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

by Natalie Meg Evans

  ‘There, there, Antonia, only a bad dream.’ The trainee nurse spoke in a soft, automatic voice as she ran her eye over the notes at the end of the bed. Moving to the pillow end, she checked the insertion point of the drip in the age-spotted hand. ‘You’re imagining things. You had a nasty fall, Antonia. We’re putting you back together.’

  A second, older voice reproved: ‘The patient has asked us to call her Miss Thorne. It says so on the notes.’

  Giving herself up to the befuddlement of morphine, Antonia tried one last time – ‘Bring Henri to me. He has to forgive me.’ She knew she’d begun speaking French, and likely neither the trainee nor the ward sister would understand her. ‘I should never have put on the Gown of Thorns. I was warned. It wasn’t mine to wear.’

  Chapter Eight

  The following week rattled past for Shauna, the only surprise a sharp downpour early on that briefly flooded the road into Garzenac. Her days were forming a recognisable shape. Isabelle was becoming a real friend, delighted to hear her grandchildren’s English improving rapidly. Two hours of conversation expanded to four, after which Shauna would fall into bed, into blessedly dreamless sleep. Beyond her forays to the winery, she’d still seen very little of Clos de Chemignac. The wildflower meadows remained unexplored, the horses elusive. She hadn’t bumped into Laurent again either, nor Rachel, though she’d seen both of them at a distance. Isabelle told her, quietly, over breakfast in the middle of the week, ‘Laurent has given Rachel her notice. I don’t know why, but keep away from her for a while.’

  ‘Laurent dismissed her? Is he in sole charge here? Your uncle has no say?’

  ‘Albert?’ Isabelle glanced up from trickling honey onto rye bread. ‘Albert no longer owns any portion of the château, nor of the wine business. He sold out to Laurent’s father years ago. I’m a shareholder, but I leave everything business-wise to Laurent. He makes the decisions here, not Albert.’

  ‘Tough for Albert, I should think. I take it he was the younger son?’

  Isabelle made a face. ‘The fourth son, actually. My father, Henri, was the eldest and the two who came after him perished in the war. They joined the Free French Navy and died at sea. Albert… Well, Albert was an afterthought. He was born nearly twenty years after my father.’

  ‘Let me get this right…’ Shauna screwed up her eyes, visualising a family tree. ‘Your father Henri was Laurent’s grandfather?’

  ‘Exactly, and Laurent’s father was my brother. My papa died during the war too, when I was just eight years old and my little brother was three. It had a terrible effect on us all. As the last of four brothers, the only one not to fight for his country, Albert became a little…’ Isabelle made a face. ‘I don’t want to say “strange”. A little bit unpredictable.’

  I can vouch for that. Shauna hadn’t forgotten Albert de Chemignac’s ferocious welcome, nor had she yet looked up the word ‘rouquine’. Actually, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know its meaning. ‘He unnerves me. He seems to run on pure rage!’

  Isabelle acknowledged it. ‘I might as well tell you, as I know you won’t gossip. Many years ago, when we were all still young, Albert tried to set up a rival vineyard on the other side of Garzenac. He didn’t get on with my brother and thought he could do a better job. But the venture failed and Albert lost everything. Without telling us, he’d used his stake in Chemignac to take out bank loans. The first we knew of it was when an official arrived with a clipboard to make a list of Albert’s assets.’ Isabelle pressed her hands to her temples, as if the memory still brought a cold sweat. ‘Thank heavens my brother managed to raise enough to clear the debt, otherwise we wouldn’t have a family business now. That was how my brother acquired Albert’s share of the château and the business, and why it now belongs to Laurent.’

  ‘So Albert is a kind of lodger?’

  ‘Yes, though you wouldn’t think it from the way he talks to us all. He had nowhere else to go, and he is bitter still, as if the fiasco was everyone’s fault but his. The kinder Laurent is to him, the more he resents it. He punishes us all because he tried to escape Chemignac and failed.’

  Escape? Laurent had described his home as ‘Beautiful, but cruel’. Isabelle had once mused out loud, ‘Nobody who loves Chemignac ever really leaves it.’

  ‘Isabelle, what’s wrong with this place?’

