimately be together, she got up to fling open her window.

The sun was rising. Unwilling to waste the coral mist, she took a fast shower, then threw on one of her jazzy, short dresses. She added a fluffy cardigan and leggings. The sun would grow intense later, but at this early hour there was a bite in the air. At the back door, she swapped her trainers for Olive’s sunflower-pattern wellington boots. Under her arm, a folded tartan rug. Dressed as if for a folk festival, she took the route out through the gatehouse.

The meadows between the moat and the woods were straw-coloured now, the grass pearly with cobwebs. Azure chicory stood to attention above the grass, the last remnants of summer. Laurent had his hay cut late to allow the flowers to seed, and sold the crop to a neighbour for sheep fodder. His seasons were relentless, but at least he always knew where he’d be one month to the next. Where would she be, she wondered, when spring arrived, and the flowers returned?

The undefined status of their relationship and the presence of the children, combined with Albert’s cast-iron views on sex before marriage, had induced Shauna and Laurent to keep their feelings for each other under wraps. Louette Barends, coming to the end of her enforced stay at Chemignac, was too busy to notice other people’s affairs. Not only was she juggling translation projects, she’d started organising the
fête de vendange
– scheduling Audrey Chaumier and other local women to do the cooking that was beyond Isabelle this year.

Only Isabelle had detected the new chemistry between Shauna and Laurent, and she’d caught on to it within hours of them making love in the meadow. At breakfast the following morning, she’d waited until Louette had left the table before saying lightly, ‘Did your promenade among the vines put that glow in your eye? Or something more?’ The children had been out of earshot, brushing their teeth in the downstairs bathroom. ‘
Chérie
,’ Isabelle had continued, ‘it is none of my business. After all, you are old enough to be married with a family, so all I will say is, have caution. After Nico, Laurent is my favourite young man in the world and I know already that you do not give yourself away lightly. I could not bear to send you back to Elisabeth with a broken heart.’

‘You don’t think it can work?’ Shauna hadn’t bothered denying her feelings for Laurent, which were so boundless, so fresh, that sharing them felt natural. And there was no time for coyness. Doors were banging, the bathroom taps were on full blast. The children would be upon them any moment. Olive was loudly complaining of a dirty lace in one of her tennis shoes, blaming Nico for pinching her pristine white one and replacing it with his. Any moment, they’d race into the kitchen, demanding adult mediation. Shauna asked, ‘Why does it have to be “broken hearts”, Isabelle?’

Isabelle had chosen her words carefully. ‘Laurent has not a good track record of long-term commitment. Oh, he has a kind nature, I am not saying he is a…’ She fumbled for the word she wanted. ‘What is that magnificent English term for bad men in
Bridget Jones’s Diary
…? ’

‘Um, philanderer?’

‘No – “fuckwit”. Shush, don’t giggle, the children are coming. You see –’ Isabelle spoke fast – ‘Laurent’s parents divorced when he was tiny, and for years his mother kept him away from his father and Chemignac. He wasn’t able to return until his tenth birthday when he was at last able to express his feelings to his mother and gain her permission. I don’t wish to criticise her, but she kept Laurent from his heritage and taught him that marriage is a battle-ground. He is marked by it, as that girl Rachel found out. You know he and she…’ Shauna nodded. ‘I know.’

‘You had a happy childhood?’

‘It was amazing. Perfect, till Dad died.’

‘A heart attack, your mother said.’

‘Out of the blue, aged forty-three. It flattened Mum for a few years.’

‘Ah,
pauvrette
. Perhaps
you
can teach Laurent what steady devotion is and give him a fresh perspective, but do not invest too much too soon. You have your career to think of.’

I do
, Shauna thought.
And how long, exactly, since I thought of it?

The children had rushed in just then, Olive pulling Nico’s hair. ‘Shoelace-gate’ had escalated dangerously. Isabelle banged her cane on the floor to get their attention, then asked Shauna to kindly fetch a box from the dresser drawer. It contained a wad of white laces, which, Isabelle explained, she ordered every summer from a sports wholesaler. ‘So there is no cause to steal each other’s, you wicked savages!’

Chastened, the children gulped down breakfast, then followed Shauna out to the car. That conversation with Isabelle had not been renewed.

S
o
… Another hot, August Sunday. Shauna desired Laurent, if anything, more than before and knew he was becoming intrinsic to her happiness. Not a comfortable state for someone with aspirations to one day heading a pharmaceutical research lab. When had she last belly-ached about losing that gilded position at Cademus? Or checked her phone for a message from Mike Ladriss? And what about those notes she’d been so avidly writing up? These days, whenever she found herself at Monty’s café, she ate cake and toyed with a crossword. Or smiled into space. Monty had even commented on it. ‘Lost your mojo, love?’

‘No,’ she’d laughed. ‘I seem to have found it.’

As for Laurent, he came to her each day with the same urgency and intensity, his frown-lines melting whenever their paths crossed. They’d snatch hours together; horse riding early in the morning or eating lunch in his apartment, listening to his music CDs. As a sweetener to the driving rock music he liked, he dug out his father’s LPs from the 1960s and ’70s and dusted off an antiquated gramophone. Often, they’d cook and eat listening to tracks by the Eagles, Johnny Hallyday, Sylvie Vartan. But their favourite time was night and moonlight.

She skirted the meadow, not wanting to flatten the grass so close to its mowing. Humming the riff from Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Paradise City’, she followed the edge of the wood until she found herself on a patch of land she’d never seen before. As she’d not crossed any ditches or opened any gates, she assumed she was still within Chemignac’s bounds. After following a meandering brook for some minutes, she reached a meadow, low-lying and narrow, like an abandoned motorway. It was striped two shades of green and sang with the malty sweetness of new-cut hay. The trill of larks proved it to be Laurent’s land. Unlike many of his neighbours, he’d banned lark traps on his estate and these ground-nesting birds were colonising his meadows. It struck Shauna that she could have walked into any era of history. Not a modern landmark or building in sight. Finding an area of mossy green, she lay down, tucking the tartan rug under her head. She intended to meditate. To unlatch her mind from the intoxication of love and try to find a way forward that honoured her feelings and Laurent’s while keeping her professional ambitions alive.

Sleep closed in on her fast. A sleep so deep it sucked her from the earth into limitless space. Into another consciousness…