Danielle Steel: Jewels

“Is there any chance he’ll be getting divorced soon?” her mother asked, but Isabelle shook her head honestly.

“I don’t think so. I think she’s going to do everything she can to resist it.”

“Does she realize he has a family somewhere else? With two children? That might get the point across.”

Isabelle nodded. “Not yet. But he says he’ll tell her, if he has to.”

“Isabelle, are you sure?” Sarah asked. “What if he never leaves her, if you’re alone with these children forever?”

“Then I’ll love them, and I’ll be happy to have them, just like you when you had Phillip and Elizabeth, and Daddy was away during the war, and you never knew if you’d see him again. Sometimes there are no guarantees,” she said wisely. She was getting smarter. “I’m willing to accept that possibility.” Sarah respected her for it, her life was certainly not conventional, but it was honest. And even Roman society seemed to have swallowed what had happened. She was back at the shop part-time, and designing jewelry, too, and things were going extremely well. She was still talking about a branch in Munich. Maybe if she ever married Lukas they would open a store there. There were some very knowledgeable people there and a real market for good jewelry.

Her divorce was due to come through by the end of the year, which meant that this baby would not have Enzo’s name, which was another obstacle for her to overcome, but Isabelle seemed ready to face it. Sarah wasn’t worried about her when she flew back to Rome with Adrianna. And after they all left, she found herself thinking, as she often did, what interesting lives they led. Interesting, but not easy.

Chapter 31

AVIER graduated from Yale three years later with honors, and his family was there to see him do it, or most of them anyway. Sarah and Emanuelle had arrived together. Julian had come to Yale, of course, and he’d brought Max, who was four, and busily embarking on destroying his surroundings wherever he went, and Isabelle had come, but she hadn’t brought the children. She was pregnant again, and they were used to seeing her that way by then. This was her third child in four years. And Adrianna and Kristian were in Munich with Lukas. He still hadn’t divorced his wife, but Isabelle seemed at peace with the situation. And predictably, Phillip and Yvonne hadn’t bothered to come. She was at a spa in Switzerland, and he said. He was too busy, but he sent Xavier a watch from their new line at Whitfield’s. Julian had designed it.

It was a lovely ceremony at Yale, and afterwards they all went to New York and stayed at the Carlyle. Julian kept teasing Xavier that it was time for him to open a shop in New York, and his brother diplomatically said maybe he would one day, but they all knew that he wanted to roam the world first. He was going back to Botswana the minute he left New York. He was flying to London and then straight down to Cape Town. And all he wanted for the next few years was to find rare stones for Whitfield’s. After that, maybe he’d settle down, but he made no promises to anyone that he ever would. He was far too happy in a jungle with a pick and a gun and a backpack to ever want the responsibility of a store like the ones in Paris and London and Rome. He much preferred being their man on the prowl, out in the wilderness somewhere. It suited him far better, and they respected him for that, although he was certainly different.

“I think it was that Davy Crockett hat you had when you were a kid,” Julian teased him. “I think it went to your brain or something.”

“It must have.” Xavier smiled, always unruffled by them. He was a handsome boy, and of all of them he looked the most like William, yet in all other ways he was the least like him. He had had a very interesting girlfriend at Yale. She was going to Harvard Medical School in the fall, but in the meantime, she had agreed to join him in Cape Town. But nothing was serious with him for the moment, except his travels, and his passion for stones. Sarah had worn the two enormous emerald rings that he’d found for her, to his graduation. She wore them almost every day, and she loved them.

Isabelle and Julian got a sitter for Max, and managed to have a drink in the Bemelmans Bar that night, as Bobby Short played in the next room, where Sarah and Emanuelle were. Xavier had gone to Greenwich Village with his girlfriend to have dinner.

“Do you think he’ll ever marry you?” Julian asked her honestly, looking at her big belly, but she only smiled and shrugged.

“Who knows? I’m not sure I care anymore. We’re as good as married. He’s there whenever I need him and the children are used to his coming and going.” She spent a lot of time in Munich with him now, whenever she could. It was a totally comfortable arrangement, and even Sarah had adjusted to it. Lukas’s wife had known about Isabelle for the past two years, but she still refused to divorce him. They had some very complicated family business dealings together, and some land holdings in the north they’d invested in, and she was doing everything she could to tie up his money and stop him from divorcing her. “Maybe one day. In the meantime, we’re happy.”

“You look it,” he had to admit. “I envy you all these kids.”

“What about you? I’ve been hearing little rumors in Rome,” she teased him.

“Don’t believe everything you read.” But he blushed as he said it. At nearly thirty-six, he had never remarried, but there was a woman he was very much in love with.

“Okay, then tell me the truth. Who is she?”

“Consuelo de la Varga Quesada. Mean anything to you?”

“Vaguely. Wasn’t her father the ambassador to London a few years ago?”

“Right. Her mother’s American, and I think she might be a vague cousin of Mother’s. Consuelo’s wonderful, I met her last winter when I went to Spain. She’s an artist. But she’s also Catholic, and I’m a divorced man. I don’t think her parents were too thrilled when she told them.”

“But you were never married in the Catholic Church, so in their eyes you were never married.” She was an expert on all that, after divorcing Lorenzo. At least that part of her life was over.

“That’s true. But I think they’re being cautious. She’s only twenty-five years old, and oh, Isabelle, she’s such a sweet girl, you’d love her. She adores Max, and she says she wants dozens of children.” She looked like a little girl herself, when Julian showed his sister a picture of her. She had huge brown eyes and long brown hair, and a smooth olive complexion that made her look faintly exotic.

“Is this serious?” If it was, it was the first really serious affair he’d had since Yvonne. For a long time, he had gone back to just playing.

“I’d like it to be. But I really don’t know how her parents are going to feel about me. Or how she will.”

“They should feel very lucky. You’re the nicest man I know, Julian,” she said, and kissed him gently. She had always loved him dearly.

“Thank you.”

The next morning they all flew away again, like birds to their own destinations. Julian to Paris, and then to Spain, Isabelle to Munich to be with Lukas and her children, Sarah and Emanuelle back to Paris too. And Xavier to Cape Town with his girlfriend.

“What a migratory bunch we are, spread all over the world, like nomads,” Sarah said as they took off on the Concorde.

“I wouldn’t call it that.” Emanuelle smiled at her. She and the Minister of Finance were about to go on a long vacation. His wife had finally died that year, and he had just asked her if she would marry him. It had actually come as a shock to her after all these years. But she was sorely tempted. They had been together for so long and she really loved him.