The French Wife

by Diney Costeloe

  Quickly she turned on her heel and, with tears flooding down her cheeks, set off back to the apartment. She had made the complete break and when she got home she would take her courage in her hands and go back to Belair, to the rest of her life. She would become a doting aunt, but she would never have any children of her own. She should never have run away, but should have stood up against the proposed marriage with Simon Barnier as soon as she’d realised his true character. No one could force her into such a marriage, and though she knew her reputation was now in tatters, she had to believe that her family would stand by her and take her back. She climbed the stairs to the apartment. She would pack up her few things and then leave, take the train home and face the music.

  As Hélène was walking slowly back to the apartment, Annette was breaking the news to Rupert.

  ‘She says she won’t see you,’ she told him. ‘She says there’s no point in opening old wounds.’

  ‘Did you give her the letters?’

  ‘Yes, but she didn’t open the parcel, at least not while I was there. I left it on the table when I went to bed, but it had disappeared this morning, so I think she’s read them now. I’m hoping to persuade her to see you when I get back later today, but I can’t leave the stall till the market closes. Benny has business elsewhere.’

  Rupert’s hopes took a fall, but they weren’t completely dashed. He gave a rueful smile. ‘I’ll come and find you again tomorrow,’ he said, ‘and hope you’ve persuaded her to change her mind. That she’ll at least see me.’

  Annette went back to the stall and Rupert returned to the Hotel Montreux. Parker was waiting for him in the suite.

  ‘Any luck?’ Rupert asked.

  ‘Yes, sir. I was outside that butcher’s shop this morning and saw Annette come out of the door beside it. There are three apartments in the building and they must be living in one of those.’

  ‘Good man,’ responded Rupert. ‘Tell me how to get there.’

  Chapter 49

  Hélène had packed her bag and was writing a note to explain to Annette that she was going to go back to Belair. She promised that she would not implicate Pierre or Agathe Sauze in her flight, but knew there was nothing she could do to hide Annette’s part, as they had both disappeared together.

  I shan’t say where we’ve been staying, or how we have contrived to live in the weeks since we’ve been away, but I shall insist that it was you who kept me safe while I was hiding and hope that my family won’t blame you for my decision to go. You are the best friend anyone could ever have and whatever happens to me I shan’t let you suffer for all the help and affection you’ve given me.

  She was just reading through what she had written when there was a knock at the door. She froze. Who would be knocking on their door at this time of day? Quietly she crept across the room and listened. The knock came again. Could Simon finally have found her? Had Annette been right about being followed home yesterday evening? Hélène wished she weren’t alone in the apartment, but suddenly she realised, if it was Simon Barnier standing on the other side of the door, it would be her chance to deal with him once and for all. She drew a deep breath and turned the key, flinging the door wide, standing with her head high, determined not to be intimidated.

  ‘Hello, my darling girl,’ Rupert said. ‘May I come in?’

  The colour fled her cheeks and for a long moment she simply stared at him, then she stood aside and he walked into the apartment and back into her life.

  Rupert made no move to touch her, but followed her into the living room, where she sank into a chair.

  ‘I had your message from Annette,’ he said, ‘but I couldn’t leave without seeing you just once again.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘Now I have, would you like me to go?’

  ‘How did you find me?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m afraid I had Annette followed last night when she came home. I couldn’t bear to be in Paris and not know where you were.’

  ‘I didn’t want to see you.’

  ‘I know and I understand, but I couldn’t bear not to see you, just one last time.’

  ‘Are you going home again now?’ Despite her attempt to be calm and unemotional, Hélène’s question sounded wistful.

  ‘Unless you want me to stay,’ replied Rupert.

  ‘There’s no point,’ sighed Hélène. ‘I’ve just decided to go back to Belair and face them out. I won’t marry Simon, no matter what they say.’

  ‘Very sensible,’ he agreed. ‘But will you marry me?’

  The question caught her off guard. ‘Marry you? How can I? Even if I wanted to, my reputation—’

  ‘I don’t care a fig about your reputation,’ he broke in. ‘But will you marry me?’

