Alexandre made every effort to comply, but nearly as much brandy ended up on the floor as in the glass. He resumed his seat and rested his elbow on the table before he refilled his own glass, an action that enabled him to avoid the waste of any more brandy. He set the bottle on the table and fell back into his seat, then lifted his glass. “Let's drink to...” Pausing, he frowned. “What shall we drink to?”
“Do we need a reason?”
“No.”
Both men laughed, thinking themselves quite witty, and drank their brandy.
A loud meow sounded, and Augustus rose from where he had been sleeping in the corner, clearly indignant at being roused from his nap by a pair of drunken fools. He walked over to the table, and Alexandre lifted the kitten onto his lap, and action that caused Henri to shake his head in disbelief. “Never thought you'd have a cat. I begin to think you are actually fond of it.”
“Possibly,” Alexandre admitted, rubbing Augustus between the ears with his thumb. The kitten responded with loud purring. “But I must confess I’m glad Tess didn't bring home more of them.”
Henri grinned. “No, she came home with a donkey instead. And what a donkey!”
Alexandre picked up the bottle, and with a frown of complete concentration, refilled his glass once more, only spilling a few drops this time. “Never should've bought the damn thing,” he muttered. “I had intended to give it back, but then I saw her eyes.” He paused to take a swallow of brandy and leaned back, starting up at the ceiling. “I saw her eyes, and I couldn’t do it.”
Augustus stirred, placing his paws on Alexandre’s chest and rubbing him under the chin. “And now, we are the only males in a household full of females, are we not, mon ami?” he murmured to the cat. “There is Tess, and Betsy the donkey, and Sophie the goat. Oh, and the goose, Mathilda. I'd forgotten Mathilda.” He glanced at Henri and said with a scowl, “I hate that goose.”
Henri laughed and downed the last swallow of brandy in his glass. “You hated cats once, too. On my next visit, I expect you and the goose will be fast friends.”
“Never,” Alexandre vowed, setting Augustus on the floor. “Every time I go near that animal, she tries to attack me. She is a femme formidable, that one. But Augustus understands me.”
Both men looked down at the kitten, which was happily lapping up the liquor on the floor.
“I see he also understands the value of an excellent brandy,” Henri commented.
“So do we,” Alexandre answered, picking up the bottle. “But we’ve nearly drunk it all.”
“Shame, you know.” Henri leaned forward again, elbows on the table, glass in hand, staring at his brother through bleary eyes. “Vintners should never run out of drink.”
“We aren't vintners anymore.”
“Ah, but when we were, we made excellent wine. And our brandy ...” His voice trailed off, and he lifted his glass. “It was better than this.”
“This is our brandy.”
“I knew it was good.” Henri emptied his glass and promptly refilled it with an unsteady hand. “We should make wine again.”
Alexandre shook his head. “I won't make wine again.”
“Because of Anne-Marie? But she didn't die because of the winery. You know that.”
“I do. She died because of me.”
“She did not!” Henri sat up straight in his chair and rubbed a hand over his forehead as if trying to gather his sodden wits. “It was an accident.”
“She didn't want a baby. I wanted it.” His words were slurred, but filled with the anguish of guilt. “She didn't want to sleep with me anymore. But I didn't listen.”
“But...” Henri started to speak, then stopped.
“And then she was so scared. She thought she'd die.” He paused long enough to take a swallow of brandy. “I said things to her. I was angry. I wanted the baby, but she didn't. She didn't want it. I told her she was selfish. That she only cared about herself.” He leaned forward, resting his head in his hands. “I called her a coward.”
“When we're angry, we all say things we don't mean.”
Alexandre's laugh was bitter and humorless as he lifted his head and leaned back in his chair. “But I did mean it. I meant every word. I thought she was a coward. But look at me, Henri. Mon Dieu, who is the coward now?”
Henri opened his mouth to reply, but then closed it again. After all, what could he say? There was no way to refute the truth.
