Bright Hair About the Bone (28 page)

A few yards farther, bursting through a clump of fragrant juniper bushes, they came upon a small glade. It was a circular space of close-cropped, springy turf, surrounded by short-growing oak trees and dotted with yellow stonecrop and pink rock roses. The side farthest from them was closed off by a low cliff of red-gold rock, and from the rock jetted a spurt of pure spring water which gurgled into a stone trough and spilled over back through the rocks and underground again.

The horses made for this at once. When they'd had their fill Edmond led them off and hitched them to a branch. Turning back into the clearing, he stopped at the sight of Laetitia, who had been drawn straight to the spring and was playing with the water, drinking from cupped hands and cooling her hot brow then raising full hands and gasping as the water ran down her arms.

He watched her in silence for a moment, seeing her silhouetted against the dying sun, hair the colour of the rock and arms gleaming. She turned, all hostile feelings dissolved away by the magic of the glade, and saw him staring at her.

“I love your special place, Edmond! It's a holy place. I can feel it.”

“And you are its spirit, Laetitia. It recognises you,” he said softly, and began to move towards her.

The last melancholy note of a thrush died away and did not come again. The air was still with the expectant hush of an audience just silenced by three warning raps. At last the sun dipped below the surrounding hills and Letty shivered. Not quite sure how she had allowed herself to be led so smoothly into this remote and Celtic scene, she was starkly aware of his intentions. Aware also of her own treacherous thought—Why not walk towards him? She judged the space between them. Four steps would take her into his arms and into his life for a little longer, perhaps forever. The water which had trickled down her body in a cooling shower now clung, hot, to her skin; her breathing was unsteady, the dark man filling her horizon no longer a threat but a desired object. Hers if she chose him. She was aware of a rush of power through her limbs, a playful confidence. He moved again towards her, arms reaching out, and she saw him afresh, clearly, the distorting mist of suspicion melted away: a suppliant, loving and beloved.

Three steps.

A piercing whicker of fear from the white mare ripped through the silence, speaking to her directly. Startled, Letty turned to see her tugging at her halter, eyes rolling in terror, hooves waltzing.

“It's getting dark, Edmond. There's something out there spooking Dido, I think. I'll lead her back over the next bit, it's rather rough for her.”

She started towards the horses but her arm was seized as she attempted to pass him. “Never mind the bloody horse! You're perfectly well aware of what I'm offering and what I want in return,” he muttered in her ear, holding her close. “Aware of, and, I would have said, eager for. But I see I've misjudged the moment and perhaps even the place—dammit! And I risk exposing myself to a rejection. You know me well enough by now to understand that my pride will not countenance a rebuff!”

“You're quite wrong, Edmond—I don't understand what you're saying. You have nothing to offer me and I have nothing to give you. In fact, I'll tell you straight—you and the countess between you have thrown me into total confusion. You tell me you are to marry this…Gabrielle? Well—you'd better confide in your mother, then. She appears not to be aware of your plans. Indeed, she has schemes of her own, to marry you off to me in a medieval way! A little project dreamed up, she tells me, by herself and Daniel. It's all for our own good, apparently. And it's confidently expected that we will be very happy.”

Instead of releasing her, his grip tightened. “Oh, no! Damn it! I specifically asked her not to…” His voice trailed away in confusion.

“You
knew
this? You stand there, a stranger, claiming to know more about me than I know myself? Are you colluding with your mother…with my godfather…in this? I hadn't taken you for anyone's puppet, Edmond.”

“I think for myself. I act in my own interests!” he exploded, clearly rattled. “My mother—your fathers, my cousins, the whole boiling—they can all go to hell! We don't need to listen to anyone, Laetitia! Who cares what anyone else thinks, wants, advises, requires, or expects? I'm fed up with being told what I may and may not do! I know very well what I want and soon you'll know what you want and it will be the same thing. Why are you laughing?”

“I was just thinking that your grove doesn't seem to be working its magic this evening. It's rather eerily exaggerating the differences between us, driving us farther apart. I'm increasingly tearful and petulant and you are shaping up to be the insensitive brute I'd always suspected you to be.”

