“To be honest, Con, I’m past caring.” Venetia sighed. “Nearly all of the safe houses in Paris are gone, although new ones are currently being established. And besides, simply no one would expect a British agent to be transmitting from the cellar of a house which is known to entertain the enemy.” Venetia turned her eyes to Connie. “Are you absolutely sure you’re not turned?” Venetia laughed suddenly. “Well, if you are, I’m dead anyway, so what does it matter?”
Venetia was asking her to prove herself. Connie sighed as she accepted the inevitable. Her loyalty had to be with her friend and her country, whatever the consequences.
“All right, I’ll help you.”
• • •
Connie returned home, then made the excuse to Sarah of having left a book downstairs in the cellar last time there had been an air raid. Connie unlocked the cellar door, which led up the steps to the garden beyond, then returned to the drawing room to sit with Sophia. As Sophia’s delicate fingers passed lightly over a new Braille version of Byron’s poems, a radiant smile on her face, Connie could sit still no longer. She feigned a headache at half past six and said she’d take supper in her room.
Then, at eight o’clock, she returned downstairs to tell Sarah there were no guests that evening and she was free to retire. Sophia was already up in her room. Connie paced the floorboards of her own bedroom, her nerves jangling as the clock ticked forward. Venetia was almost certainly down below her in the cellar now.
Plagued with guilt at the thought of innocent Sophia, unaware that the woman her family had taken in and given protection to was betraying her safety right under her very nose, Connie watched the next hour pass in an agony of tension.
At ten o’clock Connie crept downstairs. She was at the back of the house in the kitchen on her way down to the cellar to check Venetia had gone when she heard a soft tap at the front door.
Her heart missing a beat, Connie opened the kitchen door, which led into the entrance hall, and saw the front door had already been opened by Sophia, who had found her way unchaperoned down the stairs. There on the doorstep stood Frederik, his arms wrapped around Sophia. In an agony of tension, Connie slipped back into the shadows to try to decide what to do. She realized that the two of them must have engineered this tryst. Ten o’clock was hardly an appropriate time for anyone to call, let alone a gentleman to visit an unaccompanied lady. Connie wondered whether she should be more concerned for Sophia’s virtue or the possibility that a British agent was still down in the cellar—with a senior Nazi officer only feet above her.
Connie eventually decided the safest thing was to leave them be. While Frederik was looking into Sophia’s eyes, at least he was preoccupied. Once she’d seen the two of them enter the drawing room, Connie fled upstairs to her bedroom. She sat ramrod straight in a wing chair by her window, wishing with every fiber of her body for this night to be over and dawn to break.
Then she checked herself. How could she be so selfish? Venetia and her other fellow agents were putting themselves through the most terrible danger every single day. One night of mental agony was hardly a lot to contend with.
Eventually, Connie heard footsteps in the corridor below her and the creak of the stairs. An upstairs door clicked shut, and Connie sighed in relief, knowing that Frederik must have left and Sophia had gone to bed. Connie was surprised she hadn’t heard him leave, but perhaps he’d taken pains to exit the house as quietly as possible.
She yawned, suddenly feeling the tension drain away and exhaustion replace it. Climbing into bed, Connie fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. And didn’t hear the front door being quietly closed as the dawn began to break over Paris.
15
Blackmoor Hall, Yorkshire
1999
The snow was falling thickly as Sebastian paid the taxi driver and removed Emilie’s suitcase from the trunk of the car. Emilie turned to survey Blackmoor Hall for the first time and saw a darkly forbidding Gothic mansion in red brick. A stone gargoyle was perched menacingly above the arch over the front door, its grin toothless, having been eaten away by the elements, the top of its head clad in a bonnet of snow.
It was impossible to make any judgment of the surroundings in which the house sat; currently the landscape could have been Siberia as much as an English village set on the North Yorkshire moors. The landscape was white, empty, and desolate for as far as Emilie’s eye could see. She shivered involuntarily, as much from the bleakness as the cold.
