'You'll want to go to your room,' said Madame Corbe, and Carly said, 'Yes, please.'
A woman who had been hovering in the background stepped forward, and Liam asked, 'Which room?'
'The room by the schoolroom,' said Madame Corbe, and Liam said,
'I think another would be preferable.'
They must be referring to Antoinette's room and Carly wondered how she could ask for somewhere else, but while she hesitated Madame Corbe put a hand on Liam's arm and said, 'It has been a guest room for a long time.'
'I suppose it has,' he conceded grudgingly, and the woman who had picked up Carly's case went off with it towards the staircase.
Carly was relieved to find the room uncluttered. She has been apprehensive that it might have been left as it was when Antoinette slept here. Books around, perhaps, a doll on the bed, even a child's clothes in the cupboards. But she could see no intimate personal things, and after the middle-aged woman in the dark dress smiled and nodded and left, she hung up some of her clothes.
It was an attractive room, thick-carpeted in a warm honey shade, the furniture white and gold—not specifically a child's room. Antoinette could have grown up in here. If she had she would have been Roland's age now, and Carly shivered slightly. 'Someone walking over my grave,' she thought, and went to the window to clear her mind of depressing and pointless brooding.
The window had a sea view and she stood for a few minutes drinking in the loneliness and the beauty, particularly intrigued by a shape like broken towers rising far out. She would ask about them when she went downstairs. She must remember all about everything in this fabulous place to tell Ruth and William. William would like the winged lions at the gate. She could make up some bedtime stories for him about them.
There was a bathroom, in which she freshened up, then she sat down at the dressing table retouching her make-up and brushing her hair. She might get used in a little while to looking into Antoinette's mirror, but she really would have preferred! another room.
She was wondering now whether she had been wise to come, and she brushed her hair slowly, thoughtfully, eyes downcast.
There were porcelain pots and tray on the dressing table, and a little matching box, ivory porcelain dotted with tiny flowers, and she put down her hairbrush and lifted the lid, admiring the exquisite detail of a pink rosebud.
Inside the box was a fine silver chain with blue stones at intervals. Perhaps it had been Antoinette's, it was the kind of thing a young girl might wear, and Carly took it out, feeling sadness. It was so fragile and so pretty. Poor child, she thought, and for no particular reason field the chain round her own throat, looking at herself in the mirror, and the fastener clicked between her fingers.
She couldn't go down wearing this. Whoever it belonged to it didn't belong to her. As she fumbled, trying to undo it, someone rapped on the door and she called, 'Come in.' When Liam opened the door she automatically covered her throat with her hands. ,'They're waiting for you,' he told her.
'I'm coming.'
'Then come,' he said. He stood, inside the doorway, waiting, and Carly had to drop her hands before she could start on the clasp again and he snarled, 'And you can take that off for a start!'
'I'm trying to take it off.'
His eyes were blazing. 'Why did you put it on?'
'I don't know. I opened this box and it was there. Was it ‑?'
'Antoinette's? Yes, it was, and don't think because you're in this room that you're taking over in any other way.'
'I didn't ask to be put in here,' she protested. 'Your aunt said it had been a guest room for a long time.'
'It has.' Liam was right beside her now, leaning over her, it seemed, and she swayed back on the stool. 'But you're the first guest in it,'
'D-don't they have many guests, then?'
'I've seen every other room full,' he said. 'But nobody in here. And get that necklace off!'
Carly's hands were shaking, he made her shake, he was too close. 'It's a tricky clasp,' she muttered, 'I can't seem ‑' and he reached for her, and she tried to slide under his hands.
She knew all he was going to do was undo the fastener, but she panicked as wildly as though she was about to be assaulted, and when his hand closed on her shoulder she hit out with both hands and he threw her back, farther and harder than he need have done, so that she spun half across the room and ended in a heap against the bed.
Liam said nothing and neither did she. They glared furiously at each other, then he said, 'Don't come down wearing it,' and his voice sounded strangled, and he went out of the room while Carly got to her knees, and her jaw fell open.
