'You want to go over to the chapel?' he asked.
'Yes, please, I'd like to.'
'It will be just you and me. Roland's been called into the office, something that has to be dealt with at once.'
She was suspicious. 'Did you fix that?'
'Why should I?'
To keep her and Roland apart? To get her alone without Roland? 'I wanted your brother to come along,' she said. Roland was her protector against Liam. And against herself.
'And you usually get what you want.' That was how he had thought of her ever since he had seen her in that court and heard Gerald's story.
'Don't you?' she flung back.
'More often than not.'
Much more often, she thought, and remembered Victoria and Alison. The way Liam was looking at her now made her go hot and cold and her heart seemed to be struggling as though her rib cage was too small. He wanted her. He was cynical and sensual, and he would have her if she gave him half a chance.
'You wouldn't be afraid of me, would you?' he drawled, and Carly knew she was staring at him as though she was hypnotised. She threw back her head and said, 'Ha!' as if that was such a crazy idea; and then she said, 'Of course not, but I'm remembering that the last time you were in here, last night, you knocked me down, and that's making me a bit twitchy. So would you mind getting out of my bedroom so that I can get my lipstick on straight?'
'Of course,' he said. 'But can I put it on record that I didn't push you first? What did you expect me to do—turn the other cheek and get them both clawed?'
He was waiting for her downstairs in the drawing room. There was no sign of Roland, but Madame Corbe sat on the sofa with a red lacquered box beside her. 'You went up the tower? said Madame Corbe. 'That was very brave of you.'
'Brave?' echoed Carly. 'Did he tell you I came down with my eyes shut? I was paralysed! If they'd left me up there I'd have stayed and starved and ended as the ghost in the tower.'
'Not you,' said Liam.
Madame Corbe laughed. 'I don't believe that would happen. You wouldn't give up so easily. Now, look what I have here.' She put the box on her knee and opened the lid and Carly sat down beside her and said, 'Oh, how lovely!'
Liam was standing by one of the windows. He couldn't see what was in the box, and he didn't know. Carly could feel his eyes on her and she thought—he thinks it's jewellery. The box was full of buttons, pretty buttons, Victorian, Edwardian, no great value, but they made Carly's eyes shine.
'A present,' said Madame Corbe. 'For the exquisite blouses and dresses that you make.'
'Are you sure? Oh, I could have such fun with these!' Carly gloated.
Liam came over and Carly closed the lid and looked up at him with mischievous smugness. He asked, 'What are you handing over?'
'Buttons, dear,' said Madame Corbe, telling Carly, 'We used to keep them in the old days, and use favourite ones on new dresses. We had a dressmaker when I was a girl, living here. Her name was Berthe—oh, she was so clever.'
Carly opened the box again and showed Liam and said, 'Now you're sure it's all right? Would any of your lady friends like them? Perhaps you could get one of them stitching some on a shirt for you?'
Madame Corbe smiled at that and Liam said drily, 'My lady friends don't do much sewing.'
Carly could visualise a whole collection of shirt-blouses with the buttons giving them flair. She must tell Ruth about ft, and she asked, 'May I phone home, tonight?' Madame Corbe said yes, of course. 'Just to check that all's well, although I'm sure it will be. And I did promise William I would phone.'
'You're very fond of William, aren't you?' said Madame Corbe gently.
'He's a love, I'm going to get some cards to send to him. He thinks you're something out of a fairy tale, you know.' This wouldn't go down too well with Liam, but he suspected everything she did anyway, thinking she was grabbing something really valuable just now. 'Coming into the shop like that,' she went on, 'out of nowhere. He fancies a grandmother, he doesn't have one, and I said I'd ask you. I thought you lived all by yourself then, and I thought you might come round to our house in the evenings. Anyhow, I wonder if you'd just write 'grandmother' at the bottom of a card for him if I brought one back.'
But certainly Madame Corbe would be delighted. One of the photograph albums was still on a small table beside the sofa, and she said, 'Talking of children, do you know who this is?'