“Blimey, only just made it,” said Sebastian, appearing next to her. “Hope that driver makes it home safely,” he commented as the taxi plowed its way back up the drive through the deepening snow. “It may be impassable here by tomorrow.”
“You mean we could be snowed in?” Emilie said as they trudged through the snow, now shin-deep, to the front door.
“Yup, it happens most years around here. Luckily, we have a Land Rover and a neighbor with a tractor at our disposal.”
“When it snows in the French Alps, they always manage to keep the roads clear.”
Sebastian grasped the large enamel doorknob and turned it. “Say hello to England, my French princess, where any form of unexpected weather can bring the country to a standstill.” He smiled. “And now, Emilie, welcome to my humble abode.”
Sebastian pushed open the front door and they stepped into an entrance hall that was in direct contrast to the white brightness of outside. Everything was clad in dark wood: the paneled walls, the inelegant deep-stained staircase—even the huge fireplace forming the centerpiece of the room sported a heavy mahogany surround. Unfortunately, a fire did not burn brightly in its grate and Emilie felt little change in temperature from that of outside.
“Come on,” said Sebastian, dropping Emilie’s suitcase by the bottom of the ugly staircase, “there’ll be a fire burning in the drawing room, I’m sure. I left a message for Mrs. Erskine to say we were coming.”
He pulled her along a labyrinth of corridors, the walls covered in deep-green wallpaper and adorned with oil paintings of horses out to hunt. Pushing open a door, Sebastian walked into a large drawing room, its walls sporting a dark maroon William Morris wallpaper and accommodating further paintings crammed haphazardly upon them.
“Bugger!” he swore as he looked at the empty grate, filled only with the graying ashes of a past fire. “This isn’t like her. Don’t tell me she’s handed in her resignation again.” Sebastian sighed. “No panic, sweetheart, I’ll have this going in a trice.”
Emilie sat on the fender shivering as Sebastian expertly and swiftly built a fire. Her teeth were chattering by the time he’d coaxed the flames into life, and she warmed her hands gratefully.
“Right,” he said, “you sit there and defrost, and I’ll go and make some tea and find out what the hell has been going on since I left.”
“Sebastian—” Emilie called as he left the drawing room, wanting to know in which direction was the nearest bathroom, but the heavy door swung shut behind him. Hoping he wouldn’t be long, Emilie sat and thawed out in front of the fire, watching the snow flurries thicken to a blizzard and settle on the windowsills outside.
Her knowledge of England was limited—she’d traveled with her mother on a few occasions to stay with friends in London—but her vision of cozy English cottages adorned with thatched roofs and nestling in chocolate-box villages could not be further removed from this austere, freezing monolith of a house and its surroundings.
Twenty minutes later, Sebastian had still not returned, and Emilie was getting desperate. She stood up and ventured outside the drawing room into the corridor, opening doors to further dark rooms in search of a bathroom. She found one at last, whose vast wooden toilet seat reminded her of a throne. Emerging, Emilie heard raised voices from somewhere in the house. One of them was unknown, but the other was most definitely Sebastian’s. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he was obviously extremely angry.
She now wished she’d asked for more details of Sebastian’s world here in York
shire before she’d stepped on a plane with him to come to England. But the two weeks since he’d asked her to marry him had been a whirlwind of activity. Their talk had been more of their fascinating shared past than their future.
Emilie had told him all that Jacques had told her when she’d returned to Paris from the château.
“What a story.” Sebastian had sighed. “And it sounds like that’s only the start. When will Jacques be able to tell you more?”
“He promised he would when I return to put the library into storage. I think it drained him emotionally.”
“I’m sure.” Sebastian had hugged her to him. “But there’s a nice synergy in the way our families have been reunited.”
Emilie’s fingers reached to her neck to touch the creamy white pearls—her mother’s pearls—remembering when Sebastian had presented her with them on the morning of their wedding.