He was instantly contrite. He sighed and moved a lock of damp hair gently from her face. “Forgive me. It's not easy…Making a proposal that you think is bound to be rejected…well…it leaves a fellow a bit exposed, you know. Not used to that. But I'm not the clod you describe. I concede that all this,” he waved a hand at the surrounding countryside, “is intimidating. Scares me sometimes,” he lied unconvincingly. “But you're right. Not quite ourselves this evening, either of us, are we? And perhaps it's too late to retrieve your goodwill. But I don't give up. Ever. And I have more patience than you give me credit for. Laetitia—there's something I want you to do for me.”

Feeling her begin to shiver in the night air, he took off his jacket and put it around her shoulders. Holding her firmly by the upper arms he bent his head to look her in the eye. “I want you, while we're away, to assume my mother's duties of châtelaine here. The run of the house, the bunch of keys—literally!—all the trappings. A room will be prepared for you and the staff left behind will be told to take their orders from you. You will have to come up to visit your dog, anyway.”

He smiled to see her mystification. “I am, of course, showing myself to be exactly what you have suspected: manipulative, scheming, and thoroughly selfish. I want you to have the time, unencumbered by my presence, wagging like a spaniel at your heels the whole while, to fall in love with the house, with my possessions, with the spirit of the place. You already love me, Laetitia,” he said with a grin that acknowledged and mocked his own over-confidence. “It shouldn't be difficult to…”

But she wasn't listening.

“Laetitia, what's wrong?”

All her attention was fixed over his shoulder. Alarmed, he whirled around, ready to confront whoever had invaded their glade. “That bloody priest! If that's him, slinking about in the underbrush, I'll…”

The horses were restive but d'Aubec could detect no human presence.

“Have you seen a ghost?” he asked, bewildered.

She pulled her startled gaze back from the horizon. “No, Edmond. Not a ghost. A saint, perhaps…or a goddess,” she murmured.

He nodded, understanding. “Ah! That'll be Domina Luci! The Lady of the Grove, the tutelary deity in these parts. She'd be likely to surface to take a look at a rival!”

“A rival? For your attentions, d'Aubec? Are you then her devoted acolyte?”

“But of course,” he answered with mock gravity. “I worship at her altar. The Lady would always expect me to present the human object of my affections for her inspection. I think she'll approve of you.”

         

The ride back was completed in silence, Letty's emotions an uncomfortable mixture of regret and relief. When they entered the château she walked a pace behind him, lagging back as they went along what she had come to think of as “the portrait corridor.”

“Getting to know them?” He waited for her to catch up, smiling approval. “I shall, of course, quiz you on all their names and dates the moment you accept to join their ranks. You'd better do your homework.”

“I was wondering why they almost all had their portraits painted outdoors? And with the same backdrop? Unusual, isn't it?”

“Just showing off the family estate from the best angle, I assume. What about your English artists: Reynolds? Gainsborough? Weren't their subjects shown in bosky dells or set against wide acres?”

“Yes, you're probably right.” She wandered along the row, making contact with each of the counts and his family. “Poor chaps! Oh—lucky chaps, I know, to have their wealth and position, but what turbulent times they lived through. So many in uniform—it seems they never were at peace. I wonder how many of them died at peace in their beds?”

She could not imagine what it was in her innocent remark that triggered his odd reaction. His face darkened and he went silently to stand by his brother's picture at the end of the line. “The uniforms end with this one,” he said. “The last sacrifice.” He stretched out a hand and pointed back down the line. “Look at the last two centuries. War, nothing but war. Struggles against almost all our European neighbours…the Revolution…the German invasion of 1870…the German invasion of 1914. Millions dead. A constant haemorrhaging of French blood. Why?” His eyes appealed to her to supply a reason. “Tell me why, Laetitia.”

Throughout her life Letty had been subjected to rigorous questioning by men who thought they knew the answer and who waited with varying degrees of patience for her to chant their views back to them. She was a skilful player, but she was suddenly tired of the game. “Do you want my diplomatic answer or my honest one?” she asked.

