The Butler

by Danielle Steel

  Their mother had been left destitute when her husband left her, and moved to a poor slum area of Buenos Aires. And she supported her two boys by working at the National Museum of Fine Arts, as a curator in the department of French Impressionists. According to his school records, Joachim had been a good student, his brother less so, and reports of locals who still remembered her informed them that Liese had been a devoted mother.

  It went on to say that when Joachim was fifteen, his mother, then fifty-four, met Francois Legrand, an art expert at the Louvre in Paris. They married two years later, and Liese and Joachim immigrated to Paris to be with Mr. Legrand. His twin, Javier, remained in Buenos Aires, supposedly to finish his studies there, living with family friends. According to all reports, he fell in with bad company, and within two years became involved in the drug trade, and eventually moved to Colombia, where he remained to this day, deeply embedded in the drug cartels. He was considered to be highly dangerous, and had been in prison several times in Mexico, Venezuela, and Colombia, and escaped each time with the help of his powerful connections.

  When Joachim got to France at seventeen, he attended the lycée with high marks, obtained his baccalauréat degree, and spent two years studying art and literature at the Sorbonne. He then began to lose his focus, according to professors’ comments, dropped out, and had assorted minor jobs for five years in Paris, until he attended a respected butler school in London, obtained a job with the Earl of Ashbury, where he remained for a year, and was then hired by the Marquess and Marchioness of Cheshire, eventually became head butler, ran both of their homes, and remained in their employ for sixteen years until the recent death of the marchioness. He left the family on good terms at that time, and was highly thought of by the heir and current marquess. For the past four months he had been living with his mother in Paris, the widow of Francois Legrand. She remained employed and was eighty-one years of age. Upon arrival in France, she obtained a job also at the Louvre and within a year, went to work for an international organization that tracked down important works of art stolen by the Nazis and returned them to the heirs of the family they were taken from. She continued to be employed by them, and was active with the organization, to the present. She lived in the same apartment in Paris she had lived in for twenty-five years. Mr. Legrand died eight years after she came to France. The whereabouts of Javier von Hartmann were currently unknown, but he was believed to reside principally in Bogotá, Colombia.

  * * *

  —

  The report itself was surprisingly bloodless and cut and dried. Given its content, it was very unemotional and listed tragedy after tragedy that had occurred in Joachim’s life and his mother’s. It was chronological, appeared to be well researched and documented, from a wide variety of sources. It also stated that Joachim had no criminal record, had never had a problem with the law, had a clean driving record in England, and paid his taxes and was in good standing and had legal residency and a current work permit in the United Kingdom. All his documents were in order. The report concluded that everyone they had contacted spoke highly of Joachim as an honest, trustworthy person of high morals, with an excellent work ethic and reputation.

  Olivia already knew some of it. She knew all about Javier now, more than she’d ever wanted to know, and Joachim had told her that he’d never seen his father. He hadn’t said that he’d been abandoned and renounced by him almost at birth, that his grandfather had been a Nazi war criminal, and had died in prison, or that his mother had lost both her father’s fortune and her husband’s support and within weeks had descended from a lifetime of comfort and luxury to abject poverty in the slums of Buenos Aires, where Joachim had grown up. Somehow, they had survived it, and she had supported them. The story it told was a sad one, but also a triumph of the human spirit, with a mother who had done everything possible to protect and nurture them, successfully with Joachim, and who had been unable to save Javier, who had defected to the drug lords in Colombia as soon as he could and had been unsalvageable despite all attempts to contact and rescue him.

  Olivia had profound respect for Joachim and his mother. The person to fear in all of that was Javier, which had become clear to her in New York. It seemed unfair to punish Joachim now for the sins of his brother, and she didn’t want to fire him. He was an upstanding, honest man, and a terrific employee. But clearly, if his twin ever surfaced, which seemed unlikely, he posed a danger to them all, and particularly Joachim and his mother.

  Just reading the report saddened her, and made her wonder how they had survived, and how he had turned into such a decent, honorable human being after so much adversity. And his mother was nothing short of remarkable, even at eighty-one.

  There were tears running down Olivia’s cheeks when she finished reading. She printed it out, put it in an envelope, and put it in her safe. She was glad she’d had it done. It put her mind to rest about him forever. No harm would come to her at Joachim’s hands, which was what she had wanted to know. There was no similarity between him and his twin and no connection in twenty-five years.

  Her own mother’s sad life seemed paltry in comparison. She had been weak but not cruel or dangerous. And George Lawrence for all his faults didn’t compare with a Nazi war criminal, a father who had abandoned both his sons, and a Colombian drug lord. Whatever she had been through didn’t match for an instant the tragedies Joachim had survived, and he had still come out of it a decent human being. It would seem that, entirely by accident, she had crossed paths with an extraordinary man. For as long as he was willing to work for her, his job was secure. And it didn’t sound as though his dangerously criminal brother would ever surface in his life again.

