A Gown of Thorns: A Gripping Novel of Romance, Intrigue and the Secrets of a Vintage Parisian Dress

by Natalie Meg Evans

  He sounded so fixed on it that she reluctantly started back up the slope. She stopped at the outcrop of rock whose face shone like cinder toffee in the afternoon light. No sign of a cave. All she could see was greenery – myrtle, wild vine, boxwood and fern – though she’d swear she’d seen the opening right here, between two bends in the path. ‘We must have passed it,’ she said, seizing the excuse to turn back. This place rippled with invisible violence, its untouched serenity a lie. Laurent seemed oblivious to the atmosphere, but to Shauna it felt like a singing in the blood. ‘It’s gone.’

  ‘Where does a cave go? If you saw it, it must be here.’ Laurent walked on up the slope and passed out of sight, just as his blue-and-brown lookalike had done earlier. When he returned to her, his expression was a cocktail of disappointment and doubt. ‘Did you walk right up to the ridge, further than you think?’

  ‘No.’ She told him she must get back to the car park. ‘The children will think I’ve abandoned them.’

  Olive and Nico emerged through the white gates moments after she reached the car. They’d been delayed, and the explanation was muddled. It sounded as though Nico had tried to make his horse jump a fence without being authorised and, having seen her brother do it, Olive had leapt her horse over an even higher one. Shauna deduced they’d been given a telling-off by their instructor.

  ‘You’re idiots,’ was Laurent’s opinion. He’d accompanied Shauna to the car park and, seeing how her fingers shook when she tried to unlock the Clio, had taken the key from her. ‘You’ve no right jumping horses who haven’t been properly warmed up first. That’s how tendons and ligaments get pulled.’

  ‘They were warmed up,’ Nico came back sulkily. ‘It was boiling hot in the sand school.’

  Like Laurent, the children smelled of horse sweat and expensive saddle leather. If they noticed that Shauna was pale and rather distant, they made no comment. It was Laurent they wanted to shower with the minutiae of their day’s experiences.

  ‘I have to go back to work,’ he said after he’d listened to several minutes’ breathless telling. ‘You have to go on to your next venue, no?’ Without waiting for an answer, he pressed them into the back seat like a policeman confining a pair of suspects. Then he turned to Shauna, who was standing at the driver’s door, filling and emptying her lungs as a yoga student might.

  ‘Are you fit to drive? I cannot believe you have more crazy activity to cram into the day.’

  ‘I’m fine, honestly.’ She got into the car, fired the engine and lowered the window. ‘Next stop, Bergerac, for two hours’ gymnastics. Oh, and sorry about the non-existent cave. You probably think I’m certifiable, but I’m not normally this emotional. I’m suffering from Sudden Holiday Syndrome.’

  Laurent rested his hand on the window sill, keeping her from driving away. ‘Is that a recognised ailment?’

  ‘It ought to be! Thing is, I’ve been studying flat out for five years. In what passes for spare time, I had to supplement my student loan with whatever jobs I could get. No vacations other than the occasional weekend at my mother’s.’ When she’d arrive exhausted and sleep till Sunday. ‘Now, I feel as though I’ve fallen off a boat and washed up on a strange shore. I like Chemignac,’ she said quickly, as hurt flashed in Laurent’s eyes, ‘but the world has stopped too quickly. Everything’s different, all at once.’ She tapped her head. ‘Too much space up here and I’m filling it with phantom geese, caves in the woods, lights in the tower – yes, I know,’ she cut him short, knowing he was going to say something about that. ‘Wires short-circuiting. You will have an electrician check it out?’

  ‘Don’t go up there, not without me. You hear?’

  ‘I hear.’ Wow. He meant it.

  ‘I don’t want you hurt, Shauna. I don’t want more misfortune to rain on Chemignac.’ He took her left hand from the steering wheel and brushed her bruised palm with his thumb. After counselling her to watch out for farm vehicles hogging the roads between here and the D936, he stepped back. As she reversed out of her space, she saw him take the path that would eventually lead him back to his vineyards. Dappled shadows soon absorbed him.