Chapter Sixteen
Tess stood in the library doorway, staring at the sight before her in disbelief. The morning sunlight pouring through the window revealed Alexandre and Henri exactly where she and Jeanette had bid them goodnight over eight hours before.
Alexandre was sprawled back in his chair, his long hair loose and tangled, and a dark shadow of beard on his jaw. Augustus lay sprawled out on the floor beside his chair. Henri was seated opposite, leaning forward over the card table, his head resting on his folded arms. The table held three empty bottles and two empty glasses. The kitten and both men were sound asleep.
Footsteps sounded behind her, and Tess turned as Jeanette came down the corridor toward her. “I found them,” she told the other woman and returned her attention to the library.
“What, they're still in there?” Jeanette stopped behind her, peering over her shoulder.
Augustus heard the voices of the two women and lifted his head, giving a rather pathetic-sounding meow.
Tess crossed to the table, shaking her head at the three empty bottles, and lifted Augustus from the floor to cradle him in her arms. He responded with another meow.
The sound awakened Alexandre, who lifted his head slightly and opened his eyes. Wincing at the bright sunlight and giving a groan of pain, he fell forward to rest his elbows on the table, cradling his head in his hands.
Henri also stirred, lifting his head long enough to answer his brother with a commiserating moan, before once again burying his face in the crook of his folded arms.
“Really!” Tess looked from one man to the other. “Of all the childish, immature things to do!”
Alexandre held up one hand to stop her flow of chiding words. “Don't talk so loud,” he croaked in a low voice as he slowly sat up. His face was pale beneath his tan, and when he glanced at her, she noticed his eyes were bloodshot.
Jeanette entered the room, coming over to the table to stand beside Tess and add her own opinion. “Three bottles? Couldn't you two have exercised a bit of common sense?”
“It seemed a marvelous idea at the time,” Henri muttered in reply, shielding his eyes from the bright sunlight with one hand as he also straightened in his chair.
Jeanette and Tess exchanged amused, exasperated glances.
“We may have had a cup too much,” Alexandre admitted. “I don’t know about Henri, but I feel like death.”
“A bit down-pin are you?” Tess inquired with false sympathy. She set Augustus on the floor, and as she watched the kitten amble on shaky legs over to a corner, she frowned, her suspicions aroused. Turning back to the table, she glared at the two men. “Heavens, you two didn't give the cat any drink, did you?”
He rubbed his eyes with the tips of his fingers. “We may have done.”
“You got the kitten drunk?” She turned to Jeanette. “What does one do with such men?”
“Disgraceful, the pair of you,” Jeanette said. “Making a poor little kitten inebriated.”
“Don't say any more,” Henri pleaded. “We feel badly enough as it is.”
“It's no more than you deserve!” Tess said and walked over to the corner to once again lift Augustus into her arms. “Poor baby,” she murmured as the animal let out a wobbly protest. Glancing at Jeanette, she asked, “Do you know any remedies for the aftereffects of too much drink?”
The other woman nodded. “I know a recipe guaranteed to work.”
“Good.” Tess walked toward the door, Jeanette right behind her. “We'll make some for Augustus.”
“Augustus?” Alexandre turned
his head to stare after them. “What about us?”
Tess paused by the door, glancing over her shoulder at the two men. “Alexandre, you're an excellent chef. Jeanette would be happy to give you her recipe, wouldn't you Jeanette?”
“Certainly.”
The women departed, leaving the men to fend for themselves.
***
After Alexandre’s request for servants, Jeanette had wasted no time. She had written immediately to Marseilles. As a result, Paul and Leonie Renault arrived in Saint-Raphael a fortnight after receiving her letter.