It was crazy. They were fighting—physically. She had tried to claw him and he had thrown her across the room. She had started it, but he hadn't asked what the hell she thought she was doing. He hadn't even seemed surprised. He had just fought back, chucking her out of the way.
It's crazy! she thought. I never met a man before who could bring on this howling red rage. She looked at her hands, as though they were a stranger's, then got to her feet and went back to the mirror and looked at herself.
I could kill him, she thought, but my gosh, I'd better not try it again, because he is more than capable of killing me!
CHAPTER FIVE
Carly's hands were shaking so badly that she could break the fastener of the necklet if she went on fumbling with it. She eased it round on her neck and peered into the mirror. The catch looked simple enough, just the slip-on type, but she couldn't pull it apart with a gentle tug and she daren't risk any kind of force.
She would have to ask somebody to take it off for her. Not Liam. Roland, as soon as she could get Roland on his own, because she didn't want Madame Corbe seeing it. It wasn't all that unusual, although if the blue stones were sapphires it could be valuable. But Liam had recognised it at once as Antoinette's and it might distress Madame Corbe, seeing another girl wearing it.
By tying a scarf around her throat she managed to hide it, and after a few deep breaths felt composed enough to go downstairs and face them all.
There was no sign of Liam when she came out of her room, and she stood for a moment, getting her bearings. This house was big enough to lose yourself in. And quiet. She passed closed doors and wondered which had been the schoolroom, which perhaps led to the tower, remembering a painting, a piece of sculpture, and finally reaching the staircase.
Liam looked cool enough when she walked into the room, following the sound of voices. Madame Corbe and Roland turned smiling faces on her, Liam looked at her, straight and unsmiling, as though nothing in the world would make him lose control. Yet less than five minutes ago he had used force against her.
He knew she was still wearing the necklet. His eyes were on the green silk scarf, folded choker fashion, and Carly gulped, feeling that the scarf was too tight, wanting to loosen it.
A meal was waiting. They ate in a little dining room, and drank a cold white wine and discussed plans for Carly's holiday. Roland reminded her of his promise to teach her riding, and she laughed and said she wasn't so sure about that, horses always seemed so big close to. The only riding she had done was on a donkey at the village fete when the donkey stopped dead and sent her over its head on to the tombola stall.
She added gravely while they were laughing, 'That was when I decided I wasn't a natural horsewoman. The donkey stopped whenever he felt like it all through the afternoon, but nobody else actually went over his head!
Swimming? Roland suggested, and that was different, Carly was enthusiastic about that, but Madame Corbe warned, 'You must take care; The rocks and the currents here can be dangerous.'
'I'll keep you from the rocks,' said Roland cheerfully, and Carly thanked him and thought, I'll swim with you, but not with Liam. Liam would have no qualms about steering me into danger.
There were places she had to see: towns, beauty spots, ruins; she asked, 'Are there some ruins out at sea? J think I saw them from the bedroom window.'
'You walk out when
the tide's out,' Roland told her. 'There was a chapel there in the twelfth century, built by a Breton chief, giving thanks for his daughter's miraculous escape.'
'Escape from what?' Carly asked. 'The plague?' She had seen two stone carved calvaries on the road here, and she knew those had been erected after the passing of the Black Death.
'From being ravished by pirates,' said Roland, giving it a ring of melodrama.
'Oh dear!' said Carly. 'Such goings on! And how did she escape?'
'The story is,' said Madame Corbe with a twinkle in her eye, 'that around 1100 a very beautiful and very pious young lady was walking along the beach one evening when a boat pulled in and some very fierce men stepped out. The captain was about to force his attentions on her when she called on the saints for protection.'
'Virgins were always doing that in those days,' Roland chimed in.
'And what did the saints do?'
'The stone lions at the gates of her father's house,' said Roland, 'sprouted wings and flew over and carried her back to safety while the pirates beat a fast retreat. And that's the legend of the winged lions of Guirec Vert.'
'Which are at your gate?' exclaimed Carly.
