A Rather Charming Invitation (8 page)

“But just
look
at it!” I cried, pointing out the fine work. It was an expensive creation, undoubtedly made for someone quite important. The professor sidled up nearer, peering through his spectacles at the cloth.

“Exquisite,” he murmured.

“Who made this beautiful work of art?” I breathed, turning to Philippe and Leonora. They seemed touchingly pleased and proud that I was impressed.

“One of Philippe’s ancestors,” Tante Leonora answered.

“Then, it’s been in the family for many years?” I asked.

Oncle Philippe shook his head. “
Ah non
, it did not come into my family’s possession until the 1930s, when my aunt bought it at auction. Since she had no children, she gave it as a wedding present to me. In fact, Leonora and I were married before it, just like a king and a queen!”

And so it had come into the eager hands of Leonora, I observed, for she was very proud of it, pointing out this or that particular feature. “
Eh bien
,” she concluded meaningfully, nodding toward Honorine, “perhaps one day our own daughter will be married before this tapestry, if she is lucky enough to be asked by a good man!”

The guests laughed indulgently, and someone slapped Charles on the back. I stole a quick glance at Honorine, who blushed furiously. Behind her, Jeremy raised his eyebrows to warn me,
MYOB
.

“But in the meantime,” Leonora said calmly, “we have this lovely bride in our midst.” Everyone began chattering all at once, peppering me with happy questions, as we descended the stairs.

“Have you set the date yet?”

“Will it be a very large wedding?”

“Will you be getting married here in Mougins, or in Antibes?” Leonora quickly offered her house for the wedding, basically saying that her château was our château. I was stunned by their warmth and generosity, yet unable to answer their questions about my barely existent wedding details.

“Actually,” Jeremy explained, deftly rescuing me, “we are only now just contemplating our plans.” And he somehow managed to keep the focus on how we were honored by this too-generous offer by Philippe and Leonora.

Then Honorine helped out, whether she intended to or not. She let out a big cat yawn that echoed in the great hall. “Oh,
Maman
, we are so tired from the airplane, it’s time for bed!” she cried with the charming manner of a little girl. Everyone responded warmly, and, realizing that Jeremy and I, too, must be weary from our travels, they bid us good-night.

“
S
o, how’s this work?” Jeremy asked teasingly. “We get married under the thing, and then take it home and use it for a bedspread, just like that funny- looking couple tucked up in bed with their little night caps, surrounded by all those weird symbols?”

“Some of those images do look like the ‘bad news’ cards in a tarot deck,” I admitted.

“It might give us nightmares,” he suggested. “Besides, who knows who else slept under it? What if they had bedbugs? Or plague or smallpox? All things considered, I’d rather have a soup tureen, a most useful item.”

“You idiot,” I said, playing along. “We are certainly not going to sleep under this treasure, because you can’t be trusted not to spill your morning coffee and croissant crumbs all over it. But if we lived in olden times, before central heating was invented, believe me, you’d have been eternally grateful for a bedroom tapestry hanging on the wall to keep out the cold drafts. In fact, you’d also be glad to have it there for entertainment, in the days before television!”

“What, people sat around watching tapestries for fun?” Jeremy said in amusement.

“Sure! Louis XIV had his favorite Aesop’s fables all over the draperies in one of his bedrooms. He could lie there and look at them, like watching a cartoon movie,” I said as I climbed into the big bed, which required ascending a small, elaborately embroidered step-stool. “And they put tapestries in waiting rooms, so you could stare at them while waiting to curry favor with some big mucky-muck.”

“I suppose it beats sitting around leafing through old magazines in a doctor’s office,” Jeremy commented. Then, indicating that he understood the significance of Leonora’s offer, he said affectionately, “I like your French folks. They’re beautiful and smart and elegant . . . just like you. And, I’d say they’re totally enchanted with Miss Penny Nichols, too. Very nice of them to offer the tapestry for the wedding. However, I can’t help noticing that everyone is assuming we’ll be married in France.”

