A Rather Charming Invitation (20 page)

I wondered if Oncle Philippe understood that his wife was plotting to sell off the tapestry, and therefore, my photos might end up being the only pictures his grandchildren would see of his flower fields. I observed, through the long windows in the gallery, that Oncle Philippe had gone across the lawn to speak to the gardener, who was now clipping the roses and hydrangeas.

I hastily collected my things and went down the staircase. David was still waiting below, apparently defensive after his father’s outburst. He glanced up at the tapestry and shook his head.

“My father is stuck in his old ways,” he explained. “Like all of France sometimes!” He paused. “You like old things?” he said, nodding toward the tapestry. He sounded, a bit, like Honorine. Perhaps brother and sister had more in common than they realized. Maybe David, too, longed for escape and adventure.

“Yes, I do,” I admitted.

“Well, it’s very good for a wedding,” David allowed, “but as for me, frankly, those classical and medieval images remind me of my schooldays. When I look at that tapestry, I see all the unbreakable rules and traditions that hold France back from the modern world.”

“That’s just what I like about France,” I said. “The traditions that protect the quality of life.”

“For tourists, perhaps,” David said with a rueful smile, in a charmingly inoffensive way. He went outside, and drove off in his car. I wondered if I should try find a way to say goodbye to Leonora. But I couldn’t exactly holler down the hallway for her.

As I stood pondering, I heard Leonora’s voice, drifting out from the salon, very distinct, but in French. I couldn’t get all of what she was saying, but I was able to make out that she was engaged in a telephone conversation, and I actually heard her telling someone that she wished to insure
le tapisserie
for a higher value, even it meant paying a higher premium.

“Uh-oh,” I said to myself. Perhaps this little visit of mine really had been ill-advised. Now she was convinced that her mission would be accomplished. Well, I’d better wrap up my research and report to Honorine about it, and let her deliver the news if it wasn’t good. Possibly Leonora would withdraw the offer of the loan of the tapestry for the wedding, but that wouldn’t be the end of the world.

There was no reason for me to linger here, waiting for Leonora to figure out that I’d overheard her. So I went outside and thanked Philippe for letting me come, and he looked up from his conversation with the gardener long enough to wave at me as I drove away.

 

 

When I returned to the villa, Jeremy and Rollo were still at it, having been sustained by sandwiches and ale that Celeste had given them when she came to do some more cleaning and drop off a few supplies. Neither she nor I had any truly disruptive effect on the card game; the guys just kept at it.

“When it comes to cards, dear boy,” Rollo was saying expansively, “there are three things you need: smarts, skill, and luck. Smarts you definitely have, no question about it. With skill, I can surely help. But with luck, well, we’re all on our own.”

I went on into the drawing room. We had been furnishing the villa a bit at a time, with Celeste showing up to meet delivery men whenever a furniture or antiques shop sent something that one of us had purchased. The drawing room was now mostly Deco design, with two cute striped sofas from the 1930s that look like ribbon candy, and a few tables and lamps, and, in the corner, a roll-top desk and straight-backed chair, with a computer and printer that could be tucked away from view when not in use. I printed out my pictures; then I spread them side by side on a low table.

When Jeremy and Rollo got up to stretch, they wandered in and found me examining the photos. They peered over my shoulder. “I never noticed those soldiers, and the knight on horseback,” Jeremy commented. “Reminds me of King Arthur and the games we used to play, pretending our bicycles were horses, and we were knights, jousting with sticks.”

“Ouch,” said Rollo, imagining it. “Hope you didn’t get knocked off too many times.” He studied the photos and pointed out the gambling motifs he saw, like diamonds and spades. “Modern playing cards were mainly a French invention, after all,” he said. “This looks like a lucky streak to me.”

I realized that the tapestry was a bit like an inkblot design that psychiatrists use to determine a patient’s state of mind and view of the world. We were all gazing at the same pictures, but we each saw a reflection of our own preoccupations. I wondered about the preoccupations of the man who made it.

“Fancy a real drink?” Rollo asked Jeremy.