  At the urban sports centre on Bergerac’s outskirts, Shauna left the children to grapple with the balance beam and parallel bars and went for a swim. Her chance to don a sports bikini and dispel her brain-fog with fast lengths of front crawl. The chlorinated water cleaned any lingering grit from her hands. Arriving back at Chemignac just before six, she parked the Clio by the winery and walked with the children to their grandmother’s kitchen door. She was spent, but she still had two hours of J.R.R. Tolkien to come – language lessons via Middle Earth. The smell in the courtyard of roast dinner was divine, however. Letting the children run ahead of her, Shauna’s eyes consulted briefly with the tower window. The glass behind the shutters was blank. Inert. ‘I don’t need to know what’s switching lights on and off,’ she told the window. And that was true. She didn’t need to know. But part of her wanted to, very badly.

  Chapter Six

  Sunday arrived and was declared sports free. ‘By royal decree. Mine,’ Isabelle announced. She and Albert went to mass in the village, driven there by Laurent, and shortly after their return a taxi drew up to take her, Albert and the children to see relatives in Bordeaux. A four-hour round trip. The children grumbled, but Isabelle informed them that nobody got to do what they wanted all of the time. ‘Being bored sometimes is good for the soul. It makes you think.’

  The taxi doors clunked shut and everyone shouted goodbye to Shauna, except Albert. Alone in the château for the first time, Shauna knew exactly what she was going to do.

  With more time – and daylight – in which to sort through all the keys, Shauna quickly found one that fitted the door to the tower. She must have overlooked it last time. Iron ground against iron, but the key eventually turned. The door needed a couple of pulls to open, suggesting that nobody had tried it for some time.

  Shauna looked in vain for a light switch. Unable to find one, she left the door open. The tower was circular, except where it linked to the building. Embrasured arrow slits were the only source of light in the lower part of the stairwell, but they were just about adequate. Stepping cautiously over a wooden trapdoor, wondering if it was a vestigial escape hatch into the moat, Shauna climbed the spiral stairs, tripping several times until her legs got used to the steepness. A rope hand-hold had been provided and she was thankful for it. The air smelled musty but, at last, a window. Its hinges creaked as she pushed it open and, from somewhere above, doves fluttered indignantly. Reaching the top landing, thigh muscles burning, Shauna found another studded oak door. Locked. Damn. She hadn’t thought to bring the rest of the keys with her.

  She prepared to go down just as she heard footsteps at the base of the tower and a voice calling her name. A female voice, with a scornful echo.

  ‘I’m up here!’ Shauna answered, adding silently, ‘and you can do the leg work.’ She had a few things to say to Rachel Moorcroft. The girl was free with her contempt, her mockery, but how would she stand up to a bit of Sheffield straight talking?

  Rachel got the first words in. ‘That grumpy old beggar Albert won’t like you being up here. Were you hoping to poke about in the bedroom?’ Pausing a few steps down from where Shauna was standing, she said in a sinister whisper, ‘I bet the cupboards are full of mouldering skeletons of all the women Albert didn’t marry. Why can’t the poor old stick just come out as gay? Anyway, shall we go in and raise some ghosts?’

  ‘The door’s locked.’

  ‘Ta-dah!’ Rachel opened her palm. ‘I also know where they keep the keys. I saw you open the window and guessed you were sneaking up here.’

  ‘Isabelle said I could come into the tower any time I liked.’

  ‘Isabelle? Always “Madame Duval” to me. You are honoured. Laurent told me once that Albert was furious when Isabelle inherited the part of the château with access to the tower.’ Rachel proffered the key, which Shauna took. ‘But nobody actually owns
it. For some reason the tower was left off the plans when the building was divvied up between the heirs – it’s everybody’s and yet nobody’s, a vertical twilight zone. How weird is that? So it’s not really for Madame Duval to give you permission to enter.’

  ‘But it’s not your business either, is it?’

  ‘Well, if you put it like that. Only trying to be friendly.’

  ‘Oh yes? I suppose “friendly” means different things to different folk.’ Shauna unlocked the bedroom door and walked in. There was just enough light with which to make out a wooden-framed bed and a wardrobe. The size of that cupboard! It was broad enough to house all Shauna’s possessions, with room for her to get in alongside. And there was the window she’d stared up at so many times, its panes begging for a clean, its shutters clenched against the day. Flinging them wide, Shauna heard a thud. She turned in time to hear a key turn and knew from the callous chuckle on the other side of the door that she was locked in.

