by Marie Laval
‘Do you always talk so much?’ he asked in a quiet voice.
‘Well … no … yes. I mean, only when I’m nervous.’
He stepped forward and stood like a wall in front of her, so close she felt the warmth from his body and smelled the subtle scent of his aftershave. Trapped between his body and the stone basin that dug into the back of her legs, there wasn’t enough air to breathe and her head started spinning.
‘I hope I’m not making you nervous.’
His hands slid along her arms in a caress that made her shiver far more than the cold night.
‘Not at all,’ she answered in a quivering voice. This was the biggest lie she’d ever told. No one had ever affected her the way Fabien Coste did.
His fingers wrapped around her wrists and he pulled her closer so that her body brushed against his. It was too dark to read the expression in his eyes, yet as he leaned forward, slowly, and her heart drummed even faster against her ribs, there was no doubt in her mind. He was going to kiss her. She should step away, right now. Instead she parted her lips and arched towards him.
His lips almost touched hers; she felt his breath on her face. She tensed in anticipation.
And above them the sky exploded with colour and thunder. The fireworks had started.
She pulled away with a gasp as people ran out onto the lawn, shrieking and clapping.
What the hell did he think he was doing? She would avoid him like the plague from now on, just when he needed to keep a close eye on her and on Bellefontaine.
Next to him, the young woman looked at the display, her delicate profile chiselled against the skyline. Her hair shone like silver threads. He itched to run his fingers through it, bury his face in the curve of her neck and breathe in her intoxicating, vanilla scent until he was drunk on it.
Instead he leaned against the fountain’s basin, shoved his hands into his pockets, and clenched his jaw. It wasn’t like him to lose his head over a woman, but it seemed he couldn’t keep Amy Carter out of his mind. He’d even dreamt of her, for God’s sake, hot, sensual dreams that left him aching and frustrated, and unable to find sleep again. There was something about her, something rare and precious. She may not be beautiful, but she was genuine and candid, vulnerable yet determined … and incredibly appealing.
He shrugged, shook his head. He wanted her, that was all, in the same way he’d wanted other women before. It wasn’t as if he believed the old tale of a link – call it a curse or a spell in love and death between Manoir Coste and Bellefontaine – his father had written about. He remembered the papers he’d recently stumbled upon in the library. He may have destroyed them but the memory of his father’s words were imprinted on his mind. Haunting him. Eating away at him. Nobody must know what his father did. Ever. He had to keep the secret, whatever the cost.
He was so lost in thought he hardly paid any attention to the fireworks he had chosen with care and which had cost him a small fortune.
‘It was beautiful,’ Amy said after the last rocket thundered and left a starry trail in the sky.
He nodded. ‘Indeed. Shall we walk back?’
His voice was cold, his manner indifferent. It was as if she’d just imagined the attraction between them. Yet he had been about to kiss her. Hadn’t he? Perhaps it was all a game he was playing. Suddenly, all she wanted was to be back in the silence and solitude of Bellefontaine.
‘I am going to call it a night,’ she said as they stepped onto the terrace. ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll ask the receptionist to call a taxi for me.’
Shadows danced on his face, in his eyes. He looked angry. ‘I’ll give you a lift back. Give me five minutes to sort out a car.’ And he went inside before she could object.
She wrapped her shawl more closely around her shoulders and sat on a garden chair. The air was chilly but she’d had enough of people, noise and music for one night. She straightened her aching back, slipping her shoes off as pain lanced up the foot she’d stubbed on the statue in the forest earlier.
She waited but Fabien didn’t come back. She hadn’t been checking the time but she was sure it was more than five minutes since he had gone into the chateau. He must be busy. She rose to her feet and went into the lobby.
‘Do you know where Monsieur Coste is?’ she asked the receptionist.
The woman smiled apologetically.
‘I’m sorry. I haven’t seen him for a while. He may have gone up to the Manager’s Suite on the third floor. You could always try there.’