  ‘Wrong?’ Whether deliberately or because she was hard of hearing, Isabelle answered a different question. ‘It might have been a slight birth defect. Albert was the last child of aging parents, and his birth was awful. A fifty-hour labour and it killed his mother.’

  Shauna flinched at the thought of it. ‘That would scar any child.’ Recalling Rachel’s facetious reference to Albert’s sexuality, she asked casually, ‘He never wanted to marry?’

  ‘Albert is not comfortable with women.’

  ‘English women in particular, I notice.’

  ‘All the English, I’m afraid! He says there are too many cars on our roads with “GB” on the bumper. In truth, Albert can never forgive your Winston Churchill for pulling his troops out of France in 1940, leaving us to the mercy of the Germans, nor for forcing us to scuttle our ships at Toulon.’

  ‘He’s still reliving the war? That’s over sixty years ago!’

  ‘To Albert, it is yesterday.’

  Conversation ceased as Olive came in to tell them that they needed to be at tennis half an hour early that day because Nico had a tournament match. ‘He has to warm up. He must win, it’s a grudge-match.’

  The following Sunday, July 13th, arrived with sultry air, which sent Isabelle to her bed with a migraine. Olive had an invitation to spend the day with a friend in the village, and zoomed off on her bicycle. That left Shauna to entertain Nico, who was in low spirits, grunting moodily at every suggestion she made for his entertainment. Had this been a normal home, she thought, he’d have stayed in his room playing computer games, but these were restricted to two hours a week. Sports, fresh air and books were what their parents ordered.

  ‘Come on, spit it out, Nico,’ Shauna said when she could no longer bear the sight of the boy kicking his chair leg. ‘What’s up?’ He was a bit young for girl trouble or adolescent angst.

  Nico shrugged. ‘I didn’t play my A-game on Wednesday.’

  ‘Your A… Oh, you mean you played badly? There’s always another day.’

  Nico threw her a look of utter contempt. ‘No, there isn’t. I lost the match. I’m out of the tournament.’

  ‘We can’t always win everything, Nico.’

  ‘I can. At tennis, anyway.’

  ‘Not even Pete Sampras wins every game. And what about Lleyton Hewitt? He won Wimbledon last year, then bombed in the first round this time. How do you suppose he felt?’ Unsporty as she was, Shauna always made a date with Wimbledon. She’d watched the 2003 men’s finals with her mum and Grace, the pleasures of strawberries and sparkling wine amplified by the brilliance of a newcomer called Roger Federer.

  ‘That’s a Grand Slam tournament. I lost in the poxy junior league.’

  ‘And so did they, once.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I don’t,’ she admitted, ‘but everyone loses sometimes. I of all people should know.’

  Curiosity flickered in Nico’s eyes. ‘What did you lose?’

  ‘In April, I applied for a post in the research department of a big corporation in the Midlands, about seventy miles south of where I grew up. I’d have been working alongside a Nobel-prize-winning scientist, studying the potential of plant acids to destroy cancer cells. My dream job, with a proper salary for the first time in my life. It would have shoved me several rungs up the career ladder.’

  ‘But you didn’t get it.’

  ‘Worse than that. I got it. They said I was the outstanding candidate. I finished my master’s degree, gave up my flat, began packing to move. Then a week before I left Uni, I got an email saying that my application had been re-evaluated and the offer withdrawn.’

  ‘Why?’

/>   She blew out a painful breath. ‘Money. Politics. Just believe me when I say that I have also had to start all over again and it’s not the first time it’s happened. Tell you what – lob me one thing you would like to do today that is in my power to grant, and I’ll do my best.’

  He shrugged, looked mutinous, then mumbled, ‘Go riding with Laurent.’

  ‘Right. On a horse?’

  ‘Obviously, not on an elephant.’

  ‘Are you sure he’ll agree? It’s hot out there for riding.’

  ‘He’ll say yes if you ask him. He likes you.’

  ‘Really? I mean, no he doesn’t. He doesn’t know me.’ When Nico shrugged, Shauna couldn’t help nudging. ‘What makes you think…?’

  ‘When Olive and I took you to the chai, he was cross with us for leaving you to find your own way. Then he made us repeat your name three times so he got it right.’ Nico reached for his baseball cap and headed for the kitchen door. ‘It’s obvious he fancies you. And anyway, you’ve got the same tattoo.’