A small boy and a small fair-haired girl were sitting on two ponies. In the background was the barn Carly had spied through the telescope; she asked, 'Antoinette?'
'Of course.' Madame Corbe's face shadowed for a moment, then she smiled. 'But do you recognise the boy?'
'Roland.' She had known it was Roland right away. He looked a jolly little chap, smiling for whoever was taking the picture.
'It's a pity Roland is caught up in business matters this morning,' said Madame Corbe regretfully. 'I'm sure he would much rather be with you.'
'I'd have liked that too,' said Carly, and wondered what Liam had looked like when this was taken. There were several other photographs on the page, of Antoinette and Roland and the two fat ponies, all taken, she guessed, on the same day. She asked Liam,
'Where were you?' and Madame Corbe answered, smiling,
'He'd galloped off. There's never been any holding Liam, not even when he was a boy.'
'That doesn't surprise me,' said Carly.
'Postcards, you said,' said Liam. 'If you don't get them posted you'll be back before they arrive. Shall we go?'
As they came out of the Chateau through the main door he announced, 'We have a choice—down the cliff steps or by the road. The cliff steps are more direct but steeper.'
Carly shuddered. 'That's no contest! Please let's go by the road. Today is the kind of day I could get stuck half way down a cliff.'
'And stay there till you starve and then haunt the cliff face?'
'You wouldn't like that, would you? Me, here for ever?' She grimaced at him, eyes dancing. She knew he was dangerous, and could be destructive to her, but there were times when he filled her with gaiety, a desire to joke and tease, and carry on as though she wasn't a day over sixteen.
Liam pretended to consider, then said, 'Let's take the road,' and would have taken her hand, but she wasn't risking that.
The seafront of Guirec Vert was quite busy. There were tourists here. They were easy to pick out, shopping, sunning themselves. Several local people spoke to Liam, calling greetings, eyeing Carly, and she smiled and said 'Bonjour,' and wondered what they were making of her.
One man came hurrying after them. He had come out of the patisserie, carrying a couple of long rolls under his arm, and he called, 'Monsieur Sherrard!' Liam stopped and waited, and when he reached him the man began to talk in fast and worried fashion.
Carly moved away. She couldn't understand, but it was obviously personal. She walked on to where the notice Bar-Tabac was displayed and then looked back and watched, and saw the man's face clearing and thought, There's a problem 'being solved. He was smiling when Liam left him. He shook Liam's hand and went off, walking jauntily as though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
It was no business of hers, but when Liam reached her she asked, 'A client of yours?'
'In away.'
'Do you charge, or give your legal services free round here?' She had no idea why she asked that, but Liam had looked concerned and involved in whatever problem it was that the man had brought him. Not at all like an inquisitor.
'Why?' he asked. 'Do you want some free legal advice?'
She wouldn't have minded talking about the lease, but she said, 'I don't trust free gifts. I knew a man once who gave me presents and then I found I was in deep, deep debt.'
He knew she meant Gerald, but she didn't want to talk about Gerald, so she dived into the shop and began to choose cards from the rotating display just inside the door.
There were several of the Chateau des Sables. She bought two of each of those, and another half dozen of th
e coastline and the countryside, and took them up to the woman at the counter, who smiled and said, 'You are staying at the Chateau?' Liam was just outside the window, she must have seen Carly with him.
'Yes,' said Carly.
'A friend of Monsieur Sherrard?'
She amended that to, 'A friend of Madame Corbe,' and wondered why she was bothering to stress it. She was sure the woman watched her walk off with Liam and was remembering other girls who had strolled with him along the seafront.
She sat on the low sea wall to write William's card, making a rough sketch of a flying lion, and printing underneath it, 'This is the Winged Lion of Guirec Vert. His name is Leo. I. will tell you all about him when I get home.'
'Who says his name is Leo?' asked Liam, reading over her shoulder.
'Isn't it? Do they have names?'
'No.'
'Then why not Leo?' She pulled a face. 'Although he does look more like a flying pekingese than a lion.'