“Can you blame them?” I said. “If that were your tapestry, would you ever let it be taken out of the country? They probably want to make sure it’s handled and displayed correctly.”

Jeremy grinned. “Better watch out, though. A woman like Leonora will take over the whole wedding if you let her.”

“Shh! They’ll hear you!” I cried, “with your big booming voice and these big booming rooms.”

Jeremy obligingly lowered his tone to a stage whisper. “Do you want to get married here?”

I hesitated. “You’re right about Leonora. She’d expect to be in charge. My dad says his relatives used to drive him crazy, always wanting things done exactly the way they expected them to be, according to tradition. Philippe’s family goes back a long way. They must have been very honored and quite wealthy.”

“Maybe so,” Jeremy said gently, “but it looks as though they’re struggling now.”

“What are you talking about?” I demanded. “Did you not see how incredibly big the estate is?”

“Haven’t you noticed all the shabby edges around the old château?” he asked.

“Nonsense,” I scoffed. “Frayed carpeting and dusty old drapes and scuffed furniture are sure signs of old money. Aristocrats don’t spend their fortune on ostentatious new purchases. Everything is
supposed
to be musty and moth-eaten, to prove it was handed down through the centuries.”

“True enough,” Jeremy allowed, “but these people have no valet and very few servants. I’m not sure who carried our bags up. Looks to me like a case of land-rich, cash-poor.”

I pondered this. “Then their offer is all the more generous,” I said. But I felt a trifle uneasy. It occurred to me that Tante Leonora, having achieved her social position through marriage, now saw herself as protector of the family, watching over her children to ensure that, like actors, they played their assigned roles, so that the fabric of her family didn’t fray at the ends and come unravelled. She clearly saw my free-spirited father as a threatening loose end.

Being an only child, I harbored romantic ideas about big families, but I could see why my father wasn’t in such a hurry to return to the provinces of his youth, despite his deep and abiding love for France. He’d said he felt hamstrung by the watchfulness of small-town life, even in Paris, with its highly structured society of age-old privilege and connections. America had offered him the anonymity of a new place, where no one could admonish him for not playing his part exactly as they wanted. It made me wonder what role my French relatives now expected me to play.

So that night, as the entire household settled into sleep, I lay there listening to the creaking floors, the groaning pipes, the wind making trees scratch against the windows like cats. The château was undeniably beautiful, and it stood as a bulwark against time and all the uncertainties of life—wars, plague, storms, persecutions. It had the quality of a museum or a church; a place that reminded one of death as well as life. For the first time, I felt I understood Honorine’s flight. With all these medieval, cryptic images surrounding us in every carving, painting and artifact—those angels and ogres, knights and kings, youth and age—I fell asleep dreaming of galloping off on a white horse, beyond the avenue of trees, beyond the woods, all the way down to the coast . . . and the wide-open, liberating sea.

T
he next morning, at the breakfast buffet—laid out in a smaller dining salon overlooking the garden and woods at the back of the house—our hosts surprised us by casually announcing that they had arranged “a shooting party” in Jeremy’s honor. After David delivered this invitation, Jeremy marched upstairs to change clothes. I followed him.

“Shooting!” I cried, appalled. “Are you going to go off and kill some poor little deer or duck?”

“No, mercifully,” Jeremy told me as he rooted around in his suitcase. “They gave me a choice, of either slaughtering animals or shooting trap. They are operating on the huge assumption that, just because I’m English, I fancy a hunt.”

“Do you shoot?” I asked in amusement.

“I can if I must.”

“I mean, do you like it?” I persisted, wanting to know if my future husband had hobbies I’d been entirely unaware of.

“I loathe it. Therefore I opted for trap. One can only guess at what inferences they will draw from my choice,” he said. “I wonder, do you suppose this will scotch our chances for being married under the tapestry?”

“It’s ‘before’ the tapestry, as in, ‘in front of’,” I corrected. “Not ‘under’, which implies they’re going to toss it over our heads.”

“Well, either way, it’s curtains for us now,” he joked.

“If you loathe shooting, why are you going?” I asked.

