Free Invitation to Provence by Elizabeth Adler Page B

day Rafaella had bought the spectacular red chiffon dress from St. Laurent’s second collection for Dior.
    Late that evening, Juliette had drifted home with a soft look in her eyes that spelled trouble. Rafaella guessed that “trouble” had already taken place, and Juliette confirmed this in loud whispers in her bedroom as they changed for the party they were to attend that night.
    “You wouldn’t believe his body,” she whispered, closing the door firmly against all comers. “He’s like a Greek statue, hard as marble, only more virile.” She giggled, with a reminiscent look about her that made Rafaella laugh, too. “Who knew the British were sexy?” she added. “I mean, all you hear is that they are cold and emotionally ruined at a young age by sadistic nannies and homosexual boarding schools. But not Rufus. He’s warm as a brioche straight from the oven and loving as a new puppy, all over me with licks and kisses.”
    She took Rufus with her on her next visit to the château, and the two of them occupied the big room in the East Tower, hardly venturing out except when hunger became too muchor Rafaella sent Haigh up to complain that she needed company.
    Juliette smiled, remembering how she and Rufus had glowed pink from their exertions. Their eyes had sent secret sexual messages, and they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Love and sex had permeated the very air around them.
    Then one day her husband showed up and there was a wham-bam knock-down, drag-out fight, with the husband confronting her with her indiscretions and she confronting him with his longtime mistress. Fortunately, Rafaella had managed to push Juliette out of the way before she could brain her husband with a raised wine bottle. “It’s a good vintage,
chérie”
Rafaella protested. “At least if you are going to hit him, do it with a table wine.” Then she’d sent Rufus out of the room and sat Juliette and the husband opposite each other. Because they were Catholic and divorce was out of the question, she’d brokered an almost-amicable separation with the appropriate financial settlement.
    Meanwhile, Juliette and her children had moved in with Rafaella and
her
children. Rufus was a professional army man, as his father and his grandfather had been, but he was at the château as often as he got leave from his regiment. So, with Rafaella’s own long-abandoned husband permanently living in Paris, they had become one big, happy extended family at the château, with parties for the little ones as well as the grown-ups, and long, lazy summer days spent at the seaside villa at Cap d’Antibes with a myriad of friends to join in the fun.
    Later, after her husband died, Juliette had finally married Rufus, daringly wearing white, with Rafaella as matron of honor, splendid as always in the red Dior chiffon. Juliettehad followed Rufus around the world on his army postings, and they were never apart until the day he died ten years ago, breaking her heart forever.
    Ever since then, the East Tower room had been known as Juliette’s room. “I wonder if Rafaella has forgotten that,” Juliette said to herself now. “If so, then I’m about to remind her!” And she laughed a great, booming, jolly laugh. “Oh, the times we had,” she said, delighted. “And now just think, it will happen all over again. In fact, it’ll be quite the little Agatha Christie mystery, with everyone gathered at the big country house for a grand reunion, except this time they’ll know for sure the butler didn’t do it.” She laughed again, thinking of Haigh, with his stiff upper lip, in the role of the killer. Still, she had wondered about the murder in the past, and if the killer was really Felix? Or was it Alain?
    She picked up the phone and, regardless of the six-hour time difference, dialed the château’s number, which she remembered clearly even after all these years.
    Haigh answered, and when she said who it was, he said of course he knew it was her, nobody