'Not the originals, I'm afraid,' Madame Corbe smiled. 'But perhaps they would follow tradition and protect us in time of trouble. I've always been very fond of them.'
'I'm sure they would,' said Carly. 'Can visitors call on them for help?'
'They've got a strict code of conduct,' Liam drawled. 'They only operate for the virtuous.' So that was what he'd meant when their car came through the gates and. he had said no lions would be flying for her. Roland took it that Liam was joking, but Madame Corbe frowned disapprovingly, considering it bad taste for a gentleman to make such insinuations about a lady.
'And how would you know I don't qualify?' asked Carly, smiling sweetly.
'Oh, I feel I know you very well,' said Liam. He was sitting opposite her, smiling, but not with his eyes, and she said,
'You don't know me at all.' That wasn't true. He knew things she hadn't known herself until she met him. Until then she had never imagined that anyone could make her lose emotional control as easily as he could.
And it worked the other way round. She brought out the savage in him. If Madame Corbe considered his remark about Carly's morals were insulting what would she think if Carly said, 'Believe me, that's nothing. Just now we had a fight and he knocked me down.'
She wouldn't believe it. Neither would Roland. Nor do I, thought Carly, while we're sitting here and he's looking far too civilised to raise his hand to a woman. Any more than I would dream of hitting out at a man who was only offering to undo the clasp of a necklet.
It was the eyes that gave him away, but only to her, it seemed. When she looked straight into his eyes, into the dark centre, she got a little shock like the brush of a live wire. She wondered if he saw it in her eyes too, whatever it was that nobody else noticed, and she turned to Madame Corbe and began to talk, fast.
'I love legends. I've heard of flying dragons, but not flying lions before. William will love it—Ruth's little boy, he's always on the lookout for a new bedtime story. Of course I'll have to make her a princess. Nothing less will do for William. By the way, she wasn't an ancestress of the Corbes, was she?'
A thousand years was a long time, but some families could trace their family tree that far, but Madame Corbe told her, 'My husband came from Paris before I was married. I was born here. My name was Cherreur' .. . Sherrard, the anglicised version . . . 'And we arrived here in the seventeenth century, long after the miracle of the flying lions.' She smiled, 'Which is of course only a story.'
'Oh no!' Carly protested. 'Wonderful things used to happen. There used to be dragons and knights in shining armour and witches and warlocks. And pirates, of course.' She was probably talking too much, Liam's expression was wry. 'I can see you as a pirate,' she said. 'I shouldn't be at all surprised if one of your ancestors was in that boat.'
'Can you?' he drawled. 'Well, I sure as hell can't see you as the virgin,' and Madame Corbe gasped, 'Liam!' turning quite pale with shock.
'Sorry,' he said cheerfully, and grinned at her, and she said faintly,
'You young people say such things. That was not funny.'
He's not so young, thought Carly sourly, and he isn't trying to be funny. He's older in the head than you will ever be, dear Madame Corbe, and I notice he's only saying sorry to you. She smiled and said, 'Your apology is accepted,' and he could hardly point out that he wasn't apologising to her.
Later in the evening there was a caller. After the meal they went into the kind of drawing room Carly had only visited on the Stately Homes circuit. She felt there should have been a long strip of protective covering across the fabulous old carpet, and a roped-off barrier with little arrows pointing the Way Out. It seemed odd to march boldly across, skirting all the beautiful things, and sit down beside Madame Corbe on one of the brocaded settees; with her feet on a Persian rug.
Madame Corbe had brought out photograph albums and was showing Carly pictures of herself when she was a young woman, with her husband and the boy who would later be Antoinette's father. She was at the beginning of the first album. They were thick and there were three of them. Carly reckoned that Liam and Roland and Antoinette would probably be making their first appearances in the second. A record of growing up. Not Antoinette, her span was tragically brief. But she would see how the years had changed the two men who sat some distance away, talking over what looked like business papers.
Carly found the photographs fascinating. Old pictures always were, especially when you could recognise somebody in them, and Madame Corbe was exactly as Carly had imagined her, quite beautiful. But more than once she caught herself sneaking a look across at Liam and Roland.
