A Tangled Web Page 16

  “An army invades, madame. Two people simply displace. I felt displaced. Do you anticipate that it will happen often?”

  “As often as possible,” Stephanie said, more sharply than she intended. Everyone wanted to be in charge of something: Madame Besset wanted to be in charge of the kitchen; Robert wanted to be in charge of the school he headed and of their cooking lessons; Max wanted to be in charge of her and of the house. And I ought to be in charge of something, she thought. But I don’t know what that would be. If I were really good at something—if I’d earned my living in some profession—wouldn’t it have come back to me by now? Some hints, at least?

  Well, maybe I did have a hint. I redesigned the living room and Max said I had a good eye. An excellent eye, he said. You might have done it as a hobby. But even if it was only a hobby, I still knew exactly how I wanted everything to look. And it looked just the way I’d hoped and I felt so happy doing it . . .

  Maybe I could get a job. I could help people make their homes beautiful. I wouldn’t even charge them; I’d do it just because it makes me happy. And because it would give me another name—interior designer—an identity. I’d know exactly who I am.

  Maybe then, what I would be in charge of is myself.

  She became aware of Madame Besset’s scowl. “I’m sorry,” she said gently. “I meant, I enjoy learning from Father Chalon—you remember I told you he’d been a three-star chef?—and I hope he’ll come often to give me lessons.”

  “I know who he is, madame; Chalon’s was famous everywhere. People mourned its disappearance. I would not have allowed anyone else in my kitchen.”

  Oh, wouldn’t you? Stephanie thought. This is my house and my kitchen and I’ll decide who occupies it. I saved your job today.

  But she heard Max walking down the gallery and knew it was not worth arguing about. She and Madame Besset would get along most easily by skirting difficult issues, letting things slide into place almost as if arranged by someone else, and finding ways not to dwell on who really made the decisions in that house.

  I wonder if that’s how other people do it, she thought, and then Max was there and they were on their way to the garage. “If you could, we need flour for tonight,” Madame Besset called after them. “I thought I had more than enough, but for a pie, and bread—”

  Max closed the door on her voice. “Shall we bring flour for our chef?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” Stephanie said. “She needs to shine tonight, to outperform Robert. I predict a memorable dinner.”

  “The battle of the foie gras.” Max opened the car door on the driver’s side. “Well, let’s see what you can do.”

  Stephanie sat behind the wheel, momentarily frozen. She felt Max’s eyes on her face and hands and she could not remember the first thing to do.

  “The key,” he said.

  “I know,” she retorted coldly, and then everything came back, and she was all right. She started the car, backed smoothly out of the garage, and drove through their gates to the street. “But I don’t know how to get to Cavaillon.”

  “Turn right just beyond the gateposts and follow the road down the hill.” He was amused, and Stephanie realized that her hands were gripping the steering wheel and she was gritting her teeth. I probably look like a warrior about to scale the ramparts, she thought. I’ll feel better if I can pretend it’s Madame Besset sitting beside me. A laugh broke from her.

  “What is it?” Max asked.

  “I was trying to pretend you’re Madame Besset, but that was more than my imagination could manage.”

  He chuckled. “I’m relieved to hear it.”

  The exchange had relaxed her; now her hands lay lightly on the wheel and, for the first time, she let herself look at the landscape. Her eyes darted to left and right, hungrily taking in scenes she had glimpsed only once, when Max brought her here from the hospital.

  From their terrace, her view had been of Cavaillon from above: a jumble of orange tile roofs, a few concrete apartment buildings, a highway. Beyond lay a valley where small, neat fields of grapes and melons and potatoes nestled between Cavaillon and the gentle hills of the Lubéron range. Now she saw the town and the fields from the street: new shapes, new colors, a real town.

  She slowed down as she drove into town and along its tree-lined streets. “Where shall I go?”

  “Wherever you like.”

