“I think it was that Davy Crockett hat you had when you were a kid,” Julian teased him. “I think it went to your brain or something.”
“It must have.” Xavier smiled, always unruffled by them. He was a handsome boy, and of all of them he looked the most like William, yet in all other ways he was the least like him. He had had a very interesting girlfriend at Yale. She was going to Harvard Medical School in the fall, but in the meantime, she had agreed to join him in Cape Town. But nothing was serious with him for the moment, except his travels, and his passion for stones. Sarah had worn the two enormous emerald rings that he’d found for her, to his graduation. She wore them almost every day, and she loved them.
Isabelle and Julian got a sitter for Max, and managed to have a drink in the Bemelmans Bar that night, as Bobby Short played in the next room, where Sarah and Emanuelle were. Xavier had gone to Greenwich Village with his girlfriend to have dinner.
“Do you think he’ll ever marry you?” Julian asked her honestly, looking at her big belly, but she only smiled and shrugged.
“Who knows? I’m not sure I care anymore. We’re as good as married. He’s there whenever I need him and the children are used to his coming and going.” She spent a lot of time in Munich with him now, whenever she could. It was a totally comfortable arrangement, and even Sarah had adjusted to it. Lukas’s wife had known about Isabelle for the past two years, but she still refused to divorce him. They had some very complicated family business dealings together, and some land holdings in the north they’d invested in, and she was doing everything she could to tie up his money and stop him from divorcing her. “Maybe one day. In the meantime, we’re happy.”
“You look it,” he had to admit. “I envy you all these kids.”
“What about you? I’ve been hearing little rumors in Rome,” she teased him.
“Don’t believe everything you read.” But he blushed as he said it. At nearly thirty-six, he had never remarried, but there was a woman he was very much in love with.
“Okay, then tell me the truth. Who is she?”
“Consuelo de la Varga Quesada. Mean anything to you?”
“Vaguely. Wasn’t her father the ambassador to London a few years ago?”
“Right. Her mother’s American, and I think she might be a vague cousin of Mother’s. Consuelo’s wonderful, I met her last winter when I went to Spain. She’s an artist. But she’s also Catholic, and I’m a divorced man. I don’t think her parents were too thrilled when she told them.”
“But you were never married in the Catholic Church, so in their eyes you were never married.” She was an expert on all that, after divorcing Lorenzo. At least that part of her life was over.
“That’s true. But I think they’re being cautious. She’s only twenty-five years old, and oh, Isabelle, she’s such a sweet girl, you’d love her. She adores Max, and she says she wants dozens of children.” She looked like a little girl herself, when Julian showed his sister a picture of her. She had huge brown eyes and long brown hair, and a smooth olive complexion that made her look faintly exotic.
“Is this serious?” If it was, it was the first really serious affair he’d had since Yvonne. For a long time, he had gone back to just playing.
“I’d like it to be. But I really don’t know how her parents are going to feel about me. Or how she will.”
“They should feel very lucky. You’re the nicest man I know, Julian,” she said, and kissed him gently. She had always loved him dearly.
“Thank you.”
The next morning they all flew away again, like birds to their own destinations. Julian to Paris, and then to Spain, Isabelle to Munich to be with Lukas and her children, Sarah and Emanuelle back to Paris too. And Xavier to Cape Town with his girlfriend.
“What a migratory bunch we are, spread all over the world, like nomads,” Sarah said as they took off on the Concorde.
“I wouldn’t call it that.” Emanuelle smiled at her. She and the Minister of Finance were about to go on a long vacation. His wife had finally died that year, and he had just asked her if she would marry him. It had actually come as a shock to her after all these years. But she was sorely tempted. They had been together for so long and she really loved him.
“You should marry him,” Sarah urged her as they drank champagne and ate caviar.
“After all these years, the aura of respectability might be too great a shock to my system.”
Sarah patted her hand and grinned. “Try it.”
When they landed, Sarah went back to the château, thinking about all her children. She only hoped that Isabelle didn’t wait as long to get married as Emanuelle had. It amused her to think of Emanuelle married now … how long they had been friends … how far they had come … how much they had learned together.
Chapter 32
Isabelle arrived just after them, in an absurd van they had rented at the airport. She and Lukas unloaded prams and bicycles and baby things. There were their three children, and two by his former marriage. She looked up at the upstairs window then, as though sensing that Sarah was there, but she didn’t see her. Isabelle smiled at Lukas briefly as he handed her the baby and took their bags into the château. Their children were chattering loudly as they ran upstairs, wondering where their grandmother was, and then growing distracted before they found her. Isabelle stood for a moment and smiled at Lukas, as the noise echoed in the halls around them. Her marriage to him finally had been fruitful.
Julian arrived in the Mercedes 600 his father-in-law had insisted on giving him. It was an impossible car, in need of constant repair, but beautiful, and it held all his children. Consuelo held the two little girls’ hands as Julian helped her out, and they followed her, giggling, and looking just like their father. He was teasing Max, who was nine and very handsome. And as Consuelo turned you could see the full belly she carried well on her small frame. The new baby was due in the fall. Their third in four years. Julian and Consuelo had been busy.
And then at last, Xavier, his backpack over his arm, in an old jeep he had borrowed somewhere. He had a deep tan, and he had grown to be a strong, powerful man. She looked at him, overwhelmed with memories as she saw him. If she closed her eyes just a tiny bit, it was William coming toward her.