The Lavender Garden Read Online Free PDF Page A

latter years cataloging and adding to the collection. She stood up and walked slowly around the sides of the room, the books, sentinel and stoic, stretching up to four times her height. She felt as if they were surveying her—their new mistress—and wondering what fate would befall them.
    Emilie remembered sitting with her father and playing the Alphabet Game, which entailed her choosing two letters from the alphabet of any combination. When she had chosen them, her father would move around the library searching for an author whose book heldthose initials. Only rarely had he failed to produce a book from the two letters Emilie had given him. Even when she tried to be clever with X ’s and Z ’s, her father would manage to procure a fading, battered copy of Chinese philosophy, or a slim anthology by a long-forgotten Russian poet.
    Though she’d watched Édouard do this for years, Emilie now wished she’d paid more attention to the eclectic methods her father had of cataloging and filing the books. As she glanced at the shelves, she knew it was not as simple as alphabetical order. On the shelf in front of her, the books ranged from Dickens to Plato to Guy de Maupassant.
    She also knew the collection was so extensive that any cataloging her father had completed in the ledgers stacked on the desk would barely have scratched the surface. Even though he had known where to place his hands on a book almost immediately, Édouard had taken the skill and secret with him to his grave.
    “If I’m to sell this house, what would I do with you?” she whispered to the books.
    They gazed back at her silently; thousands of forlorn children who knew their future lay in her hands. Emilie shook herself from her reverie of the past. She could not let emotion sway her. If she decided to sell the château, then the books must be found another home. Closing the shutter and returning the books to their shrouded slumber, she left the library.
    •  •  •
    Emilie spent the rest of the morning exploring the endless nooks and crannies of the château, suddenly appreciating a wonderful two-hundred-year-old frieze that adorned the ceiling in the magnificent drawing room, the elegant but now shabby French furniture, and the many paintings that hung on every wall.
    At lunchtime, Emilie made her way into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water. She drank it thirstily, realizing she felt breathless and exhilarated, as if she’d woken up from a bad dream. The beauty she’d seen so clearly for the first time this morning had been around her for the whole of her life, yet she had never thought to appreciate it or give it credence. And now, rather than seeing her inheritance and her familylineage as a rope around her neck from which she wished to be free, she was experiencing the first traces of excitement.
    This wonderful house, with its wealth of exquisite objects, was hers.
    Feeling suddenly hungry, Emilie rooted around in the fridge and the kitchen cupboards, but to no avail. Taking Frou-Frou under her arm, she put the little dog in the car next to her and drove toward Gassin. Having parked the car, she walked up the ancient steep steps through the village to the hilltop boulevard that housed the bars and restaurants and took a table at the edge of the terrace to admire the spectacular coastal view below her. Ordering a small jug of rosé and a house salad, she basked in the strong lunchtime sun, thoughts circling in no particular order around her head.
    “Excuse me, mademoiselle, but are you Emilie de la Martinières?”
    Shading her eyes from the strong sunlight, Emilie looked up at the man standing by her table.
    “Yes?” She looked askance at him.
    “Then I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.” The man held out his hand. “My name is Sebastian Carruthers.”
    Emilie reached out a tentative hand to his in return. “Do I know you?”
    “No, you don’t.”
    Emilie noticed he spoke excellent French, but with an English accent.