“Let’s all dine in tonight,” I said hastily, sensing that it was absolutely necessary to get Rollo to break his pattern of going out on the town every evening.

“Are you mad, inviting him to dinner?” Jeremy whispered to me when Rollo returned to the kitchen to switch off the TV.

“We need to keep him away from bad company,” I said. “I think we should make him come back to London,” I added.

“You heard him. He’s sick of Great- Aunt Dorothy. Can you blame him?”

“That’s not exactly what he said,” I corrected. “He’s lonesome.”

Jeremy sighed. “Then find him a wife,” he said. We just looked at each other.

“Okay, I’ll cook, and you talk to him,” Jeremy conceded.

We returned to the kitchen, where Rollo was neatly packing away the playing cards. I put him to work helping me lay out the table for dinner, which he did with the amused, fascinated look of someone who’d never been asked to do this before. He dutifully followed me out to the dining room.

“Oh, child,” Rollo said with some distress when I told him I wanted him to come back to London with us, “really I can’t bear London. Too depressing.”

“But I need you,” I said, suddenly inspired.

The expression on his face changed, and he smiled warily. “What for?”

“You know your way around the best English antiques shops. Could you find me some nice champagne glasses for the wedding reception?” I asked. “I’ve been reading about how we should have just the right shape for champagne. You know, not too narrow, but not too wide and shallow, either . . .”

“Of course, of course,” he said instantly.

“Nothing too ostentatious,” I said. “I don’t want to spend a fortune on them. Just something nice for a wedding, you know?”

Rollo brightened. “Darling, I know just the thing—Mum has a perfect set, and she never uses it. Lots of them, just laying about in crates. Perhaps I can convince her to give them to you as a wedding present; she may like that, for she won’t have to end up spending money on something inferior.”

“Really?” I said. I couldn’t imagine Great- Aunt Dorothy giving anything away.

Rollo must have read my thoughts, because he added, “Not to worry. I can talk her into it. Or, failing that,” he mused, “I can always smuggle them out of the flat.”

I could see it was a challenge that appealed to him.

S
o Jeremy, Rollo and I returned to London, with Rollo promising to “touch base” with me within a week. Upon entering the townhouse, I found a pile of messages, neatly categorized, all stacked up. Honorine had also put fresh flowers in vases in each of our offices.

Lowering her voice so Jeremy wouldn’t hear, she told me that the jeweler had sent over my groom’s gift for Jeremy. She and I examined the signet ring together. I ran my finger over the fine engraving, delighted. “Oh, it’s great,” I said, locking it away in a small drawer in my desk. “I must remember to thank the jeweler.”

“Yes, but, it was delivered by a woman who”—Honorine wrinkled her nose in profound distaste—“wore
very
heavy cologne,
très horrible
.” She rattled off the probable composition of the perfume that so offended her senses. “I had to open all the windows on the entire first floor, for days and days!” she exclaimed indignantly. “And still, I could not get that smell out of my nostrils.”

Her little face, all screwed up in outraged sensibility, made me want to laugh affectionately, but aloud I observed that Honorine appeared to be quite a “natural” to follow in her father’s footsteps and work in the family perfume business. She knew that I’d been taken on a tour, but now I described it in more detail, which revived her own fond memories of the place.

“At Easter time, we used to take the little soaps and hide them, like eggs,” she said dreamily. “I put the lavender ones under my pillow. It helps you sleep, you know.”

“Did you ever consider going into the family business?” I asked curiously. She sighed.

“And have my brother and I firing cannons at each other all day long?” she asked. “After all, I
am
a naturalist,” she proclaimed, “yes, I am a follower of the philosopher Rousseau, you know, ‘
Nature never deceives us, it is always we who deceive ourselves
.’ Whereas David doesn’t really care what he makes in that factory, it could be shoes or can openers,” she declared, “so long as it makes profits—but they are never big enough for him. Modernize, modernize, modernize! It’s his mantra. But,” she added darkly, “when it comes to women, David is not at all
moderne
; he thinks we should all just be obedient wives who stay out of a man’s business!”

