The chesmut trees that surrounded the chateau and also gave it its name were beautiful still, even though the tall
candles of blossom had died in the month she had been there. The trees stood plump and serene in the sunshine fluttering their palmate leaves in gende appeal as the evening deepened.
Apart from the main driveway to the house and the side paths, the chateau was surrounded by grassland and trees, deep soft turf that put a spring into even the most laggardly step, and the quiet of the evening was as soothing as a soft hand on the brow. Sometimes she convinced herself that the faindy luminous glow in the evening sky was the lights of Paris coming on; bringing the capital to life as the countryside drifted into relaxation and sleep. Maybe it was simply her imagination, but it was a nice thought and she mused on it as she walked.
The chestnuts whispered in the light wind and there was no other sound until her ears caught the immistakable crunch of gravel as if someone was coming along the driveway she had left behind. The sudden cessation of the sound suggested that whoever the walker was had either stopped in his or her tracks, or else had moved over on to the sound-deadening softness of the turf.
Something in Charlotte's brain tingled a warning and she turned as she stood imder a cluster of trees, almost in darkness since the sun was sinking rapidly and the branches were so thick that they doused whatever light was left. The figure that came striding across the grass towards her was unmistakable and she clenched her hands involuntarily into tight litde fists as she tried to think of reasons why Raoul should be coming in her direction with such urgency in his stride.
As always he came straight to the point without a greeting of any sort. *Are you on your way to meet with someone?' he asked, and Charlotte frowned at him curiously as she shook her head.
'No,' she said briefly, and turned to continue her walk.
but he put a hand on her arm, persuading her to stop rather than forcing her to. Looking at the long brown fingers that curled lighdy over her much lighter skin, she said nothing for a moment, then looked up into his face. *Did you come with die intendon of preventing me from meeting anyone. Monsieur Raoul?' she asked.
In the shadows his features had an almost primidve cast that aroused a feeling of mingled fear and excitement that she found infinitely disturbing, and the steely gleam in his eyes watched her from shadowy lashes. Then he dropped his hand slowly and thrust them both into his pockets.
*I was curious to know why you diought it necessary to inform my father of your visit to his office this morning,' he said. 'It was not necessary; he need not have known.'
She had anticipated his anger because she had forestalled him, but his atdtude puzzled her. It was almost as if he was suggesting that he would rather have kept it from his father, and she found that hard to believe when he was so suspicious of her. Turning aside, she began walking again, and he fell into step beside her without hesitation, disturbing her with the fierce turbulence of his mood even though he said nothing.
*I told him before you did,' she said. *You can't blame me for wanting to get my version in first!'
Raoul turned his head swifdy, raking her with angry grey eyes before he swore sofdy in his own tongue. 'Because you expected me to—tell tales?' he demanded. *You take me for a schoolboy who runs to his father with stories of what the office girls do?'
That stung, for she felt she had been firmly put in her placty and Charlotte swallowed hard on her pride. 'You seemed to be taking it all very seriously,' she reminded hiHL *As if you suspected me being an—^an industrial spy or something!'
*Ahy aliens done V
*Not nonsense at all,* she denied, noting his black frown uneasily. *You'd already implied I was doing undercover work for one of your competitors!'
His lean body was taut as a bow-string, but he modified his step to accommodate her, and walking beside him over the sound-deadening turf gave Charlotte a curious sense of detachment from the rest of the world. There was nothing definite before them but the setting sun which seemed to be dying at the very edge of the green parkland where they walked, and she stopped in her stride suddenly and faced him.
'Why did you come after me?* she asked, and hastily avoided a.gaze as bright as polished steel gleaming in the darkness of his face.
He stood facing her and could hardly be as undecided as he appeared; it simply was not possible for Raoul to be undecided. *I acted on impulse,' he said, and Charlotte's heart beat a litde faster suddenly. *l felt I should tell you that something has happened that could—complicate matters, and since you have already told my father about your
visit to his office ' He was so obviously uneasy that
Charlotte stared at him.
