Danielle Steel - Jewels

“We’ll try….” He was immensely pleased that she really liked it. He was excited about it now, too, and doing the work with her might actually be fun, if it didn’t kill them both “I’m happy that you like it. I had a bad moment or two, thinking that you had forgotten all about it, and didn’t really want it. And I promise you, your father thinks I’m quite mad. I’ll have to show you some of the cables sometime. He said this sounded almost as bad as that farm you tried to buy on Long Island, and it’s now completely obvious to him that we’re both mad and obviously well suited.” She giggled with glee, as she thought of the house again, and then she looked at William with a mischievous look of her own, which he was quick to notice.

“I have something for you too … I think … I didn’t want to say anything until we got back to England, and I was sure … but I think it’s possible … we might be having a baby …” She looked sheepish and pleased all at the same time, and he looked at her in wonder and amazement.

“So soon? Sarah, are you serious?” He couldn’t believe it.

“I think I am. It must have happened on our wedding night. I’ll be sure in a few more weeks.” But she had already recognized the early signs. This time she had recognized them herself.

“Sarah, my darling, you are truly amazing!” In one night they had acquired a family and a château in France, except the child had barely been conceived, and the château had been falling to rack and ruin for the better part of a century, but nevertheless they were both pleased.

They stayed in Paris, walking the Seine, and making love, and having quiet dinners in little bistros until just after the new year, and then they returned to London to be the Duke and Duchess of Whitfield.

Chapter 11

ILLIAM insisted that Sarah go to his doctor on Harley Street, the moment they returned to London. And he confirmed what she had guessed weeks before. By then she was five weeks pregnant, and he told her that the child would be born in late August or early September. And he urged her to be cautious for the first few months because of the miscarriage she’d had. But he found her in excellent health, and congratulated William on his heir, when he came to fetch her. William was clearly very pleased with himself, and with her, and they told his mother when they went to Whitfield that weekend.

“My dear children, that is marvelous!” she raved, acting as though they had accomplished something no one else had since Mary with Jesus. “I might remind you that it took you thirty days what it took your father and me thirty years to accomplish. You are to be congratulated on your speed, and your good fortune! What clever children you are!” She toasted them and they laughed. But she was enormously pleased for them, and she told Sarah again that having William had been the happiest moment in her life, and had remained thus in all the years since then. But as the doctor had done, she urged her not to be foolish and overdo, lest it hurt the baby or herself.

“Really, I’m fine.” She felt surprisingly well, and the doctor had said they could make love, “reasonably,” he had suggested they not hang off the chandelier or try to set any Olympic records, which Sarah had passed on to William. But he was desperately afraid that making love at all would hurt her or the baby. “I promise you, it won’t do anything. He said so.”

“How does he know?”

“He’s a doctor,” she reassured him.

“Maybe he’s no good. Maybe we should see someone else.”

“William, he was your mother’s doctor before you were born.”

“Precisely. He’s too old. We’ll see someone younger.”

He actually went so far as to find a specialist for her, and just to humor him, she saw him, and he told her all the same things as kindly old Lord Allthorpe, who Sarah much preferred. And by then she was two months pregnant, and had had no problems.

“What I want to know is when are we going back to France,” she said after they’d been in London for a month. She was dying to get started on their new home.

“Are you serious?” William looked horrified. “You want to go now? Don’t you want to wait until after the baby?”

“Of course not. Why wait all these months when we could be working on it now? I’m not sick, for heaven’s sake, darling, I’m pregnant”

“I know. But what if something happens?” He looked frantic and wished she weren’t so determined. But even old Lord Allthorpe agreed that there was no real reason for her to stay at home, and as long as she didn’t wear herself out completely, or carry anything too heavy, he thought the project in France would be fine.

“Keeping busy will be the best thing for her,” he assured them, and then suggested they wait till March, so she would be fully three months pregnant before they left. It was the only compromise Sarah was willing to make. She would wait until March to go back to France, but not a moment longer. She was dying to get to work on the château.

William tried to drag out his projects at Whitfield as best he could, and his mother kept urging him to tell Sarah to take it easy.

“Mother, I try, but she doesn’t listen,” he finally said in a moment of exasperation.

“She’s just a child herself. She doesn’t realize one has to be careful. She wouldn’t want to lose this baby.” But Sarah had already learned that lesson the hard way long before. And she was more careful than William thought, taking naps, and getting off her feet, and resting when she was tired. She had no intention of losing this baby. Nor did she intend to sit around. And she pressed him until finally he was ready to go back to France, and couldn’t stall her any longer. By then it was mid-March, and she was threatening to leave without him.

They went to Paris on the royal yacht, when Lord Mountbatten was on his way to see the Duke of Windsor, and he agreed to take the young couple over as a favor. “Dickie,” as William and his contemporaries called him, was a very handsome man, and Sarah amused him during the entire crossing, telling him about the château and the work they were going to do there.

“William, old man, sounds like you have your work cut out for you.” But he thought it would be good for them too. It was obvious that they were very much in love, and very excited about their project.

William had had the concierge at the Ritz hire a car for them, and they had managed to find a small hotel two and a half hours outside Paris, not far from their crumbling château. They rented the top floor of the hotel, and planned to live there until they had made the château habitable again, which they both knew could be a long time.

“It might be years, you know,” William grumbled as they saw it again. And he spent the next two weeks lining up workmen. Eventually, he had hired a sizeable crew, and they began by prying off the boards and shutters to see what lay within. There were surprises everywhere as they worked, and some of them were happy ones, and some of them were not. The main living room was a splendid room, and eventually they found three salons, with beautiful boiseries , and fading gilt on some of the moldings; there were marble fireplaces and beautiful floors. But in some places the wood had been destroyed by mold and years of dampness, and animals who had ventured in through the boards and gnawed at the lovely moldings here and there.

There was a huge, handsome dining room, a series of smaller salons, still on the main floor, an extraordinary wood-panelled library, and a baronial hall worthy of any English castle, and a kitchen so antiquated it reminded Sarah of some of the museums she’d visited with her parents the year before. There were tools there that surely no one had used for two hundred years, and she collected them carefully with the intent to save them. And they carefully stored the two carriages they had found in the barn.