'Give him here.' Liam took the card and her ballpoint pen, put his foot on the sea wall and balanced the card on his knee, and with a few strokes made the lion into a lion. Then he added a girl on the lion's back, hair flying, smirking smugly, and in the lower left-hand corner a recognisable pirate, booted and eye-patched, leaping around in comic rage.
Carly burst out laughing when he showed it to her. 'My aren't you talented?'
'Oh yes,' said Liam. As she took back the card he leaned over and cupped her chin, tilting her face, and again she felt her blood leap. Her tongue flickered between dry lips and she thought, He's going to kiss me, and if he does I could kiss him back, and then he'll know and then I'm finished.
She said, 'I must post the card. How long will it take? I don't want to get home before it does. Is that likely to happen, do you think?'
'That depends on how long you're staying.' He wasn't going to kiss her after all. He made no attempt to stop her moving away, and she couldn't have said if she felt reprieved or let down.
'When are you going back?' he asked as they walked across to the postbox. 'I can give you a lift any time up to three weeks. That's my deadline, I have to report in three weeks.'
Carly had planned on a fortnight, but she could make it a little longer. She said, 'No, thank you,' dropping in her card. 'Coming here you were putting me through the third degree, weren't you? Dredging up anything that might discredit me.' He didn't deny it. 'So I'm doing no more travelling with you.'
'Pity,' he said cheerfully. 'I felt we got to know each other pretty well, but it could have been much more pleasurable on the way back. I might have surprised you with the extent of my talents.'
'No, thanks,' she said again, and turned her face towards the sea breezes, because she was sure she was blushing scarlet.
The mount of the chapel was only an island at low tide. The rest of the time it was the end of a rocky outcrop. Weeds grew in the crevices of the rose-red rocks and green pools glittered, but Carly resolutely refused a helping hand, and scrambled, slithered and jumped, getting along quite well and enjoying herself immensely.
There were a few tourists about, on the beach and climbing the rocks. On the causeway a middle-aged man was photographing a middle-aged woman who was perched rather stiffly on a small boulder, and Carly felt a fellow feeling for them. She was a tourist herself, and she wished she had brought a camera along. Postcards weren't the same, although she couldn't see herself asking Liam to take snapshots of her.
They didn't do much talking, but she knew that he was getting the same exhilaration as she was from the sparkling day. She said, 'You swim, of course.' Of course he did, this place was his second home. 'We must have a race some time,' she added.
'Any time.' He cautioned her, 'But remember the rocks.' With the tide out she could see what the smooth water would hide, and she smiled a little wryly.
'When your aunt said that I thought I'd do better to go swimming with Roland, I'd be safer with Roland.'
'That depends,' said Liam, and she might have asked what it depended on, but they were reaching the end of the causeway, where the island rose up in front of them, and she fell silent.
They stepped from the rocks on to a fringe of shingle and began to climb up the slope. Rough grasses covered the knoll and when she stood in the shadow of the ruins her exuberance gave way to hushed awe. The great rock arches were open to the sky and she went ahead of Liam, walking slowly, breathing deeply.
The sea stretched beyond, with a white boat on the horizon, and she stepped through a gap and stood with the wall at her back looking out over the waves.
Madame Corbe used to come here to be alone, but Carly wasn't alone. Liam hadn't spoken since they reached the island, and she hadn't heard his footsteps through the cries of seabirds and the sound of the sea. But she knew he was close and she said, 'Your aunt told me this used to be her favourite place. That she used to come here to sort out her problems.'
'Understandable,' he said, and he was near enough to have touched her. 'She's always been a great one for problems and plans. One problem she's working on right now.'
'What do you mean?' Carly's head jerked round. She suspected he was going to say something annoying, but what he did say shook her speechless.
'Oh, come on. Since you got here it must have dawned on you that she's planning to get you married to Roland.'
CHAPTER SEVEN
The thought that Madame Corbe wouldn't mind if Roland and Carly took to each other had occurred to Carly, but she hadn't considered it as a permanent relationship. It was understandable that Madame Corbe should want the brothers, who were the last of the line, married, but Carly couldn't believe she would simply select a girl at random and expect Roland to settle for her choice.
