Chapter Three #3
‘You’ve felt responsible, haven’t you? For this place.
You told me it’s been in your mother’s family for generations.
Now it’s gone. It isn’t your fault that it’s gone.
If there was any fault it was, if you think about it, your mother’s fault in trusting your father.
And before that it was your great-grandfather’s fault for putting debt on it.
So, because it’s not your fault it’s gone, it’s not your responsibility either. ’
He could see her face work now, her hands clenching. ‘But I don’t want it gone,’ she said in a faint voice.
He gave a sigh. ‘The secret of a happy life, Arielle…’ he said in a very dry tone, ‘…is only to want what we can get.’ He took another breath.
‘If you want this place then my advice to you is this. Go back to England and make some money, enough to make whoever buys this place an offer they won’t want to refuse. ’
She looked at him. ‘I don’t know how to make money.’
‘Then learn!’ he said impatiently. ‘Anyone can do it! I’m proof of that—’
He broke off suddenly and stood up. ‘That’s enough of a life lesson for now. I’m hungry. What’s for lunch?’
It was a distraction, he knew, but it was also what he happened to want right then.
And getting what he wanted, whatever it was, was the most compelling life lesson that he had learnt. And lived by.
Arielle’s voice interrupted his familiar mantra, sounding hesitant, ‘I usually just have salad for lunch.’
‘What kind?’
She replied, still sounding hesitant, ‘Tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, cheese and ham. That sort of thing.’
Lycos nodded. ‘Sounds good. Let’s eat outside.’
She was still hesitant, so he crossed to the ancient looking fridge, which was rumbling to itself in the corner, and opened it.
He brought out what he could find by way of cheese, ham and butter, and put it all on the table.
He knew that some of the baguette he’d brought with him remained from their breakfast. Arielle collected herself sufficiently to fetch tomatoes and a gold-yellow pepper from a large bowl by the sink.
‘I’ll… I’ll go and cut some lettuce,’ he heard her say as she headed outside.
Lycos let her be. She needed to come down completely from that state of mental turmoil she’d succumbed to.
He busied himself loading up the wooden breakfast tray, wondering when he’d last had to prepare his own lunch.
Arielle returned with a handful of leaves, washing them and then tossing them in a crockery bowl with oil and vinegar.
She didn’t speak and neither did Lycos. He picked up the tray.
‘Ready?’ he asked and made his way out to the terrace.
The midday heat hit him and he was glad of the shady awning.
Arielle emerged with the salad bowl, a jug of water and two glasses.
Lycos sat himself down, as did she, and he started to help himself to bread, cheese and ham, and a couple of the ripe tomatoes. He got stuck in.
‘This is good cheese,’ he said.
‘My neighbour makes it,’ Arielle said. ‘The ham is from their pigs too.’ Her voice was back to sounding studiedly neutral.
She poured water into the glasses. Lycos took a draught, wondering when he’d last drank tap water, and only that, during a meal. But it was cold and refreshing with a distinct taste to it, unlike city water, and he remarked as such.
‘It’s from the original well,’ Arielle said. ‘Though it’s pumped up by electricity now, not by hand.’ She paused and he could see she wanted to say something else. Then she did.
‘When…when you said what you said about responsibility…did you mean that?’
‘Yes,’ he said, looking across at her. ‘You can let this place go, Arielle, because nothing about it or what’s happened to it, is your responsibility.
Except, maybe…’ he allowed a trace of rare humour to creep into his voice, ‘…for your poultry. You can find new homes for them with my blessing. Though…’ he added ‘…I suspect unless Matilde and Maurice get a swimming pool of their own, wherever they end up they won’t be best pleased! ’
She gave a wry, if reluctant, laugh. Lycos liked the sound of it.
He let his gaze rest on her for a moment from beneath his lashes.
He wanted, he realised, for her to get over what was obviously a blow to her.
Discovering that what she’d said she’d been dreading, her stepbrother disposing of the mas, had actually happened. Get over it and…
And what?
His gaze rested on her a moment longer. She really was, he knew, exceptionally lovely.
Maybe, now he was here, he should take advantage of that.
Thoughts flickered in his head. Yes, he was here, but he wasn’t exactly going to stay, was he?
Her hesitant voice interrupted his thoughts.
‘When are you planning to sell?’ she asked. Her voice was low and she didn’t look at him.
‘I’ll be putting it on the market when I get to Paris. I was on my way there, driving up from the coast, when I decided to stop off and take a look this morning.’
‘Do you live in Paris?’
‘I don’t live anywhere. I stay in hotels or rent apartments if I’m anywhere for any duration.’
‘But you’re based in Greece?’ she sounded puzzled, making an assertion she seemed to assume must be the case.
‘That’s the last place I’d call home.’
He hadn’t intended there to be an edge in his voice, but it was there all the same.
‘Why?’
She was looking at him now, straight at him, with those celestial blue eyes of hers. As if she could see into him. Or wanted to.
‘Why?’ he echoed. ‘Because… I escaped.’
‘From what?’