  She smiled and drove at random, turning wherever it pleased her. She passed the Grand Marché supermarket, its parking lot filled with cars, and the trailer park behind it, some with added porches and tiny gardens; she passed small shops and bistros, homes and apartments, and then saw the shops change: their windows sparkled; they displayed elegant gowns and shoes, jewelry and kitchenware. Then Cavaillon’s main square opened up before them, with its fountain topped with a sculpture of metal spikes like the rays of the sun. Trying to see everything, Stephanie drove more slowly, barely crawling, and soon other drivers were honking angrily, shouting at her, throwing up their hands in Gallic frustration and telling her in various ways where she should go and what she should do with herself.

  “Ignore them,” Max said, and she nodded, but in fact she barely heard him or the shouts of the other drivers; she was in her own small shell, trembling with the rapture of discovery. Oh, the people, so many people, old and young, skinny and fat, strolling or striding purposefully along the sidewalks, pulling off jackets and coats in the March sun to reveal a kaleidoscope of patterned shirts and plaid pants like flashes of light amid sober business suits and casual dresses. And so many cars crazily swerving around her, the drivers gesticulating when her eyes met theirs; and so many cyclists weaving casually and cheerfully through the treacherous traffic; and the shop windows beckoning with bright displays, and sidewalk cafés with white-aproned waiters holding trays high as they slid sideways between crammed tables where people sat reading the newspaper or talking, their heads close together, striking the table to make an important point . . . how wonderful it all was, how noisy and alive and busy after the silence of the stone house on the hill.

  Stephanie was buoyant, as if she had broken free and had just been born into this wonderful world. I love it; I love being part of the world, I love being alive and being me, here, now . . . whoever I am.

  Joyous, growing confident, she drove more easily, speeding up to join the movement of traffic. She turned into the main shopping areas of town, no longer fearful that she would scrape the sides of parked cars or run over curbs when she turned corners. By the time she turned onto the cours Gambetta, she was allowing herself swift glances into the windows of the shops on both sides of the wide street. And then she looked, and looked again, into the windows of a shop in the middle of the block and stepped on the brake. “Max, I have to stop; where can I park?”

  “Nowhere,” he said dryly, looking up and down the street. “Well, perhaps over there. Have you ever parked anywhere but in our garage?”

  “Not really. Would you do it? I’ll wait for you in that shop.”

  He followed her glance. It was the largest shop on the street, its slightly dusty windows flanking a wide door beneath the name Jacqueline en Provence spelled out in tall gold decorative letters. In the windows Max saw furniture and ceramics, floor pillows, dishes, draperies and tall glass hurricane lamps crammed together. “For refurnishing our house?”

  “Oh. Yes, if there’s anything . . .” She opened the door and stepped from the car. She had not thought of furnishings for their house; she had not thought of anything except seeing what was inside the shop. It fascinated her, and she did not even hear Max’s grunt of annoyance as he circled the car and sat in the driver’s seat.

  “Wait for me there,” he said. “Don’t wander off.”

  “Yes.” She was already crossing the sidewalk, heading for the door.

  Just inside, she stopped and looked around. There was barely room to move: antique sideboards and hutches held displays of old translucent china and vases; antique sofas, chairs and rockers were grou
ped around tables and desks mellowed by age, set with silver and glass bowls filled with old marbles, napkin rings, candle snuffers, salt cellars. Wherever a few inches of space had been found on the floor there were baskets holding folded tablecloths and sets of place mats and napkins. Everything in the shop contained something which contained something else; the floor was carpeted, the walls were hung with draperies and tapestries, chandeliers hung from the ceiling. The air smelled of silk and wool and freshly ironed cotton, the lemony scent of furniture polish, and the sweet, slightly musty scent of old velvet and tapestries and faded rugs. Like someone’s attic, Stephanie thought, and she knew that this was the most wonderful place in the world and that she felt she had come home.

  “Yes, madame.” A tall, slender woman, austerely beautiful, had come from another room. She wore a gray silk dress, perfect in its simplicity, and her ash blond hair was held loosely back from her face. “What may I show you?”

