Invitation to Provence(21)
Felix, the rich bachelor, was known as quite a catch in Hong Kong society. His black hair was streaked handsomely with silver, he wore immaculately tailored pin-striped suits, and his shoes were handcrafted in London. He could make good small talk at a party, knew how to treat a lady, and not only gave generously to all the proper charities, he also bought tables for their gala balls and dinners. And he actually showed up, usually with someone important as well as beautiful on his arm. The words confirmed bachelor were whispered, but Felix was not gay. It was just that he’d had it with women. Except for sex, which of course he could buy. All he thought about, all he dreamed about—when he had that rare couple of hours of sleep that fate and time now allowed him—was making money. And making more money.
Unfortunately, sleep no longer seemed to factor in the “living” equation. The more he made, the less he was able to sleep, until he was at the point of sleep deprivation where his hands shook uncontrollably and sometimes his head spun, and he missed his footing, or he missed what someone had just said.
The invitation lay unopened in the exact center of his oversized desk. He stared out the window, waiting for the blip from the concierge desk downstairs that would tell him Jake Bronson had arrived, winging in like Mercury, bringing a message from his past. A past he no longer cared to think about, though in those hard waking moments, that three o’clock in the morning dead zone when his life seemed suspended while everyone else’s went rushing on, his mother, Rafaella, came to his mind as he’d last seen her, white-faced and trembling. It was not something he cared to think about now, and he wished he had not agreed to see Jake, though for a while there they had been almost like brothers.
Felix was in his early twenties when Jake arrived at the chateau. Alain had been there too, but Alain led his own secret life and wasn’t around so much. Mostly it was just him and Jake.
The internal phone blipped and he pressed the ON button. “Mr. Bronson is here to see you, sir,” the concierge said.
“Send him up.” Felix went and sat in the big leather chair, safe behind his impressive antique desk, and waited for whatever was to come, toying absently with the letter from the Bank of Shanghai that awaited his attention.
The outer door buzzed and he pressed ENTER, hearing brisk footsteps crossing the marble hall, then the polite tap on his door.
“Entrez,” he said in French because that was the language he had always spoken with Jake. He did not get up as Jake walked toward him, and Jake stood a few feet away, looking at Felix.
Taking him in, Felix thought uncomfortably, and no doubt comparing him to the last time he’d seen him. Meanwhile, Jake looked good, still lean, still with that thick, dark hair and his father’s big confident stride and those cool gray eyes that seemed to look right into your soul.
“How are you, Jake?”
“I’m well, thank you, Felix. And you?”
Felix nodded that he was okay and Jake grinned. “Still a man of few words, huh?”
“Like you, I prefer action.” Felix picked up a silver paper knife and slid its silky blade through his strong fingers.
“I told your mother I had to be in Hong Kong. She asked me to see you.” Jake eyed the knife through narrowed eyes.
Felix said nothing, looking warily at the cream envelope with the French stamps.
“You’re famous here, Felix,” Jake said. “In business circles, that is, though of course you also made a few headlines in your local newspapers when you were younger.”
Felix said nothing and Jake pushed further. “A pregnant girl found dead at the foot of a cliff? And you suspected of being the father of her child? And possibly of giving her that fatal push?”
Felix lifted his eyes from the knife. “If you are here just to provoke me, Jake, this conversation is terminated.”
Jake’s shoulders lifted in an exaggerated shrug. “Of course there was no DNA in those days. Nothing could be proven, but you, Felix, were unable to account for your whereabouts, and Alain was. What was your mother to believe?”
“Mother never gave me a chance,” Felix said angrily. “She never even listened to me. And why should she, when Alain was so convincing, placing the guilt on my shoulders. Mother could never see the truth about Alain, she was blinded by his charm, never saw the slime that was underneath. Until it was too late.”
Jake said mildly, “Oh come on, Felix, a little sibling rivalry, a touch of jealousy, a girl you both fancied … loved even. So tell me, what is the truth?”
Felix sighed. He got up from behind his desk and walked past Jake to the floor-to-ceiling expanse of bronze-tinted windows, staring moodily out at the passing show below. “I said it to Mother then, and I say it to you now: believe what you wish. It will not make me any more guilty, nor will it make my brother any less guilty.”
He swung around and stood, hands behind his back, a looming dark figure against the bronze light. “Tell me, why are you really here, Jake?”
“I come as a messenger from your mother. She’s an old woman now, Felix. There’s not much time left and she wants to see both her boys again.”
Felix gave a short bark of laughter. “And I’m supposed to go trotting back like the prodigal son.”
“That’s entirely up to you,” Jake said quietly. “Of course, do as you wish.”
Felix turned away and Jake’s eyes quickly scanned the desk, taking in the letter from the Bank of Shanghai. It was an acknowledgment that the monthly stipend paid to a Bao Chu Ching at an address in Shanghai was to be increased from thirty to fifty dollars. Jake memorized the account number and the address instantly. To him, it was the smallness of the sum that seemed significant. Thirty dollars was the average wage of the poorest workers, yet Felix paid it to this woman every month.