Danielle Steel - Jewels

This time Sarah looked stunned. Up until then, nothing had really surprised her. “Why not?” He had even threatened that Isabelle might be pregnant when he wanted to marry her, it had been his main reason for not waiting until Christmas. And he wasn’t that old. He was fifty-four then, William had been older than that when they had Xavier, and not even in good health, Sarah thought warmly. “Is there something wrong with him?”

“He had severe mumps as a child. And he’s sterile. His uncle told me. Enzo had never told me anything. And when I asked him, he laughed. He said I was very lucky, it was built-in birth control. He lied to me, Maman … he told me we would have dozens of children.” The tears spilled over on her cheeks again and again. “I think I could even stand being married to him, no matter how much I hated him, if we had children.” There was a longing in her heart that nothing would fill now. For five long years she had had no one to love, and no one to love her. Not even her family, whom he had caused her to fight with.

“That’s no way to have children, dear,” Sarah said quietly. “You don’t want them to grow up in misery.” But she didn’t want her own daughter living in it either.

“We don’t sleep with each other anymore anyway. We haven’t in three years. He never comes home anymore except to pick up his shirts, or get money.” But something Isabelle had said had caught Sarah’s attention, and she made a mental note of it for later. The Principe di San Tebaldi was not quite as slick as he thought, but almost. “I don’t care anymore,” Isabelle went on. “I don’t care about anything. It’s like being in prison.” And she looked it. In the daylight, Sarah saw that Emanuelle had been right when she went to Rome, and now she knew why. Isabelle looked wan and pale, and desperately unhappy, and with good reason.

“Do you want to come home? You could probably get a divorce here. You were married at the château.”

“We married again in Italy,” Isabelle said hopelessly. “In the church. If I got a divorce here, it wouldn’t be legal in Italy, and I could never get married again anyway. It would be illegal. Lorenzo says I just have to resign myself to my fate. He’s not going anywhere.” Once again, as he had before, he really had them over a barrel, and Sarah didn’t like it. It was worse than her first marriage had been, by far, or certainly similar to it. And her father had gotten her out of it. She knew she had to find a way now to help her daughter.

“What can I do to help you? What do you want, my darling?” Sarah asked sadly, “I’ll speak to my attorneys at once, but I think you may have to bide your time with him. Eventually there will be something he wants more than you, and maybe we can bargain with him.” But she had to admit, it wouldn’t be easy. He was a tough one.

Isabelle looked at her oddly then. There was something she wanted very much. Not as much as a divorce, or a child, but at least it would give her life some meaning. She had been thinking of it for a long time, but given die estrangement between them, she felt she couldn’t ask her.

“I’d like a store,” she whispered, and Sarah looked surprised.

“What kind of store?” Sarah imagined she meant some kind of boutique. But she didn’t.

“Whitfield’s.” She was absolutely certain.

“In Rome?” Sarah had never even thought of it. The Italians had Buccellati and Bulgari. She had never even considered opening in Rome, but it was certainly an intriguing idea, although Isabelle was a little young to run it. “It’s an interesting idea. But are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“What if you succeed in divorcing him, or you simply decide to leave, divorced or not, then what do we do?”

“I won’t. I like Italy. It’s Lorenzo, and my life with him, that I hate. But it’s wonderful there.” Her face lit up for the first time. “I have terrific friends, and the women are so chic, they wear tons of great jewelry. Mother, it would be a huge success, I promise.” Sarah couldn’t disagree with what she said about the Italian women, anyway, but it was a new idea to her, and she had to digest it.

“Let me think about it. And you think about it too. Don’t enter into this hastily. It’s an enormous amount of work, and a tremendous commitment. You’ll work very hard, endless hours. There’s more to this than dressing up. Talk to Emanuelle … talk to Julian…. You have to be very sure before you do this.”

“It’s all I’ve wanted for the last year, I just didn’t know how to ask you.”

“Well, you have.” Sarah smiled at her. “Now let me think about it, and talk to your brothers.” And then she grew serious again. “And let me think about how I can help you with Lorenzo.”

“You can’t,” Isabelle said sadly.

“You never know.” In her heart of hearts, Sarah suspected that all it would take was money. In the right way, at the right time. She just hoped the moment would come soon, so Isabelle didn’t have to be married to him for much longer.

They sat and talked for another hour and then walked slowly back to the store arm in arm. It warmed Sarah’s heart to feel close to her again, she hadn’t in years, not since she was in her teens and losing her had been so painful. In its own way, it had been almost as sad as losing Lizzie, because in many ways, Isabelle had been dead to her. But she was back now, and Sarah’s heart felt lighter.

Isabelle left her outside the shop, and went to have tea with an old friend, a girl she had gone to school with who was just getting married. Isabelle envied her her innocence. How nice it would have been to start over. But she knew there was no hope of that for her. Her life, empty as it was, would end with Lorenzo. At least if her mother let her open the store, it would give her something to do, and she could concentrate on that, instead of sitting at home and hating him, and crying every time she saw a baby, as she thought of the babies she would never have. She could have lived without children if she loved him, or without his love if she had a child to console her, but to have neither was a double punishment, and sometimes she wondered what she’d done to deserve this.

“She’s too young,” Phillip said absolutely when Sarah called him. She had already discussed it with Julian and he thought it was an intriguing idea. He liked some of the old Buccellati things, and many of the new designs young Italian designers were doing. He thought they could do something very exciting in Rome, different from both Paris and London, each of which had their own style, and their own clients. London had the Queen and the old guard, and Paris had the flash and the dash, the chic and the very rich, and the nouveau riche. And Rome would have all the greedy stylish Italians who devoured jewelry.

“We could get someone to help her run it, that’s not important.” Sarah brushed his objections aside. “The real question is if Rome is the right market.”

“I think it is,” Julian said quietly, on the same call with them.

“I think you don’t know what you’re talking about, as usual,” Phillip snapped, and Sarah’s heart ached. He always did that. Julian was everything he wanted to be, and everything he wasn’t. Handsome, charming, young, adored by everyone, and particularly by women. Phillip had become increasingly stuffy over the years, so much so that he almost seemed to dry up, and instead of being sensual, he was sneaky. He was forty years old, and much to her chagrin, Sarah thought he looked more like fifty. Being married to Cecily hadn’t helped anything, but it had been his choice, and she was still the kind of wife he wanted, respectable, dull, well-bred, and usually absent. She spent most of her time in the country with her horses. And she had just recently bought a horse farm in Ireland.