A Sudden Change of Heart by Barbara Taylor Bradford Page B

to her brother, Dylan.
    She knew she should call him in London just to say hello, but she was afraid to do so and had kept putting it off for the last few days. And for a simple reason. Invariably, they always managed to quarrel. Her brother was contentious by nature, and she wasn’t a bit surprised when Claire had told her he had tried to pick a fight with thewaiter the night they’d had dinner at the Ritz. He loved picking fights with everyone. He was troubled, filled with demons. But weren’t they all? Their lovely Welsh grandparents had always claimed—no, boasted—that they were
different
because they were Celts, and Laura had believed this, at least part of her had.
    But she was smart enough to know that she and her sibling
were
odd, troubled, dysfunctional to a certain extent, in part because of a fey, neglectful, if loving mother who was bound up in her husband and her painting at the expense of her children, an overcompensating father who smothered them with love, and a famous actress for a grandmother who surrounded them with her own theatricality and extravagances and mythic tales of ancient Wales.
    Laura smiled inwardly. Whatever it was they had made her, she was very sure of
who
she was. A Valiant. And proud of it.

4      
    “I am happy you were available to meet with me, Laura,” Hercule Junot said, bestowing his warm smile on her. “My friend is leaving tonight for her château in the Loire, and this afternoon at three was the only time she had free to receive us.”
    “No problem, Hercule, I’m looking forward to meeting her, and really excited about seeing the Renoir. I’m thrilled she still owns it.”
    “It was lucky for you, and for Claire. But come, let us not waste another moment.” Taking hold of her elbow, he ushered her across the lobby of the Plaza-Athénée, continuing. “My car is waiting outside. My friend lives on the Faubourg Saint-Germain in the
septième,
not too far for us to go.”
    “It’s one of my favorite areas of Paris,” Laura confided as they went out into the street and made for the car. Once they were comfortably settled on the backseat and driving off, Hercule remarked, “Yes, I know what you mean about the seventh. I myself have always found it very special, perhaps because of its diversity as well as its beauty … an enclave for aristocrats in their beautiful houses, and yet an area where students, artists, and writers abound.”
    “I used to haunt the seventh when I was at the Sorbonne,Hercule,” Laura told him. “When I wasn’t trotting around The Rodin museum I was at the Café de Flore or the Deux-Magots, or heading in the direction of the Hôtel des Invalides to visit Napoleon’s tomb.”
    “Ah, yes, he is a favorite of yours,” Hercule said. “Claire has told me how much you admire our famous emperor.”
    Laura smiled. “Napoleon and Winston Churchill are my two great heroes.”
    “Not Lincoln or George Washington?”
    “Well, yes, but in a different way. Churchill comes first with me, then Napoleon. I was tremendously influenced by my Welsh grandfather, who believed that Churchill saved Western civilization from extinction, quite aside from pulling the whole of Europe through evil times in the Second World War. Until the day he died, my grandfather Owen Valiant said that Churchill was the greatest man of the twentieth century. And I believe that too.”
    “And Napoleon, the great dictator, how did you come to him?”
    “Is that how you think of him … as a dictator?”
    “Not I. Neither do most of the French, for that matter. The rest of Europe?” Hercule gave a small shrug and lifted his hands.
“They
think of him as a monster, but I do not believe he was.”
    “I agree. And I came to him when I was living here as a student. I’m a Francophile, as you know, and I fell upon a wonderful biography of him, by Vincent Cronin, and I was just captivated. He was a genius in my opinion.”
    Hercule nodded. “There is no half measure when