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reluctantly opened up like multicoloured flags to subside with a silken whoosh on to the counter.
    ‘My grandmother likes blue.’
    Cautioning her colleagues, in rapid French, to keep an eye on her dubious customer, the woman disappeared in the direction of the stockroom, from which she eventually returned with a blue scarf garlanded with roses.
    ‘That will do admirably.’
    Resorting to her native French, Clare demanded that the box be gift-wrapped. Pulling herself up to her full height, she made out a cheque (hoping it wouldn’t bounce). She had no trouble with the particule.

Three
    Baronne Gertrude de Cluzac, patrician and upright, tinted her hair, wore high-heeled shoes and had the figure of a young girl, despite the fact that she had reached the age of eighty-five.
    She had been brought up by a series of governesses to put duty before pleasure in accordance with the family motto, Ad Augusta per Agusta (to honours through difficulties); but after so many years the line between the two had become blurred and now, more often than not, the duty had become the pleasure.
    Since leaving Château de Cluzac over twenty-five years ago she had not been back to the Médoc. To say that she had ‘left’ the Médoc, was to imply that she had departed from her home voluntarily. After the tragic and premature death of his father, Baron Thibault, the indolent Charles-Louis – who three years previously had come down from Oxford having gambled away his allowance and failed to get a degree – had virtually kicked her out.
    Baron Thibault had not only been the ‘great man of the Médoc’ in the heyday of the great wine-producing estates, but a great man. In every respect. Energetic and aristocratic, he excelled at sport, had a keen eye for business, was respected by his employees in whose affairs he took a personal interest, and was passionate about his vines.
    On a personal level, Thibault had been a good husband and a good father. A bon viveur and full of charm, with a courtesy and generosity that endeared him to everyone, and a prodigious appetite both for life and for food,Thibault liked nothing better than to head the long oak table capable of seating twenty-two, to which he brought a spirit of social brilliance and conviviality. Gertrude, herself the daughter of a château owner, this time in Sauternes, had adored him. The feeling had been mutual.
    A wise woman, she had learned early on in the marriage, which had taken place when she was eighteen – not unusual in those days – that a man of such prodigious appetite must be free to indulge it. Unwilling to restrain him, to bridle him as she did her horse (she was a fearless horsewoman), she let him take the bit between his teeth and did not question him too closely when he returned from the trips abroad taken without her, or from his frequent and regular visits to Bordeaux.
    From the moment they had met, at a Christmas party at Cluzac, to the moment when an ashen-faced chef de culture had knocked on the door of her boudoir to bring the news of Thibault’s death while out hunting, they had loved each other dearly. Gertrude was not stupid enough to imagine that among the peaks of married life – it was after all an arcane and impossible institution – there would not be troughs of despair and despondency (no longer tolerated by the young), moments when she would wonder what she was doing in the larger-than-life Thibault’s bed at all. These were soon dissipated by his overwhelming generosity (both of body and of spirit), his innate decency and his genuine love for her.
    Charles-Louis, although similar in build, immaculately turned out, and with Thibault’s impeccable manners, was a far cry from his father. Out of touch with his own feelings and impervious to those of others, he had a temper verging on the sadistic and humiliated those who crossed him, in the case of women often reducing them to tears. Gertrude was at a loss to know where her son got all his