The Riviera Secret

by Sarah Steele

Genres: World War II; Women's Fiction; 20th Century Romance

Synopsis

The captivating new novel from USA Today bestselling author Sarah Steele is a spellbinding book club read set in the glittering French Riviera, sweeping from the Roaring Twenties through to the dangerous days leading up to the outbreak of war.

Nestled into the pine-dusted coastline of the Cap d'Antibes is the dazzling white Château Violette. When British diplomat Lord Harry Sinclair, his young Jewish wife Daisy and their four-year-old son move into the château in the summer of 1938, their home becomes a beacon for the glamorous expat set - rife with gossip about the Windsors, and everyone in denial about the grumblings across the border in Italy and northern Europe.

But as Germany tightens its grip on Europe, Daisy discovers the château holds a dark past that could threaten her future. While she unravels the tragic secrets of the previous mistresses of Château Violette, war begins to rage across the continent, and soon, no one is safe - least of all Daisy...

Your favourite authors love Sarah Steele's novels...

'I was gripped and enthralled' JILL MANSELL
'Moving, romantic and utterly gripping' KATIE FFORDE
'A fabulous story' MANDY ROBOTHAM
'A tense, heart-in-mouth story' GILL PAUL

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 384

Sample

She sat in front of her dressing-room mirror, examining the reflection of the woman who had just stepped from the stage, the audience’s cheers still ringing in her ears, and her feet screaming with pain from the complicated dance routine. She was a star, the talk of the town, a queue of men already waiting at the stage door to declare themselves to her, but of course it was all an illusion, and beneath the deep-red cupid’s-bow lips, the finely pencilled eyebrows and painted beauty spot, the child she had once been stared back at her.

Would that little girl have believed that one day she would top the bill in a Riviera nightclub, her face plastered across posters, and her name drawing crowds from miles around? Would she have been amazed at the dozens of bouquets crammed into the dressing room that evening, their scent even more powerful than that of the greasepaint and sweat that were her stock-in-trade? The jewellery boxes delivered on behalf of starry-eyed men who hoped that diamonds would secure them dinner with the celebrated singer and dancer?

As the bulbs surrounding her mirror flickered briefly, she removed the heavy diamanté-spangled feather headdress and fluffy blonde wig that had become part of her stage identity. One by one, the elements that made her a star were stripped away – long sparkly earrings, strings of pearls, solid-gold slave bangles – until she could see the flesh-and-blood woman behind the myth. Survival was the most important lesson she had ever learned, and if the fallout meant she could right now hear girls from the chorus airing their spite and jealousy from the other side of her closed door, she did not care. She had not made it this far just to let something as sentimental as friendship get in her way. Friends were disposable, lovers were unreliable, but money and success were the path to freedom. They never let you down.

She scooped cold cream from a large tub and smeared it across her face, dragging the thick stage make-up away with balls of cotton wool. Leaning closer, she examined the fine lines around her eyes, the olive complexion that in this light appeared sallow, and the scattering of grey hairs defying the black dye she applied every two weeks.

How many more years did she have before she was shunted from the limelight by the queue of young hopefuls behind her? How many more years until she was able to give herself the comfortable life she craved? How many more years until her secrets caught up with her and people discovered the darkness behind the feathers and jewels?

She had played a careful game all her life, however, and so perhaps no one would ever discover quite how far she had gone in order to survive.

And how far she would still go in order to protect everything she had worked for.

It was a sultry afternoon, and Daisy could do little more than lie on the window seat in the drawing room, exhausted from a lingering virus that had knocked her out. Had the wife of the Earl of Hastings, gifted his title and estate by Queen Elizabeth I, also hated rainy days on the South Downs? Had she also lounged in this damp manor house, counting dogs on the ancient tapestries that bedecked the oak-panelled walls, or watching raindrops dribble down the ancient leaded windows? Poor woman hadn’t even had the radio to entertain her, nor Daisy’s London gossip magazines.

On days like this, she missed the predictable gloriousness of summer days on the French Riviera, where Sinclair had been posted just before war broke out and they had spent a few sunny months away from England. Back in Antibes, there had always been something to do: a party or a boat ride, a trip to the casino or the beach. Back in Antibes, however, there had also been a darkness that haunted her still.

She considered calling Barker to bring her tea, then remembered that along with the rest of the household staff, the butler had the day off for the party in the village. After six years of war, VE Day celebrations couldn’t have come soon enough for anyone. Nanny had scrubbed and polished Daisy’s children, as befitted their position as heirs to the estate that owned half of the village, and she could only hope they had behaved. Although would it be so bad if they hadn’t? The children needed to let their hair down just as much as the adults.