“For love of a Penny,” he said, kissing me and then hurrying off.

I went downstairs shortly after Jeremy left, wondering uncertainly what I would do with the day while he was out. I needn’t have worried. Oncle Philippe emerged from the little dining salon, having lingered over his coffee, fresh brioche and newspaper; and he now said, with a twinkle in his eye, “You seemed interested in the history of my family’s perfume business. Would you like to come to my workshop in Grasse for a private tour of the best perfume in France? It’s all been arranged, if you’d like.”

“Oh, yes!” I cried. I loved his rich French accent, which made “arranged” sound more like “orange-ed.” He wore a fine, formal straw hat and a linen suit, white shirt and pale blue tie.

Nobody else in the household seemed to be around; it was just Oncle Philippe and me. He escorted me out the front door and down the pretty stone steps. The sun was already bathing the air with its warmth and the promise of a beautiful day. A long black car awaited us, and a driver opened the door so that we could slip into the cool interior. Then he steered the car down the driveway past the allée of trees, and whisked us off to Grasse.

We took the “Route Napoleon”, where the irrepressible emperor had escaped his island exile and marched back to Paris. Despite the roar of traffic on this now- modern highway, the South of France—with its prehistoric caves, sheltering Alps in the distance, and
villages perchés
clinging to ledges and cliffs—still seemed like something from a fairy tale.

“Where is Honorine today?” I couldn’t resist asking.

“Her mother has taken her to call on a few friends of the family,” he replied, and I wondered if this had to do with Charles’ family. He smiled and said, “I am sure that she would much prefer to come with us today.” It seemed like an opening to ask him how on earth he could want a bright young daughter to sacrifice her future happiness for their present business interests, until he added rather presciently, “But I do not interfere where the ladies are concerned.”

“Honorine is very, very bright,” I ventured. “She’s already been so helpful to us at our office. And her school record is amazing! She’s really quite special.”

“
Oui
, Honorine has always been bright and high-spirited,” Philippe said, “and with that comes a certain independence of mind.” He was careful, in that French way, not to make this sound like either boasting or complaining, but I could tell that Honorine both delighted and vexed him.

We’d reached the town of Grasse, whose name, Oncle Philippe said, came from the word for “grace”. Once upon a time it had been an independent Italian city, before falling under French rule.

At the flat top of a high hill was a modern, bustling tourist area with lots of shops and traffic, and a pedestrian plaza, rimmed with stone balustrades, reigned over by an imposing war memorial. From here, one had a view of the old city, which lay below us, at the foot of a wide, steep, stone staircase. Nestled in those narrow, medieval streets were tall stucco and stone houses in pale washed colors of desert sand, faded terracotta and violet-grey.

I would have been delighted to stop, get out and explore the old streets on foot, but the driver was steering the car away from the shops, museums and churches, making several turns down side streets, so that he could approach a parking lot at the rear of the old factory that belonged to Oncle Philippe. The car stopped at the back door, and I slid out first, followed by Oncle Philippe.

A brisk, alert-eyed woman in a white coat, carrying a clipboard, greeted us, ready to guide our private tour. Oncle Philippe introduced her as Lisette, one of the managers. Although the factory was technically closed today, some of the workers had come just to help in this tour, presided over by Oncle Philippe himself, which made it a very special day indeed. From the moment we entered the factory, his employees snapped to attention and greeted him with genuine warmth and excitement.

“I am what you might call ‘semi-retired’,” he explained with a smile, aware of his celebrity status.

“Theeze way,” Lisette said politely as she led us past the foyer. The factory was a series of cavernous, echoing, high-ceilinged rooms with no windows, and various big machines, each operated by an employee who neither glanced up nor spoke to us unless Lisette addressed him. “First, we have to get the flowers and herbs, many of which we still grow and pick from our own fields,” she said as she began a narrative of the process of perfume-making. “Only about thirty years ago, there were still thousands of flower growers in this area, but now it’s down to less than a hundred fifty growers.”

“So we are a vanishing species,” Oncle Philippe said, shaking his head. “We go the way of the dodo.”