Place Of Storms. Sara Craven

rose to her feet, pushing her hair back with a weary gesture.

      ‘I—I think I’d like to go to my room,’ she said. ‘I’m rather tired.’

      ‘Certainly. I will ring for Clothilde.’ He reached for the bell rope. Then he turned and walked back to her and stood looking down at her. ‘Sleep well,’ he said abruptly. ‘Perhaps everything will seem a little better in the morning, hein?’

      She shook her head, suddenly unable to think of a single thing to say in reply.

      For a moment he too was silent, looking down at her, and then almost casually he raised his hand and brushed one finger across her parted lips in a gesture that was almost more intimate than the kiss he had greeted her with on her arrival. She made herself stand her ground, refusing to allow herself to recoil in case he misinterpreted it as an act of repulsion. Whereas, if she was honest with herself, the opposite was true. Why else this almost terrifying tingle of awareness along her nerve-endings? It was a response, the implications of which she did not care to study too closely, and she was thankful when a tap on the door heralded the arrival of Madame Bresson.

      The interior planning of the chateau was an architect’s nightmare, Andrea thought resignedly as she was led by the housekeeper up a winding stone staircase to the first floor. She found herself in a long, draughty passage at one end of which were a pair of imposing double doors. Andrea gathered from Madame Bresson that that was the chateau’s main bedroom, and was presumably occupied by the master of the house.

      Her own room, she discovered with amusement and an odd sense of relief, lay in the opposite direction, and at a considerable distance. It was an altogether cosier apartment than she had anticipated, with a small fire burning on the hearth, and enormous old-fashioned furniture which gave a sense of reassurance. The bedstead too was massively constructed in oak, and Andrea wondered with a sinking heart whether the mattress would match it, but a surreptitious poke at it while Madame Bresson was making up the fire soon reassured her.

      It was as Madame was wishing her a smiling ‘Bonne nuit’ that a thought occurred to her. ‘Oh—my keys!’

      Madame raised her eyebrows in puzzled enquiry and Andrea elaborated. ‘The car keys. I gave them to Gaston so that he could fetch my cases, and I can’t see them anywhere.’

      The housekeeper’s smile broadened. In a daze Andrea heard herself being advised to remain tranquil as Gaston would no doubt have given the keys to Monseigneur, who would arrange its return to the company it had been hired from. Mademoiselle, Madame added triumphantly, was not to concern herself. Monseigneur would arrange everything.

      I bet he will, Andrea thought inwardly as the door closed behind Madame. She sank down on the edge of the bed with a feeling of desperation. She had relied so totally on having the car at her disposal for even a few days. Now she would have to depend on what the local bus service had to offer to get her away from this place.

      She walked over to the fireplace and sank down on to the rug, holding out her hands to the comforting flames. Not for the first time, she bitterly regretted that she had ever become involved in this charade. Just for a moment she seriously contemplated finding her way back downstairs and telling Blaise Levallier the truth, throwing herself on his mercy, then she dismissed the thought, remembering how he had rejected her accusation that he was cruel.

      She squared her shoulders slightly. No, there was little of the milk of human kindness left there, she told herself, and he deserved everything that was coming to him. If Clare’s foolish letter was in the chateau she would find it somehow and—Monseigneur could find another dupe to play his marriage game with him.

      She gave a little shiver, and wondered why she did so. And at the same time, the thought occurred to her that the sooner she could get away from the chateau—and its master—the better it would be for her.

      It rained again in the night. Andrea’s first intimation of the fact came when she was rudely awoken by water dripping on her face. Still half asleep, she dragged herself upright and lit the lamp beside her bed, spilling some of the matches as she did so. She stared upwards with mounting indignation as she registered the spreading patch of damp on the ceiling above the bed. She scrambled out of bed and tugged and manoeuvred the heavy bedstead a few inches to the right. Then she fetched the basin from the washstand and placed it to catch the water. There was no point in allowing the water to ruin yet another ceiling below, she thought crossly.

      The fire was out, a pile of grey ash, and outside the wind had got up. Somewhere one of the broken shutters was banging monotonously each time a gust took it, and Andrea got back into bed feeling chilled and thoroughly out of temper. Between the sound of drips falling into the china basin and the banging shutter she would be lucky if she closed her eyes again for the rest of the night, she thought.

      But it was her inner anxieties, more than exterior conditions, that kept her from sleep, she found. No matter how resolutely she tried to exclude him, the scarred face of Blaise Levallier kept intruding on her interior vision. She told herself she was being ridiculous. After all, he had no real power over her. She was free, white and just over twenty-one. The most she had to fear was his anger when he found out he had been deceived and with any luck she would be well away by then. But all the time, a nagging voice somewhere deep inside her kept telling her that it was not going to be that simple.

      She sighed, huddling the fleecy softness of the duvet around her. It would be so easy to get involved, she thought, recalling the pang she had felt when Blaise had spoken of losing everyone he cared for in the space of a few hours. She wondered what had happened. Presumably he was referring to his brother’s death, so had the scarring on his face occurred at the same time? It seemed clear there was some connection, and that the subsequent loss of his fiancée was involved in the same web of bitterness.

      She closed her eyes, willing her thoughts to be silent, but they would not obey. She found herself speculating about the girl Blaise had been engaged to. Somehow she imagined her small and blonde with a piquant face, like Clare. Was this because in her heart she knew her thoughtless cousin might well have reacted to his damaged face with the same selfish cruelty?

      Intuitively, she knew that the visible scars were not the worst that Blaise Levallier carried. Shuttered behind that bleak hostility was a man who had once laughed and loved and expected to be married and raise a family. Now, as a substitute, he had decided on an emotionless relationship with a stranger, and any hopes for the future were pinned on his orphaned nephew. It was not a healthy situation, she told herself.

      There was another puzzling aspect to it, too. Clare had told her and he had confirmed that he had spent much of his life abroad. But if he was the heir to this crumbling property, shouldn’t his duty have been to remain here? He had spoken of ‘heritage’, so obviously he was not indifferent to the fact that he was now lord of this particular manor.

      She turned over resolutely, burying her face in the pillow. The linen was old, but had been of the finest quality, and it was charmingly scented with lavender. This was a bed for sweet dreams, not disturbing thoughts, she told herself determinedly, in spite of the leaking roof.

      But the dreams which came when she at last fell into an uneasy sleep were as troubling as the thoughts had been. She stood in a ruined church, where stars peeped through the broken roof, and grass grew along the aisles. A man stood at the altar alone, endlessly awaiting a bride who did not come, and it was only when she tried to speak to him to comfort him, to run to him and touch his arm, that she realised that she was invisible, calling to him in a voice he could not hear.

      When she awoke to find a ray of watery sunlight finding its way through a crack in the faded brocade curtains at the windows, she found her cheeks wet with tears.

      She was angrily brushing the betraying drops away when Madame Bresson knocked at the door, and came in bringing a fresh jug of hot water for the washstand. She clucked distressfully at the sight of the bowl on the floor, and burst into a flood of largely incomprehensible explanations from which Andrea gathered that the majority of the bedrooms suffered in the same way during heavy rain, but that Gaston would be despatched to the roof that very morning to carry out some essential patchwork. After assuring