How had Sinclair’s speech gone? she wondered. Lord Sinclair Castlemere, member of Churchill’s War Cabinet, would have been expected to say a few words, although hopefully not too many, as could be his way if left unchecked. There were barrels of beer to be drunk and dancing to enjoy, after all.

Plenty from the village would find it hard to celebrate, however, including the many war widows and bereft mothers. No amount of evacuated city children screaming around the house and gardens, nor injured soldiers recovering in the Great Hall’s makeshift hospital during the worst of the fighting, could alleviate Daisy’s guilt at her children being safe, when others’ had not survived. She had everything to be grateful for.

How the war years had toughened her up, when she was forced to run the estate alone, turning it into everything from farm to foster home to hospital. She barely recognised the delicate, grief-ridden version of herself who eight years ago had lost a baby and subsequently her mind, and after taking the best part of a bottle of pills had been sent to a clinic to prevent her from harming herself irreparably. Paranoid and convinced the stillbirth was her fault, Daisy had imagined her little son would be better off without her, but thanks to the care and love shown her during those months, she finally emerged as healed as possible after losing a child, cherishing every moment of her second chance at family life.

Other branches of the Edelman banking dynasty had produced male heirs with a strong financial gene, but Daisy Edelman’s best hope for success had always been a good marriage. After an agonising, expensive and fruitless debutante season in which Daisy pinned herself to the walls of ballrooms across London, she unexpectedly found herself a husband at Victoria station. She had been on her way to visit an aunt in Sussex, leaving her luggage in a locker whilst lunching with an old school friend in town. Except that when she returned to the locker, she found she had lost the key. Desperate, she had searched her handbag, riffling through powder compacts, train tickets and loose change, and then bursting into tears as the guard blew the whistle for the Hastings train, which promptly left without her.

A passing gentleman offered Daisy his handkerchief, and when she eventually pulled the key from the breast pocket of her jacket, he neither laughed nor rolled his eyes, but calmly retrieved the case for her. And as she took it from him, distracted momentarily by his dazzlingly blue eyes, he had the grace not to look at the contents of the suitcase as the clasps burst open, spewing clothes and underwear onto the station concourse. Instead, he bought her a brandy, seeming delighted that they would both be catching the same train. He then bought her a first-class ticket for the compartment they had to themselves, talking non-stop all the way through the smoky London suburbs and softly unfolding contours of the South Downs.

Sinclair Castlemere had been to the same school as her father, loved the countryside and hated the city, and had been thrown into the world of politics through his position in the House of Lords. She adored Jane Austen and Beethoven, preferred an evening reading to a party, and wanted to fill her life with dogs and children. If there was a twenty-year age gap between them, it hid itself remarkably well.

By the time the train pulled into Wadhurst station, Daisy wondered how on earth she would survive the twenty-four hours before Sinclair came to take her out to dinner. Survive she did, however, and within six months they had married at the chapel on his estate, with a write-up in the society magazines to prove it, to the delight of Daisy’s parents, who finally considered their work done.

She heard the front door open now, the sound of squealing, damp children as Nanny shouted at them to wash their hands and change before they disturbed their mother. As their feet thundered up the staircase to the attic nursery, Sinclair appeared at the drawing-room door.

‘How are you feeling?’ he asked, planting a kiss on top of her neatly rolled dark hair as he sat beside her.

She smiled up at him, still the handsome stranger on a train, despite the accelerated ageing brought on by the war years. ‘Much better, thank you. I’m sorry I’m such a terrible bore. People will begin to think you’ve buried me in the kitchen garden.’

‘Well, at least you’d fertilise the broad beans,’ he laughed.

‘Was it very jolly?’

‘It was. I don’t think anyone will be leaving until the last drop has been drunk and the band has packed up.’ He chuckled. ‘We mustn’t expect much in terms of service tomorrow, judging by the state of Jackson and young Mabel from the kitchen. I suspect we’ll be taking care of them.’

‘Good. They deserve some fun. Everyone has suffered.’

‘Hard to imagine now that this place was such a vital part of the war effort.’ Sinclair glanced around the drawing room, until recently an office to a secret cross-services command unit involved in the D-Day landings. Family portraits were now back on the walls in place of vast maps of Europe, typewriters and telex machines packed away in some War Office storeroom.

‘Is it awful to say I miss feeling useful?’

‘Not at all. It will take time for everyone to adjust to peace.’

‘Do you miss it?’ she asked.

‘Miss the war? One day we’ll look back and see that these were our best and our worst years. And I have certainly seen the best and worst of humanity.’ He looked at her. ‘As have you, my darling.’

