Settled at the table she checked whether Christian had logged in yet. The ring on her computer answered her question. Quickly she checked her reflection – she’d made sure she was dressed and presentable today – and pressed answer.
She grinned at Christian, who appeared a lot more relaxed today, dressed in a red T-shirt rather than a work shirt and tie. “Morning.”
“Evening, Imi.” He grinned.
“How was your day?”
“Great. Libby and Kate were right about the beach. It was beautiful. Hardly anyone on it at all.”
“Did you go swimming?”
“Wasn’t quite warm enough.” He chuckled. “Then I went to the port of Fremantle and ate my way around the markets there. So much good food.”
“Sounds like fun.” She loved trying different types of food but was always conscious of the amount she ate. She had a certain reputation to uphold as Tour de Force’s representative.
“What have you been up to?”
“I’ve been working on my business plan.”
“How’s it going? Have you come up with a name yet?”
“It’s coming together. I’ve been brainstorming names but I’m not sure what to choose yet.”
“Hit me with them.”
Imogen wasn’t sure whether they were a bit obvious. “Originally I was thinking Tour as a shortened form of Tour de Force but that was when I assumed Papa would support my idea.”
Christian screwed up his face.
“You don’t like it?”
“It’s not different enough. It’s not you.”
Warmth filled Imogen’s veins. He was right. She’d come to the same conclusion. “Then I considered Fontaine because Papa’s name means something in this business and I could use it as a springboard.”
Again Christian looked unimpressed. “What else?”
There was another name she was thinking about but she wasn’t sure she was ready to tell Christian. It was possibly too soon for that.
“Come on, spill.”
Imogen sighed. “I did think maybe Imi.”
Christian’s mouth gaped a little and he sat up straighter. “That’s my name for you.”
She nodded. “I know.” She tried to gauge whether he was happy about it or not.
“How about if?”
She’d take that as a no. She frowned. “If?”
“Your initials, IF, capitalized. It makes me think of hope and possibilities.”
“Maybe.” She could visualize the label; a clean font – something modern but classy. “Hang on a second.” She got up and grabbed a notebook and pen from the kitchen drawer and sketched her idea on the pad as she sat back down. Turning the notebook around so she was showing the screen she asked, “What do you think?”
“Wow, that’s fantastic. You drew that just then?”
She nodded and fiddled with the design some more. She wasn’t entirely sold: some people might think IF was conditional and view it as a negative.
“You’re so talented.” The admiration in his voice made her look up. He was so serious.
Imogen wished he wasn’t half a world away so she could hug him. “Thank you.”
“Who are you talking to, Imogen?”
Imogen’s head shot up at her father’s voice and saw him standing at the kitchen door. She glanced at the screen and from the expression on Christian’s face she knew he’d heard him too.
“I’m talking with Christian via Skype. He’s in Australia at the moment.” She turned over her logo sketch so he couldn’t see it and checked the time. “I’m not late for brunch, am I?”
“No, I thought we’d have it in the rose garden today, since it’s so lovely outside.”
Imogen didn’t want to finish her conversation with Christian yet. “I’ll meet you there.”
“I’ll wait for you in the salon,” Remy answered and stepped inside, walking through to her sitting area.
He would hear her remaining conversation with Christian and she didn’t want him to. She sighed and glanced at the screen. “I’ve got to go.”
“Daddy’s calling?”
The tone of his voice stung. She nodded. “Maybe we can talk tomorrow?”
“I’m not sure how busy I’ll be with work. I’ll let you know.” His whole demeanor was now rigid. He wasn’t happy.
She felt a twinge of guilt and tried to shrug it off. She wasn’t going to apologize. She didn’t want her father listening in to what she said with Christian. “Take care.” She logged off.
Turning off her laptop, she got to her feet and walked into the living room. She froze. She’d forgotten she’d left all of her business planning things spread on the coffee table in there last night. Her father had her plan in his hand and he was reading it, his posture straight and his brows furrowed. She knew that posture, knew that look.
He was not happy.
She said, “Papa, I’m ready. Shall we go?”
For a moment he didn’t respond and then slowly he turned to her. “What is this?”
Imogen waved a hand. “Oh, something I’ve been working on. Nothing, really. I’m starved and we don’t want Mrs. Povey’s breakfast to get cold.”
“Nothing? So it would not matter if I threw it in the bin?” He made as if to screw it up.
Imogen took a couple of steps forward, one arm outstretched. “Don’t.” She’d scribbled a lot of notes down last night and hadn’t transferred them to the computer yet.
“Then I suggest you tell me what it is.”
Her father’s face held a world full of disappointment and hurt. Imogen hated it.
Defeated, she slumped her shoulders. “It’s my business plan.”
“Stand up straight, Imogen. Posture is everything.”
Imogen straightened automatically.
“Why do you need a business plan? You have Tour de Force. Is it not keeping you busy enough?”
“Papa, can we discuss this over breakfast?”
