Read Online The Eden Inheritance by Janet Tanner - Free Book Online

father or my grandfather, Guillaume thought with a touch of self-congratulatory humour.
    And supposed that it was Guy’s impending visit that allowed him to regard his own mortality with such unaccustomed levity.
    â€˜I need to talk to you, Grandpapa. Alone,’ Guy said.
    Dinner was over, the formal meal so beloved of the Baron Guillaume de Savigny, reminiscent of all the formal meals he had enjoyed throughout the years. Even when he and Louise were alone they still ate in the dining room at the long refectory table which could quite comfortably seat twelve, with the solid silver candelabra placed at either end throwing a soft dancing light on their lined faces and the portraits of his ancestors looking down at them from the walls. It was the way Gullaume liked it, yet another comforting familiarity to provide evidence of continuity.
    Tonight however there were six; himself and Louise, elegant as always, if a little frail, in a Paris gown of the softest black wool, Henri and Celestine, his daughter and son-in-law, who had their own suite of rooms on the second storey of the château, Lise, home from Paris for the weekend, and of course Guy. Guillaume looked at his grandson and felt himself warmed by a glow of approval. At first glance he might have been looking at his own son, Charles, at the same age, but Guy had more about him than Charles had ever had – a strength of character his father had lacked and which Guillaume found gratifying for it eased, in part at least, the disappointment and frustration which had always marred his paternal pride in Charles. Perhaps he was wrong to harbour such resentment as he did against Kathryn, he thought, for he was fairly certain that Guy’s strength had been inherited from her and nurtured by the way she had brought him up. But for all that he could not forgive her for taking Guy away from Charente, and the old enmities between them went too deep for forgiveness or any hope of reconciliation now.
    â€˜You want to talk to me,’ he said, swirling the last of the cognac in his glass. ‘Well, I suppose I should have known you had a reason, coming here so unexpectedly. We’ll go to my study.’
    â€˜Oh Guy, don’t be such a bore!’ Lise said. She spoke fiercely, everything about Lise was fierce these days, from her small set face to her defiantly masculine clothes. What had happened, Guillaume sometimes wondered, to the little girl who had set the château ringing with her laughter, the little girl in petticoats and flounces with ribbons in her hair? That hair was long and straight now, a sleek but, in his opinion, unbecoming curtain with a deep fringe which almost hid her eyes, and she never seemed to laugh. Her tone was always pitched somewhere between aggression and earnestness, totally lacking, he thought, in feminine charm, but he was also wise enough to know that the extra note of sharpness in it now was because Lise was disappointed that she was to be denied Guy’s company, for a while at least. She hero-worshipped her cousin to the point of obsession – it had always been the same. As a small girl she had followed him everywhere like a pet puppy dog and little had changed in the intervening years. Guillaume was fairly certain she had come home this weekend especially because she had known Guy would be here; more often these days she remained in Paris with her intellectual and – in his opinion – extremely tiresome friends.
    â€˜Sorry, Lise, but it’s quite important.’ Guy stood up and moved toward the door, tweaking a strand of that straight dark hair as he passed her chair. ‘I’ll see you later and you can tell me all your news.’
    â€˜What makes you think I want to tell you anything?’ she retorted, but a little colour came into her sallow cheeks all the same.
    Guy allowed his grandfather to precede, him along the corridor and up the curving stone staircase, matching his pace to