“I don’t know. Maybe they’ll want to see him, and they’ll just come in as usual. Gwyneth is dying to meet him. I don’t know about the others. Maybe that’s why Angus turned up. I’ve never seen him in the daytime before.”
“Maybe we should just do what we always do, and see what happens,” Blake said, suddenly feeling brave. “Maybe they’re up for it and so is he. And what can he do if he sees them? Call the police and say he saw a bunch of ghosts having dinner? Let’s just do it.” After opposing their visit initially, he was willing to throw caution to the wind now. The Butterfields were Samuel’s ancestors, after all, not Sybil’s and Blake’s.
“Okay,” Sybil said, feeling nervous now and less confident than Blake. She didn’t want to explain it to Samuel, in case the others didn’t appear. And if they did, he’d be unprepared and confused. And Blake was right in a way, it was a kind of test. Did the Butterfields want to meet him or not? Were they willing to accept the French branch? And were Lili’s child and grandchild acceptable to them? Would they consider them Butterfields at all? Or simply ignore them and refuse to be seen?
As Blake and Sybil left the library, she asked him if he had noticed Samuel’s resemblance to Bert, and Blake laughed. “It’s funny that you said that. I thought so too, but I figured you’d think it was hokey if I said it. They have strong genes.”
“And his daughter looks like Lucy,” she said as they walked into the kitchen to see the young people. They were having a snack at the kitchen table, and Charlie had joined them, but not Magnus. And Max, Caroline’s boyfriend, walked in a minute later. They were a happy, lively group. Samuel followed the noise and joined them a few minutes later.
“Would you like to join us here for dinner tonight?” Sybil asked Samuel, trying to sound casual, and he looked pleased as he accepted for him and his daughter. “I should have warned you. We dress for dinner, but you don’t have to. You can wear whatever you want.”
“I can lend Laure a dress if she needs one,” Caroline volunteered, and Laure thanked her.
“When you say ‘dress’ for dinner,” Samuel asked cautiously, “that means? Tie and jacket?”
“We follow some of the old traditions of the house, and we wear black tie,” Blake said, embarrassed at how ridiculous he knew it sounded, like a costume party. But it seemed run of the mill to them now. And they even wore white tie on some nights, but Blake didn’t say so.
“How amazing!” Samuel looked surprised. “It’s a nice idea actually, and must have been then. And now that I’ve seen the house, I can see it, but if you had told me that on the phone, I would have thought you were mad. But the house is so perfectly of the period, I actually understand it.”
Samuel walked around the ground floor again, taking pictures, and Sybil joined him and pointed out some details, which Laure found fascinating too, as an architecture student.
“I’d love to see some of the photographs you said you have,” Samuel said after a little while, and Sybil walked him back upstairs to her office, and took them out of the box where she kept them. She went through the photos, explaining who was who, and he was fascinated. There was one of his grandmother Bettina holding his mother, Lili, when she was only a few months old, and all the dates and many of the names were on the back. And then he noticed the resemblance between Laure and Lucy. “What happened to Lucy again?” he asked Sybil.
“She always suffered from ill health, and she died of pneumonia right after the Crash of ’29, when she was twenty. I think it totally disheartened her father, particularly with the reversals they had. He had a heart attack and died about six months later. They sold the house for the first time when he did. That was when your great-grandmother Gwyneth went to live in Europe with your grandmother Bettina. Your mother must have been about twelve then.”
“I think she said something about it,” he said, jogging his memory, “about her grandmother coming to live with them, my great-grandmother, but she died soon after. My mother always said that her grandmother died of a broken heart after her husband died. Somehow that sounds very sweet. I don’t think women do that these days. If I had died during our divorce, my wife would have celebrated, although we’re good friends now.” He laughed ruefully and Sybil smiled. “We divorced a long time ago, when Laure was five. The relationship didn’t last very long. Now we’re fine just as friends and co-parents, but it took a while.”
“Did she marry again?” Sybil asked him, and he shook his head.
“No, but she has two children with the man she lives with, and she’s very happy. I think I cured her from marriage,” he said and they both laughed. It sounded very French to Sybil. And she remembered that Bettina hadn’t wanted to marry again after Tony, until she fell in love with Louis in Paris. So maybe Samuel would feel that way one day too. He had said he had never remarried either and didn’t want to. He was content with his daughter and his work, which Sybil thought was too bad. He seemed like a nice man.
They walked downstairs to the next floor together to Sybil’s bedroom, so she could dress for dinner. The young people had stayed together downstairs, and Andy was showing the guests the antique pool table in the playroom in the basement.
“I’m so sorry I don’t have a dinner jacket for tonight,” he said apologetically.
“Don’t even think about it,” she reassured him. She was convinced by then that the Butterfields weren’t going to appear anyway. The Saint Martins were strangers, after all, so all he’d see were the Gregorys overdressed and they’d eat in the kitchen and look silly.
“I have a tie and a blue shirt,” he offered, “but I didn’t even bring a white shirt.” She couldn’t give him one of Blake’s because he was taller and broader than Samuel, although Samuel was tall too, but Blake’s shirts wouldn’t fit him.
They met in the hall again an hour later, and Samuel looked very nice in his tweed jacket, pale blue shirt, and navy blue Hermès tie, with proper shoes and black jeans, and Sybil was wearing one of her less dressy evening ensembles, a long black velvet skirt with a black cashmere sweater, and he complimented her on how nice she looked.