The Butler Read online

  The Butler is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 by Danielle Steel

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Delacorte Press and the House colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Steel, Danielle, author.

  Title: The butler / Danielle Steel.

  Description: New York : Delacorte Press, [2021]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020018985 (print) | LCCN 2020018986 (ebook) | ISBN 9781984821522 (hardcover : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781984821539 (ebook)

  Classification: LCC PS3569.T33828 B88 2021 (print) | LCC PS3569.T33828 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2020018985

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2020018986

  Ebook ISBN 9781984821539

  randomhousebooks.com

  Book design by Virginia Norey, adapted for ebook

  Cover design: Derek Walls

  Cover image: © pink_cotton_candy/Getty Images (man’s head), © Jacobs Stock Photography Ltd/Getty Images (man’s body), © Maggie Brodie/Arcangel (estate)

  ep_prh_5.7.1_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Dedication

  By Danielle Steel

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  The moment the plane touched down at Ministro Pistarini de Ezeiza airport in Buenos Aires, Joachim von Hartmann knew in every fiber of his being that he was home. It was almost as if his heart and soul, and even his body, knew it. He had left as a boy of seventeen, twenty-five years before, when he’d moved to France with his mother and new French stepfather. Eight years later, he went to England on a lark, which turned into a worthy career for the past seventeen years. His roots were now firmly planted in Europe, but Joachim realized as he breathed the air of Buenos Aires that his heart had remained here. He had never fully cut the cord that bound him to Argentina. There was a magic to it that was still in his blood.

  This was a long-awaited pilgrimage to the place where he had been born. All his boyhood memories were here, and what he had been too young to remember, his mother had told him again and again as he grew up. He felt as though he had never left as he came off the plane, like an old childhood friendship, or a great love.

  Both his name and his tall, thin, aristocratic looks, with blond hair and blue eyes, were familiar in Argentina. With the influx of Irish, English, and German immigrants over the years, Argentines with German and Anglo-Saxon surnames and looks were not unusual. On his mother’s side, all of Joachim’s ancestors were German, originally from Bavaria and later from Berlin. His father, whom he never knew, had been from a distinguished banking family in Argentina. He had died when Joachim was less than a year old, and the rest of his father’s family had died within a few years, so Joachim never knew them either. The mainstays of Joachim’s life growing up had been his mother, Liese, and his identical twin brother, Javier. Joachim had a special relationship with his brother because they were twins. He felt at times as though they were two halves of the same person.

  Joachim’s German maternal grandfather, Gunther von Hartmann, had been widowed when his wife was killed in the Allied bombings of Germany. Like others who could still afford to leave, he hadn’t wanted to stay in Germany and live through the disarray and reconstruction of the country. He was accustomed to a genteel world that no longer existed after the war. As soon as possible after the war, he had taken his five-year-old daughter, Liese, and what was left of his once-vast family fortune, and moved to Buenos Aires, rather than be treated as a defeated enemy in Germany. He had enough left to live extremely well in Argentina, which wouldn’t have been the case in Europe. Argentina was a country that welcomed the Germans who had chosen to settle there, as they had been doing for generations.

  Joachim had never lived in Germany, and knew very little about it, or his mother’s life there, except that she had experienced great wealth and luxury as a young girl, first in Germany and then in Argentina. But his mother had often told him about the beautiful house where she grew up with her father in Buenos Aires. It was filled with antiques, and the fine works of art her father had been able to bring with him. He had a passion for the beauty of art in all its forms and had passed it on to his daughter. She had told Joachim too of the pretty finca they had outside of the city, where they spent weekends, and the many servants her father employed. They had never gone back to Germany, even for a visit. They had no one left there. Gunther von Hartmann had only his daughter in the years after the war. He had nothing left in Germany, and he had forged a new life in Argentina. They spent their holidays in Uruguay, Colombia, Brazil, and other parts of Argentina. Gunther had no desire to see Germany or Europe again, and Liese no longer remembered it. He became an Argentine citizen, and Liese grew up feeling entirely Argentinian. Her father never remarried. She went to the best schools in Buenos Aires, and she eventually married Alejandro Canal, the son of one of the city’s finest banking families. She lived in what seemed to her a perfect world, as she remembered it and described it to Joachim. Her only sorrow, once married, was their inability to have children. She and her husband, Alejandro, had been married for ten very happy, fairly glamorous years, and had given up hope of having children, when by some miracle she conceived and gave birth to Joachim and his identical twin brother, Javier. She was thirty-nine when they were born. She told her sons that their birth was the happiest time of her life, but it all ended in tragedy a year later.