'What are you trying to tell me?' she asked, and noticed a huskiness in her voice that had not been there a moment ago.
Raoul's big hands had a curious suggestion of helplessness as they spread wide in concert with the lift of broad shoulders, and it was so unlike him that Charlotte found the gesture oddly touching. 'Do you recall seeing a buff-coloured fdder on my father's desk?' he asked, and Charlotte nodded, her uneasiness growing by the minute. 'There is a very important drawing missing from it, it appears.' There was a shivering vibrance in his voice that affected her strangely, and she recalled how he had found her with the big buff folder in her hands that morning. 'It contains the
details of some very important govenmient work we are doing,' he went on, *and in the wrong hands '
He gestured helplessly once more, but Charlotte was beginning to get the gist of his meaning and she stared at him with the dawn of fear as well as anger in her eyes. 'And
you think ' She stepped away from him, looking into
his face and shaking her head slowly back and forth. *You think I took it,' she said in a small unsteady voice. 'You do, don't you? You think I stole that drawing!'
It seemed to her that he was deliberately cautious in his reply. 'It is missing, Charlotte,' he said, 'no one has been accused.'
'But you're out here looking for me!' she reminded him with a catch in her voice. 'That speaks for itself, surely! You don't have to spell it out to me!' She turned swifdy from him before he saw the hurt in her eyes and the move obviously surprised him, for it was a moment or two before he came up beside her again, once more levelling his stride to accommodate her. 'I presume you've searched the ofl&ce?' she asked in a tight small voice, and he nodded.
'Yes, of course.'
'Thoroughly?' She glanced up at him, her mouth smiling bitterly. 'Or simply a man's search? Who looked for the wretched plan?'
'You speak of plans as if you imagine a plot for a spy film,' Raoul told her impatiendy, and Charlotte glared at hinL
'That's the way you make it sound!' she retorted. 'Who have you had looking for your plan, drawing or whatever?'
'No one but my father and myself.' His tone suggested that he saw her as clutching at straws. 'So far we have said nothing to anyone else, but the office has been very thoroughly searched and there is no trace of it.'
'Well, I'll be obliged if you'll let me search for it!' Charlotte said firmly, and glanced at him challengingly from
the comer of her eyes. *At least you have to allow me to do that!'
*Naturally you may search for it if you wish,' Raoul agreed, and Charlotte gave him another meaningful glance as she walked beside him.
*Thank you!' she said with laboured sarcasm, and increased her pace.
Bernard looked distincdy starded when they came into his office together, and immediately glanced at his son for an explanation. Aware of it, Charlotte switched her gaze in time to see Raoul shrug his shoulders again in resignation, then listened while he briefly defined her intention to his father.
*You have told Charlotte?' Bernard asked, and was clearly surprised to hear it.
Already looking as if he was having second thoughts about being so frank, Raoul nodded. 1 thought that she had the right to know. Papa, when she was so closely involved with the situation.'
> *Not closely involved at all!' Charlotte declared firmly, made bold by the need to defend herself, but breathlessly anxious. 'I'd be glad of the opportunity to look for the drawing, Monsieur Bernard, for the simple reason that Monsieur Raoul seemed to think I might have been on my way to hand it over to an accomplice! I think I deserve the opportunity to prove him wrong!'
Bernard looked so obviously confused that Charlotte felt sorry for him. *Raoul said diat^—but '
Once more Charlotte switched her gaze in time to catch Raoul's expression and he was frowning; shaking his head and using one hand to silence his father's attempts to explain whatever it was he wanted to tell her.
^May I search for the drawing. Monsieur Bernard?' she asked, and permission was given, accompanied by a gesture of resignaticm.