‘Not as much as my people have,’ she said quietly.

Daisy’s Jewish heritage might be diluted by her father’s marriage to a gentile, but still she valued her lineage through the banking family who had settled in London from Austria a century earlier. Sinclair had tried to shield her from some of the atrocities being reported against Jews, but he had not been quick enough to switch off the radio during Richard Dimbleby’s first-hand account of what he had seen at a German death camp, sitting with his wife as she insisted on listening to the horrors unfold. Her own first-hand experience of the war paled into insignificance in comparison, but still she sometimes reflected on those last months in France and how easily she might not have made it home.

‘Sinclair,’ she said, ‘do you ever wonder what happened to her?’

‘To whom?’

‘Arleta, of course,’ she said carefully.

He sighed. ‘Daisy, you mustn’t try to imagine. Even if she survived, things in France were pretty terrible.’

‘But she sacrificed everything in order to help me, and I never even found out whether she survived. What sort of person does that make me? I am here, enjoying my life, and she . . .’

‘She made her choice, Daisy.’

‘And I let her.’ How could she explain that without an ending to the story that had started seven years ago on the Riviera, there would always be a part of her that remained adrift? Daisy looked up at him. ‘I still think about the château. Do you?’

‘There hasn’t been time to think about much over the last few years.’

‘But now there is time, and I can’t bear it. I need to know what happened to her.’

He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her towards him, so that her cheek rested against his tweed jacket, infused with the scent of his favourite pipe tobacco. ‘Let’s look forward instead of back. Take the children up to Scotland for the school holidays, perhaps. The change will do us all good. And it’s about time I taught Milo to fish.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘And why don’t you come to London in the meantime? The flat’s far too empty on my own. Do some shopping while I’m at the House of Lords. We could go to the opera with Ellen and Gerald before they go back to New York, maybe have dinner at Claridge’s. I hear have they have a marvellous new chef.’

Before she could answer, however, the door burst open and Milo hurled himself into his mother’s arms, closely followed by Cecily, dragging her spaniel puppy onto Sinclair’s lap. Daisy felt a flash of blissful happiness, the guilt she carried daily put briefly aside.

Seeing London for the first time in months was a terrible shock to Daisy as she arrived at Brompton Gardens with Sinclair. Familiar landmarks had been gutted by firebombs or razed to the ground, routes blocked off whilst trucks ferried away rubble and work began on rebuilding the capital. Despite the prevailing British stiff upper lip, disfigured soldiers begged on the streets, displaced families dragged their belongings in carts and queues outside food shops told of the rationing everyone was so exhausted by.

Whilst Sinclair was at the House of Lords, sitting on one of the new social-reform committees established now that Attlee’s Labour government had ousted Churchill, Daisy wandered along Bond Street, following her husband’s instructions to buy herself a few new items of clothing with the coupons she had accrued during the war, when almost all her wardrobe had been ruined by working alongside the land girls.

Once, she would have delighted in a day’s shopping, perhaps arranged to meet a friend for lunch and gossip, but nothing was the same these days, and she had pretended to share the enthusiasm of the shopgirls who encouraged her to buy two elegant CC41 day dresses in Fenwick, a slim suit in Dickins & Jones and a couple of blouses in Harrods. Without the lace and trimmings so easily accessed before the war, the austerity of these few pieces failed to ignite the hoped-for excitement, although Sinclair insisted she looked wonderful in them.

She was lifted by their visit to the opera with Ellen and Gerald Andrews, dear friends from their Riviera days before the war. It had been strange at first, seeing them in England, away from the parties and yacht trips, but the Andrews had spent several weekends at Oakhurst, whilst Gerald’s role as a UN envoy kept the family in London. The two women had been through much together during the evacuation of non-French nationals in 1940, and had subsequently discovered that their close friendship also extended to a shared perplexity at opera.

‘I only come along to see who’s brought their wives, and who their mistresses,’ Ellen whispered, casting her opera glasses across the occupants of the boxes opposite. ‘Oh, look, there’s Lord Hartford with that ghastly Carmichael woman. While her husband languishes in a POW camp in Singapore. Shame on her.’

It was hard to imagine the war still raging in the Far East, even with poor Madam Butterfly singing her way to her demise, abandoned by the man she loved. The heroine’s final act of self-sacrifice was almost too much for Daisy to bear, the echoes from her own last moments in France making her search furiously for a handkerchief with which to dab her eyes.

The mood stayed with her throughout the taxi ride to Piccadilly. ‘You’re awfully quiet,’ Sinclair said, taking her gloved hand in his as she climbed down from the cab. ‘Everything all right?’