  “Oh, the desk,” Stephanie said, choosing a piece at random. “It looks very old.”

  “Seventeen-thirty, perhaps -forty. The construction of the drawers and the curve of the legs . . .” She pulled open a drawer and Stephanie bent to look. The dusty smell of the wood enveloped her and suddenly she felt dizzy. Without thinking, she knelt on the floor and ran her hand over the smooth wood of the legs and around the carvings of the feet, like a blind person identifying features. “It’s in very fine condition,” she said at last, standing up.

  “Yes.” The woman was peering at her closely. “Madame knows something about furniture?”

  “No, I don’t know anything, but I’d like to. I like old pieces, working with them, arranging them . . .” She moved to a bureau and touched a candelabrum centered on it. Fanciful animals played at its base and its arms stretched upward like tree branches, holding eleven candles. “Can you tell me about this? And what it costs?”

  “It was made by Ladatte, about 1770. As you see, it is gilt bronze and the candles seem to rise out of flowers. It is a favorite piece of mine; its twin is in the Palazzo Reale in Turin.”

  “And the price?”

  “Fifty thousand francs, madame.”

  Stephanie touched the candelabrum again. “Is that a good price?”

  The woman smiled. “It is a very rare piece.”

  Stephanie turned. “And it will be perfect for someone’s home, and then cost will not be an issue.”

  “As madame says.” They shared a smile. “Is there anything else I can tell you, madame?”

  “Oh, I want to know about everything. I love this place, just being here . . . I never want to leave.”

  She looked everywhere, her gaze coming to rest on a coat tree hung with boldly designed tablecloths in brilliant yellows and blues, ochers and splashes of vermilion. “Would you let me work here?” she asked abruptly. “I’d do anything, whatever you need, and I know I could learn, I’m sure I could learn and be useful, and I want to be here so much; I want it more than—” She saw Max pushing open the door and lowered her voice. “Well, I don’t really know if I could . . . I mean, I’d have to ask . . . someone, but if I could work here, would you let me?”

  The woman watched Max walk toward them; then she turned her back to him, facing Stephanie as if forming an alliance. “I wish I could, madame. I like you very much, but you see I have two women who help me now and I cannot afford anyone else, especially someone I must train. I am truly sorry. Perhaps you would wish to ask me again in a few months. Who knows? Something may have changed.”

  Max heard the last few words. “Ask what in a few months?” he asked Stephanie.

  “If I can work here.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I love it, I love being here . . .” She was holding back tears, feeling as if a door, briefly opened on enchantment, had swung shut. “I don’t have anything to do, Max, and I want to do something, and it would be so wonderful if I could work here . . .”

  “Just here, or anywhere?”

  “Just here.”

  “There are other shops.”

  “Not like this one.”

  “You said you would redesign our house, buy new furniture; that should keep you busy for a long time.”

  “I can still do that. But I want to be here, too.”

  “I’d rather you were at home. Now that you can drive, you can visit other towns, buy anything you want for the house and for yourself. There’s no need for you to work.”

  “Oh, you’re talking about money. I’m talking about something else. I want to work. I want to work here.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. What difference does it make? Max, I want this so much. Is it that you don’t want me to work? Why shouldn’t I? I’d like to find something I’m really good at, something I can be proud of. It really isn’t the money, you know; I’d work for nothing just to be here.”

  There was a silence. Max looked past her, seeing nothing of the shop, seeing instead Ambassadors, Sabrina Longworth’s shop in London. He had considered from the time she was in the hospital the possibility that she would regain her memory, and he had worked out several scenarios for dealing with that if it happened, all of them built around the central fact that there had been a bomb on his yacht and he—and probably she, too—had been the target.

  He did not know how much she had known of the forged porcelains that had been a private sideline for Ivan Lazlo and Rory Carr, who had worked in his smuggling operation; for some time he had not known himself. He wondered if Sabrina had unknowingly bought one of the forgeries and then found out about it; if she had, and if she then confronted Lazlo or Carr, they would have been delighted to get rid of both Max and Sabrina with the same bomb. But it did not really matter if she had known something or not: she was with him and therefore Carr and Lazlo probably thought she was a danger to them, too.