  Grabbing her straw hat, Shauna dashed after Nico. ‘How d’you know about that?’

  ‘Olive and I saw you getting out of the swimming pool in your bikini. If you don’t want people to see it, swim in a wetsuit.’

  No sign of Laurent in the stable yard. Shauna followed Nico into the closest of the steel barns. Strolling down its central walkway, she thought, at least I now know where he keeps his horses! Indoors, in ventilated comfort. Stalls each side of the corridor were occupied by the same breed of white pony that had pulled the trap. Grey-pink noses poked through U-shaped grilles. Hay nets had obviously just been filled, because the predominant noise was of molars chomping. The horses were bedded on some kind of fibre that smelled sweetly of eucalyptus. Presumably, the addition of the volatile oils was to deter flies.

  The second barn housed animals of greater stature and she thought she recognised the one Laurent had called Héron. They were all greys, with short, muscular necks and a bluish marbling to their coats. ‘Are they Percherons?’ Shauna asked as they emerged, still without finding Laurent.

  ‘No…’ Nico threw out a breed name she didn’t catch, then shouted, ‘Rachel! Where’s my cousin?’

  Rachel was sprawled on a plastic chair outside a wooden building that had a sign on the door stating it was the stable yard office. In a cropped top, shorts and knee-length suede riding boots, a genuine-looking Stetson shading her face, she was enough to make a ten-year-old boy’s eyes ping out on stalks and Nico’s duly did. Shauna, less impressed, eyed the cigarette lighter dangling from Rachel’s neck on a leather thong. The girl surely didn’t smoke near the stables?

  ‘Last time I saw Laurent,’ Rachel drawled, ‘he was in the south parcelle, communing with his Cab Sauve.’ Rachel returned Shauna’s look. A long stare that mirrored that of the tabby cat curled by her chair.

  ‘Thank you.’ Shauna was tempted to walk on without alluding to their last meeting, but Rachel’s manner grated and she added, in English, ‘And thanks for locking me in the tower. I’ll return the compliment one day.’

  ‘Be my guest, but don’t leave it too long. I’m off once harvest is over. Did Isabelle mention that I’ve had an amazing job offer? A country club in California. Three thousand dollars a month, and more days off than I get here.’

  ‘Congratulations.’

  If Rachel heard the edge Shauna put on the word, she made no sign, saying, ‘Spend too long in a backwater, you rot. What I keep telling Laurent. My face is here, Nico.’ Rachel pointed at her cheekbones, turning her headlamp stare on the boy, whose eyes had indeed slid down to the cleavage bursting from the crop top. He blushed and hurried away.

  They found Laurent between rows of vines, on one knee, pressing the grass with his knuckles. ‘Salut.’ He stood to greet them, pushing his bush hat back off his brow before removing his sun glasses. ‘I will have to mow, at least on these southern slopes. That rain has brought on a flush of grass.’

  ‘Can’t you leave it a day?’ Nico entreated. ‘Mowing’s boring.’

  ‘He’s hoping to go riding with you,’ Shauna said, colouring because Laurent’s glance had reminded her that the last time they’d been in each other’s company she’d torn off a dress in front of him. She pretended to be fascinated by a vine laden with clusters of hard, green grapes. She’d expected them to be velvety magenta and sweet by now.

  Eager for neutral ground, she said, ‘They look ages from being ripe.’

  ‘Cabernet Sauvignon is always quite late. Six weeks to go, depending on the weather.’ ‘You’ve been spraying?’ The vine’s lower foliage was tinged with a bluish residue that had also dripped onto the grass. It matched the stippling on Laurent’s forearms and finger ends, and she imagined him going bush to bush inspecting leaves for hidden grubs or signs of rot. ‘Maybe I can help—’ She broke off, remembering Nico’s teasing; he fancies you.

  No he doesn’t, she silently answered. Just because she got a tumble-dryer stomach when she was near him didn’t make a relationship either sensible or feasible. To reinforce it, she said the unsexiest thing she could think of. ‘You treat them with copper sulphate, I presume?’

  Laurent nodded, still with that unreadable curve to his lips. ‘Every ten days or so.’

