“How did the manuscripts stay hidden for so long?”
“Sade’s name was poison, even in the family. His son burned his unpublished books and forbade the mention of him. If my father had whipped and drugged prostitutes and carried on with a teenager, I’d do the same thing.”
Marc pulled a sheet of brittle paper from the stack and handed it carefully to me. The script was faded but still legible, the letters slanted and ornate. “This is a letter he wrote to the government calling them hypocrites for putting him in prison. Not the best way to get sympathy.”
“You don’t think much of him, do you?” I said.
“No, I don’t. I believe he was an abuser, pure and simple. To Eleanor, he’s just a crazy relative with no significance in our daily lives.”
“Interesting,” I said, hardly listening. I couldn’t take my eyes from his lips, which looked both inviting and haughty.
“But can we ever escape our past, even if we try to reinvent ourselves?”
“Mm,” I said. “It’s a fascinating question.”
“What’s your opinion?” he said, his pearl-gray eyes practically boring into mine. “I carry criminal blood in my veins. Doesn’t that give my actions more significance?”
Did he have to keep looking at me that way, shattering what little concentration I had left? I reached for my nearly-empty glass, giving myself a few more seconds to think of an answer. “Our readers will be interested in the history and the places they can visit in France,” I said. “I’ll leave it to others to explore the moral side of things.”
He set the page back onto the pile. “Of course,” he said with a short sigh. “I’m sorry. I’ve been considering these ideas since I first realized the kind of man we’re descended from. They aren’t abstract for me.”
He talked about Sade being sentenced to death and raving through a barred window from prison. Though I took down every detail, my temperature was shooting up, leaving my palms and upper lip damp. I wasn’t looking at the papers, but at Marc’s long fingers and the strength of his hands. What could those hands do to a woman? To me?
It had to be the topic of discussion, not to mention exhaustion, that kept pulling my thoughts in an inappropriate direction. My emotions were zapped, still raw after the bitter end of my relationship with Trevor. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t take my eyes from Marc’s mouth.
Just as I imagined tracing his lips with my tongue, he stopped talking, almost as if he’d read my mind.
“I’m not keeping you, am I?” he asked. “First I treat you rudely and then I deprive you of sleep. My sister would be outraged.”
“It’s better to go over everything tonight,” I said. “Then I can leave you in peace tomorrow.”
I was foolishly disappointed when he didn’t insist I return in the morning. There was a lull in the conversation, a tension so thick I could hardly breathe. I had to do something – anything – to break it.
“Excuse me,” I said, pushing my chair back with a loud scrape. “Is there a restroom on this floor?”
“In the hallway to your left,” he said, handing me a candle. “Watch your step.”
“I will.” I took the votive and escaped to the powder room. It was tiny, with pale stone walls and a high skylight beaded with rain.
Drawing deep breaths, I stared in the mirror at my candlelit face. I looked drained, my brown eyes haunted by dark circles. Nothing remained of my makeup but a smudge of eyeliner under each lower lid. My cheeks were flushed and my mouth, always small with an exaggerated bow at the top, was stained crimson from wine. Though my features were fairly attractive by themselves, they added up to a face that was more interesting than beautiful, and my short hair gave me nothing to hide behind.
“What did you do this time?” Trevor had asked when I’d come home from the salon in July. He’d pushed his fingers through what was left of my hair, turning me around as if the right angle could make it better.
“I wanted to take a chance for once,” I’d said, and he’d replied, “From the back you look like a boy.” When he’d admitted being unfaithful a few months later, my first insane thought was that my haircut had driven him to it.
If a man like Trevor wasn’t satisfied with me, how could I let myself be attracted to someone like Marc? He wasn’t just a professional contact, he was way out of my league. For my sanity, for the sake of my pride, I had to leave this house as fast as possible.
When I returned to the kitchen, he was standing at the sink washing dishes by candlelight. “I’m making coffee in the French press if you’d like a cup,” he said over his shoulder.
“Thank you, but I’ve already taken up too much of your time,” I said, setting the candle on the counter. “Can I help with anything?”
“Thanks, but it’s all done.”
“In that case, I should get to my hotel.” The deadline for check-in had passed hours ago. For all I knew, they’d given my room away and bolted the front door for the night. I pictured sleeping in the rental car with a vinyl armrest for a pillow.
Drying his hands on a striped towel, Marc turned to look at me. “You’re going to drive to Villette? Where are you staying?”
“Um, La Maison Lavande, I think it is?” I said, blushing at my awful accent.
“Be careful on your way to the main road. Your car looks small, and there’ll be puddles after this rain.” Though his words were innocuous, his eyes radiated tension and sexual heat. I wasn’t imagining it. I couldn’t be. The attraction was mutual, and so magnetic it was like a hot knife sliding over my nerves.
