A Gown of Thorns: A Gripping Novel of Romance, Intrigue and the Secrets of a Vintage Parisian Dress (23 page)

T
he sputtering lights
had died at some point during their ascent to the tower bedroom. Dark serenity greeted them.

‘Let’s get into bed,’ Shauna murmured. Under the satin coverlet, they could share body heat and, besides, standing about, she’d feel she was waiting for something awful to happen. Stripping to her bra and pants, she climbed under the covers. The mattress creaked as Laurent got in beside her and, for a while, they competed in shivering. As warmth finally stole over them, Shauna directed Laurent’s hand so it lay over her tattoo. She slid her hand inside his sleeve and grasped his forearm, and the image of the thorn. A circle, thorn on thorn.

‘What are we trying to do?’ he muttered.

‘I’m emptying my mind to start the film show again. I’ll tell you if I see anything.’ She tried to clear random thoughts, but the proximity of the Gown of Thorns acted as a disturber. Like having the TV on when trying to meditate. Her eyelids grew leaden and she thought,
I give in. I’m going to sleep
, when Laurent murmured, ‘It was an error to let the children visit.’

‘They need to be here,’ Shauna answered. ‘Can you imagine the atmosphere in the Paris apartment, their father veering between despair and depression, and their grandmother constantly blaming herself for what’s happened to Louette? They’re much better off with us.’

‘Not those children. Isabelle and my father. Their nanny brought them here while the British agents were in hiding. That was the mistake.’

‘They saw things they shouldn’t?’

‘My father was at the toddler-talking stage, babbling his own language, so it didn’t matter what he saw. But Isabelle was eight. Bright and opinionated, much like Olive, and deeply…’ He tailed off.

‘Deeply what?’

‘Attached to me.’

‘I know that. After Nico, you’re her favourite male.’

‘Who is Nico? Attached to me, their father.’ Laurent sounded as though he was speaking through a layer of wool. His breathing was too shallow for him to be falling asleep. She waited.

‘Isabelle is attached to me and it is why I’ve sent her away, and the boy.’

I have sent…
What decade was he in? Laurent’s voice, always deep, had grown huskier.

‘Am I speaking to Henri?’

‘That’s who I am.’

‘You sent your children away because it was – I mean,
is
– safer?’

‘Naturally. They have no mother and at the Valle’s farm, they are well cared for. The Valles are trustworthy and Audrey makes a good nursemaid for all she is young.’

‘Audrey as in “Raymond and Audrey”?’
Whoa, where was this going?

‘The Valles are my tenants and Audrey is their daughter. She loves Isabelle and Pierre-Gaston, and plays with them like an older sister. A good solution for motherless children, don’t you think?’

‘I hadn’t thought about it.’ Shauna stroked Laurent’s arm and put her lips to his knuckles, testing his reactions. He didn’t respond. ‘Did they – I mean,
do
the Valles know what you do at Chemignac?’

‘Other than make wine?’ Laughter made his ribs bounce. ‘They know about the “guests” I take care of, but they don’t speak of it any more than they would of a neighbour’s ailments or infidelities.’

She had to ask again: ‘Am I speaking to Henri de Chemignac?’

His arms tightened around her and his answer came in the form of a kiss, deep and demanding, and her breathing grew shallow too, a yielding moisture between her thighs, her nipples responding as Laurent – was it still Laurent? – cupped her breasts, chafing their peaks. She remained aware of herself as Shauna, in the tower room with a man who wanted to make love. She unhooked her bra and his lips instantly sought her exposed flesh. When his fingers invaded her, she succumbed to waves of pleasure that went on and on until she thought she would lose her senses. Her mind seemed to dilate, her inner vision travelling super-fast through darkness. Like a camera bedded in a bullet passing through the barrel of a gun, her inner eye kept pace until, like a lucid dreamer, she touched down in a different reality. She was Yvonne, but also Shauna. The man with her, whose clothes she was helping to remove, was Laurent
and
Henri.

Y
vonne stretched
her arms behind her, linen bed sheets falling away like a spillage of cream. It was late afternoon, the day’s heat touching its zenith. Henri had opened both windows, west and east. The room would have been unbearable otherwise. If anybody saw him up here, he’d explain that he was airing the place. She must stay on the bed, meanwhile.

