Ryan pressed her lips together. ‘I – I’ll speak to Abbé Maurice—’
‘Abbé Maurice has barely enough to live on. Priests do not earn comfortable salaries here. They do not live in detached houses, and buy new cars every year.’
Ryan stared at him. ‘You seem to know a lot about it,’ she retorted sarcastically.
‘I have been in England. I have read books. I am not entirely the barbarian you would like to think I am.’
Ryan flushed then, but the heat of the fire could be held responsible for the darkening of colour in her cheeks. ‘I’ll manage somehow,’ she insisted.
Alain de Beaunes shrugged. He got up and went to a cupboard and took out a bottle of red wine. He uncorked the bottle, found a glass, and brought them both back to his seat near the fire. Pouring some of the ruby liquid into the glass, he held it up to the light for a moment, examining it intently, before nodding his satisfaction at its clarity. Then he raised the glass to his lips and drank some of the wine. Its bouquet drifted across to Ryan, rich and fruity, his lips reddened for a moment before he licked them clean.
When he lowered his glass, he looked again at Ryan. ‘This wine has matured with age, little one, as all things do. Once it was rough and bitter – as you are. Now it is rich and full-bodied.’
‘Spare me your similes, monsieur.’ Ryan shifted irritably. ‘I should have never have come here. I should never have written to my father.’
‘And do you think if you had not written to your father that this situation would not have arisen? I assure you, it would.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Your father did not make his will during these few days that you have been in France. His decision was made some time ago.’
‘And you knew of it?’ Ryan was aghast.
Alain de Beaunes hesitated. ‘Not – entirely, no.’
Ryan shook her head. ‘And you believe that – that had my aunt still been alive – and I still been living in England – that – that my father would have made the same stipulation?’
‘I know he would.’
Ryan got unsteadily to her feet and walked dazedly across the room. ‘But – why? Why?’
‘It was what he wanted.’
‘And you had no – objection?’
‘Let us say I – did not care, one way or the other.’
Ryan felt sick. It was as much with emptiness as anything, but the nausea that filled her was equally upsetting. ‘I – I can’t marry you, monsieur,’ she got out thickly. ‘Please, let us say no more about it.’
Alain de Beaunes regarded her impatiently. ‘There is no one in England, is there?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Then what is your objection?’
‘I’ve explained—’
‘All you have said is that you cannot marry me. No – that you would not marry me! That you believe I took advantage of your father in accepting a partnership with him when I had nothing to offer but my strength.’
Ryan took a deep breath. ‘Half the vineyard is yours, monsieur. Is that not enough for you?’
‘And half – should you refuse to accept your share – will belong to Gaston Aubert, your father’s greatest rival. Is that what you want, English miss?’
‘Of course it’s not what I want.’ Ryan shifted restlessly from one foot to the other. ‘But your acceptance of your share does not involve entering into a marriage with a – with someone you – you—’
‘Despise?’ He finished the sentence for her. ‘Oh, yes, I am aware of your aversion for me, mademoiselle. However, your feelings do not enter into it so far as I am concerned. I am concerned only for the vineyard. I know your father depended on you understanding his feelings in this.’
‘Then why did he do it?’ she burst out hotly.
Alain de Beaunes finished his wine and rose to his feet, towering over her. She was quite a tall girl, but he was so much bigger, so much broader, that he dwarfed her.
‘You are either being very obtuse, or very stupid,’ he said coldly. ‘Consider the situation. Whether you like it or not, your father needed me. He was not strong. He had been ill for many years. Doctors had warned him he should give up working altogether. But this he could not do. The vineyard was his inheritance, it was his life. Your mother, so he said, could not accept this. She was a cold, foolish woman, more fitted to afternoon bridge clubs than working in the fields. Oh—’ this as she would have protested, ‘—this is my interpretation, not his. Your father always spoke most regretfully about your mother. So – this is the position. When your father knows he is dying, what is he to do? No matter what you may have been told, he never stopped thinking about you. He used to talk to me of his little girl, and of how, some day, he hoped you would come to the valley and share his delight in cultivating the vines to make some of the finest wines of the district. But, being the man he is, he feels loyalty to me. He cannot leave me the vineyard, that would not be right. You are his flesh and blood, his heir. But he would not – he could not hand it to someone who knew nothing of the vine, of the grape, someone who might sell – to the Auberts.’ He shrugged. ‘He is still very much a Frenchman, your father. He knows that the marriage of convenience is still the most successful marriage there is. He tries to – manipulate us, no?’
Ryan had listened to him in silence, but now she turned away. ‘You cannot manipulate people, monsieur.’
‘Can you not?’ Alain de Beaunes voice contained a trace of mockery. ‘So you intend to leave?’
‘Of course.’ She swung round on him angrily. ‘Did you think that what you have just told me would change my mind?’
He ran his long fingers through the heavy straightness of his hair. ‘I thought it might have done,’ he conceded.
‘Well, it hasn’t.’ Ryan’s lips moved tremulously. ‘I – I’m sorry, of course. I understand your difficulties—’
‘You! You understand nothing!’ His voice was harsh now.
‘I do not wish to enter into another argument with you, monsieur—’
‘Do you not?’ His lips twisted. ‘Then that is unfortunate, because I cannot stand by and watch you destroy everything your father and his father before him ever worked for without making some effort to show you how selfish you are being.’
‘I didn’t ask for a share of the vineyard!’
‘Didn’t you?’ He put his hands on his hips. ‘Then why did you come here?’
‘I came to see my father.’ Ryan was trembling now. ‘And – and in any case, you said yourself, it would have made no difference—’