Liam sat with the papers before him, while Roland sat in a listening attitude most of the time, leaning forward, nodding, taking in what Liam Was saying. They weren't discussing her. She could have heard them, if she had concentrated on hearing; but when she did for a moment it was something about strawberries. Her name wasn't mentioned, that would have reached her through Madame Corbe's soft-spoken reminiscences.
The caller was a short stocky man, with thinning grey hair and a broad jovial face. He came into the room like someone sure of a welcome, and his greeting was echoed by them all. He went straight to Madame Corbe: 'Madame. . . .'
'Man cher Louis!'
'Vous allez bien ce soir?'
'Oui, tres bien.'
'Bon, bon.' He was holding her hand and, Carly noticed, checking her pulse. So he was a doctor, and this seemed like a regular occurrence and if it was necessary Madame Corbe must be ailing.
That frightened Carly, as though they had been close for a long time. But Madame Corbe was getting old and perhaps he was simply checking as a precaution. Madame Corbe was introducing her to Dr Castel, then Carly's hand was ceremoniously kissed and she was asked in fluent English what part of England she came from.
The doctor knew Carly's area, he Said, he and his daughter had been guests at Liam's home, and Carly imagined a woman looking like the doctor. She wouldn't be Liam's type. She could be well over forty, going by her father, so they must be family friends.
It would be good to have friendships that lasted a long time, books of photographs that showed you with everybody who had loved you. She wished passionately that she was in those dark-blue velvet-covered albums, and this was her home, her family. She wished she had been Antoinette, with a right to Madame Corbe's love, and Roland for her brother, and Liam not hating her.
'You will have a glass of wine, of course,' said Madame Corbe, and Roland was pouring and they all sat together, and Carly knew she was daydreaming, but nobody else knew she was pretending that she belonged.
She sat back, in the deep soft cushions, and listened. They spoke in English; it would probably have been French if she hadn't been there. 'We were very impressed at the way you handled that criminal libel case last month,' said t
he doctor to Liam. 'Your cross-examination was masterly.' He rolled his eyes. 'Such damages!'
'Gratifying, but a little excessive, I thought,' said Liam, and Carly found herself grimacing. She could visualise Liam as a prosecutor only too easily.
Roland grinned across at her, 'They don't call him the Inquisitor for nothing! Never been known to lose his nerve yet.'
'Do they call you the Inquisitor?' she asked.
'Of course not,' said Liam.
'But you've never been known to lose your nerve?'
'Not in court,' he said, and a moment later a phone, rang and a man came in to say that Monsieur Liam was wanted.
'We told you Victoria phoned last night,' said Roger. 'She expected you to ring her as soon as you got here, so what are you going to tell her?'
'Not a lot,' said Liam.
'I'd say Victoria's on the way out,' said Roger, when Liam had closed the door, and asked Carly, 'Was Alison Parry as glamorous as she was last year?'
So Alison Parry was last year's girl, who wouldn't mind being this year's too. 'I'd never seen her before yesterday, but she's pretty fantastic,' said Carly.
The doctor and Madame Corbe were exchanging amused glances. 'That one,' said the doctor, 'is not looking for a wife.'
'Old friend,' said Madame Corbe, 'regrettably, you are right,' and she reached over and patted Roland's hand, her meaning obvious. Roland raised eyebrows, and smiling shook his head at her. She meant that her hopes for future generations rested with him, and Carly began to wonder if they might include her.
Oh no! she thought. Thank you, but no. And then she thought, This is rank conceit. She likes me, so does he like me, but nobody is going to hand-pick me to carry on this kind of dynasty.
The doctor stayed for about half an hour, and when he stood up to leave he asked Madame Corbe, 'Est-ce que vous avez assez de pilules?' 'Oui, merci,' she said.
Pilules? Pills? They could be sleeping pills, vitamins. But when the doctor had gone Carly asked quietly, 'What are you taking pills for?'
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