He drew back, dropping his knife on the table. ‘What is this? Psychoanalysis?’
‘Not really. But you’ve seen fit to lecture me about my circumstances. I… I’m simply retaliating.’
He gave a laugh. A short one, but a laugh for all that. Although there was an edge to it too.
‘From things I wanted to escape from. Mainly poverty. And I have. Now I can get things I want. That’s why, Arielle, I say the same to you. If you make money, you can get what you want.’
The blue eyes were still looking at him. ‘How did you?’ she asked. ‘Escape poverty?’
‘I discovered I had a skill and I honed it, until I could use it on others. On people with money. To remove it from them—or enough of it to enrich me in the end.’
She frowned. ‘What skill?’
‘I told you already. The same way I acquired this place. I gamble, Arielle. That’s my skill.’ He met her frowning gaze.
‘So you are a professional gambler? Is that it, you make a living out of gambling?
He shook his head. That was easy to answer too.
‘No, I make a living out of investing the money I make out of gambling. Gambling provided me with capital, lump sums, that I then could invest in whatever it is in the world that makes money. Once you have money, Arielle, it’s easy enough to make more.
Millionaires and billionaires don’t have to work hard to stay rich.
The markets do it for them. Providing they stay sensible, they’ll make more money.
Or, rather, they themselves won’t. Their fund managers will make it for them and cream off a percentage from their clients to make their money while they’re at it. ’
‘But you do still gamble? You just won the Mas Delfine off my stepbrother by gambling.’
He could hear the bitterness that the place she loved had changed hands in a game of cards in her voice, but he ignored it.
‘To keep my hand in,’ he said. ‘To pay, if you like, homage to the skill that made me rich. We should not, Arielle, neglect our roots.’ His voice was dry and self-mocking, yet cautionary.
He would never, must never, forget his roots.
His origins. Or he might become like the other rich idiots out there who took their wealth for granted.
He wanted to change the subject away from himself. He was not used to talking about himself—he never did. He was no one’s business but his own.
‘So,’ he said his voice changing as he helped himself to another sweet tomato.
‘What’s your skill, Arielle? Besides looking after this place and attempting to shoo ducks off the swimming pool?
’ He let humour lighten his voice, as his eyes went to her questioningly.
‘With luck it might be a skill you could use to make enough money to buy this place back.’
She gave a rueful half-smile. ‘My skill isn’t one that yields much likelihood of riches,’ she told him.
‘What is it?’ Lycos asked.
‘Music. I studied it. Went to music college. But there is a huge number of good musicians out there and only a few make a living. Even fewer make a good living and almost none become virtuosos or stars! My mother always encouraged me though and my father was happy enough to pay for my studies. He gave me the piano in the parlour, so I have that to thank him for. Then…’ Arielle hesitated as a shadow moved over her face, ‘…after I’d graduated my mother became ill, so I came here to look after her.
I stayed with her until she died. Then I stayed on, while I mourned her and then…
Well, my father remarried four months later. ’
She continued, ‘And because I loathed Naomi, and because she wanted only my obliteration and non-existence, I stayed here until my father died within a year of marrying Naomi and… Well, you know the rest. So, here I am. Until…’ she said with resignation, or maybe even acceptance he thought, ‘…you throw me out.’
She’d cleared her plate too and she got to her feet, packing away the dishes back on the tray.
Lycos did not help her. He only watched her deft, quick movements.
Thoughts were moving inside his head and he was not sure what to make of them.
The heat of the day was palpable, even there shaded below the awning.
All around, cicadas sang their constant chorus, while birdsong interrupted as if an occasional vocalist. The air was somnolent with fragrance from the honeysuckle winding over a nearby pergola and the lavender lining the stone walls.
The heat radiated up from the stone paving of the terrace.
Arielle disappeared indoors with her laden tray. Lycos stretched out his legs, lounged back in his chair and let his gaze rest on the gardens beyond the terrace. His mood was strange. This whole place was strange. Alien to his life.
His life was nothing like this place. This time yesterday he’d been doing a tough workout in the gym at his hotel on the C?te d’Azur, knowing he was heading for the casino that evening to, as he had just told Arielle, keep his hand in.
And at that moment, he should be checked into his hotel in Paris, where he should be meeting Marc Derenz of Banc Derenz for dinner at one of the city’s Michelin-starred restaurants.
The next morning in his formal review being shown spreadsheets, graphs and forecasts, making decisions, moving money and investments around.
Checking out an appropriate realtor to discuss the best price he could get for this latest acquisition.
This remote, old-fashioned Provencal mas in the middle of nowhere, with its hens and a pair of over-indulged ducks, and its very own version of Cinderella with a wicked stepmother and decidedly ugly and brutish stepsibling…
And shall I be her Prince Charming?
Charming her into his bed…?
He felt the question take shape in his head.
Wondering, considering, how to answer it.
He wasn’t yet sure. But there was no rush, after all, to answer it.
He wasn’t going anywhere for now. And that, he realised as he flexed his outstretched legs, recrossed his ankles and lounged back in his seat, felt strangely good…