She exclaimed, 'That's ridiculous!'
'Of course it's ridiculous.' Liam sounded as though it would be hard to find anyone less suitable, and Carly's eyes narrowed. 'I thought at first it was just this fancied resemblance to Antoinette,' he went on, 'that she might imagine she had a replacement and get hurt that way, but it now seems she's carrying it several stages further. Roland and Antoinette married would have been her dream, I suppose. The locals used to call them the little sweethearts because they were the same age and always together during the holidays, although it was a brother-sister relationship, the three of us.'
'It might have grown into something else,' said Carly quietly. Her face softened and her lips curved. She could imagine Antoinette and Roland growing up together here and falling in love. It would have been like a story, and she enjoyed a good love story.
'Antoinette has been dead for twenty years,' said Liam harshly, jarring her romantic train of thought, 'so talking about what might have been is bloody pointless. And this scheme of my aunt's is absurd.'
If he had been less scathing she would have agreed, but instead she snapped, 'Well, I wouldn't expect you to give it your blessing.'
'I'd go farther than that. I wouldn't allow it.'
How about that for ego? Who did he think he was? Carly nearly fell about laughing, but there was something in Liam's expression that stopped her from smiling, much less laughing. She felt the warm rock of the broken wall pressing against her shoulder blades and her voice was cold. 'Surely the problem is Roland's, not yours. Anyway, why wouldn't you allow it?'
She knew the answers to that, but she was mad and she wanted him to spell them out. That a shopgirl was not taking over the ancestral home, especially a shopgirl with the record of Caroline Brown.
'You know why,' he said.
'Because I'm a peasant?' She grinned then, mocking him, 'And your aunt found me in a little shop?'
'I couldn't care less where she found you,' he said. 'I know you could play any part you put your mind to.'
She could act and look as well-bred as any of them, she knew that, but Liam judged her by what they had said about her when Gerald was on trial, and she said bitterly, 'But you don't think I'd be good for your brother because your lawyer friend made me out a gold-digger.'
>
'It's a point,' he admitted.
It was the main point. It was all Liam really had against her, and she could do nothing about it because he would go on believing what he wanted to believe. She watched the soaring leisured flight of a seagull. That kept her head up, and gave her a haughty look as though almost anything interested her more than he did.
'Looking for a winged lion?' he asked.
'Why should the winged lions be out today?' He was talking nonsense and so was she, but suddenly he was standing in front of her so that she couldn't look up or anywhere without looking at him, or move without touching him, and her entire body shivered. She said very quickly, 'What makes you think there's any risk that Roland would want to marry me?'
'Roland tends to let his heart rule his head,' said Liam, 'but it isn't going to happen, and you know why.'
Carly only knew that the full length of his body seemed pressed against her, disturbing her so that she was conscious of .nothing else. His arms held her, against the wall, against him, and she knew that when his mouth covered hers it would be like a match set to paraffin. ‑^
'Hell,' Liam swore softly. 'Hell and damnation!'
'W-what?'
'Oh dear!' gasped somebody. 'Er—bonjour. Pardon.'
It was the middle-aged man and woman who had been taking photographs among the rocks, looking hot, and disconcerted at stepping through a hole in the wall and almost colliding with a pair locked in an embrace. Another few minutes and they'd really have been embarrassed, Carly reflected, blushing scarlet, and oh lordy, so would she!
'Good morning,' said Liam. He kept an arm around Carly's shoulder and gave the arrivals a grin that had them smiling back. 'My fiancée and I were just admiring the view.'
The woman twinkled at Carly; she obviously thought they were a handsome couple. Carly's heart was thudding away and her head was beginning to throb with it. All she could manage was a fixed smile, standing stiffly in Liam's careless embrace, while he and the couple discussed the weather and the view. They were touring, they had stopped for a coffee and a walk on the beach. Were Carly and Liam touring? 'No,' said Liam, 'we're staying with friends.' Very nice, that was, said the woman. The man said these ruins looked old, did Liam know what they were? 'Just the remains of an old chapel,' said Liam.
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