  Chapter Seven

  No reason to panic. This was a snug enough place to await her eventual release.

  If you like old rooms with cobwebs and sad memories… Shauna wasn’t bananas about sad memories, but cobwebs fascinated her. Cobwebs were manifestations of perfect geometry, and spider silk was among the strongest fibres in nature. She peered at a web stretched across two panes of the window. One day, spider silk would probably be used to make parachute harnesses and body armour.

  When she saw Rachel crossing the courtyard a minute or two later, she shouted, ‘If you’re hoping I’ll die of terror, you’ve picked the wrong victim!’

  Rachel’s reply was a teasing wave.

  Shauna looked about her temporary cell. Ghosts did not exist. Sadness did not hang around like a bad smell. Memories were real only in the sense that they altered brain chemistry or created tension in the body. There was nothing to be afraid of.

  The bedroom was circular, of course, with cleanly plastered walls. A stone lintel suggested a second window on the side facing the meadows and the woods. She couldn’t look out of it, however, as a picture hung in front of it, one with a heavy frame, depicting a scene of wading cattle under a gloomy sunset. The rest of the furnishings were equally heavy-looking and probably several hundred years old. After all, you wouldn’t make a regular habit of hauling wardrobes and beds up and down tower stairs. They might even have been made up here. Testing the bed for comfort, she sneezed. A whizz round with a duster wouldn’t go amiss.

  A mirror on a wooden stand threw back a misty reflection when Shauna stood in front of it. This had been a woman’s room, she decided.

  She returned to the window. The outlook took the eye across the courtyard, over the roof of Laurent’s apartment to a garden that must be his frontage. Well-tended, laid out in rows, she wondered if it was his handiwork. When did he find time? Beyond the garden, the vines began, lush parcelles planted with different grape varieties, the whites on the cooler slopes, the reds where the sun shone hottest. The only man-made structures between the château and the horizon were two green metal barns, their roofs wobbly with heat haze. For the horses, Shauna decided, though she saw no sign of them grazing in the paddocks.

  Tearing herself from the window, she tried the door in case Rachel had somehow failed to properly lock it, but it was immovable. OK. She’d snooze till the family came home. It crossed her mind that ‘the family’ would have no idea she was up here unless Rachel told them. No phone, of course. Unless she was going into town, she always left her cell phone in her room. Banging on the floor would rouse nothing but more dust. If they failed to hear her shouting from the window, they might think she’d run away. She could die of thirst. But she doubted Rachel’s prank would go as far as that. Now, what about those skeletons in the cupboard…

  She opened the wardrobe expecting to find nothing but dead moths, and her mouth dropped open. A treasure trove of dresses was before her. Not your average old tat on a hanger, but sinuous, full-length vintage gems.

  ‘Knew it was a woman’s room!’ Shauna fetched out a flapper dress heavy with iridescent beads, black and hot pink. Holding it against herself in front of the mirror, she couldn’t resist humming the tune to the Charleston. It would be the right size for her too. Modern dresses were usually too long.

  She returned the flapper dress to the rail and took out another, then another. Silks with padded shoulders and small waists. Plunging, cross-over V-necks that must have revealed a lot of candlelit bosom. A velvet coat with a majestic satin collar, hand-stitched to look like astrakhan fur. Another gown in plum satin, a matching taffeta jacket with black reveres. And finally, a dress that took her breath away.

  Shauna was not a clothes person. She liked natural fibres and unusual colour combinations. At university, when short of cash – which was most of the time – she’d shopped in the teenagers’ section of chain stores. This dress was a sleeveless tube of finely pleated silk, each pleat as fine as a harp string. It had a draped neck and a waist-tie. Simplicity incarnate. She took it to the window the better to see it and discovered that silk cords strung with glass beads had been sewn to the side seams. Such fine sewing, you’d think the fabrics had been fused together. When the hem touched the floor, the pleats splayed out like a pool of melted ice-cream.

