Read an Excerpt
1
Iowa, USA, 1932
The night was black, without a glimmer of moon or even a single star, and a chill wind searched across the plains, rustling the endless stretches of grain in a sad, rippling lullaby.
The girl was young. Her cheap, brashly patterned summer dress clung to her too-thin body, inching its way up her pale thighs as she struggled from the car with her burden. Standing in the road, she gazed doubtfully at the gravel driveway. She could just make out the outline of a large building lit by the flickering gleam of a single lamp.
“Go on. Hurry up, will ya,” a man’s voice commanded her from the car. “Get it done and let’s get out of here.”
Stumbling in her high heels, the girl walked down the dark driveway, breathing quickly, clutching the bundle close to her, gasping with pain as she turned her ankle on the treacherous gravel. The walk seemed endless, dark with nameless fears. A walk that would cut her off from her future.
Steps, worn by the frequent scrubbing of unwilling hands, gleamed in the sudden lamplight. Trembling, she lay down her burden, wrapping its blue blanket firmly and checking the pin that held it closed. Lifting her eyes she read the sign inscribed in letters wrought from steel, MADDOX CHARITY ORPHANAGE. Est. 1885. Her eyes fell to the motionless blue bundle. “No message,” the man had said, “no notes or they will be able to trace you.” The wind soughed down the drive chilling her, and she glanced hesitantly at the polished brass doorbell. She could ring it and then run, she’d be gone before anyone answered. But what if she weren’t?
The lamplight caught the pale gleam of her legs and the flimsy scarlet stiletto-heeled shoes as she turned and ran, tripping on the gravel, back down the driveway to the waiting car and her lover. She was free.
The sudden sound of the engine and the roar of its loose exhaust pipe startled the child from his sleep. Struggling in his cocoon of blankets he began to cry, a tiny sound at first, growing louder and then louder until it became a roar. A great shout of anger.
Two women in flannel dressing-gowns and curlers pulled back the massive bolts and threw open the door. “Another baby,” said one to the other. “It’s the third this month; whatever shall we do with them all?”
“Folks shouldn’t go getting themselves kids they don’t want,” grumbled the other, bending to pick up the screaming bundle. “My God, this one’s gonna give us trouble, listen to him yell.”
“I’ll call the police,” said the first, “she can’t have gotten far.”
“Far enough. I heard the car. We’re too close to the county line here—they should’ve thought of that when they built this place. We get the illegitimate brats from four counties and no chance of finding the mothers. Well, what is it, a boy or a girl?”
The woman unpinned the blanket and lifted the baby, red-faced and still yelling. “A boy,” she said, “no more than a couple of days old.”
“We’d better take him upstairs and give him a bottle. Maybe it’ll stop him yelling before he wakes up the entire place.”
Wrapping the blue blanket around him they moved across the cold, darkened hallway.
“What shall we call him?” asked one of the other as they mounted the uncarpeted stairs.
“Noel,” she replied firmly.
“But it’s April,” protested the other. “Noel’s a name given to children born on Christmas Day.”
The woman’s laugh rang harshly in the dark. “Let him have a Christmas name then. It’s the closest he’ll get to Christmas in here.”
2
Florida, USA, 1934
Amelie de Courmont’s room was lit with the glow of a perfect Florida dawn promising another golden day. Closing the door softly behind him, Gerard paused, identifying the tangle of scents that hung in the air. Amelie’s favourite perfume, carelessly unstoppered in the big crystal flacon that he’d bought her on their last trip to Paris, the butter-yellow jug of fading blossoms whose weightless petals drifted like confetti across the soft silk of the Persian rug, and the green garden scents on the early morning breeze from the open windows.
The baby’s elaborate crib, ruffled in white lace, stood by the side of Amelie’s bed. Walking softly so as not to disturb his wife and child, he peered at the little pink bundle that was his daughter. Her flawless lids with the ridiculously long curve of blond-tipped lashes fluttered for a moment, as if she knew he were watching her, then her gaze locked with his. His daughter had deep, dark blue eyes, definitely her grandfather’s but, unlike Monsieur’s, hers were full of innocence. Her hair was neither brown nor blonde, but a sleek bronze shade, somewhere in between. And, miraculously, her skin was not the usual blotched pink and white of the newborn, but a pale golden colour as though from a summer spent beneath some gentle sun. The curve of her cheek, the slender arms and dimpled wrists, the fragile bumps of her spine were dusted with a golden down too fine even for the silkiest velvet. It was exactly, thought Gerard with a smile, like the tender bloom of a fresh peach.