‘I suspect your motives,’ she told him. ‘“Stay on the bed, don’t move. Don’t put your clothes on…”’

They had dined on bread, the local goat’s cheese called Cabécou, and preserved walnuts. Henri had uncorked a bottle of the previous year’s Cabernet Franc, complementing the simplest, and one of the best, meals she’d ever tasted. Afterwards, they had made love with the slow intensity that they had perfected. Her limbs soft and sated, Yvonne thought dimly of the job she’d come to do. In three or four days, Henri had informed her, somebody would hustle her on to the next location. A safe house in Bergerac had been secured, a short journey by train. After that, she’d be conducted to Bordeaux and an anonymous town centre apartment where she’d get on with the job she’d been dropped for – running messages between Resistance personnel and SOE wireless operators – one of whom was certainly jumping up and down for those replacement radio crystals right now. Jean-Claude would be taken to his next location. Cyprien would remain here until he had fully recovered.

Her life would become one of clandestine meetings and messages relayed back to London. Whenever she ventured outside, she’d walk on metaphorical eggshells, eyes staring out of the back of her head. No more love in the afternoon, no more night-time liaisons in the vines. If she had any sense, she’d put Henri de Chemignac out of her mind and tell him to forget her.

Might as well tell the doves to stop cooing or command the grapes not to ripen.

She heard Henri swear, saw him put a finger in his mouth. He was repairing the oil painting’s hanging wire, having noticed it was fraying. It looked like he’d driven the end of it into his finger.

‘It’s a hideous picture,’ she said.

‘That’s why it’s up here. My wife had it removed from the drawing room after we married. She hated it too, and before you say anything else rude about it, the painter was English.’

‘Of course. Only English water-meadows could be so dank-looking on what must be a summer’s evening. One could catch fever of the lungs staring at it too long.’ Then, because she was so mindful of her imminent departure, and because she hated the idea of secrets between them, she asked to know more about Marie-Louise.

For a while, Henri said nothing and she supposed she’d offended etiquette. But it seemed he was concentrating on twisting the ends of the picture wire. ‘Marie-Louise died in June 1940. She’d been in Paris when the Nazis invaded and was trying to get home. She was with her maid, and both women were killed. Murdered, I should say. The last trains had already left Paris, but they got a lift in a van as far as Orléans. From there I believe they went on foot, heading for Chateauroux where the maid had family. As far as I know, they were shot by German pilots, who strafed refugees on the road at low altitude.’

‘The shits. No wonder you’re so angry, Henri. No wonder you do what you do. Did you…’
Love her
? She cleared her throat. ‘You said that she left her children. That seems…’ Cruel? Unnatural? Hardly her place to cast judgement, so she substituted, ‘Were you a happy couple?’

Henri tested the wire to ensure it could still take the painting’s weight. Then, leaning the frame against the wall, he poured out the last of the wine. Balancing two glasses, he eased himself down on the bed next to her. ‘We married when I was twenty-nine and she thirty-two. I know. A bit late. I didn’t want to marry her, but my family expected it.’ He handed her a glass. ‘I was born in 1902, making me a year too young to fight in the Great War. My elder brother was killed within weeks of it starting, and an uncle a few months later. I joined the army the year after the war ended, feeling I should do something for my country. Back then, I didn’t want to grow grapes, but when my father died, I had little choice. I had to return. My mother had been dead several years, but my grandmother was still alive and she arranged a marriage for me, with a friend’s daughter – Marie-Louise de Sainte-Vierge.’

Yvonne hazarded a guess. ‘She’d lost her fiancé during the war.’

He drained his wine. ‘Correct. So she made do with me. I had land and a title, she had family money. A sensible arrangement, as we like to do in France. People of my class rarely expect happiness, but we do expect the appearance of fidelity. What I did not know at the time of my engagement was that Marie-Louise had a career in Paris, as a writer and painter. She was, I later learned, in a relationship with a fellow artist. Our temperaments were unsuited, and we were too set in our ways to change. But, we muddled through and had children, which was the point of it all.’

‘Most people muddle through.’ Yvonne finished her wine and put her empty glass down on the floor. ‘Artistic temperament is grossly overrated, in my opinion, whereas “muddling” is the mature realisation of one’s own limitations. It is the great, unsung human virtue.’