  Her father, whom she adored, died suddenly at seventy-three, four months after the twins were born. Her husband, Alejandro, was killed in a riding accident three months later, as she told her sons when they were older. She rapidly discovered after her father’s death that his money had been poorly invested and he died leaving her nothing. Her husband’s family lost everything they had in the political upheavals that shook the country and left many of the previously wealthy penniless. By the time Joachim and Javier were a year old, Liese was living in a small apartment. Her in-laws’ bank was bankrupt and they were unable to help her. She explained that her father-in-law had mishandled the bank’s funds in desperation, and to spare her sons embarrassment later, she took back her maiden name, von Hartmann, and gave it to her sons as well.

  Unlike his mother in her privileged youth, Joachim had grown up in modest circumstances. He had never known anything different, and neither he nor his twin, Javier, was unhappy. They lived in a poor neighborhood where there were always other children to play with, and their small apartment was a loving, warm home, thanks to their mother. They had food on the table, decent clothes, the basic necessities of life, and a mother who loved t
hem. It had always seemed like more than enough to Joachim, who didn’t hunger for more. Javier had a less contented nature as he got older, and in his early teens he argued with everyone and reproached their mother for what they didn’t have. He had begun to notice the inequities between the rich and the poor in Argentina and was angry about the injustice of it. Joachim was content and satisfied with what they had. And it began to cause dissent between the two brothers, although Joachim loved his twin unconditionally.

  Their mother had studied art history at the university before she got married, and had also been carefully schooled by her father, who knew a great deal about art, particularly the Impressionists. When the bottom fell out of her world, after her husband’s and father’s deaths, Liese was able to get a job she loved as a curator of French art at the National Museum of Fine Arts of Argentina. The job was poorly paid, but she was respected for her expertise and extensive knowledge of art. She tried to share her passion for art with her sons, but neither of them was particularly interested. They preferred playing soccer and other sports with their friends in the street.

  They were fifteen when Liese met Francois Legrand, an art expert from the Louvre in Paris, who came to Buenos Aires to verify the authenticity of several paintings that the museum had recently acquired. Although she had always led a retiring life, and spent all her free time with her boys, she and Francois fell madly in love. After his visit, they maintained a constant correspondence, and he came back to Buenos Aires several times to see her. She was fifty-four when she met him. As with the birth of the twins, meeting Francois Legrand seemed like a miracle to her. There had been no man in her life for years, and it had never occurred to either of her sons that that could change. They were the center of her universe before, and even after, she met Francois. The correspondence with Francois Legrand and his occasional visits had gone on for two years. He was sixty-four, ten years older than Liese, and had been widowed for many years as well, with no children of his own. He wanted to marry Liese and bring her and her sons to Paris. He had even found a job for her at the Louvre. He was by no means a rich man, but had lived carefully, and could support her and the boys comfortably, and provide them a security they didn’t have living on their mother’s meager salary. Francois was genuinely fond of the boys and loved Liese deeply.

  His relationship with Joachim was easy. He was a happy-go-lucky boy who didn’t require more from life than what he had. He was planning to go to university in Buenos Aires but hadn’t found his direction yet. He wanted nothing more than his happy, easy life, among his friends in Buenos Aires.

  Javier, by contrast, was always the voice of discontent. He became angry as a teenager, at not having a father, at the money his family had lost before he was born, at what they didn’t have, at being the youngest twin by eleven minutes. He resented his brother for that. He was hard on Joachim, who forgave him all, because they were twins. Joachim was unfailingly loyal to him. Javier resented their mother as well. He hated her stories of her golden youth, thanks to a grandfather he never knew, and who had managed to lose his entire fortune at his death. Javier was angry at his paternal grandparents too, for the fortune they had lost, which made him feel doubly deprived. Javier had a hunger in his belly that nothing could satisfy or cure, and he blamed his mother for not providing them with a better life than the one they had growing up. Joachim was grateful for all she’d done for them. Javier wanted more than a life of poverty, and his mother’s and brother’s love wasn’t enough for him.

  Unlike his mother, Javier didn’t think Francois Legrand was the answer to their prayers, or his at least. He wanted much more than the comfortable, secure middle-class life Francois could provide. He didn’t want to move to Paris if she married him. He had no interest even in his own ancestral roots in Europe. Javier was an Argentine to the core. Whereas the blue blood that ran in his German mother’s veins, and even in his twin brother Joachim’s, was always evident in subtle ways, good manners, and a natural compassion and generosity toward others, Javier related better to the common man in the streets of Buenos Aires. He acted like them and had a rough edge. He was always out of step, picking fights in school, and on the streets when he grew older. There was a violent side of him, despite his mother’s efforts to quell it. Joachim tried to reason with him to no avail in their late teens. They were turning into very different men.