She squeezed his hand reassuringly. ‘I’m fine,’ she replied as the doorman showed them through the revolving doors of the Ritz Hotel. Daisy had once accompanied Sinclair to a reception at Buckingham Palace, and not only had it been painfully stuffy, but the palace was almost shabby in comparison – probably more so now, after the Luftwaffe had bombed it.

‘Your table is ready, Lord Castlemere,’ the restaurant manager said with a slight bow before leading their party into the gilded, Versailles-like opulence of the Ritz restaurant, where, beneath ceiling frescoes and glittering chandeliers, uniformed colonels and wing commanders dined amongst white ties and diamonds.

Daisy let Sinclair order for her from the menu that had done its best to disguise food shortages with flowery French prose, but as the champagne was poured, she felt herself relax. The four of them chatted about their children, about the Andrews’ plans to return to New York, and about how the new government would affect Sinclair’s role in the House of Lords.

‘Met Mr Attlee yet, have you?’ Gerald asked. ‘Not going to demand your head off, I hope. Can’t be too sure about these Labour chaps.’

Sinclair was about to respond when a hand was clapped on his shoulder. ‘Good lord,’ he said, turning around and smiling. ‘If it isn’t Freddie Carstairs. Care to join us?’

Daisy looked at the tall man standing behind Sinclair, a little greyer around the temples, but undeniably the fellow who had been around during those last, strange months before the war. She felt Ellen bristle beside her – clearly her friend recalled those months too.

‘Better not,’ Carstairs said, gesturing towards a table for two beside the tall glass windows, where a young woman sat impatiently, watching their conversation. ‘She’ll have my guts for garters.’

‘The new fiancée got the boot already?’ Gerald said, flinching as Ellen slapped his arm.

‘Life moves on,’ Freddie shrugged.

‘So what news?’ Sinclair asked. ‘Are you still with the French Trade Board?’

‘I am, but it’s chaos in France: everyone accusing everyone else of being a collaborator and all the traditional trade routes blown to pieces.’

‘You’ve been over there?’ Daisy asked.

‘Last month. I was down in your neck of the woods, as it happens. Trade conference in Nice with the Italians and the French. Actually, Sinclair old chap, it might be useful to have you out there for the next conference, with your War Cabinet credentials.’

Sinclair looked at Daisy. ‘I don’t know . . .’

‘We could do with someone with your experience. There’s a big conference planned for later in the year. Think about it.’ Freddie took a card from a gold case, handing it across. ‘I’m at my club all week. Let’s have dinner.’

‘Did you see our house, Freddie?’ Daisy asked suddenly.

‘Darling . . .’ Sinclair placed a hand on her arm.

‘I did, as a matter of fact. Well, we drove past the gates.’ He shook his head. ‘I’d get the builders in before you think of having a holiday there.’ Freddie looked across the room, to where his dinner date was tapping impatiently at the table. ‘Must dash. But hope to see you soon, Sinclair.’

As they watched him go, Ellen leaned across the table to Daisy. ‘You mustn’t think about the house, darling,’ she said. ‘You have to put all that business behind you.’

‘Ellen’s right,’ Sinclair said. ‘France is a past chapter in our lives. As soon as things have settled over there, I shall put Château Violette on the market.’

‘Sinclair, you can’t. I want to go back there.’

‘Daisy, this is not the time . . .’

‘But what about Freddie’s conference? If you went, I could come with you.’

‘Carstairs?’ Gerald threw in. ‘Never liked the man. And the war’s not improved him, if that woman on his arm is anything to go by.’

‘Still,’ Sinclair said, ‘he did good work with the SIS, running some high-profile agents in France. Maybe he’s grown up at last. And there’s certainly a lot of work to be done out there.’

‘There’s also a lot of work to be done on this champagne,’ Ellen said brightly, lifting her glass. ‘I suggest we toast happier times ahead.’

Relieved by the change of subject, Sinclair joined her as the toast was raised around the table. ‘I agree. To happier times.’

‘Happier times,’ Daisy said quietly.

Talk of France had disturbed her, and Daisy slept poorly that night, Sinclair snoring lightly beside her. Once or twice she awoke believing she was back in Antibes, her ears full of the swoosh of waves on the rocks below the villa. Light pushing through gaps in the heavy velvet curtains from streetlamps outside became the reflection of the moon on the swimming pool, the sound of taxi cabs a fishing-boat engine cutting across the still, blue-black sea. Once or twice she woke with a visceral need to press her children close to her, only to be left with emptiness when she realised they were far away on the South Downs.