  Chapter 12

  After she’d read the report, there were no longer any questions in Olivia’s mind about Joachim. She had no intention of firing him, in spite of his criminal brother. Javier hadn’t come near Joachim in twenty-five years and had turned his back on him. Why would he surface now? As they continued to work side by side at the chateau, they became closer and more at ease with each other again. They were accomplishing a great deal in a short time, with the chateau owner’s willingness to spend vast amounts of money to speed the process along. And Joachim could tell that Olivia was comfortable with him and trusted him again.

  “He must have an incredible fortune,” Joachim commented to Olivia one night about the Russian owner of the chateau. They were working late going over their expenses. Nikolai Petrov never challenged their bills or scolded them for what they spent. His check to Olivia arrived on time every month, and he kept more than enough money in the account from which they paid their suppliers. Olivia was very pleased with how the chateau was progressing. It already looked like a different home, with all the grand glory of the chateau in its original state, and the fine workmanship and every modern convenience that money could buy. She had ordered the fabric for the upholstery and curtains, and there was an entire workroom set up to receive it, with some of the finest curtain makers in Paris waiting to work on the order.

  Audrey called her from time to time to see how it was going and was impressed that Olivia was managing it so well. It was beginning to look like they would have the chateau ready for the owner in under eight months, although the pool area might take a little longer. They even had twenty-two very imposing ancestral portraits to hang in the entrance.

  And through the entire process, Petrov hadn’t come to Paris once. Olivia sent him frequent photographs, and he assured her that he trusted her completely, and was pleased with her results, which was very gratifying. He was always nice to her on the phone and by email, expressed the utmost confidence in her and treated her well.

  It was an exhausting project, but Olivia loved doing it, and Joachim was enjoying it with her. It was an ideal combination of unlimited money, Olivia’s good taste, and a beautiful house, which they were making even more beautiful every day.

  The one thing she always found od
d was that whenever Petrov called her, the number he called from was blocked so that she could not see it, and she didn’t even know what country he was in. She had no phone number to reach him, only email. Supposedly he lived in Moscow, but Audrey said she’d been told that he moved around constantly, and had an elaborate security system, and dozens of bodyguards. Every pane of glass in the chateau was now bulletproof, at his instruction, and his bedroom and office suite were missile-proof. There was an entire floor of bedrooms for his bodyguards, also at his request. There were to be twenty-four of them, bunking two to a room.

  Olivia and Joachim spent many nights working late at the chateau. He was mostly in charge of keeping all of the crews working hard at full speed, and he dealt with the outdoor crews who were trying to make the gardens look like Versailles, at Petrov’s request. They had even brought in a fully grown twelve-foot-tall hedge cut as a maze, which cost a fortune. And the stables were being refreshed for horses he wanted to buy and bring in from Saudi Arabia. They added some additional touches, but few were needed.

  Olivia concentrated more of her efforts on the inside of the chateau and coordinating the artistic side of it. Joachim oversaw the construction and outdoor landscaping. Together they formed a formidable task force. They even worked on many weekends. There was still much she wanted to do in Paris, but she had no time now until they finished the chateau. And looming in the distance was the end of her lease on the Paris apartment. She already knew she wanted to stay, but hadn’t told her landlord yet, and hoped he’d let her. She didn’t want to move again, she loved her new home, and had no desire to go back to her dreary apartment in New York. It seemed part of the past now and wasted years of her life. But she hadn’t let it go or sublet it in case she decided to move back at the end of the year in Paris.

  They were driving back to the city from the chateau on a Friday night when Joachim asked her a question she constantly asked herself.

  “What do you want to do after the chateau?”

  She’d been thinking about it a lot lately, as the project neared completion. “Maybe the same thing on a smaller scale. A lot of Americans still buy chateaux in France. I’ve loved refurbishing this one. Maybe something less extreme. I’ll never have another client with this much money, but it adds a lot of pressure too, although he’s certainly easy to work for.” They both agreed on that. Petrov was an invisible, undemanding presence with unlimited funds.

  “Too much so. I hate to think where the money comes from,” Joachim commented. A job as a butler still hadn’t come up in England for him, and he’d done nothing about pursuing it lately. He was having too much fun working with her, and he couldn’t make this kind of money as a butler. She was paying him a very fair portion of her earnings, in consideration for all the work he was doing. They both knew she couldn’t have done it without him. There was far too much work for one person to handle, too many component parts, and workers you constantly had to chase to show up and threaten and cajole. He was better at that than she was, and she liked the artistry of it better. Their combined talents made for a very efficient team.

  “What are you doing tonight?” he asked, as they entered the sixteenth arrondissement.

  “I was going to soak in a hot tub and go to bed.” She had helped carry some of the lumber that day since the workmen were shorthanded, and rocks for the garden. Each rock was individually selected. Nikolai Petrov wanted the most beautiful garden in France. And Joachim was constantly impressed by how hard she worked. Nothing stopped her or was too hard. “But I think I’ll go to a movie. There’s a new one on the Champs Élysées I want to see, the original version in English. I get homesick once in a while, but not very often.”

  He smiled. Her French had improved in the last few months from speaking to their workers. Her accent was pure American, but she knew the words she needed to speak to the workmen, and they understood her.