  Part of its distinction was its colour – intense amethyst at the hem, lightening by stages to silvery lavender at the neck. Shauna stroked it, cooing with pleasure. Then, driven by an urge she didn’t question, she quickly shed her clothes and slipped the dress over her head.

  The scent of patchouli wafted about her like smoke. Beloved of her hippie parents in their younger days, patchouli oil also had long history as a moth repellent. The smell told Shauna that this dress was misted every now and again to protect it. Knotting the belt around her waist, she went to the mirror.

  Her reflection stunned her. The natural elasticity of the pleats defined her curves, moulding like rows of vines to the contours of the land. She could be a statue of Venus. The rich colour transformed her, adding translucence to her skin. Even her short hair seemed sophisticated, the violet hues drawing out its richness.

  Shauna stared as her face changed before her, growing leaner and far more beautiful. Unable to blink or move, she felt an unbearable sadness swilling through her. Tears began to course down her cheeks. Where did this grief come from? It wasn’t to do with a stolen research post or the loss of a university lover. It didn’t stem from her feverish attraction to Laurent… No, it came from a cause more terrible – and one without remedy. The woman in the mirror flared her eyes back at her in desperate appeal. When fingers touched Shauna’s wrist and a face joined hers in the glass, she screamed like a jungle-creature.

  ‘Shauna? It’s me, Laurent. Shauna, wake up! Look at me.’

  She reached for him, gasping, and he helped her to sit on the bed. She must have been holding her breath to the point of fainting. No wonder she’d begun to hallucinate.

  ‘I saw Rachel leave the tower. I thought you might be locked in.’ Laurent sounded angry, but in that quiet way that detonates at some later date. ‘It’s not the first time she’s done something of the sort.’ He cupped her face. ‘You’re so pale. Do you have some kind of condition we should know about?’

  ‘No. I’m well. And I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I shouldn’t have come up.’

  ‘I should have been with you. Maybe you came up the stairs too fast?’ He crouched in front of her, his hands wonderfully, humanly warm against her skin. He stroked the draped silk, like a harpist drawing notes from his instrument. ‘Nobody ever puts on this dress,’ he said in a low voice. ‘It’s known as the “Gown of Thorns” and has a history we hide, even from ourselves.’ He stood up, though with visible reluctance. ‘And I should warn you, my Oncle Albert retains strong feelings about it – and this room.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Old quarrels, guilty secrets. Every family has them.’

  ‘Mine doesn’t!’

  ‘No? Then you are fortunate.�
�� Laurent walked to the door, turning brusque as he said, ‘I’ll wait outside while you change, then I’ll escort—’ He stopped abruptly.

  Shauna turned, twisting the satin bed cover into a starfish pattern. ‘What is it? What are you staring at?’

  He was looking at her left side, at her bare arm. ‘You have our symbol. That tattoo…’

  She shrank into herself. Inexplicably, she felt naked and knew that if he stayed, looking at her like that, he’d drag some dreadful truth from her, the way a chef drags the guts from a fish.

  In one movement, she stood up and pulled off the dress. Hearing Laurent’s unfettered gasp, she feared her gamble had misfired. Then she heard the door click gently. ‘I will wait here for you,’ Laurent said from the other side of the door.

  At the same moment, a thousand kilometres away in a hospital ward in Dakenfield in England’s West Country, a patient woke abruptly from a dream. No ordinary, vapid dream. She’d really held a man’s hands, felt them covering hers, dry and strong. She’d lost herself in his gaze because his eyes could smile and pledge themselves, even when the mouth stayed stern. Without warning, his eyes had blurred, tears flowing, then blood—

  That’s when she’d woken.

  ‘Nurse!’ she called, hating that she sounded as if she had a broken reed in her throat. Pain stormed into her pelvis and legs, diabolical pins and needles. She needed morphine, though she knew it would make her sick. ‘Nurse, please.’

  ‘Coming.’

  Don’t say you’re coming then not come. She called more urgently, adding a scream because they made you a priority if you threatened to wake up the ward. Later, see-sawing between sleep and lucidity, she called to the girl in the pale blue tunic, ‘The man who was here, bring him back, dear. I must tell him that I was wrong. I should not have done what I did. I have to tell him, so he can forgive me.’