Although she wanted nothing more than ring a taxi and go home, it would be rude to leave without saying goodbye, so Amy made her way up to the third floor. The thick red carpet muffled her footsteps as she followed a discreet sign to the Manager’s Suite. She was turning round a corner when a door opened and Claudine came out, barefoot, holding her sandals in her hand, her black hair loose on her shoulders.
‘Hurry up, chéri! I must get back to our guests, and you must take care of your little English protégée. I’m sure she will be quite lost without you.’
A man’s voice spoke from inside the room.
‘You want more? You’re a devil, do you know that?’
Claudine laughed and walked back into the room, closing the door behind her.
Her heart thumping, a sick feeling at the pit of her stomach, Amy ran down the stairs, and made her way across the crowded lobby and out of the chateau. She wouldn’t stay one more minute at Manoir Coste, not even to call a taxi. She started on the road to Bellefontaine, her heels clicking on the tarmac in the silence of the night.
Fabien Coste was the most horrid, two-faced, cheating liar she’d ever met. How dare he ask her to wait while he made love to Claudine Loubier in his suite? Tears stung her eyes. She wiped them off in an angry gesture and walked faster. She wasn’t crying because of him – of course not – or because for a few moments tonight she had been bewitched by the romance and sheer magnificence of Manoir Coste and its charismatic owner. She told herself this as she pulled her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. She was only crying because she was exhausted, and had drunk too much champagne.
She was shivering with cold and her feet hurt so much she could hardly walk when she finally reached Bellefontaine. As she pulled her key out of her purse, the roaring of an car engine made her swing round. A Range Rover turned into the courtyard at speed, and she stood blinking in the headlights, clutching her key in her hand.
Fabien pulled down the window and leaned out. ‘Amy, thank goodness you’re all right. I looked everywhere for you; I said I would give you a lift, so why did you walk back on your own?’
She gathered what was left of her pride.
‘Surely you didn’t expect me to wait while you were … engaged with Mademoiselle Loubier.’
A puzzled look crossed his face. ‘While I was … what? And what does Claudine have to do with it?’
On second thoughts, she’d rather not confess she’d been up to his suite and almost caught him and his lover in the act. Looking for inspiration, she took a deep breath, looked up at the starry night, and said the first thing that sprung to her mind.
‘I wanted to walk and enjoy the moonlight and the stars. They are beautiful tonight, don’t you think?’
Fabien stared at her as if she was some strange, demented creature.
‘Well, I am glad you enjoyed the night sky,’ he said at last. ‘I take it you’ll be all right now.’
She nodded. ‘I’m fine. Thanks for your concern.’
‘Don’t mention it.’
He reversed onto the main road and with a screech of tyres, he was gone.
Chapter Four
By the end of March, the apricot, peach, and cherry trees in bloom painted splashes of soft pastels in the landscape, and on breezy days their pink and white petals flew around like confetti at a fairy tale wedding. The days got longer and brighter, and the garden party for Bellefontaine’s official opening loomed closer. Amy was exhausted and increasingly distracted.
‘I lose my keys,’ she told Adèle while they were having coffee one afternoon. ‘I forget to switch off the computer or the television. I leave the taps running in the kitchen all night. I think there must be something wrong with me.’
What she didn’t say was that her forgetfulness had led to a more serious incident. She had been woken up in the middle of the night by the shrill beeping of fire alarms, and had rushed downstairs to find the living room filled with clouds of grey acrid smoke and the new rug on fire. She had been able to put the small fire out quickly with the extinguisher, but the incident had left her shaky and scared. The fire could have destroyed the bastide, she might have been hurt – or worse.
Since then, she stuck colourful Post-it notes all over the kitchen with reminders to turn off appliances, close taps and check the stove and the fireplace before going to bed. It was a strange, unpleasant feeling not to be able to trust herself, and it made her restless and even more worried.
At last the day of the garden party arrived.
Like every morning, Amy woke up to the cooing of wood pigeons and the crowing of roosters in nearby farms. The sun filtered through the slits in the shutters and cast lines of golden light on the walls and the tiled floor.
