Sarah was grateful that she was still working for her, particularly now that Julian was coming into the business. He had great taste and a wonderful sense of design, and a fine eye for extraordinary jewels, but there were many things he didn’t know about running the business. Emanuelle was no longer working on the floor selling, and hadn’t been in a long time; she had an office upstairs, she was the directrice générale, and her office was directly across from Sarah’s. They left their doors open sometimes, and shouted across the hall, like two girls in a dormitory doing homework. They had remained close friends, and only their friendship, her children, and her ever-increasing workload had helped Sarah survive William’s death. It had been more than six years, and for Sarah, they had been brutally lonely.

Life wasn’t the same without him, in countless major ways, and all the small ones. All the laughter they had shared, all the thoughtful little gestures, the smiles, the flowers, the deep understanding, the shared or even diametrically opposed points of view, his endless good judgment, and limitless wisdom, they were all gone now, and the ache she felt was almost physical, it was so painful.

The children had kept her busy over the years, Isabelle was sixteen, and Xavier seven. He was into everything, and Sarah often wondered if he was going to survive his childhood. Sarah found him on the roof of the château, or in caves he created near the stables, testing electric wires, and building things that looked as though they might easily kill him. But somehow he managed to get through it, and his energy and ingenuity intrigued her. He had a passion for rocks, too, and he always thought he had just found gold or silver or diamonds. The moment anything glimmered in the soil, he would pounce on it and proclaim he had found a bijou for Whitfield’s

Phillip had children of his own, a boy of five and a girl of three, Alexander and Christine, but Sarah admitted only to Emanuelle that they were so much like Cecily, they were of very little interest to her. They were sweet, but very wan and pale, and they were not very exciting, or very endearing. They were distant and shy, even with Sarah. Sarah brought Xavier to play with them at Whitfield sometimes, but he was far more enterprising than they were, and always got into too much mischief, and it was obvious eventually that Phillip wasn’t anxious to have him.

In fact, Phillip wasn’t fond of any of his brothers or his sister, nor was he interested in them, except Julian, whom Sarah sometimes feared Phillip hated.

He was unreasonably jealous of him, so much so that she worried that with Julian entering the business, Phillip might do something to hurt him. She suspected that Emanuelle feared it, too, and she had already urged her to watch him. Phillip had once been her friend, her charge when she was young and her life had been less sophisticated than it was now, and in some ways she knew him even better than Sarah. She knew what viciousness he was capable of, what slights he feared, and what revenge he wrought when he thought someone had crossed him. In fact, it amazed Emanuelle that after all these years, Phillip was still getting on with Nigel. It was an unusual union between them, a marriage of convenience of sorts, but it was very obviously still working.

But Phillip hated how much Julian was loved, by his family, by his friends, even by his women. He took out the most attractive gills in town, they were always beautiful and fun and glamorous, and they adored him. Even before Phillip was married the women he took out were always a little bit sleazy. And Emanuelle knew he was still attracted to that kind of woman when his wife wasn’t around. She had seen him in Paris with one of them once, and he had pretended she was his secretary and they were there on business. They were staying at the Plaza Athénée, and he borrowed some of their flashiest jewelry to let her wear for a few days, and he had asked Emanuelle if she would be good enough not to tell his mother. But the jewelry looked pale on her, she looked tired and used, and the ridiculously short clothes she wore were not even stylish. She just looked cheap, and Phillip didn’t seem to notice. Sarah was sorry for him. It was obvious to her by then that he wasn’t happy in his marriage.

But Phillip was not missed at Julian’s graduation.

“So, my friend,” Emanuelle asked Julian as they all left the Sorbonne, “how soon do you begin work? Tomorrow, n’est-ce pas?” He knew she was teasing, because she was coming to the party his mother was giving for him that night at the château, and all his friends were going to be there.

The boys were staying in the stables and the girls were sleeping in the main house and the cottage, and the additional guests were staying in local hotels. They were expecting about three hundred people. After the party, he was going to the Riviera for a few days, but he had promised his mother he would go to work on Monday.