  He could tell her that much: that she had been a target because of him. But he could not explain why he did not want her to work in a public place, even in a town as small as Cavaillon, the center of the region’s melon farming, not a place where tourist buses or hordes of visitors came in the summer.

  Because he had realized, soon after they moved there, that they were not home free after all. As long as there was no body of Max Stuyvesant, whoever actually set the bomb would be wondering whether he really was dead. And looking for him.

  He could not tell her that because she knew nothing of Max Stuyvesant. She did not know that Max Lacoste had dyed his hair and grown a beard to go with his new name, and lived more quietly than ever before and avoided places popular with English tourists. There was no reason for her to know any of that. But now she was asking him for something that seemed so simple he did not know how to continue to refuse. Something had broken free of the locked rooms of her amnesia and brought her here. Inwardly he shrugged. One more risk. And it will please her.

  “Well, madame,” he said to the proprietor, who had walked a few steps away to give them privacy, “my wife seems to want to be an apprentice in your shop. For no salary. That eliminates the problem of your payroll. I would expect, however, that you would reopen the discussion of a salary in six months or so, when you both know what she can do.”

  Stephanie looked at him with such gratitude that the woman drew in her breath. What made a beautiful young woman so dependent on a man? She stood before him, her face as eager as a child’s, her body bent forward slightly as if she could draw from him the answer she longed for. There is no way I can say no, the woman thought; I have to help her get away from her husband, if only for a few hours a day.

  “It would give me great pleasure to have you here, madame,” she said. “My name is Jacqueline Lapautre; you will call me Jacqueline and I am sure we will work together in perfect harmony.”

  “Oh.” Stephanie’s breath came out in a long sigh. She held out her hand. “Sabrina Lacoste. Thank you, thank you; I’ll do anything you want. Could I come every day?”

  “Two days a week would be sufficient,” Max sai
d.

  Jacqueline glanced at him. “For stability and continuity, monsieur, it would be best if Sabrina came in every day for a few hours.”

  “Well, we’ll try it for a month. I want you at home for lunch, Sabrina.”

  Stephanie’s eyes met Jacqueline’s; then she looked at Max. “I can’t do that if I’m working. But you said you’d be traveling more . . . and we’ll still have dinner . . . and breakfast. That’s really quite enough, Max.”

  “Is it,” he said. “Make your arrangements, then; I’ll be in the car, just down the street.”

  When he was gone, the two women looked at each other. “He wants to protect me,” Stephanie said.

  Jacqueline smiled. “To my knowledge, there are no threats here.” She held out her hands and Stephanie took them. “Welcome, my dear. I think we are going to have a very good time.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Sabrina climbed down from the ladder in the window of Collectibles and adjusted the antique lace curtains she had just hung from a rod at the ceiling. They filtered the April sunlight streaming through the glass, patterning the Italian silk armchair and needlepoint footstool she had placed in front of them. She contemplated the arrangement, then brought a heavy bronze Art Deco lamp to a spot beside the chair.

  “Oh, Stephanie, I like that,” Madeline Kane said, coming from the back room. She was small and slender, with a thin, delicate face dominated by sharp black eyes. “I wouldn’t have thought they’d go together at all.”

  “It still needs something. What did we do with those old eyeglasses someone brought in last month?”

  “They’re on the Louis Quinze desk, aren’t they? I’ll get them.”

  When she brought them back, Sabrina hung them over the arm of the chair, their round, spidery wire frames and glass lenses glinting in the sun. “And a book,” she murmured, and went into the shop and found an 1870 leather-bound copy of Alice in Wonderland with faded gilt lettering and frayed edges. “Stephanie and I loved this book,” she murmured, and leafed through it until she found a page she liked, then laid it on the seat of the chair, opened to an illustration of Alice and the Caterpillar.