She gave up on sleep around four a.m., slipping down to the kitchen to make herself a hot chocolate. As she poured milk into a pan, she spotted Milo and Cecily’s ‘London’ teddies on the dresser, kept here to make them feel at home when they visited, even though Milo claimed that, at nearly twelve, he was too old for toys.

Daisy went to the drawing room and curled up in Sinclair’s armchair. This flat really was his domain, a bachelor pad decorated years before they had married and unchanged ever since, bar a few soft furnishings she had introduced. She glanced around at old rowing trophies, piles of Punch magazines and the silver tray bearing decanters of Sinclair’s favourite spirits. An entire console table was given over to family photographs, and she smiled at one of their wedding day. She looked so young, and Sinclair no less handsome than Clark Gable, with that narrow moustache of his.

She noticed a couple of photographs tucked behind the others and went to pick one up. It was of Sinclair and his sister, Frances, when they were children, standing on the steps of Oakhurst with the family Labrador, whilst the other had been taken on the terrace of Château Violette, during that last summer. Against the white façade of the villa and its great glass windows, Milo sat on Sinclair’s shoulders, whilst Daisy leaned against her husband. Ellen and Gerald posed beside them, along with Frances and her husband, Ralph, who was shot down in a Mosquito aircraft two years later over northern France. They all looked carefree and beautiful, as they soaked up the winter sunshine on the Riviera.

All except one figure behind them. Dressed in black and out of focus, she had probably been clearing beach towels or drinks glasses away and looked up just in time to see the photographer capture the moment. Blurred as her features were, Daisy had no doubt this was the woman who had haunted her dreams ever since she left France.

Arleta.

Daisy stopped to listen through the solid-oak door of Sinclair’s study, a picnic basket hanging from her arm as sunlight burst through the ancient glass onto the wood-panelled landing. Outside, Milo chased Cecily around the knot garden, the puppy following close behind as they waited for their mother, who had been on her way with the afternoon tea packed by Cook when she passed the study and overheard her husband’s voice.

‘I know, Frances,’ he was saying, ‘but it’s not as simple as that. You know what Daisy went through there.’ So he was talking to his sister about the row that had been brewing ever since the evening at the Ritz.

Sinclair had indeed gone to meet Freddie Carstairs, and whatever was said, it seemed past differences were laid to rest. Freddie had spoken in depth about a role he envisaged for Sinclair at the peace conference the following spring, by which time it was assumed peace would have followed in the Far East. With Sinclair’s experience of negotiations with De Gaulle’s Free French government-in-exile during the war, plus his excellent grasp of French, he was the perfect candidate for the talks aimed at re-establishing trading links between France and the rest of Europe.

Daisy knew Sinclair wanted this. He had spent his war mainly behind a desk and had hated it. He wanted to be on the frontline, and this role in Nice would at least enable him to make some impact on the future trading of Europe.

The last thing she wanted was for her family to be separated yet again, and by Freddie Carstairs, of all people, but she agreed that, yes, Sinclair had an important part to play, and that she would fully support him – as long as he took her to France with him. It was the perfect opportunity for her to find out what had happened to Arleta.

Sinclair disagreed, however. What about the children? Did she seriously want to take them to a recent war zone? he’d asked.

They could stay here with Nanny, Daisy argued, trying to make the horrific prospect of being parted from her darling children seem a mere formality. Or Frances could come to stay? Sinclair’s sister was desperately lonely after losing Ralph, and Milo and Cecily had been a huge tonic in the intervening years. And besides, did he think she would leave her children behind, just on a whim? She had never wanted to be parted from them again, but this was important – necessary to her, even. She owed Arleta at least the courtesy of caring whether she had lived or died.

At which Sinclair replied that he owed his wife the courtesy of caring about her safety, and they had subsequently spent a frosty rest of the night at opposite edges of the four-poster bed.

Good old Frances was clearly giving him a talking-to over the telephone, however: Frances, who understood this nagging pain that gnawed at her sister-in-law; Frances, who would never know where in the vast expanse of northern France to lay flowers for her dead husband. Both women had learned the hard way that loose ends had a horrible tendency to unravel.

‘But you can’t just up sticks, Frances. I know it’s not for months yet, but—’ There was a long sigh as he was forced to listen to his elder sister. ‘And besides,’ he went on eventually, ‘it won’t be a bloody holiday. And I won’t have time to chase around after ghosts . . . I know, I know . . . what happened was awful.’ She heard Sinclair pour something into a glass. ‘Do you really believe it would help?’ Frances must have been working hard, for Sinclair went on to say, ‘I suppose the change might do her good. It’s been a long few years.’

As the conversation drifted on to dreary relatives, Daisy slipped quietly away. She had the best husband any woman could h. . .