“Monday, I promise.” He looked at Emanuelle with huge eyes that had already melted many hearts. He looked so much like his father. “I swear …” He held up a hand officially, and Emanuelle laughed. It would be fun to have him at Whitfield’s. He was so handsome, women would buy anything from him. She just hoped he didn’t buy for them. He was incredibly generous, as William had been, and terribly kindhearted.

Sarah had offered him her Paris flat, until he could find his own, and he was looking forward to staying there. She had just given him an Alfa Romeo as a graduation present, which would surely impress the girls. He offered to drive Emanuelle to the château in it that day, after they had lunch at the Relais at the Plaza, but she had promised to go with Sarah.

Isabelle rode down to the château with him instead, and he teased her about her long legs and her short skirts, as she piled into the car, looking more like twenty-five than sixteen.

And as Julian often said about her, she was trouble. She flirted with all his friends, and had gone out with several of them. He was always amazed that his mother didn’t take a stronger position with her. But ever since his father had died, she was softer with all of them. It was almost as though she didn’t have the strength or the desire to fight them. Julian thought she let Xavier run wild, too, but all he ever did was set firecrackers off in the stables and frighten the horses, or chase the farm animals into the vineyards. Isabelle’s misdeeds were far more discreet, and a lot more dangerous, if what his friend Jean-François said was true. She had driven him to a frenzy recently on a ski weekend in St Moritz, and then she had slammed the door in his face, a fact for which Julian was grateful, but he also knew that soon she wouldn’t be slamming doors, she would be leaving them open.

“So,” he said, as they drove south on Route 20, toward Orléans. “What’s new with you, any new boyfriends?”

“No one special.” She sounded very cool, which was unusual for her. Normally, she loved to brag to him about her latest conquests. But she was more secretive these days, and she was getting prettier by the hour. She looked like their mother, but in a more sultry, smoky way. Everything about her suggested passion and immediate gratification. And her underlying innocence only served to make the invitation more tempting.

“How’s school?” She was still going to school in La Marolle, which he thought was a mistake. He thought she should go away to school, perhaps to a convent. At least he had been smart enough to be discreet when he was her age; he looked all innocence, and pretended to play tennis after school, while he was actually having an affair with one of his teachers. No one had ever discovered them, but eventually she had gotten serious, and she had threatened to commit suicide when he finally left her, which really upset him. And after that it was the mother of one of his friends, but that had been complicated, too, and after that, he realized it was easier chasing virgins than dealing with the complications of older women. But they still intrigued him anyway. He was totally omnivorous when it came to women. He adored them all, old, young, beautiful, simple, intelligent, and sometimes even ugly. Isabelle accused him of having no taste, and his friends said. He was always horny, which was true, but no great sin as far as Julian was concerned. He was, and happy to oblige at any moment.

“School is stupid and boring;” Isabelle answered him, looking petulant, “but it’s over for the summer, thank God.” And she was furious they weren’t going anywhere till August. Her mother had promised her a trip to Capri, but she wanted to stay at the château until then. She had things to see about there, alterations they wanted to make on the Paris store, and repairs that needed to be made on the farm and the vineyards.

“It’s so boring-being here,” she complained, lighting a cigarette, taking a few puffs and tossing it out the window. He didn’t think she really smoked, she was just trying to impress him.

“I used to love it at your age. There’s so much to do, and Mother always lets you have friends to stay.”

“Not boys.” She glowered at him. She adored him, but sometimes he didn’t understand anything, especially lately.

“Funny,” he teased her mercilessly, “she always let me have boys over.”

“Very funny.”

“Thank you. Well, at least it won’t be boring tonight, my dear. But you’d better behave yourself, or I’ll spank you.”

“Thanks a lot.” She closed her eyes and slid down in the seat of his Alfa Romeo. “I like your car, by the way.” She smiled at him. Sometimes she really liked him.

“So do I. It was nice of Mother to do that.”

“Yeah, she’ll probably make me wait till I’m ninety.” Isabelle thought her mother was unreasonable with her. But anyone who stood in the way of what she wanted, in her eyes, was a monster.