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unpleasantness from. Itwas neither his egotistical behaviour, his arrogance, nor his frank womanising that now bothered her, however, but the fact that, after 300 years, he was not husbanding Cluzac.
    In touch with the old Comtesse de Ribagnac, her contemporary on a nearby estate with whom she exchanged discursive letters, Gertrude was kept informed on a monthly basis of Charles-Louis’ conduct. Despite the boomtime of the eighties, when an incredible run of great and bountiful years had driven prices through the roof and Médocain growers had ploughed back their profits, her son had apparently made no investment in the cellars, had not bothered to repair the dilapidated roofs of the château, and although his vineyards, under the expert eye of Albert Rochas, were impeccably kept, there had been little or no replanting. Making no secret of the fact that, as one of the last true landowning aristocrats, he was above the commercial fray, that he did not trust – and strongly objected to paying taxes to – a socialist government (a sentiment with which Baronne Gertrude for once concurred), Charles-Louis seemed to turn a blind eye to the viability of Château de Cluzac, the gates of which he kept firmly closed.
    It was not only their inability to get on with one another that made Baronne Gertrude exasperated each time she thought of Charles-Louis, but also the fact that, unlike his father – who had taken his responsibilities seriously and devoted himself to Cluzac – her son preferred whisky to claret and had not the least dedication to wine, the making of which he supervised as necessary but did not love.
    On her enforced departure from the Médoc as a reasonably young widow, Baronne Gertrude had made her home in the Pas-de-Calais, in the Château deCharleville, which belonged to her family, and in Paris where she had a great many friends.
    It was there, at the British Embassy, that she had met, and ultimately married, Selwyn Donaldson, the United Kingdom Ambassador to Sweden. After Thibault’s death she had not thought that she would marry again. It was too much trouble. But Selwyn, a widower, had wooed her with an English courtesy which had eventually captured her heart. The wedding had been a quiet one in the church of la Madeleine in the eighth arrondissement, and she had spent the next ten years as Lady Donaldson in the embassies and salons of Warsaw, Bonn, Washington and Rome, where she brought a Gallic style and grace to the diplomatic carousel.
    They had been back at their London base, a crepuscular mansion flat facing Rotten Row, when Selwyn’s pancreatic cancer had been diagnosed. It was all over within three weeks. Missing the gentle man terribly, Gertrude had considerable difficulty in coming to terms with the loss of her second husband. It was several years before, pulling herself together, she reverted to her previous title, gathered about her a coterie of friends – largely bridge-playing – and made a new life for herself in the Hyde Park flat where her existence was enlivened by the intermittent visits of her granddaughter, Clare.
    The two Cluzac women had more in common than their disparate ages would suggest.
    Although Gertrude had had as little as possible to do with her son since leaving Cluzac, his wife, Viola, had kept in touch with her when she had walked out on Charles-Louis and returned to Ireland with the eight-year -old Clare. Glad of something to do to mitigate her loneliness, Baronne Gertrude had devoted herself to the upbringing of her granddaughter, leaving Viola free to attend to her horses.
    During Clare’s schooldays at St Mary’s Ascot, her summer holidays, until she was old enough to opt out, had been spent at Cluzac with her father. At Christmas and Easter, when she did not go back to her mother in Ireland, on which she was not at all that keen – they had little in common and Clare was frightened of horses – she stayed with her grandmother, from whom she learned the principles