“And what do
you
think?” I challenged her. Honorine shrugged, pretending to be indifferent.

“What does my famous
cousine
suggest?” she asked tentatively.

“My advice is, follow your heart and do what you love,” I said stoutly. “For all you know, you could be a great
nez
!”

Jeremy had come to the doorway of my office just in time to overhear this. Honorine always managed to slip discreetly away at such moments. When she was out of earshot he commented, “I don’t suppose it would do me any good to say that
my
advice is, keep your own
nez
out of it.”

“Nope,” I said, eyeing him, trying to decide when to give him the gift. “It would do you no good whatsoever.” I paused. “Was there something you wanted to discuss?”

“Just wondering how things went with the wedding planner,” he said, a bit too casually.

“Let’s just say we were incompatible,” I replied. “They’d have us doing a karaoke rendition of ‘our song’ or making PowerPoint presentations of our love. There seems to be an assumption that all brides and grooms are secretly dying to get into show business.”

“Perhaps I could do card tricks,” Jeremy volunteered. “Rollo might teach me.”

“Who’s asking about our plans?” I inquired, in the same casual tone he’d used.

“I got an e-mail from Uncle Giles. He says Amelia sent you an e-mail you didn’t answer,” Jeremy admitted, looking a trifle embarrassed.

I turned to my computer and checked. Yes, it had come in yesterday, and was sitting there with all the other unopened messages I’d received. I opened it now, read it quickly, then groaned.

“Oh, God,” I said. “She wants to bring the kids to the wedding. How many do they have?”

“Four,” Jeremy answered. “The first three were all girls, so they kept at it till they got the son. He arrived rather late in the game.”

“Four! If we invite
their
kids, we’ll have to invite David’s,” I said, remembering the shrieking little dears playing on the lawn at the château. I scrolled to the end of the e-mail. “Oh,
no
!” I added in genuine distress. “She says they want to bring the dogs, too, because they are ‘members of the family’!”

“Lord, no,” Jeremy said firmly. “Draw a line now. No pets, no kids.”

“I think we’d better say it the other way round,” I said, rapidly reading the rest of the e-mail. “She’s not even
asking
. She’s
telling
me they’re bringing them. She just wants to make sure that we pick a hotel that allows them. It looks like they expect us to pony up for all Margery’s guests at the hotel.”

“We’d better nip this in the bud. Let me deal with Giles on this,” Jeremy said firmly.

“She’s also sent me the names of a good stationer, and says Margery wants to see the proofs. But Jeremy, the invitations are already on order in France. The stationer is just waiting for the info—the date, place and a final count of guests.” As I said this, I realized how much I still had to do.

“Thank her for the suggestions, that’s all. You be the good cop, and I’ll be the bad cop,” Jeremy said. He paused. “But you know, we really
must
nail down the wedding plans. We can’t keep waffling forever.”

My telephone line rang just then, and Honorine announced an urgent call from Jodi, the fund- raising woman at my Women4Water group. Jeremy returned to his office, and I took the call.

Jodi came straight to the point. Women4Water was nearly bust. If we didn’t raise money this year, it would leave thousands of children in poor countries without safe drinking water. “How do we justify doing nothing about that?” she cried. Since Jodi was normally a very serene Englishwoman, not given to emotional outbursts, I knew it was truly serious, and that money must be raised, and quickly.

But no sooner had I promised to get back to her with concrete suggestions, than my phone rang again. “Your parents wish to speak to you,” Honorine said.

They were both on the line. My father coughed in an embarrassed manner. “We heard from Leonora, who was wondering if you found the château unsuitable in some way. She said you visited her recently but never mentioned the wedding at all,” he said. “She had planned to show you that they have a little private chapel on site, but said you left before she could do so. Or, you can use the garden if you wish, but either way, the village priest normally does his bookings two years in advance.”

I’d thought I’d made the perfect getaway that day, but apparently not. I felt a little ashamed. “Can you just tell them to hang on a few more days and I’ll pick the venue?” I said.

“Yes. But you also should decide about bridesmaids and ushers,” my mother warned. “They must be outfitted, you know.”