  ‘Oh, Rupert, how can you ask? After all that’s happened, it’s far too late.’

  ‘Too late for what?’ he said. He took a step towards her. ‘You’re not married, I’m not married, and I love you. Love you beyond everyone and everything there is in this world. I always have and I always will. What I need to know is if you still love me, just a little, and if you can forgive me for not coming back to find you. At least I should have come back to ask you why you’d changed your mind.’ He realised that he was standing over her and lowered himself in to the chair opposite hers.

  ‘I love you, Hélène, I have from the first moment I saw you, and when I left to go back to England, when Justin died, I held you in my arms and I thought you loved me in the same way.’ He looked across at her, his eyes intent upon her face. ‘Was I wrong, Hélène?’

  Unable to speak for fear of weeping, Hélène simply shook her head.

  ‘And do you still?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Her words came out on a sob.

  ‘Then I won’t say any more for now. If you send me away, I’ll go. If you ask me to wait, I’ll wait… for as long as it takes.’ He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, handing it to her to mop the tears.

  ‘I’ve still got the other ones,’ she said as she took it and dabbed her cheeks.

  Rupert looked confused. ‘What other ones?’ he asked.

  ‘The hankies you lent me when I was telling you about poor Annette losing her baby.’

  ‘Have you?’ Rupert couldn’t hide his surprise.

  ‘They’re the only things I have of yours,’ she said.

  ‘Oh my darling girl,’ he said, a break in his voice. ‘Everything I have in the world is yours.’

  For a long moment neither of them spoke, both too full of emotion, neither knowing what to say. At length Rupert said, ‘Well, I’d better go. What will you do now?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Hélène. ‘I was about to go back to Belair, but now I don’t know. Do they know you’ve come back?’

  ‘Who? Your family? I don’t know, but I don’t think so, unless Simon Barnier has told them.’

  ‘Simon! How does he know?’

  Rupert heard the fear in her voice and his lips tightened. ‘He saw me yesterday and he told me you were going to be married, very soon.’

  ‘Then he lied to you,’ Hélène said sharply. ‘He doesn’t even know where I am.’

  ‘Darling, I hate to say this, but if I can find you, so can he. Now he knows that I’m here, he’s going to be looking even harder. Is there somewhere else you can go?’

  ‘No, only home.’

  ‘Listen, my darling girl, you may not want to marry me, but I’m not going to walk away and leave you here to the mercy of that man.’

  ‘I didn’t say I didn’t want to,’ she said, so softly that for a moment Rupert did not realise what she was saying, ‘I just said I thought it was too late.’

  For moment he stared at her and then moved swiftly across to kneel beside her chair. He took her hands in his and very gently raised them to his lips. She felt the tenderness in his hands and, looking up into his face, saw such love in his eyes she had to turn away.

  ‘Darling,’ he whispered, ‘what is it?’

  ‘I… I—’ Her voice broke on a sob.
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  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I can’t, I’m too ashamed.’

  ‘Hélène, my love. You can tell me anything, anything at all, always and with no shame.’

  ‘I… I couldn’t bear Simon to touch me. I hated his hands on my face and his mouth and… and his tongue. And,’ she said in a rush before she lost the nerve to say it at all, ‘and he said that’s what it would be like when we were married, and I knew I couldn’t do it. I looked at him and I was afraid and he knew I was afraid… and he liked it.’

  ‘Hélène, I swear to you now, you will never be afraid of me—’ Rupert began, but Hélène interrupted him.

  ‘I know that you have to do all that to have children.’ Her face flushed red with humiliation. ‘So I won’t be able to… with you.’

  ‘Hélène, one thing I absolutely promise is that I won’t make you do anything you don’t like, and I also promise you that nothing between us will be anything like what Simon Barnier wanted to do.’

  Encouraged by his gentleness, Hélène took the final plunge and told him about the nightmares that sometimes woke her screaming, and as he listened in silence she told him of the root cause. ‘The man who took me… well, Simon was like him. Rupert, I’m afraid of my dreams.’

  ‘If your dreams wake you, I shall be there beside you,’ Rupert said softly. ‘And the further you get from Simon Barnier, the less they will haunt you. You will always be quite safe with me, I promise you.’