She smiled and stretched, enjoying the contact of the soft cotton sheets against her skin, and the last few moments of tranquillity before the storm. Today was her big day. All she could hope now was that the people she’d invited came to enjoy themselves.
Well, maybe not all of them.
When Adèle had helped her draw the guest list, she had been adamant that Fabien Coste should be invited.
‘You can’t leave him out. He is as close as it gets to being our lord of the manor. You must invite Mademoiselle Loubier too, of course.’
‘I thought that the French had done with aristocrats during the Revolution. I don’t see why I have to put up with Fabien Coste,’ Amy objected, her cheeks getting annoyingly hot. ‘I swear men bow their heads and women curtsy when they mention his name in the village. It’s as if he owns the place.’
Adèle had laughed. ‘That’s because he does! Most of the land around here belongs to him. Did you not know that the whole forest is his?’
‘Really?’
No wonder the man was arrogant.
‘It’s been in the Coste family for generations, but he doesn’t mind people going in to hike or ride.’
Amy snorted.
‘How very generous of him.’
Adèle had looked at her sideways. ‘I thought you were rather taken by our dashing duke …’
Now Amy sighed and sat up against the bed head. The problem was that she had been more than taken by Fabien, she had been positively smitten by him
Her throat tightened, like every time she remembered standing in the corridor at Manoir Coste and listening to Claudine’s throaty laugh as she called her ‘his little English protégée’.
She pushed the memory to the back of her mind. She wouldn’t let Fabien Coste ruin her big day. With any luck she wouldn’t see him today. He must have much better things to do than attend the opening of Bellefontaine.
She got up, opened her window to let the sunlight and the fresh morning breeze in, and looked at the garden below. The landscape gardeners Paul recommended had cut down bushes, mowed the grass, dug out flower beds and resurfaced the terrace. A patch of land had been cleared for her fruit and vegetable plot and she couldn’t wait to get started, even if she knew that taking care of a garden would be a lot harder than looking after the tubs she’d kept in the tiny courtyard of her Manchester terraced house. It would be worth it, and she’d never been afraid of hard work.
‘Hippy chic retreat, indeed,’ she mumbled, remembering Fabien’s comments about her plans for Bellefontaine’s organic vegetable and fruit garden.
The garden had revealed surprising secrets. Several stones carved with ancient inscriptions in Latin had been recovered from the edge of the cedar forest, near where she’d found the statue. She had emailed photos to the Antiquity Museum at Arles and a Professor Laurent Orsini had phoned a few days later to say that the site looked promising and that he’d be in touch to arrange a visit.
After a quick shower, she dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved red T-shirt, pulled her hair into a ponytail, and knotted a navy blue jumper on her shoulders. She would have time to change before the party. First she had to drive to Bonnieux to collect the organic meat that Monsieur Lefèvre, the village butcher, had reluctantly agreed to order for her after muttering that there was nothing wrong with his sausages.
She ran downstairs and sighed impatiently when she came across the cellar door, partly open once again. She really had to be more vigilant … She pushed the door shut, carried on into the kitchen and stepped into a puddle of water.
What had she forgotten this time? She glanced at the sink. The taps were closed.
She walked into the utility and let out a moan. The freezer door was ajar. All the food she’d prepared for the party had defrosted during the night and was now ruined, and the ice-creams and sorbets she’d made were reduced to a sugary mush that leaked and congealed on the floor tiles. Right now, she wanted nothing more than to sit down and cry. Instead, she grabbed hold of a bucket, filled it up with water and started mopping the floor. Weeping wouldn’t achieve anything. She had the house to get ready and a party to organise. What she should do however was to consult a doctor. She’d never been so distracted, so forgetful, even when working under pressure at the bank …
It took her over an hour to empty and wipe the freezer and mop the floor clean. By the time she wrung the floor cloth dry and tucked the bucket in a corner of the utility room, there was no time left for breakfast, not even a cup of coffee.