Tess anticipated their arrival with mixed feelings. Her own situation here was unorthodox, to say the least. The two servants would conclude what seemed obvious—that she was Alexandre’s mistress, and the babe was his. As the daughter of a vicar, Tess disliked that she would be regarded in such an immoral light, but at this point in her pregnancy, she could not afford to care what other people thought of her. Jeanette had told her the baby had descended, estimating that she was within a few weeks of delivery, and she simply could not continue with the physical labor her role as housekeeper demanded.
Jeanette had prepared rooms in the servants’ quarters on the third floor of the chateau, and all was in readiness when Paul and Leonie arrived. When Jeanette performed introductions, she introduced Tess as the housekeeper. Her condition didn’t seem to cause the servants any surprise, leading Tess to conclude the other woman had already explained her situation to them.
Paul was a tall, extremely thin young man with brown hair and a shy manner. Leonie was a complete contrast to her husband, being short and plump, with dark hair and merry black eyes. But it was their baby daughter Elise that captivated Tess. “Oh, she's lovely!”
Leonie smiled. “Merci, mademoiselle.” She glanced down at Tess's swollen abdomen, and blushed. “I mean madame—I mean—”
Tess waved a hand to stop Leonie's mortified flow of words.
“Please call me Tess,” she said and gestured to the baby. “May I hold her?”
“Of course.” Leonie held out the baby, and the moment Tess took her, she felt a fierce wave of anticipation wash over her. Soon, she thought, resting the baby’s head against her shoulder and patting her back, soon she would be holding her own child in her arms. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine what her own baby would look like. Would her baby's face be round as a dumpling, like Elise? Would her baby's skin be as soft? Would the baby look like her, or like—
Tess shivered and opened her eyes to find Alexandre watching her, and as their eyes met over the baby’s head, she watched a slight smile tilt his lips, banishing any thought of Nigel from her mind in an instant.
***
Tess set aside the currycomb and gave Betsy an affectionate pat. “There,” she said, “you look much better.”
Betsy did, indeed, look considerably better than the day Tess had found her in the vineyard. She had gained weight, and her wounds had healed. Her scars, however, would never go away. Tess knew that from experience.
She glanced over her shoulder to the open door at one end of the stable, expecting Jeanette or Leonie to catch her out at any minute and give her the customary lecture about doing too much. In the week since Paul and Leonie's arrival, the two servants had taken over all the household chores, supervised by Jeanette, and Tess had been relegated to “lying-in,” which meant doing absolutely nothing.
While she appreciated the assistance she was being given, she was also bored beyond belief. In coming out here to groom the donkey, Tess felt as if she were savoring a stolen treat.
As if Jeanette and Leonie fussing over her wasn't enough, Paul and Henri were just as bad. Paul was constantly fetching her footstools or cushions, and Henri insisted upon accompanying her for walks and generally behaving like an overprotective elder brother. The only person not fussing over her was Alexandre.
With servants in the house to look after her, it was as if he felt he'd passed the responsibility for her welfare onto others. He was gone most of the time, and though sometimes Henri accompanied him, often he went alone, and his withdrawal hurt Tess more than she would have thought possible.
She sighed, remembering their picnics and cooking lessons with longing. For a short time, he’d let her into his solitary world, but now, they were like the strangers they’d been when she first arrived, and it was as if the camaraderie they’d shared had been nothing but a product of her imagination.
Tess’s melancholy thoughts were interrupted by the loud, indignant honking of Mathilda and a string of passionate French curses. Tess hurried out of the stable and around the corner to the goose's pen, wondering what was going on to cause such a fracas.
She soon found out. Alexandre was standing in one corner of the pen, a strip of linen binding in his hand, Mathilda in front of him, emitting loud, belligerent honks. Every time Alexandre tried to move, the goose nipped at him or beat at his legs with her good wing.
Tess couldn't help it. She burst out laughing, causing Alexandre to cast an exasperated glance in her direction. “You think this is amusing?”
“Yes,” she admitted, smiling broadly. “I do.”
Mathilda took another nip at his leg, and he jerked back to evade the animal. “Tess, if you don't get this goose away from me, I'm going to wring its neck and cook it for dinner!”