  ‘Will I?’ Hélène looked up into his face. ‘Annette said that it would be different with someone you love. When I asked her about wanting to marry Pierre, she said it was quite different to what had happened to her before.’

  Rupert did not ask what had happened to Annette before, but he said, ‘She was quite right. It is quite different when you love someone as much as I love you.’

  ‘But… but supposing it isn’t?’

  Rupert got to his feet and said, ‘Do you remember that last day, before I went home to England?’

  ‘When we had the picnic? Yes, of course.’

  ‘And when I was leaving, that evening? When I held you in my arms when we said goodbye?’

  Hélène nodded. She had held the memory close in the weeks after he’d gone. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, ‘I remember.’

  ‘You didn’t mind me holding you close then, did you? Will you let me hold you again, now, before I go?’

  Hélène looked up at him as he pulled her gently to her feet, and then as he slipped his arms round her, she buried her face in his shoulder, clinging to him as if her life depended on it. He made no move to kiss her, simply held her close until he felt her relax. Then he let her go and she sank back down into her chair, and he sat on the floor beside her.

  ‘This time,’ he said, ‘I won’t go back to England without you. I can’t risk losing you again.’

  They sat together as the shafts of dusty sunlight moved slowly across the floor, talking to each other as they had used to.

  Hélène told him how they had managed, with the help of Pierre and the generosity of Madame Sauze, to escape from St Etienne and maintain themselves in the little apartment, taking in sewing and working on the stall in the market.

  ‘I had to learn so many things,’ she said. ‘Things I had never thought about before.’

  Rupert told her of all the sadness that had overtaken his family at Pilgrim’s Oak, not only the deaths of his father and wife, but of his mother’s slide into senility and Fran’s perfidy. He told her everything and she listened to the pain in his voice, holding his hands enfolded in her own.

  ‘Will you be happy to come back there with me?’ It was a question he had not dared to ask earlier. She’d said she loved him, she’d said she would marry him, but was he asking too much of her? Could she really be happy living in a house she didn’t know, in a country she didn’t know, with a family who so far had clearly not wanted her?

  ‘As long as I have you,’ she said, ‘I will be happy anywhere.’

  Sometime later, he said, ‘I must go back to the hotel soon and make some plans. I don’t like you being here by yourself. I’ll wait till Annette comes home, but then I’ll have to go.’

  At that moment there came a pounding on the door. Rupert got to his feet and, telling Hélène to stay out of sight, went to the front door. He unlocked and opened it to find not Simon Barnier, as he’d half expected, but a young man he’d never seen before.

  ‘Who’re you?’ demanded the young man.

  ‘I might ask the same of you,’ replied Rupert, not moving an inch. Suddenly he heard Hélène’s voice.

  ‘Jeannot! Is that you?’

  The young man pushed his way past Rupert, who had turned at Hélène’s words.

  ‘Yeah. Everything all right, is it? Who’s this bloke?’

  ‘Everything’s fine, Jeannot. Come in!’

  ‘He already has,’ Rupert said drily as he closed and locked the door behind the unexpected visitor and followed him into the apartment.

  ‘Who’s this then?’ Jeannot jerked his head at Rupert.

  ‘He’s the man I’m going to marry,’ Hélène replied with glowing eyes.

  ‘Not that Simon bloke what’s been looking for you?’

  ‘No, not him. This is Rupert Chalfont. He’s English.’

  ‘Oh, him.’ Jeannot looked across at Rupert. ‘Wasn’t you the one what gave her the old heave-ho? Pierre said he was English.’

  ‘Jeannot, why are you here?’ Hélène said quickly to deflect any further comments about Rupert.

  ‘I’m here,’ he told her, ‘because my lad telled me that he thought Annette was followed home last night. Silly sod should have telled me straight away yesterday an’ I’d’ve come round then, but no, he didn’t tell me till just now, did he? So here I am to find out what’s going on.’

  ‘I’m afraid it was my man Parker who followed Annette yesterday,’ Rupert said. ‘I was trying to find Hélène.’