“No, we will discuss this now.” He stood straight and proud, his signature defensive posture.
She took the business plan from his hand. “You know I’ve been playing with my own designs,” she began.
“Playing? You think what I do is playing?”
“No, Papa.” She had to be careful. Everything she said was going to cause him offense. “What I meant was doing some designs of my own. I showed some of them to you a couple of weeks ago and you said they would never suit Tour de Force.”
“I remember. They were too common.” He sniffed.
Imogen ignored the sting his words caused. “Well I like them, and I was exploring whether I could produce my own label. Hence the business plan.”
“Of course you could,” her father said. “But why would you want to? Tour de Force is the pinnacle of fashion.”
Imogen suppressed a sigh, knowing it would annoy her father. “Tour de Force is the pinnacle of couture fashion, Papa. I want to design clothes my friends can afford, clothes my friends will like.”
“Your friends do not like Tour de Force?”
“They like it, but it’s not the type of thing they would wear to work, or to the movies.” She wasn’t sure if she could get him to understand.
Her father harrumphed. “If you do this thing,” he said waving toward the business plan, “you will not have time for Tour de Force.”
She took hold of his hand. “I know, Papa.”
“Tour de Force will be yours when I die. It is my legacy to you. You need to run it when I go.”
He wasn’t really listening to her. “Papa, Tour de Force is your baby, your style. It’s not mine.”
She might as well have stabbed him in the heart for the look of shock and outrage he gave her.
“Non non non! Everything I have done, I have done for you. You cannot refuse. Who else can it go to?”
Imogen didn’t dare suggest he could make his workers shareholders. People like Abigail would carry on the Tour de Force brand gladly. “Once I’m established, and with t
he right team, there is no reason why I couldn’t run both Tour de Force and my own label.”
“Non. I will not have your commonplace designs associated with Tour de Force.”
He clammed up and she was beginning to think he wasn’t going to speak again when he said, “If you insist on doing this, you will break my heart. I have slaved for decades to provide for you, to be both mother and father to you, to ensure you never went without.” His voice was tight with pain. “Tour de Force is yours. Why do you think I have made sure you learned every aspect of the business? It is not merely to give you something to do.” His accent thickened. “Are you trying to kill me?”
“No, Papa!” Not even when she’d proposed moving out of home had her father been so upset.
“Then we shall have no more talk of this matter.”
She couldn’t let it go. She had to make him understand. “But Papa – ”
“Ça suffit!” he said and he walked out of her house.
Chapter 8
Imogen sank into the couch and winced as the door slammed shut behind him. What had got into him? She understood why he wanted her to take over Tour de Force, but why was he so against her own designs? She was old enough to do her own thing. She didn’t need his permission.
Tears welled in her eyes and she blinked them away. She’d cried too much of late. What she needed to do was go for a walk, clear her head.
She grabbed an apple out of the fruit bowl as she left her house and wandered down the path to her secret garden. She pushed through the doorway and found her tree house where it had always been, high in the branches of an ancient tree. The ladder still seemed sturdy enough, so she climbed up, squeezing through the trapdoor into the first story. The opening had definitely shrunk since the last time she made the climb.
Cautiously she checked the timbers of the tree house; they seemed to be in good condition. She opened the window and perched on the window seat that looked out between the branches and over the garden.
The tree house was a testament to her father’s love and the things he’d done for her over the years. She might not have had many friends but her father had given her the tree house and her own secret area of the garden when she’d asked for it.
He was right: he had provided for her. She’d led a very sheltered but affluent life. Was it selfish to want more? There would be hundreds of people in the fashion world who would jump at the chance to swap places with her, to have the opportunity to take over at Tour de Force, even if their own taste differed from Remy Fontaine’s.
Was she just a spoiled, contrary child?
Imogen perched her forearms on the window frame and leaned out.
She hadn’t thought her desire to have her own label was controversial. She loved Tour de Force, but it wasn’t her; it would never be her. Her creativity was stifled there and she wanted to reach out, do something new, but now it seemed she’d never be able to do that while her father was alive.
What was she going to do?
Was his concern more about their different tastes as designers, or the fact that she was making new friends: first Libby and Adrian, then George and Christian? She’d spent more time away from the guesthouse than she usually did.
Was he worried he would lose her now that she was beginning to branch out and have her own ideas? Did he want to force her to stay? Imogen was all the family Remy had and he had no close friends. Imogen was pretty sure her mother’s death all those years earlier had scarred him, though he rarely talked about her death, only her life; he’d loved his wife deeply and desperately. Her father reminded her often of how much she resembled her mother. Perhaps he felt his wife was still nearby when Imogen was around.
Imogen wished she’d known her mother, but she’d died only days after Imogen was born. Her father never told her the cause of death; he’d always just got upset and told her to leave it be when she’d asked about it.
Imogen couldn’t stand to see her father upset. It was why she’d given in to him so often, let him talk her out of doing things she wanted to do.
Would she let him this time?