‘She hated this place, and at every opportunity went to Paris. She liked clothes, so we pretended it was to view the collections. In May 1940, I wrote to her at the hotel where she was staying, warning her that I feared an invasion was imminent, and that Paris might be bombed. She must come home for the children’s sake. Marie-Louise wrote back saying that she had gowns being made, and one being altered, and would leave as soon as they were finished.’ He pulled Yvonne to him, blowing a strand of her hair off her cheek. ‘I should have fetched her. Whenever I hear my daughter crying for her
maman
— Who is that?’

Henri went still. Somebody was calling from the courtyard below. A child’s voice. He waited until he heard the clear call of ‘Papa!’ before getting out of bed and wrapping a sheet around himself. ‘Don’t move,’ he told Yvonne.

He went to the window and she saw him give a slight wave. He pushed the window wider and shouted, ‘Stay there with Audrey,
ma fifille
.’
My little girl
. ‘I’ll be down in a moment. I said wait!’ He swore through his teeth, turning to Yvonne. ‘Quick, get dressed. My daughter Isabelle is coming up. I had hoped to keep the children from seeing you, but I suppose there’s no avoiding it now.’

‘I could hide in the wardrobe. I found the key in your pocket. Sorry.’ She felt awkward, because she hadn’t told Henri that she’d already met his children. He’d been so angry on his return, the moment had been lost. She didn’t want to say it now, either. Henri looked strained. Not ashamed or shifty, for which she was glad, but like a man who knew the next few minutes were going to be unpleasant.

He was throwing on his clothes, though he took a moment to notice the key in the wardrobe door. ‘No, no point hiding. She’ll fling open the wardrobe door anyway, to see the Gown of Thorns.’

‘Gown of what?’ Yvonne was out of bed, hauling on her knickers, her blouse – no time to put on her brassiere, which she shoved under a pillow as Henri roughly remade the bed. Just time to button her waistband and smooth down her skirt before a black-haired whirlwind burst in.

‘Papa!’ The little girl threw herself at Henri, who absorbed the impact and picked her up.

Truffle-dark eyes regarded Yvonne warily over her father’s shoulder.

‘Why is she still here?’

Henri put his daughter down. ‘That is rude, Isabelle. We do not say “she”. This lady is Yvonne, and she is my guest. Come and shake her hand.’

‘Why is she up here?’

‘We’re tidying,’ Yvonne improvised, when Henri failed to come up with an answer.
Oh dear
. Daddy’s little girl looked distinctly put out. Charm and appeasement were called for. ‘He was telling me about the Gown of Thorns, is that its name? I’m intrigued. Will you persuade your papa to open the wardrobe and show it to me?’

She knew instantly that she’d made an unimaginable gaffe. Henri shook his head warningly, while Isabelle let out a shriek, flew to the wardrobe and spread-eagled herself against the doors, a human barricade.

‘Nobody must touch the dress. It killed
Maman
! It killed
Maman
!’

Even when her father pulled her away and removed her from the room like a cumbersome parcel, Isabelle de Chemignac kept up the harrowed chant – ‘It killed
Maman
!’

Yvonne sat down heavily on the bed. ‘Goodness. Poor little mite. The ‘killer dress’ was, presumably, one of those that had kept Madame de Chemignac in Paris, resulting in her being caught up in the chaos of invasion.

And yet, Yvonne was curious. She had a strong notion she knew the identity of the Gown of Thorns. On all fours like a cat, she shuffled to the wardrobe and unlocked it by stretching up her arm. She opened the doors from their base and squinted up at the sumptuous colours. And because she felt ridiculous on her knees, she stood up and rifled through folds of satin and silk until her fingers stopped at a gown of violet, lavender and silver-grey pleats. So delicate, she was reminded of the gills under the cap of a mushroom. When she’d held it against herself before, the dress had turned her mood to blue-indigo. But of course, she’d been obsessed with Henri’s safety at the time. It hadn’t been the dress.

Quite forgetting Henri’s injunction to keep below window level, she lifted the violet gown off its hanger and turned towards the mirror.

‘Put it back, Yvonne.’

She jumped like a thief. ‘Only looking. Sorry. But it’s lovely. It’s my colour.’ Her voice rang hollow as she justified herself. ‘We auburns and Titians can’t wear red or pink or orange, so as you know, we go nuts for violet and green. Admit it, it’s my colour.’

‘It
is
your colour, but it is not your dress.’ Henri took it from her and returned it to the rail. He closed the cupboard, then the window shutters. He then drew her to sit next to him on the bed. ‘Although my wife treasured it, this dress was actually made for my mother, from silk dyed with berries picked on the estate.’