  Joachim had a thirst for life, for new discoveries and the knowledge he acquired. He loved his studies. To him everything new he encountered was an adventure, and he was intrigued by the idea of attending the Sorbonne in Paris. He had learned French and English in school as a boy, and his mother had taught him German. He managed all four languages well. Javier had had the same education and had benefited from none of it. He was a poor student and felt most at ease among the lowest element on the streets. Joachim didn’t like the new friends his brother sought out as they got older, although they’d had the same friends as young boys. He thought his twin’s pals were “cowards and little jerks.” By their late teens, and even before that, the two brothers couldn’t have been more different. Despite that, Joachim loved Javier deeply and had an older brother’s protective instincts toward him, and felt sure he’d outgrow his rebellious nature. He frequently reassured his mother about it, and she hoped Joachim was right.

  It had taken considerable convincing and reassurance, but Francois had finally overcome Liese’s reservations about remarrying. After two years of correspondence and courtship, they were married in a small ceremony in Buenos Aires with only her two sons present. After a brief honeymoon in Punta del Este, Francois went back to Paris to ready his home to receive them. Joachim had been accepted at a lycée near Francois’s home in Paris, where he would spend a year, pass his baccalauréat exam, then hopefully get into the Sorbonne, to pursue his education. He was planning to major in literature and art.

  Much to Joachim’s chagrin, Javier flatly refused to join them. At seventeen, he wanted to live with a friend’s family for a year in Buenos Aires after his mother and brother left, and then go to work after that, without bothering with university. He grudgingly agreed to come to Paris in a year when he finished school, if his mother would allow him to spend the year in Buenos Aires. He didn’t want to graduate in another country, without his friends. His new, wild friends meant more to him than his education or his family. Liese didn’t like the family that Javier wanted to stay with, nor their son, and Joachim was upset at the thought of being separated from his brother for a year. He had never lived away from his twin, and even though they were very different and didn’t always agree, he still felt that Javier was a part of him, like a limb, or his heart, a vital organ he couldn’t imagine losing. He didn’t want to be away from him for a year, but Javier fought like a cat to be left behind.

  Joachim was always more protective of their mother, and it didn’t seem fair to him to let her go to her new life alone, without her sons, even though Francois was a kind man and would take good care of her. Joachim got along with him particularly well, and Francois enjoyed having a son for the first time. Javier treated him as an unwelcome stranger, an interloper, but Francois warmly invited him to live with them in Paris nonetheless. He knew how important her sons were to his new wife. She had made countless sacrifices for them while they grew up.

  Eventually, after struggling with the decision, Liese gave in to Javier’s constant pleas and arguments that went on day and night until she conceded. She agreed to let him stay with the family she didn’t like. She thought they were coarse, and their children badly behaved, but they weren’t evil people. And Javier solemnly promised to come to Paris in a year when he graduated. It was a major victory for him, which he celebrated with his friends for weeks, which made his mother even more uneasy. She wasn’t fully confident that his best friend’s family would supervise Javier as closely as she had, and he was hard to control. He was far more eager to fly free than Joachim was, and do what he wanted. Joachim stil
l enjoyed family life, and never chafed over his mother’s parental control. He liked the idea of Francois as the father figure he’d never had. He’d been hungry for a father all his life. And Francois was kind to both boys.

  Liese felt their departure from Buenos Aires like a force tearing her in half, leaving one of her sons behind. They had packed up everything she wanted to keep, and sent it by ship to France. Her father’s books, his letters to her, and all the souvenirs of the boys’ childhood and youth. She kept only what was of sentimental value to her, and owned nothing of great worth. But she felt as though she was abandoning her whole life since she was five. She had strong ties to Argentina, despite all the material things she had lost long before.

  Joachim felt as if he had left half of himself behind, the beating heart or the lungs with which he breathed. He believed that the bond between twins was a sacred one, more than that of ordinary brothers. He had a deep psychological bond to Javier, despite their differences. At seventeen, the tears had poured down his cheeks when he said goodbye to his twin brother. He could not imagine a single day of his life without his brother in it, no matter how different they were becoming. The next year was going to be hard for him, in a new country and new school without his twin. Just knowing Javier was in his daily life was a comfort to him. In contrast, Javier could barely conceal how excited he was to be left on his own, living with his friend, without his mother and brother, and their supervision. And right up until the last minute, Liese was tempted to tell Javier she had changed her mind, but Francois convinced her that it might be better to let Javier do as he wished for a year, rather than bring an angry, sulking, rebellious teenage boy to Paris, which could only lead to trouble. He had already threatened not to go to school in France at all, if they forced him to leave with them, and he had promised to continue his schooling in Buenos Aires.