From her perch in the tree she saw his car go down the drive. That meant only Mrs. Povey would be in the house, probably cleaning up from brunch before having her afternoon off.
Mrs. Povey.
The cook had been around since Imogen could remember. Perhaps she would know a little more about what happened in the past. Imogen had never asked her because her father had always said Fontaine business was no one’s business but the Fontaines’.
But this was too important.
She shut the windows and latched the trapdoor behind herself before shimmying down the ladder and hurrying across to the big house. She entered through the kitchen door to find Mrs. Povey finishing the dishes.
“Imogen, how lovely to see you. Your father said you were ill.”
“I’m fine. We had a bit of an argument,” Imogen said, picking up a dish towel and helping her dry the rest of the dishes.
Mrs. Povey turned to her. “You two never argue.”
Imogen murmured in agreement. “Mrs. Povey, how long have you worked here?”
Mrs. Povey looked surprised. “Since just before you were born. Your dad hired me to help cook when your mother was too tired from the pregnancy.”
Imogen felt hope lift inside her. “Was it a bad pregnancy for her?”
“I wouldn’t say bad as such. She’d miscarried twice before and was being extra careful with you.”
“She had trouble carrying to term?” Imogen asked.
“You should be asking your father, not me.” The older woman hung up her dish towel and concentrated on wiping down the already clean bench.
“He won’t talk to me about it. He never would.”
Mrs. Povey shook her head sadly. “I can’t tell you, Imogen. He said if I spoke about that time he would fire me and he meant it. I’m too old to find a new job and I like this one.”
Imogen stared. Fire her? For telling her about her mother? She wasn’t expecting that at all.
There was one place that might have answers: her father’s study. “I might go upstairs for a while, wait until Papa comes home.”
Mrs. Povey looked at her until Imogen dropped her gaze. “You could never lie, Imogen. Please don’t do whatever you’re thinking about doing. At least not while I’m here. I do still need this job.”
Imogen couldn’t defy her. “All right.” She gave the cook a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you anyway.”
She left the house and wandered back to her place. She was no good at investigative stuff; maybe she should get Piper’s help.
The thought of Piper gave her an idea. When her mother died, her father was already a famous designer. The death of his wife would have surely made the news, if only in Houston. Hurrying inside she turned on her laptop, hoping some of the old editions had been digitized.
She searched for her mother’s name and came up with articles just mentioning her as Remy’s late wife.
She would have to go to the library or even the paper’s archives. On a mission now, she rang Piper.
“Does your paper keep archives of their previous editions?” she asked when Piper answered.
“Of course.”
“Can you get me access to them?”
“What are you searching for?”
Imogen told Piper about her argument with her father and her conversation with Mrs. Povey. “I need to find out more.”
“Oh, honey. Of course you do.” Her voice was sympathetic. “How about you meet me at the paper in an hour?”
Imogen’s heart beat faster. “You can get in today?”
“There’s always someone there,” she said. “What date did your mom die?”
Imogen told her.
“All right. I’ll meet you there soon.”
Imogen hung up, excited and afraid. What if her father was hiding the information for a good reason? Did she really want to know the truth?
Of course she did. She
had to figure out why he was so desperate to keep her by his side.
She grabbed a notebook and her bag and headed into town.
***
Piper let her into the Houston Age building when she arrived and gave her a big hug. “All the archives are on microfilm. I’ve found the one for that period. It shouldn’t take long to find something.”
They arrived at a room set up with several microfilm machines. “Do you know how to work these things?” asked Imogen.
Piper laughed. “Of course. I sometimes need to go back to the old information when I’m researching a story. They’re slowly digitizing everything but there’s a big backlog.” While she talked she fed a roll of film into the machine and then fiddled with some knobs to get it to work. “We’ll start with the day of her death and then go through the days afterward. It may have taken a while for the news to break.” She indicated a chair. “Take a seat.”
Imogen sat and as the screen in front of them lit up with the image of the front page the day her mother had died, she leaned forward to read. Piper slowly scrolled through the paper, but there was no mention of the Fontaines.
The next day was more fruitful. Only a few pages in was an article about how Imogen’s mother had died suddenly. There was a picture of both her mother and father from happier days. Piper printed the page for Imogen.
The day after contained an obituary for Frances Fontaine.
Frances Margaret Fontaine (nee Ryder) died from complications with her pregnancy on Tuesday night. She was thirty-three. She is survived by her husband, owner of Tour de Force, fashion designer Remy Fontaine, and their infant daughter, Imogen Rae.
Frances grew up in Houston, daughter to Julie and Robert Ryder, sister to Allen and Peter. She enjoyed traveling and spent several years backpacking around Europe, where she met her future husband, Remy Fontaine.
Upon her marriage she became an active philanthropist, organizing various charity events and speaking publicly for the under-privileged. She was a much loved member of the community.
Imogen didn’t read any further. She stared at the screen as the shocks hit one after another.
Her mother had died because of her.
The Texan Quartet (Books 1-4) Omnibus Page 37
