A Perfect Stranger Read Online Free PDF Page A

Santa Eugenia for a few more weeks. And when at last she returned to him in Paris, six weeks later than she had promised, Antoine fully understood what was going to happen after that. Alejandra was going to spend most of her time as she always had, surrounded by her family, on their estates in Spain. She had spent all of the war years sequestered there and now, even after the war, and married, she wanted to continue to live in those familiar surroundings.
    Predictably, on their first anniversary, Alejandra gave birth to their first child, a son named Julien, and Antoine was well pleased. He had an heir for his own empire now, and he and the marquis strolled quietly for hours on the grounds of Santa Eugenia when the child was a month old, discussing all of Antoine's future plans for the banks and his son. He had his father-in-law's full endorsement, and in the year since he had married Alejandra, both the Banque Malle and the Banco Quadral had grown.
    Alejandra remained at Santa Eugenia for the summer with her brothers and sisters, their children, cousins, nieces, and friends. And when Antoine returned to Paris, Alejandra had already conceived again. This time Alejandra suffered a miscarriage, and the next time she delivered twins, born prematurely and dead at birth. There was then a brief hiatus when she spent six months resting, with her family, in Madrid. When she returned to Paris to her husband, she conceived yet again. This fourth pregnancy yielded Raphaella, two years younger than Julien. There were then two more miscarriages and another stillbirth, after which the ravishingly beautiful Alejandra announced that it was the climate in Paris that did not agree with her and that her sisters felt she would be healthier in Spain. Having seen her inevitable return to Spain coming throughout their marriage, Antoine quietly acquiesced. It was the way of women of her country, and it was a battle that he never could have won.
    From then on he was content to see her at Santa Eugenia, or in Madrid, surrounded by female cousins, sisters, and duennas, perfectly content to be always in the company of her relatives, assorted women friends, and a handful of their unmarried brothers, who squired them to concerts, operas, and plays. Alejandra was still one of Spain's great beauties, and in Spain she led an exceedingly pleasant life of indolence and opulence, with which she was well pleased. It was no great problem for Antoine to fly back and forth to Spain, when he could get away from the bank, which he did less and less. In time he induced her to let the children come back to Paris to attend school, on the condition of course that they flew to Santa Eugenia for every possible vacation and for four months in the summer. And now and then she consented to visit him in Paris, despite what she constantly referred to as the detrimental effects of the French weather on her health. After the last stillbirth there were no more babies, in fact after that there was only a platonic affection between Alejandra and her husband, which she knew from her sisters was perfectly normal.
    Antoine was perfectly content to leave things as they were, and when the marquis died, the marriage paid off. No one was surprised at the arrangement. Alejandra and Antoine had jointly inherited the Banco Quadral. Her brothers were amply compensated, but to Antoine went the empire he so desperately wanted to add to his own. Now it was of his son that he thought as he continued to build it, but Antoine's only son was not destined to be his heir. At sixteen Julien de Mornay-Malle died in an accident, in Buenos Aires, playing polo, leaving his mother stunned, his father bereft, and Raphaella Antoine's only child.
    And it was Raphaella who consoled her father, who flew with him to Buenos Aires to bring the boy's body back to France. It was she who held her father's hand during those endless hours and as they watched the casket being lowered solemnly onto the runway at Orly.