She grabbed her car keys, opened the front door.
And gasped.
The Clio’s tyres had been slashed, all four of them. A dead crow lay on the windscreen, its wings sprawled open and held into place by the wipers in a gruesome display, and bright red blood trickled from the bonnet and pooled on the cobbles.
‘My God.’
Her heart in her throat, she stepped outside, swallowing hard to fight a wave of nausea. There was so much blood – far too much for a single bird. She frowned, stepped closer, and realised with a sigh of relief that it wasn’t blood but red paint on the car bonnet. Someone was determined to frighten her. This time, however, she wouldn’t keep quiet. She would call the gendarmes.
An hour later, a dark blue car drove into the courtyard and a stocky man in uniform with dark hair and a moustache peppered with grey climbed out.
‘Madame Carter? Lieutenant Bijard. Much obliged.’ He pointed to the Clio. ‘Is that the vehicle?’
A rather stupid question since it was the only car with slashed tyres and a dead crow pinned to its windscreen. She bit back a sarcastic comment and nodded.
‘Yes. The tyres were slashed, and they left this …’
She pointed to the crow. ‘It must have happened during the night. I didn’t see or hear anything.’
She watched him examine the car, then walk across the courtyard, and finally write a few notes into a notebook.
‘I’ll make my report but I’m afraid there isn’t much chance of us catching the culprits. You should ring the garage, get your tyres changed, and get rid of the bird.’
‘Don’t you want to keep the tyres and the crow as evidence?’
She was annoyed to see him smile.
‘No, of course not. What would you suggest we do with that bird at the gendarmerie? Stuff it and put it on display?’
‘The thing is, it’s happened before,’ she insisted. ‘Someone nailed a dead rabbit to my door the night I moved in. There were people lurking in the garden too. I saw torchlights at the edge of the forest.’
He arched his eyebrows, lifted his képi and scratched his short, grey hair.
‘And you didn’t report it?’
‘I didn’t want to make a fuss.’
‘Well, there’s not mu
ch I can do about that now, is there? Next time, phone us straight away,’ he said.
‘Next time?’ Amy’s throat closed in. ‘You think there’ll be a next time?’
‘Who knows? Good day, Madame.’
After a last shrug, he touched the rim of his kepi with his index finger and climbed back into his car.
Amy stomped back inside the house to phone the local garage. Well, that had been a waste of time. Lieutenant Bijard had shown no interest in her story whatsoever.
She had more luck with the mechanic who said he’d come straight away. In the meantime, she put rubber gloves on, disposed of the dead bird then washed her car, blinking back tears of anger and frustration. This wasn’t how she had planned to start the most important day of Bellefontaine …
True to his word, the mechanic soon arrived in his tow truck and changed all four tyres for her.
‘I’m sorry I can’t do anything about the red paint right now,’ he said, wiping his hands on his overall when he’d finished. ‘This is bad business, Mademoiselle. You should get yourself a dog, a big nasty one, preferably.’
She thanked and paid him, made sure all the windows were closed and the doors locked and drove down to the village. Today, the drive did not bring a smile to her lips. Not even the blossoming orchard trees and yellow gorse bushes, or the vibrant new green leaves on the vines that ran in straight rows in the plain could make her forget that someone wished her ill.
But who hated her so much that they were ready to vandalise her car and kill animals to frighten her?
Saturday mornings in Bonnieux were always busy, and she had to park outside the village, a long way from the centre – which was just as well as she didn’t want her car to attract too much attention.
Monsieur Lefèvre greeted her with a solemn face.
‘Mademoiselle Carter, c’est une catastrophe! Jacques, my driver, just phoned. He broke down near Manosque and won’t make it to Sisteron on time. I’m afraid you won’t have your organic meat for your party today.’
Amy repressed a whimper. This couldn’t be happening, not on her opening day! A French saying popped into her mind. ‘ Jamais deux sans trois’. Bad things always happened in threes … This was her third disaster of the day, so on a positive note, nothing else could go wrong now. Could it?