illnesses. Just remember that. My father was a madman.”
“Sebastian did a great deal of good, and don’t you ever forget that.”
Slowly, he shook his head. “It’s odd. It really is.”
“What is?”
“The way you adore him still after all these years. And after all the things he did to you.”
“I don’t know what you mean by that. He treated me very well. Always.”
“Better than the other wives I’ve got to admit. He liked you.”
“Liked me! He loved me. Sebastian loved me from the very first day we met, when I was twelve—”
“Dirty old man.”
“Shut up! Furthermore, he continued to love me after we split up.”
“He never loved anyone,” Jack announced swiftly, scathingly, giving me a pitying look. “Not me. Not my mother. Not Luciana. Not her mother. Not your mother. Not his other two wives. Not even you, sugar.”
“Stop calling me sugar. It’s disgusting. And he did love me.”
“I told you, he wasn’t capable of loving. He couldn’t love anyone if his life depended on it. It wasn’t in him. Sebastian Locke was a monster.”
“He was not! And I know he loved me, do you understand that? I know he did,” I answered heatedly, swallowing my anger, clinging to my composure.
“If you say so,” he muttered, giving in to me, which he frequently did. Averting his head, he stared into the fire, a morose look settling on his face.
As I sat watching him, thinking how sad it was he was so wrong about his father, thinking how little Jack had known about him, it occurred to me that he bore a strong resemblance to Sebastian tonight. Their profiles were the same; Jack had inherited his father’s strong jawline and aquiline nose, as well as his fine head of dark hair. But his eyes were a faded, watery blue, not the bright cornflower hue his father’s had been. As for their characters and personalities, they were as dissimilar as any two men could be.
The moroseness stayed with Jack throughout supper. He ate sparingly, drank a lot, and said little.
At one moment I reached out and touched his hand, and remarked softly, in my most conciliatory voice, “I’m sorry I shrieked at you.”
He did not answer.
“Honestly, I am. Don’t be like this, Jack.”
“Like what?”
“Mute. Unresponsive. And infuriatingly mule headed.”
He stared at me, then he smiled.
When Jack smiled his face lit up, and he was engaging, almost irresistible to me. That was the way it had always been. I smiled back, my affection for him once more intact. “It’s just that I can’t bear it when you’re nasty about Sebastian.”
“We see him differently, you and I,” he mumbled, swigging more of my best red wine, the Mouton Rothschild which Sebastian had sent me last year.
He continued, “You’ve always been…agog about him…so…so adoring and worshipful. Look, I don’t wear the same kind of rose-colored glasses, Viv.”
“You adored him too, when you were little.”
“That’s what you think. But it’s not true.”
“Oh Jack, don’t lie to me. This is Vivienne you’re talking to…good old Viv, your best friend.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “Jesus, don’t you ever let up? When it comes to persistence, you’re like a dog with a bone.”
“Only when we’re discussing Sebastian Locke,” I countered.
“Well, one thing is certain, your loyalty is commendable, sugar.”
“Thanks. And stop calling me sugar in that awful tone of voice. You know I hate it. You do it just to get my goat.”
He grinned, reached out and squeezed my hand. “Truce?”
“Truce,” I agreed and as quickly as I had when we were children.
We spoke about other matters for a short while after this. About France, Provence to be exact, and our respective homes there, houses which Sebastian had given us at different times. Although I did not dare remind him of this. It was obvious to me that he was as unrelenting about his father in death as he had been during his lifetime. Jack had never given Sebastian the benefit of the doubt, nor apparently did he intend to do so now. When it was too late, anyway.
It was when we returned to the den to have coffee that Jack suddenly started to talk about the circumstances of Sebastian’s death once again.
Settled in an arm chair, with his coffee and cognac on a small side table next to him, he said, “The police had me check through his things. In the library. The rest of the house. No valuables were taken. As far as I could tell.”
“Does that mean they’ve now ruled out the possibility of an intruder?”
“They didn’t say.”
“It’s perplexing.” I sat back in my chair, my mind turning over the few facts we had. “When I lunched with Sebastian he mentioned that Mrs. Crane was away on vacation…” I stopped and looked at him.
“What are you getting at, Viv?”
“I guess I think it’s a bit odd that Sebastian came up to the farm when there was no one there to look after him. When she was away. Even the police think that, Jack.”
“He told me on Thursday that he had some work to finish. He gave me the impression he was looking forward to being alone up here, from his tone and his attitude.”
“Maybe he wasn’t alone, though.”
Jack threw me a swift look and his brows puckered. “That’s a possibility. Somebody could have been with him. Yes, of course they could.”
“And that somebody might have ended up doing him bodily harm,” I pointed out.
“Only too true.”
“By the way, why did you and Luciana suddenly come to the States? Was there a special reason for this visit?”
“We didn’t come to kill Sebastian,” he said, and gave me a smirk that was oddly ghoulish.
“For God’s sake, I wasn’t implying any such thing. And do stop it. You know your facetious talk only infuriates me. Grow up, act your age, Jack. This is very serious…a serious situation.”
“Sorry, Viv. Luciana and I came in for the annual meeting of Locke Industries,” Jack explained in a quiet, more subdued tone, sounding suddenly and