Half-asleep against her pillows Amelie watched as Gerard ran a gentle finger over the baby’s soft cheek. After fourteen years of happy marriage she had almost given up hope of giving Gerard a child and when she knew she was pregnant she had hoped for a boy. Gerard would have a son to succeed him and to inherit the business empire created by his father. But Gerard hadn’t cared about the sex of the child—he’d been too worried about her. Having a baby at forty wasn’t the easy business it had been when she was nineteen and married to her first husband, Roberto do Santos. The birth of their twin girls, Lais and Leonore, had been effortless. This time the pregnancy had been tiring and fraught with risk—but it had been worth it even if just to see Gerard’s face now, as he looked at their daughter.
“It seems I woke you both,” said Gerard ruefully.
Amelie took his hand as he sat beside her on the bed. “I was half-awake, remembering when Lais and Leonore were born. Gerard, I hope they will be pleased with their new half-sister.”
“They’ll be as thrilled as I am,” he replied firmly. “How could they resist her?” Lifting the baby he placed her in her mother’s arms. “Just look at our daughter, Amelie. She’s a beauty. A perfect little peach.”
Amelie laughed delightedly, folding their baby close to her breast. “Of course she is, and she will be named Marie-Isabelle Leonie de Courmont. But from now on, Gerard, she’ll be just Peach.”
Paris, 1934
At the de Courmont mansion on the Ile St Louis the butler waited, a silver tray in his hand.
“A telegram for you, Mademoiselle, from America.”
Lais snatched the flimsy envelope, tearing at it impatiently. It must be the baby. Oh God, she begged, suddenly afraid, let Maman be all right, forty is too old to be having babies. Damn! It was a girl. All she needed was another sister! Peach! My God, what a name. She only hoped the creature could live up to it. Lais stared at the telegram uneasily, unable to shake off the feeling that this new half-sister would cause ripples on her smooth personal pond. Or maybe even a tidal wave.
“It’s a girl, Bennet,” she called, heading for the door. There was just time to make Carrier’s before they closed. She would buy the baby a christening gift, squander her monthly allowance on something wildly extravagant to make up for the guilt at her lack of joy in having a new sister, and something totally unsuitable, damn her, because she didn’t really want to give her anything at all. She didn’t want to share any part of her life with Peach.
Tossing the expensively wrapped gift into the back of the big, dark blue de Courmont convertible, Lais pulled into the Paris traffic, checking her appearance in the mirror as she drove.
Lais patted her tawny blonde hair doubtfully. Perhaps the short haircut was a mistake? But it was fashionable and if you didn’t have the latest look, if you weren’t wearing the latest style, weren’t seen in the smartest places, then you simply didn’t exist! She was in Paris supposedly studying at the Sorbonne but, in truth, the number of lectures she attended were few. Her blue eyes looked back at her from the mirror with disarming innocence and Lais turned away impatiently. Maybe she was a bit selfish, but she only wanted to enjoy herself. And the truth was she had a short fuse on boredom.
Lais double-parked the car on the corner of Boulevard St Germain and rue Bonaparte in front of the Café des Deux Magots and sauntered towards the young man waiting for her at a table on the terrace.
He had been waiting for her over an hour and empty coffee cups and small glasses marked the passing of time that for him had been an eternity. “Here you are at last,” he cried, relieved. “I thought you weren’t coming.”
Why was it, wondered Lais, frowning, that he had seemed so attractive last night? For that matter, why did all the men she met seem more attractive by night than in the cold light of day?
The young man smiled anxiously as the waiter placed a Pernod in front of her. “Your drink, Lais,” he said, touching her hand.
“I can’t stay.” She rose almost immediately. “I’m already late for an appointment.”
He knocked over the glass as he pushed past the table after her. “Lais, Lais … wait …”
Lais pressed a firm white-shod foot on the accelerator. She flung back her head relieved at her escape, taking deep breaths of the special Paris smells of chestnut trees in blossom, of petrol fumes and fresh baked breads and rich coffee and wonderfully scented women. Dusk was closing in, lights sparkled from shops and in cafés, threading jewelled necklaces along the River Seine. The passion she’d felt for him the previous night was gone, withered by his very eagerness to see her and his anxiety to please. What Lais liked was the anonymity of a hotel room, the secret rendezvous in some afternoon apartment, or the shuttered heat of a summer boathouse … sometimes she wondered if the intrigue weren’t more exciting than the sex. And sometimes it was.
There was that man she’d met the other night, the Russian exile—Nikolai. He was different, intriguing. His harrowed dark eyes had stared at her with such calculating appraisal that she’d trembled inside. Nikolai was older than her crowd, and maybe a little bit dangerous. She’d waited for him to come over to her, but he hadn’t and she’d circled the crowded room, ignoring the rest of the party, lured by his gaze. But when she’d finally approached him, he’d dismissed her with a disdainful smile as though she were a tiresome child and departed, a glamorous woman in large diamonds and ink-blue velvet on his arm. Lais knew Nikolai had been invited to the Villiers’ party tonight. And that’s where she was heading.
Lais laughed out loud. She was free again and just twenty years old. And life was a marvellous game—to be played on her terms.