  She’d have liked to stroll along the rows with him and, at the right moment, turn the conversation to what she’d experienced in the tower. What they’d both experienced, if her intuition was correct. But Nico was sticking to his agenda.

  ‘You always take me out riding when I’m here, Laurent.’

  ‘Today, mowing is a boring necessity,’ Laurent replied. ‘Straggly grass encourages pests and if it rains again it might be days before I can do it. So, here’s the deal.’ He brushed grass stains off the knees of his long, grey shorts. ‘Help me and we’ll ride out afterwards. It’s too hot now, anyway.’

  ‘Don’t the horses graze in summer?’ Shauna asked.

  ‘They do, all night. It’s more bearable for them.’ Laurent turned again to Nico. ‘You can earn your ticket by helping me hitch up the new mowing attachment and walking alongside as I go up the rows. You can be my second pair of eyes and emergency cutter.’

  ‘I’ll drive the tractor,’ Nico fired back. ‘I know how.’

  ‘I doubt it, living in Paris. Anyway, my insurance won’t cover you.’

  ‘Who cares?’

  ‘I do. If you had an accident, I’d be up before a judge. Ça alors, you think I have time to negotiate?’ Nico had opened his mouth to argue. ‘Listen, my father wouldn’t let me handle the controls till I was sixteen, and it drove me mad too. In a few years’ time, I’ll teach you.’ He patted his young cousin on the shoulder in a gesture which clearly meant ‘Shut up’, then threw out a sweetener. ‘You can ride the tractor for a few rows beside me, if your walking and shearing live up to my hopes. Hello under there.’ Laurent lifted Shauna’s straw brim. ‘You should go back to the house. This job’s hot and noisy.’

  ‘I’d like to help. My walking might live up to your hopes too.’

  After a slight recoil, Laurent’s gaze warmed. ‘I have a feeling it will, but I have to keep my eyes on the job or I might drive over the vines. So no distracting me.’

  ‘Can I have a go on the tractor too, if I’m good?’ She saw the change in his stance, his throat moving above the neckline of his work-worn T-shirt. Why was she flirting? Opening a door marked ‘Danger’? ‘What I mean is, I’m competent with machinery. I’ve ridden quadbikes and driven Land Rovers on rough terrain.’

  ‘The tractor responds only to brute force. I believe your touch would be too light.’ He was flirting back, and belatedly cautious, she stepped back. ‘What I really mean is, I’m getting used to the heat and I’m smothered in factor forty. I can help, if you want me to.’

  ‘All right, but you’ll need insect repellent too. Go to the house and spray, and bring back bottles of water, enough for all – oh, Dieu!’ Nico was running off. Laurent muttered, ‘I’d better get to the tractor b
efore he does. He probably knows where I hide the key.’

  Returning fifteen minutes later with a rucksack bulging with bottled water and slices of melon in cling film, Shauna found Nico seated on a small tractor. It was a basic machine without a cab, and antiquated, to judge from its dented panels. The contraption whose drive-shaft Laurent was attaching to the rear looked virtually space-age in comparison. Laurent shooed Nico off the seat and fired the ignition. He let it run for a minute or so, then turned it off.

  ‘So, this is a mulching cutter,’ he said. ‘The blades reach right under the vines, but they won’t cut everything because the rows are not equally wide. Where I miss a weed or a clump of grass, you two cut by hand. All right?’

  ‘Sounds easy enough.’

  ‘It’s tiring.’ He handed Shauna a pair of short-bladed shears, an identical pair to Nico. ‘The mower shoots out stones and twigs, so walk with a row of vines between us. Don’t ever come behind me. If you need me, run to the top of the row and approach me from the front. Got it?’

  It was easy enough to start with, the stroll in the sunshine she’d hoped for, though the mower and tractor at full throttle were a deafening combination. The vines were level with her eyebrows and all Shauna could see of Laurent were flashes of fabric and bare arm. The foliage canopy, supported on tight lengths of wire, was busy with flies, bees and butterflies. Not a wild landscape, she thought, but nurtured and perfect in its way. Most of the grape clusters hung below waist level, giving her an intimation of the work ahead in picking them. She saw the virtue of Laurent’s labour-saving monster, whose rubber bumpers caressed the feet of the vines while its blades reduced grass and weeds to fine cuttings, leaving a diesel vapour trail.