She stepped into the pen, and as she came closer, Mathilda quieted. “What are you doing in here?” she asked as she paused beside him.
“I was trying to have a look at its wing to make certain the bindings were still secure when it suddenly attacked me.”
Tess shook her head, giving an exaggerated sigh. “I don't think she likes you. I can't understand it.”
“It hates me,” he answered. “I don't know why, and I don't care. Put it back inside.”
Tess shooed the goose toward her coop and closed the door once she was inside. She turned back to Alexandre, still smiling, but her smile faded at the smear of red on his hand. “Did she bite you?”
“Of course she did,” he muttered and began to use the linen strip in his other hand to dab away the blood. “It’s her favorite pastime.”
“Let me see it.”
She reached out, but her fingers had barely touched his before he pulled back. “It's nothing.”
He started to move past her, but she couldn’t let him. She wanted to break down this wall that had come between them. She reached for his hand again, grasping it in both of hers to keep him from pulling away. “Let me see it.”
This time he let her, rigidly still in her hold. “It appears to be just a scratch,” she said after a moment and began to bandage it with the strip of linen.
“I told you it was nothing.”
“Still, we should put some of that ointment of yours on it.” She tied the bandage in place, but she did not let go of his hand. Instead, she slowly slid her palm over his to entwine their fingers.
He jerked his hand away as if her touch burned him and moved again to depart, but she reached up to put her hands on his shoulders, as if by sheer strength she could somehow hold him there. “Don't do this,” she said. “Don't avoid me.”
He moved within her grasp, but he did not pull away. “You don't understand,” he said without looking at her.
“No, Alexandre, it’s you who doesn’t understand,” she contradicted softly. “You don’t understand that I need you.”
“There are servants to do the work. Jeanette is here to look after you.” He stared over her head as if fascinated by the wall of the barn. “My presence is not necessary.”
Her hands left his shoulders to cup his face. “It is to me,” she said. “I need you to be what you have been from the beginning. My friend, my companion, my protector.”
He shook his head. “No. You don't know about me. You don't know—”
“It doesn’t matter. I know that I need you.”
He shook off her touch and stepped around her before she could reach for him again. “Then God help you,” he muttered
as he walked away. “God help us both.”
***
The tide was going out. The waves washed gently over the pools formed by the rugged coastline, depositing in their wake a treasure of mussels and other shellfish. Crabs crawled amid the kelp festooned over the rocks as the sun set beyond the hills of the Massif des Maures.
Alexandre sat on a rock high above the water, his arms resting on his bent knees, his gaze fixed unseeingly on a pair of bickering crabs in the tide pool below, her words of a short time ago echoing in his head.
He didn't believe her. It was as simple as that. He was willing to acknowledge that she had needed him for a short time, but that time was past. That thought did not make him happy. It didn't even bring a sense of relief. All it brought was the painful reminder that he could never be what she wanted him to be.
She didn’t know about him, and thought she’d said that didn't matter, he knew it did. It mattered more than she could possibly understand.
Perhaps it would be best if he sent her to Marseilles with Jeanette and Henri after her babe was born. They already had a housekeeper, but he was sure Jeanette would willingly provide her with some form of employment.
He didn't want to think about what it would be like when she left. He didn't want to think about what it would be like to return to the days when he fetched water in the mornings only for himself, when it was as quiet in the château as a tomb. He didn’t want to think about how lonely he would feel, or how empty his life would be.
He closed his eyes, wishing he could see himself the way she saw him. But he was afraid of believing in that, why not admit it? He was afraid to believe in love or believe in himself.
A startled cry broke into his thoughts, and Alexandre opened his eyes. Scanning the rocky coast below, he could see someone flailing in the water some distance from shore. Without further thought, he jumped to his feet and scrambled down the hill, pausing only long enough to pull off his knee-high boots before plunging into the water.
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