“Both,” he said, surprising her.

“Well, I could say, tediously, that the casualties were incurred as a result of interstate disputes arising from national, religious, economic, or demographic pressures. Or, I could say that men have slaughtered each other for the usual male reasons: an inborn urge to kill their fellow man to establish superiority, natural aggression, arrogance, land-grabbing greed, and blood-lust.”

She thought she must certainly have offended a man who, she judged, was guilty himself of most of these dire charges, but Edmond was looking at her with humour and approval.

“A proponent of the Darwinian evolutionary theory, Miss Talbot?”

“But of course. And these ancestors of yours bear witness to the truth of it. They owed their existence to a long—and blind—struggle for survival. They are a part of slowly evolving natural history, a sequence, a progression. Natural selection has occurred over aeons and,” she pointed an accusing finger at him, “
you,
Edmond, are the culmination of all this struggle, this bloodletting and—let's not ignore the female role in all this—selective breeding.”

She had expected him to stalk off down the corridor, dismayed by her rudeness, but instead he chuckled and slipped an arm companionably around her waist. “Laetitia, my love, I see at last you're understanding me!” He looked again at his brother. “I've made a vow to him. No more. Never again, Guy.” He repeated the phrase quietly. “Never again.”

Laetitia did not wish to cut across his thoughts and remained silent. But he looked at her quizzically, expecting a response. “No more war, do you mean? Can anyone ever be certain of that?” she asked tentatively.

“Oh, yes! I can be certain. France will never again be weak. Never unprepared. Never be sent reeling by the first blow.”

Embarrassed by his vehemence, she said with an attempt at lightness, “Gosh, for a moment, I thought Napoleon had joined us.”

“He would not be welcome here. I would have no use for his vainglorious self-interest.”

“Are you expecting a blow, Edmond? Hostility from some quarter towards your country?”

“
Our
country, Laetitia. It's
your
native land too. I don't forget that your mother was French.” The clasp about her waist grew tighter.

“But we've fought the war to end war, Edmond. It's over. Let it go.”

“A delusion! War will come again.”

“
L'étendard sanglant est levé?
But whose bloodied standard do you see opposing you in your nightmares, Edmond? Germany's? Surely not? They suffered more than anyone. The country is destitute, bled white by the reparation they are still paying to France, hardly able to live through the peace, let alone another war.”

He shook his head. “There are forces at work already. For some years now they have been quietly planning, gaining ground, seeking financial backing from abroad, recruiting support from disaffected and mindless riffraff at home.”

“But who would encourage or finance an aggressive German faction? I can't imagine…”

Her naïveté seemed to amuse him. “International banks, the Ford Motor Corporation, Dutch Oil, certain elements of the Anglo-Saxon business world, American senators, English aristocrats…Do you want me to name names? They would be known to you. They would make you gasp.”

“This is nonsense!”

“Sadly, it is not. I have clear evidence of this, and a thick file on the activities of the troublemaker at the centre of it all, a nasty little Austrian layabout, a nobody, who yet seems to have the knack of conjuring gold from deep pockets. You are half English and half French, Laetitia, and well placed to understand me when I say that we French must never trust the Anglo-Saxon world. They feel they have much more in common with their Germanic cousins than they have with the French. The British royal family are, after all, in reality exactly that—cousins of the Kaiser, are they not? The United States is heavily populated with German immigrants. France is threatened from two sides.”

Marie-Louise's words had been similar. Had Letty's blend of French and English blood blurred her political vision? Would the day ever come when she would have to decide where her allegiance lay?

“Are you proposing that something should be, could be, done to prepare for this threat you envisage?”

“Should be done, could be done, and I'm doing it,” he said with quiet satisfaction.

“I can't imagine what a single man, however active and influential, might achieve. The French are too tired to fight again,” she objected. “Materially, they are at a low ebb, and morally, they are exhausted. I don't believe they would rally to the standard of a d'Aubec, however rampant.”