  ‘And now you found her, what you going to do about it? She’s supposed to be safe here and not have visitors. That Simon bloke is a nasty bit of work, so I been keeping an eye, know what I mean? I hope you wasn’t followed!’

  ‘No,’ Rupert said, but even as he said it he wondered. When Parker had told him of Annette’s address he had come straight here. Had he been followed? He didn’t think so – he had seen no one.

  ‘Simon Barnier knows I’m in Paris,’ he admitted, ‘so we have to be extra careful until I can take Hélène to a place he’ll never find her. I’ve had an idea, but I’ll need to set it up.’

  ‘What’s this idea then?’ demanded Jeannot, and realising that he might need Jeannot’s help to carry it through, Rupert told him.

  Chapter 50

  Rupert left Hélène in the apartment in Jeannot’s safe-keeping and made his way back to the hotel, where Parker awaited him.

  ‘I’m going out again,’ Rupert told him. ‘I need you to watch my back. I can’t risk being followed. We’ll leave by the rear entrance and you can watch to see if I’ve picked up a tail.’

  Together they went down the iron fire escape at the back of the hotel and Parker waited for a moment in the kitchen yard, watching as Rupert set out, taking the narrow streets that led to the river. Parker lounged along behind him but could see no one paying any attention to him, and when Rupert finally waited before crossing the river, Parker was able to assure him that he had no tail.

  As Rupert and Parker left the hotel from the kitchen yard, red-headed André hurried away from the Hotel Montreux to report his day’s work to Simon Barnier. André had managed to follow the Englishman unobserved this morning, first to the St Eustache market and then through the streets to Batignolles. He had seen him enter an apartment building, but dared not follow to see which apartment he visited. For a long time he waited, concealed in the tiny alley opposite, ready to follow him when he came out again. Monsieur Barnier would want to know where else he went. When at last his mark did emerge from the building, André, having taken refuge
from the cold in a nearby tabac, nearly missed him, but loitering along behind him was relieved when he realised that the Englishman was returning to the hotel. Now he could report all the Englishman’s movements to Monsieur Barnier and collect the promised payment.

  When he reached the hotel where Monsieur Barnier lodged, he was told by Eugène that Monsieur was out and was instructed to wait for his return.

  It was some hours later that Simon Barnier came back. He had been renewing his acquaintance with Mademoiselle Angélique, and her attentions, costing double the price due to his broken appointment earlier, were so exquisite that he had remained in her care, and that of several of her younger ladies, for the whole afternoon. Could Hélène, even after the training he planned to give her, ever take him to the heights that Mademoiselle Angélique achieved? It would, he decided, be an interesting comparison. As he entered the front door, Eugène told him that André had come back and immediately Simon summoned him to his private parlour.

  ‘I followed the Englishman this morning,’ André told him. ‘First to the market, where he spoke to some woman working on one of the stalls. Not the one you was looking for, what I followed from Passy.’

  Annette? wondered Simon. It would be worth keeping an eye on her in case.

  ‘Anyhow,’ continued André, ‘he went back to the hotel for a while and then he come out again and went to a street in Batignolles, to an apartment house, with a butcher’s shop. I kept watch till he come out, and followed him back to his hotel. Then I come straight here to tell you.’

  ‘You should have come as soon as you discovered where he went this morning,’ snapped Simon.

  ‘You told me to follow him wherever he went,’ replied André sulkily. ‘So I stuck with him, in case he went somewhere else after.’

  ‘Go back to the Montreux tomorrow morning, and stay with him,’ said Simon as he paid André. ‘I still want to know where he goes and what he does. Understand?’

  With promise of more money, André agreed and set off to the nearest bar to drink what he’d been paid so far.

  As Simon had hoped, Rupert had led him to Hélène, and by the sound of it to the maid, Annette, as well. Now he had to decide what he was going to do about it. Should he go to the apartment in Batignolles and confront her? Or would that be better coming from her father? Suppose he brought Emile St Clair up to that apartment, a squalid apartment above a butcher’s shop in Batignolles – surely he would insist that they married, to avoid a scandal that would affect the prospects of the whole family?