‘Take the rest of the bottle through to the kitchen, please, Inigo,’ said Simone. ‘Tell the chef it’s his for the tasting and that we’d like his thoughts on what sort of canapés he thinks might best accompany it.’
‘Are you serious?’ Inigo glanced towards Rafael as if for confirmation. ‘Is she serious?’
Rafael nodded. ‘She likes to delegate from on high.’
‘Well, that’s one interpretation,’ said Simone sweetly. How could she be expected to behave in the face of Rafael’s constant baiting? ‘I like to think of it as letting the experts do their job.’ She picked up the ice bucket and handed it to Inigo. ‘Kitchen,’ she said.
‘Kitchen,’ murmured Inigo. ‘I’m on my way. I’m seeing the princess’s master plan unfold and I’m loving it. I’ll just pour a glass for myself as well as one for the chef and wax lyrical over the bouquet for a moment or two before suggesting that we call his apprentice and my offsider in to work tonight so that we can concentrate more fully on the weighty issue of planning a menu around such wines. Then I’ll go and get the whites you requested. Right after I uncork the red for you.’ Which he did. ‘There we go. Breathe, little cry baby, breathe. I have a hunch I’ll be seeing you later.’ Humming cheerfully, Inigo made his exit.
‘Congratulations,’ murmured Rafael. ‘You’ve made a conquest.’
‘Haven’t we all,’ countered Simone with the tilt of an eyebrow.
‘Simone,’ said Gabrielle sternly, ‘don’t tease. I can’t be held responsible for the consequences if you do. Rafe’s not twelve any more. He’s unlikely to put a frog in your shoe in reply.’
‘Pity,’ said Simone with wistful sigh. ‘I like frogs.’
As a child she’d built homes for them in the shady nooks in the gardens of Caverness, and Rafael knew it. The frogs he’d put in her shoes had been gifts for her, not retaliation for her teasing, and she knew it. ‘To frogs,’ she said, and reached for the champagne.
‘To the children of Caverness,’ said Gabrielle, picking up another glass of the gently bubbling liquid. ‘May they never weep again.’
‘Lovely,’ said Simone approvingly. ‘Although possibly a little optimistic.’
‘Just how much wine have you two already had?’ asked Rafael.
‘He had to go and spoil it,’ said Gabrielle, eyeing her brother darkly.
‘No sense of occasion at all,’ agreed Simone, sipping her champagne. ‘Oh, this is good. Rafael, try some.’ She wasn’t inebriated. She didn’t think for one minute that a glass of champagne, even if it was a superb vintage, would change Rafael’s opinion of her. She just wanted Rafe to be able to relax around her, just a little, so that she could relax, so that maybe, just maybe, they could get through this evening without bloodshed.
Rafael’s lips tightened as he reached for the only glass of champagne still left on the table. Half of it went in one long swallow. The man was obviously thirsty and royally out of sorts. Maybe she’d been a bit hasty in sending the rest of the bottle to the kitchen.
‘It’s Luc’s favourite vintage,’ she told him. ‘Do you like it?’
‘It’s superb,’ he said curtly. ‘Not that you need my opinion.’
‘Just checking,’ she said. ‘I do that a lot. Occupational hazard.’
‘And what exactly is it that you do these days, princess? Besides delegate, that is.’
Ooh, he was asking for trouble. She didn’t care how big and beautiful he was. ‘Oh, nothing much,’ she said airily. ‘I spend a bit of time pottering around the gardens of Caverness. I oversee the running and maintenance of the chateau. I run the European marketing arm of the Duvalier winemaking dynasty. That sort of thing.’
‘Don’t forget all the hiring and firing,’ injected Gabrielle. ‘You do that too.’
Simone shook her head. ‘Luc usually does all that.’
‘But you were the one to suggest that Josien find work elsewhere,’ said Gabrielle quietly.
‘Oh.’ She took a deep breath. ‘That. So I was.’
Rafael’s sudden stillness unnerved her. The intensity of his gaze unnerved her more.
‘You fired Josien?’ Rafe’s voice was mild. Too mild. ‘You?’
‘Yes.’ Simone tried hard not to quail beneath the onslaught of that searching blue gaze. She’d fired his mother from a position Josien had held for almost thirty years, but not without good reason. Rafe hadn’t been there. He hadn’t seen for himself how untenable Gabrielle’s position as Luc’s wife would have been had Josien stayed in residence as housekeeper to Caverness. ‘Me.’
‘Why?’
Now there was a question in need of a careful answer. Never mind that Rafe had been baiting her and she him ever since he’d stepped into the room. Never mind that he’d been estranged from Josien for years. Criticising a man’s mother was never a sensible thing to do. ‘Because I wanted her gone from Caverness.’
‘Why?’
‘Can we please not have this conversation?’ she said.
‘Too late,’ he said. ‘We’re already having it. Why did you fire Josien?’
‘Because it was time she left Caverness,’ she said curtly, and cursed him for pushing her for answers she didn’t want to give. ‘Because I refused to sit back and watch her poison the happiness Gabrielle and Luc had found.’ She lifted her chin. ‘Because I could.’
Rafael drained the rest of his champagne. He looked as if he were swallowing the bitterest of pills rather than vintage champagne. ‘Good,’ he said gruffly.
‘Pardon?’ squeaked Simone.
‘I’d have done the same,’ he said.
He…‘What?’
‘You heard.’
‘Well, yes, but…’ Had he really just given his approval? ‘Was that a compliment?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said with a twist of his lips. ‘It could have been. It was hellishly hard to say aloud.’
‘I think it might have been,’ she said, and with a swift and challenging smile, ‘Does this mean we’re friends?’
‘No, it means we have a common foe and I’m impressed by your ruthlessness.’
Was that the shadow of a smile in his eyes? Hard to tell, but she thought it might be. ‘I had a good teacher,’ she said with a shrug. ‘He taught me how to protect the people I love. I was a little slow on the uptake, but I got there eventually.’
‘Josien’s not coming to the wedding, by the way,’ said Gabrielle with a lightness that didn’t quite mask her disappointment. ‘She says she’s not yet recovered enough from her pneumonia to attempt the travel.’
‘But surely you expected as much?’ said Simone. ‘I thought you held the wedding here so as to keep her away?’
‘Well, yes, that was one of the reasons for holding it here,’ acknowledged Gabrielle. ‘But not the only one. I’m having second thoughts.’
‘Don’t,’ said Rafael, and the hardness was back in his eyes. He loved hard, did Rafael. Simone didn’t need to be reminded that he hated hard too.
‘Maybe you’ll pay her a quick visit on the way back from your honeymoon,’