  “You can’t go to the Champs Élysées alone. It’s dangerous.” He frowned at her. “There are juvenile delinquents all over the place, and Gypsies.” She still hadn’t made any friends or met anyone, other than the people she worked with, and Joachim. They had a good employer-employee relationship that had developed into an artistic partnership, like war buddies, but he was careful to maintain a respectful distance, which was comfortable for her too. They were both people who shied away from close relationships, although it manifested differently. He had said to her once that signing on for a life of service was like joining a religious order. You gave up your personal life for your job. To do it well, you had to give up your freedom, independence, and other loyalties. The job would always have to come first and the family you worked for, and your own family, personal pursuits, and girlfriend would have to come last.

  “And no woman likes that,” he had said, and she agreed.

  She had sacrificed her own personal life for her work, for a magazine that didn’t even exist now, so what had that gotten her? Ten years of hard work and long nights and an empty pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

  They both agreed that if they’d been dating anyone, they couldn’t have devoted the same intense amount of time to the chateau. But as a time-limited project, they were both willing to do it, and the rewards were considerable.

  He argued with her again about the movie when he dropped her off at home, and offered to take her and she finally gave in. He wasn’t entirely wrong about the Champs Élysées, but she didn’t want to monopolize all his time, and she said she didn’t need a babysitter, to which he always responded that she sounded like his mother.

  “I’ll go home and change. I’ve been crawling around in dirt all day. And I’ll pick you up at eight. That still gives us time to buy popcorn,” he said, and she grinned, and took a bath and changed into clean jeans herself. He was slowly becoming her best friend in Paris.

  When she talked to Claire, her old assistant, in L.A., occasionally, she always asked Olivia if she had a crush on him and she insisted that she didn’t. They were work friends and nothing more and Claire didn’t believe her. She insisted that wasn’t possible with no sexual undercurrent at all.

  “Maybe I’m a freak then,” Olivia said. She hadn’t slept with anyone since she’d come to France, and for months before that, since she had dated a photographer briefly in New York. Like most of her relationships, it ended because she had no time to see him and didn’t really care. She had decided she was too old for casual sex and had never liked that anyway. The only men who had invited her out on dates so far in Paris were married, which she liked even less. She gave them a sharp rebuff every time, and they told her she was too American.

  Joachim’s mother had asked him the same question, if he was attracted to Olivia, and he said the same thing as Olivia had to Claire. He added that it was out of the question. They were employer and employee, and once in a while in their off hours, they enjoyed a casual friendship, or friendly conversation, with no physical overtones whatsoever. Liese didn’t believe him either.

  “One day you’re going to wake up and figure out you’re in love with her,” his mother said matter-of-factly, which annoyed him. She seemed certain of it.

  “Never,” he said confidently.

  “Men and women can’t be friends in that way,” she said wisely.

  “Yes, they can. Everything in life doesn’t have to be about romance, Mama,” he said stubbornly.

  “Well, something does, or it’s a damn sorry existence, and a lonely one. Francois and I started out as friends, and I wanted to keep it that way. He wouldn’t have it, and he was patient and persistent, and I’m glad he was. He was my soul mate.” Her first husband, Joachim’s father, had been dashing, handsome, and superficial, and had deserted her the minute the chips were down. Francois would never have done that. He never even gave up on Javier completely, and always hoped he would find his way back, for Liese’s sake. And Joachim knew that about him. Francois had been such a
good man and the love of his mother’s life.

  “I can’t live a life in service, and go around falling in love with my employers, Mama. Besides, I don’t see her that way, as a sex object. I see her as a person.”

  “And the woman you’re in love with can’t be a person? Who dreamed that up? I may be an old woman, but I remember what love is. You’re not a priest, Joachim. You didn’t take holy orders. At least I hope not.” She doubted that she’d ever have grandchildren, but at least she wanted her son to be happy, and not sacrifice his entire life for his employers. He had always put them and all their needs first, and Liese wished he wouldn’t, or he would be a lonely old man one day, if he wasn’t already. Olivia sounded as if she’d been cut of the same cloth, from what he said. Joachim had mentioned that she was badly marked by her mother’s relationship with a married man, so she was careful not to get too deeply involved with any man. It didn’t sound like a fulfilling life to Liese. It sounded like both her son and Olivia were afraid of love. She secretly wished that Joachim would sleep with her. She had said it once, and Joachim was outraged, and said that even saying that was disrespectful. In Liese’s opinion, they were both running from the best part of life.

  “She’s not a vestal virgin, for God’s sake, or a fourteen-year-old. She’s a forty-three-year-old woman.”

  “She’s only interested in working,” he confirmed. And so was he. It made it easy and safe for them to be together. The most they could ever be was friends.

  “Then she needs a good shaking. And so do you,” his mother scolded him, and hadn’t mentioned it lately. She was coming close to the end of her search for the Monet’s rightful owners, and was working on two new paintings, a Pissarro and a very unusual Picasso that Goering himself had taken out of Paris on his famous art train, on one of his raids on the Louvre. He had put it there for safekeeping after taking it from a well-known Jewish family. Liese was looking forward to working on them when she finished with the Monet. But she also worried about Joachim. He had lost his brother and never known his father, and she knew he was terrified to love.