*Mais oui, naturellement, ma cherey he said, *if you think you can discover its whereabouts. Menais and Company will suffer a great deal of embarrassment, as well as much more serious repercussions, if it is not soon found.' He waved a hand around the big room. Tlease look wherever you wish, Raoul and I will assist you, although we have already been most thorough.*
*rd like to try the desk first, if I may,' Charlotte decided. *I feel it must be there somewhere, because none of the drawings or papers went any further than immediately in front of the desk here.' She anticipated just for a moment the missing drawing not being found, and gnawed anxiously at her lower lip as she looked from the two men to the chaos on Bernard's desk. *I don't know quite where to begin,' she confessed.
*0r what to look for?' Raoul suggested quietly, and she turned swiftly and held his gaze, breathing deeply and unevenly in her anxiety.
*0r what to look for,' she agreed huskily, then looked at his father for guidance. *Can you give me some idea of what it looks like. Monsieur Bernard?'
*A drawing,' Bernard told her, with such an air of vagueness that Charlotte began to understand.how it was that drawings and papers for an important government project had been left on his desk unattended. *About so big and rolled into a tube, about—thirty-five or forty centimetres in length.'
*I see, right.' She glanced down at the floor at her feet without any real hope of seeing it lying there, but she did notice the empty waste paper basket and looked up again at Bernard. *Has the waste bin been emptied since this morning?'
*I checked,' Raoul interrupted shordy. *I can vouch that it has not been accidentally thrown away.'
*Oh!' Charlotte caught his eye and saw the look that
suggested he found her first efifort at a solution sadly lacking in originality. *I just thought '
She shrugged and once more began her search. Bernard went through the contents of a filing cabinet on the far side of the room, but it was obvious from the desultory way he conducted his search that he had litde hope of being successful. Raoul on the other hand chose to assist her in going over the things on the desk, and his doing so made her nervous and clumsy.
It locked an impossible task, even without the knowledge that the two of them had already searched thoroughly, but it had to be done, she could not draw back now. Apart from the group photograph that had caught her eye on the earlier occasion, diere were several others, among them, rather surprisingly to Charlotte, a very good one of the other Raoul Menais.
He had been Bernard's half-brother, of course, and Bernard was a sentimental man, she suspected, much more so than his son. It was like him to keep a photograph of his half-brother on view years after he died. Making a point of moving'everything on the top of the desk, Charlotte picked up the picture of Raoul senior as a matter of course, but inevitably he held a fascination for her and she retained possession of it for longer than she realised, gazing down at the smiling and handsome features diat she felt might so easily have belonged to her real father.
It was as she replaced the photograph that she realised Raoul was watching her, his grey eyes narrowed in the way she was all too familiar with. *You are—interested in him?' he asked, in a voice soft enough in pitch to be sure to be inaudible to his father, and Charlotte shook her head quickly.
Tvc said before. Monsieur Raoul,' she told him breathlessly; *he was a very good-looking man, and as a woman I appreciate that—^no more!'
Raoul said nothing, merely shrugged his broad shoulders and pursed his lips briefly in an expression she could only interpret as one of disbelief, then resumed his search. Five minutes later they were still searching, but with no success, and Charlotte sighed despairingly.
*Did I not tell you we had searched very thoroughly?' he asked, and in her anxiety Charlotte rounded on him furiously.
M3h, I can just imagine what satisfaction it gives you to say I told you so!' she accused. *But that drawing has to be here somewhere, because I didn't leave this room with it, and if I have to stay here all night, Raoul, I'll find it, just to prove you wrong!'
She did not even notice that she used his name without its customary formal tide, but Raoul's eyes had a bright steely gleam that made her shiver involuntarily. *If you imagine it gives me any satisfaction to know diat Menais and Company will have to stand an enquiry at government level, you are sadly mistaken, mademoiselle !' he told her. *I assure you that this—incident gives me no pleasure at all 1 I hope that you are right, that the drawing is still in this room!'
Bernard looked across the room at the two angry faces, both bent over his chaotic desk and rummaging with hands that moved jerkily with suppressed anger. 'There is no need to feel so responsible, Charlotte,' he told her. *You are not hekl to blame.'