“I bought them back for you at the auction, sweetheart,” he’d said as he’d fastened them around her throat. Then he’d kissed her. “Are you sure you don’t mind the ceremony being so small? I mean, it’s hardly how the last surviving member of the de la Martinières should get married. I’m sure half of Paris attended your parents’ wedding.” He’d smiled down at her.
“Yes, and that’s why I’m very happy to get married quietly,” Emilie had answered truthfully, the thought of being the center of attention horrifying her. The low-key nuptials had suited her perfectly.
After the marriage ceremony, at which Gerard and a Parisian art-dealer friend of Sebastian’s had been witnesses, Gerard had insisted on taking the four of them to the Ritz for lunch. “It’s the least your parents would have wanted for you, Emilie,” he’d added. Gerard had raised a glass to their health and happiness, then asked of their plans. Emilie had told him she was off to stay with Sebastian in England while the château was renovated. Gerard had caught her as they were leaving the Ritz and urged her to keep in touch with him.
“Anything I can do to help, Emilie, you know that I’m always here for you.”
“Thank you, Gerard, you’ve been very kind.”
“And, Emilie, please try and remember that even though you’re now married, it’s you who owns the château, the proceeds from the sale of the Paris house, and the de la Martinières name. I would like to speak to you about the details of the estate and the finances in the future, as well as to your husband.”
“Sebastian tells me everything that I need to know. He’s been wonderful, Gerard, and I couldn’t have got through this without him.”
“I agree, he has, but it’s still a good thing in a marriage to keep your independence. Especially financially,” Gerard had added, before kissing Emilie’s hand and leaving.
• • •
Eventually, when Emilie had been reduced to reading numerous out-of-date copies of Horse & Hound, Sebastian reentered the drawing room looking harassed and apologetic in equal measure.
“So sorry, darling. I had a few things to sort out. Would you like a cup of tea? I could certainly do with one.”
“What’s wrong?” Emilie went to him and he folded his arms around her.
“Oh, nothing out of the ordinary, for this house, at least. I was right. Mrs. Erskine has handed in her notice and gone off home in high dudgeon, swearing never to return. She’ll come back, of course. She always does.”
“Why has she left?”
“That, Emilie, is something I want to try and explain to you over a hot drink.”
Each furnished with a large mug of hot tea, and sitting comfortably on a couple of big cushions by the fire, Sebastian began to explain.
“I want to tell you about my brother, Alex. And I’m warning you, it’s a story I don’t enjoy relaying. I’m feeling bad I haven’t told you before, actually, but then it never seemed relevant. Up until today, anyway.”
“Then tell me now.”
“Right. So”—Sebastian took a sip of his tea—“I’ve already told you our mother dumped us here on our granny when we were toddlers, then disappeared off into the blue yonder. Alex is eighteen months younger than me. And we’re polar opposites, rather like Falk and Frederik from the sound of things. As you know, I like to be organized, whereas Alex has always been a … free spirit, constantly searching, not prepared or even able to live with routine. Anyway, we were both sent to boarding school, and whereas I loved it and thrived, Alex struggled. He got himself expelled and messed up his university place by getting himself a drink-driving conviction. Then, when he was eighteen, he took himself off abroad and we heard nothing from him for a good few years.”
“Where did he go?”
“We really had no idea, until one day Granny had a call from a hospital in France. Alex had apparently overdosed on heroin. He’d been near death’s door when someone had found him, but he’d just pulled through.” Sebastian sighed. “So Granny flew over to get him and put him into a private rehab clinic here in England. To be fair to him, Alex was as good as his word and came home clean. But then he disappeared abroad again and we didn’t see him back until after Granny had died. I think I need a stiff drink. You?”
“I’m fine, thank you.”
Sebastian left the room and Emilie stood up to close the curtains against the still-falling snow. As she sat back down and stared into the red-hot flames of the fire, Emilie felt sympathy for her new husband. His brother sounded dreadful.
