Danielle Steel - Jewels

William ventured cautiously upstairs after their initial investigations on the main floor of the château. But he absolutely refused to let Sarah join him, for fear that the floors might cave in, but he found them all surprisingly solid, and eventually he let Sarah come up to see what he’d found. There were at least a dozen large sunny rooms, again with lovely boiseries , and beautifully shaped windows, and there was a handsome sitting room with a marble fireplace, which looked out over the main entrance and what had once been the park and the gardens of the château. But suddenly Sarah realized as she walked from room to room, that there were no bathrooms. Of course, she laughed to herself, there wouldn’t have been. They took baths in tubs in their dressing rooms, and they had chamber pots instead of toilets.

There was a lot of work to do, but it was clearly well worth doing. And even William looked excited now. He made drawings for the men, and drew up work schedules and spent every day from dawn to dusk giving directions, while Sarah worked beside him, sanding down old wood, refinishing floors, cleaning boiseries , repairing gilt, and polishing brass and bronze until it shone, and eventually she spent most of every day painting. And while they worked on the main house, William had assigned a crew of young boys to repair the caretaker’s cottage so that eventually they could move there from the hotel, and be right on the site of their enormous project.

The caretaker’s cottage was small. It had a tiny living room, a smaller bedroom beside it, and a large cozy kitchen, and upstairs there were two slightly larger sunny bedrooms. But it was certainly adequate for them, and possibly even a serving girl downstairs, if eventually Sarah felt she needed one. They had a bedroom for themselves, and even one for their baby when it arrived.

She could feel the baby moving inside her now, and each time she felt it, she smiled, convinced that it would be a boy and look just like William. She told him that from time to time, and he insisted that he didn’t care if it was a girl, they wanted more anyway. “And it’s not as though we’re supplying an heir to the throne,” he teased her, but there was still his title, and the matter of inheriting Whitfield and its lands.

But they both had more than Whitfield, or even their château, on their minds these days. In March, Hitler had raised his ugly head, and had “absorbed” Czechoslovakia, claiming that in effect, it no longer existed as a separate entity anymore. He had, in effect, swallowed ten million persons who were not Germans. And he had no sooner devoured them, than he turned his sights on Poland, and began threatening them about issues that had been a problem for some time, in Danzig, and elsewhere.

A week after all that, the Spanish Civil War came to an end, having taken well over a million lives, as the well-being of Spain lay in ruins.

But April was worse. Imitating his German friend, Mussolini took over Albania, and the British and French governments began to growl, and offered Greece and Romania their help if they felt it was needed. They had offered the same thing weeks before to Poland, promising this time to stand by if Hitler came any closer.

By May, Mussolini and Hitler had signed an alliance, each promising to follow the other into war, and similar discussions between France, England, and Russia stopped and started, and went nowhere. It was a dismal spring for world politics, and the Whitfields were deeply concerned, yet at the same time they were moving ahead with their enormous work at the Château de la Meuze, and Sarah was deeply engrossed in her baby. She was six months pregnant by then, and although he didn’t say so to her, William thought she was enormous. But they were both tall, and it was reasonable to think that their child might be large. He would feel it moving inside her at night as they lay in bed, and once in a while when he moved close to her, he’d feel the baby kick him.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” He was fascinated by it, by the life he felt inside her, her growing shape, and the baby that would soon come from the love they had shared. The miracle of it all still overwhelmed him. He still made love to her from time to time, but he was more and more afraid to hurt her, and she seemed less interested now. She was hard at work on the château, and by the time they fell into bed at night they were both exhausted. And in the morning the workmen arrived at six o’clock and began hammering and banging.

They were able to move into the caretaker’s house in late June, and give up their rooms at the hotel, which pleased them. They were living on their own turf now and the grounds had begun to look civilized. He had brought a fleet of gardeners from Paris to cut and chop and plant, and turn a jungle back into a garden. The park took more time, but by August there was hope for that, too, and by then it was amazing, the progress they had made with the whole house. William was beginning to think they would move in at the end of the month, just in time to have their baby. He was working particularly hard on their suite of rooms so that Sarah would be comfortable there, and they could go on working on the house after they moved in. It would take years for all the minute details to be finished, but they had already accomplished an astonishing amount of work in a remarkably short time.

In fact, George and Belinda had come by in July, and they had been vastly impressed by how much William and Sarah had done by then. Jane and Peter also came to visit, and it was all too short a visit for the sisters. Jane was crazy about William, and thrilled for Sarah about the baby. And she promised to come again after it was born, so she could see it, although she was expecting again, too, and it would be a while before she could come tack to Europe. Sarah’s parents had wanted to come, too, but her father hadn’t been feeling well, though Jane assured her it wasn’t serious. And they were frantically busy rebuilding Southampton. But her mother had every intention of coming to visit in the fall, after Sarah had the baby.

After Peter and Jane left, Sarah felt lonely for several days, and absorbed herself in the house again to boost her spirits. She worked frantically to finish her own room, and especially the lovely room next to it that she had set aside for the baby.

“How’s it coming in there?” William called out to her one afternoon, as he brought her a loaf of bread and some cheese and a steaming cup of coffee. He had been so kind to her family, just as he was to everyone, and to her. And more than ever, Sarah loved him deeply.

“I’m getting there,” she said proudly. She had been carefully gilding some boiserie , and it looked better than what they had seen at Versailles

“You’re good.” He admired her work with a gentle smile. “I’d hire you myself,” he said as he bent down to kiss her. “Are you feeling all right?”

“I’m fine.” Her back was killing her, but she wouldn’t have told him for anything in the world. She loved what she did there every day, and she wouldn’t be pregnant for much longer. Only for another three or four weeks, and they had found a small, clean hospital in Chaumont where she could have the baby. There was a very sensible doctor there, and she had gone to see him every few weeks. He thought everything was going well, although he warned her that she might have a very large baby.

“What does that mean?” she had asked, trying to sound casual. Lately, she had been getting a little nervous about the birth, but she hadn’t wanted to frighten William with her concerns, they seemed so silly.

“It could mean a cesarean,” the doctor confessed to her. “It can be disagreeable, but mother and child are sometimes safer that way if the baby is too large, and yours could be.”