Terhaps not by you. Monsieur Bernard,' Charlotte told him, trying hard to control a trembling lower lip. *And I'm grateful for your trust.'
Bernard looked vaguely uneasy for a moment, then resumed his vague meandering through the filing system while Charlotte looked around her helplessly. It did not even enter her head to suspect Raoul himself had taken it, for any reason at all, so if it had gcme someone had entered
Bernard's office after he left and taken it, that was the only solution.
She looked across to Bernard for permission to open the brass-handled drawers of the desk, then opened die topmost one and glanced inside it. It contained nothing but a jumble of scraps of paper with figures scribbled on them, pens, pencils and paperclips—the inside oi Bernard's desk was no more tidy than the top of it, and she wondered if his secretary despaired of him.
Qosing the top drawer, she reached down to open the second in line and as she shifted the supporting hand she had on the desk top she knocked a small open notebook to the floor. Making a grab at it, she touched Raoul's descending hand instead and drew back hastily while the notebook landed with a soft plop on the carpet, then shd out of sight beneath the pedestal of drawers.
Immediately Charlotte bent down, but once more found herself in unison with Raoul when his lean height crouched swifdy to retrieve the bode. *Allow me!' he murmured with heavy irony, and she rose slowly upright, leaving him crouched at her feet with one id&g hand feeling under the desk for the missing book.
There was barely an inch of space between the bottom drawer and the carpet and he was using two fingers stretched to their limit to reach for something which he drew with infinite care out into the open and then straightened up slowly with it in his hand. The dropped notebook had been drawn out with whatever else it was he had discovered there, and it did not take Charlotte more than a second to realise it was the missing drawing.
Raoul unrolled the curling paper and lock a long careful look at it before turning it to show to his father. *Dieu soil b&nil* Bernard murmured piously, and came across to peer briefly at the drawing. *We did not think to look '
Charlotte was looking at Raoul. His eyes were hidden by
the long sweep oi black lashes and it was difficult to tell what he was thinking, but she remembered how he had come to look for her, and the non-committal shrug of his shoulders that neither confirmed nor denied his suspicion of her. Thrusting out her chin, she looked up at him with the light of challenge in her bl
ue eyes.
Tm as relieved as you are. Monsieur Bernard,' she told him in a voice that she simply could not stop from shaking. *Monsieur Raoul was so ccmvinced Fd taken the wretch^ thing he was ready to stand up in court and swear it! Thank heaven it was he who found it and not me!'
Charlotte was not sure what reaction she expected from him, but the sudden narrow-eyed fury he showed her was so alarming that she shrank from it. Then he turned swiftly on his heel and went striding round the desk, thrust the drawing into his father's hands and marched out of the room, closing the door with a resounding bang behind him.
It was difficult to understand her own sense of regret, for she was convinced that she had said no more than the truth, but she watched him go with a wildly beating heart and her legs were shaking uncontrollably. For a second or two after he had gone the big room was silent, and the yellow garish-ness of die overhead light gave Bernard's thickening jaw-line the same taut leanness as his son's for a moment. Then he turned and looked down at her with an expression in his eyes that she could not quite define.
*You do my son an injustice, Charlotte,' he told her, and in the face of his reproach Charlotte found it hard to maintain her air of injured innocence. *No one accused you of taking the drawing, and Raoul most of all was insistent on your innocence. He declared that you had left this room empty-handed and that you were—as he put it—incapable of anything deviously criminal because you would be bound to give yourself away.'
The urgency of her heartbeat nearly choked her as she
Stood with her hands held tighdy together, trying not to meet Bernard's reproachful gaze. She wanted to cry and did not know why, but she dared not look at Bernard because he had the same kindly and understanding character his mother had and if she looked at him she might lose the control she clung to so tightly. Then after a moment or two she spread her hands in that appealing gesture of helplessness that was something she used unthinkingly.
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