Sebastian came back with a gin and tonic and lay back in Emilie’s arms. She stroked his hair. “What happened next?”
“Well, just after Granny’s death, when Alex had finally returned home and moved back in here, we had a flaming row. He headed for the car and I offered to drive him as I knew he was drunk, but he insisted on driving himself. I foolishly got in the car with him, and a few miles down the road on a particularly notorious bend, he took the corner wide and smashed into a car coming in the opposite direction. My brother sustained serious injuries. I had the luck of the blind and escaped with cracked ribs, a broken arm, and whiplash.”
“Oh my God!” Emilie breathed to herself. “You poor, poor thing.”
“As I said, it was Alex who took the worst of it.”
“How sad.” Emilie shook her head. She looked at him. “You should have told me all of this before, Sebastian.”
“Yes, and given you the chance to get out of marrying me before it was too late.” He smiled harshly.
“No! I didn’t mean that. But I’ve learned from you that it always helps to share our problems, not keep them to ourselves.”
“Yes, you’re right. You know, the tragedy is that Alex was always so bright. Far brighter than me. He sailed through his exams having done no work, whereas I’ve had to slog for everything I’ve ever had. Alex could have had it all if he hadn’t been so messed up and irresponsible.”
“I often think people who are too bright suffer as much as those who struggle. My father always said gifts were best in moderation. Too much or too little of anything brings problems.”
“It sounds like you had a very wise father, and I would have very much liked to have met him.” Sebastian kissed her on the nose and looked up at her. “So, there we are. The story of my errant brother. Now then, you must be starving. Why don’t you come into the kitchen with me while I knock something up from the fridge? At least it’s warm in there with the range going full pelt. And then I suggest we both retire to our icebox of a bedroom. I’m sure we can think of ways to keep warm.” Sebastian pulled her up from the floor with him. “Come on, let’s eat as quickly as possible and then go upstairs.”
As he led her along the icy corridors toward the kitchen, Emilie felt she simply had to ask: ‘So where is Alex now?”
“Didn’t I say?”
“No, you didn’t.”
“He’s here, of course. Alex lives here at Blackmoor Hall.”
16
Emilie woke early the next morning, having had an unsettled night. This was partly to do with the biting cold, the like of which she’d never before exp
erienced. She felt as if her freezing bones would snap at any moment. Sebastian had apologized profusely, explaining that the ancient heating wasn’t working because someone had forgot to fill up the oil tank, and that he would sort it out as soon as possible.
Emilie moved her icy toes surreptitiously onto the warmth of Sebastian’s shin. The room was completely shrouded in darkness, not a chink of light coming through the fading damask curtains. She wondered if Sebastian would mind if they could sleep with the curtains drawn back. She’d always slept with the windows naked, enjoying waking to the mellow light of a new day.
Emilie mulled over what Sebastian had told her of his brother, Alex, the previous night. After dropping the bombshell that he lived at Blackmoor Hall, Sebastian had explained that he’d suffered a broken back in the car crash and was now confined to a wheelchair. A carer lived with him full-time in a specially converted flat on the ground floor of the east wing.
“Of course, it costs a fortune to have him looked after, not to mention the renovation that was needed to accommodate a disabled person, but what else could I do?” Sebastian had sighed. “Anyway, please don’t worry about Alex. He keeps to himself and rarely ventures into the main house.”
“Has he been able to steer clear of drugs and alcohol since the accident?” Emilie had asked tentatively.
“Mainly, yes. But we’ve been through a succession of carers, two of which I had to get rid of after they’d been coerced by my brother into supplying him with alcohol. Alex can be extremely charming and very persuasive if he wants to be.”
Despite her husband’s reassurances about the separateness of Alex’s existence, Emilie shuddered when she contemplated this drug-dependent paraplegic who lived—whether in a separate apartment or not—very clearly under the same roof.
The Lavender Garden Page 16