Free Dangerous to Know by Barbara Taylor Bradford Page A

back In France, back at my quaint old olive mill situated between the ancient villages of Lourmarin and Ansouis in the Vaucluse.
    There, under the shadows of the Lube ron mountains, amidst my gardens, olive trees, and endless fields of lavender I knew peace and tranquility. It was a world apart.
    Certainly I am my happiest there. It was the one spot where I worked best over long periods of time, where I could truly concentrate on my writing. For some weeks I had wanted to get back to the biography of the Bronte sisters I was writing. Actually, it was vital that I did so; the manuscript was due at my publishers at the beginning of March, and I had only four months to finish it.
    The thought of a long stretch of work over an unbroken period of time was suddenly rather appealing to me, and I found myself filling with that special kind of excitement which usually precedes a creative period for me.
    As I settled back against the antique needlepoint cushions, feeling happier, thInking lovingly of my home in Frovence, my eye caught the large photograph album on a bookshelf next to the fireplace.
    There were pictures of vieu Moulin in it, and I had a sudden desire to look at them.
    I rose and went to get it. Returning to the sofa, I opened the album, but instead of seeing the mill in Lourmarin, as I had expected, I found myself staring at photographs of my twenty-first birthday party in 1979.
    I studied them for a brief moment.
    How revealing it was to examine photographs after a long time has passed. How different we look, in reality, than we remember ourselves looking then, years ago. Whenever I cast my mind back to that particular birthday party, I think of myself as being so grown up at twenty one. But of course I wasn’t. My image, captured here on celluloid, told me how innocent and young I was in my off-the-shoulder white lace dress and string of pearls. My dark brown hair was brushed back, fell around my face in a soft, unsophisticated pageboy style, and my high cheekbones were not as prominent as they are now. My wide mouth looked tender, vulnerable, and a very serious pair of green eyes looked out at me from the album, expectant and trusting.
    I peered at my face more closely. Not a line, not a mark. I smiled to myself. Why would there be? I was very young, just a girl, inexperienced and untouched by life.
    Sebastian was with me, smiling and debonair in his flawlessly4ai bred Savile Row dinner jacket, his gleaming white shirt punctuated down the front with those deep-blue sapphire studs which he had had such trouble removing later that night.
    Here was Luciana, a bit plumpish in her pale pink taffeta, looking as if a pound of butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, her short curly -hair a golden halo around her radiant face.
    Even at thirteen there had been a certain lusciousness about her, despite the puppy fat. How much older she actually appeared to be in this particular shot, certainly much older than the little girl she really was at the time. And she had had the mouth of a thirty-year-old on her. I knew that only too well.
    I regarded the picture of Jack for a long moment. I couldn’t help thinking he looked like a little old man.
    His hair was untidy and his dinner jacket was rumpled; his whole appearance was decidedly un kempt. The expression on his face was surly, disgruntled, and with a start I realized he had not actually changed much. He was exactly the same as he had been at fifteen. Jack had never grown up, more’s the pity.
    Flipping the pages, I came to a series of photographs of Sebastian, which I had taken that summer, when we had been on vacation in Nantucket. My favorite was a shot of him standing nonchalantly on the deck of a sailboat belonging to his friend Leonard Marsden. It was called the Rascal, and at the time we had joked about the name being so appropriate for Leonard, who was something of a playboy.
    Sebastian’s white opened-necked shirt emphasized his deep tan, and he was so boyish, so