“I drove in,” I managed to reply. “I’m sure I can drive out.”
He took a pen and paper from a drawer. “Here’s the number for the house phone,” he said, writing with his left hand. “I’m going back to Paris in the morning but Eleanor will be here until mid-afternoon. She agreed to a photograph of the papers, right?”
I took the number from him and slipped it in my bag. “Yes, and I’d love to have a photograph of the two of you, if possible. I could come early, before you leave.”
“I’m sorry? A photograph of us?” In an instant, his face clouded and his expression turned dark and grim. “Eleanor said nothing about that to me.”
“I haven’t talked to her about it, but I think she and my editor discussed it when they set up the interview.”
“But you don’t know for sure.”
“Well – no, I don’t.”
With one simple request, his suspicion of me was back in force. “You said you wouldn’t publicize our personal details.”
“I won’t. I just think our readers would like to see a photo of the people who –”
“No,” he broke in. “I’m uncomfortable giving details of our family history to anybody, let alone the American media, but I’m doing it for my sister’s sake. I won’t let anyone take advantage of her.”
I frowned at him. “My intention isn’t to take advantage of anyone.”
“Of course it isn’t. Your intention is to make money for your website. Being in business myself, I understand how it works. But there must be a way to attract readers that doesn’t involve displaying the lives of private citizens.”
Without responding, I walked to the table and shut my laptop with a curt slam. I could feel his eyes on me as I dug into my bag for the car keys. Slinging the purse strap over my shoulder, I smiled and said, “No photographs necessary. What I have will do perfectly.”
I walked to the doorway, only to realize it led to the living room. “I’ll show you out,” he said, a note of apology in his voice. He took a step toward me but I held up a hand.
“I can find my way,” I said. “Thank you for showing me the documents. And dinner was delicious.”
“You’re welcome to stay in one of the guest rooms for the night,” he said, following me into the hallway. It was pitch black, the only light a blinking smoke alarm above the front door.
I almost laughed. “Thanks, but no.”
“Are you sure
you know your way to Villette? It can be confusing, especially at night.”
I kicked a table leg but kept going, feeling my way along the wall. “Please thank your sister for me. She was a great help.”
“You can thank her tomorrow when you see her,” he said, right behind me.
“I’ll be taking the train north tomorrow. First thing.” Something – a spider web, maybe, or a moth – brushed against my face and I stopped suddenly. Marc ran into me, jarring the breath from my lungs and slamming into my backside with an intimate jolt. His hard chest pressed against my back and his chin grazed the top of my head.
“Oh – I’m sorry,” he said, slipping steadying hands around my hips. At his touch, loneliness and physical craving roared through me. I arched my back in automatic response, feeling the exquisite pressure of his fingers all the way to my core. Even as I pulled away from him, my muscles tightened with arousal. I was furious and offended and hurt, and if he’d ripped off my skirt right then I wouldn’t have stopped him.
But he didn’t tear off my skirt, or anything else. He just apologized again and dropped his hands as if I’d burned him. I fumbled in my bag for my cell phone, found it, and held its glow out in front of me. The front door, and my escape from the most confusing night of my life, were just a few feet away.
“Let me give you an umbrella,” I said.
“I don’t need one.”
“I’ll walk you out, then. If you have any trouble on the road –”
“I’ll be fine. Goodnight.” Flinging the door open, I ran into the downpour. By the time I reached the car I was drenched to the skin. As if to mock me, a cheery French pop song blared from the stereo when I started the engine. I backed out too fast, spraying rain and gouging deep ruts in the mud.
I was a terrible judge of character – that much I’d learned from my relationship with Trevor. Coming to France hadn’t changed a thing.
In my rear view mirror, the house was dark except for one candlelit window. I saw a shadowy form standing there looking out – after me or into the storm, I couldn’t tell.
As Marc had warned, the way out was slick and cratered with puddles. The car strained to find traction, fishtailing from side to side and scraping over rocks exposed by the rain. I lurched along over broken branches, sheets of water splashing across the hood.
The main road loomed up ahead. I accelerated toward it, then braked suddenly, sending my laptop skidding to the floor of the passenger seat. At the end of the driveway was a pool so deep it reached my bumper. To cross it would be certain death – for the car, if not for me.
I had every excuse to turn back. But I wouldn’t do it.
Gingerly pressing the gas, I steered into the water. The car made a muffled drowning sound at the deepest point, but churned forward to the other side as if it knew what was at stake. “Thank you,” I whispered, patting the dashboard.
It wasn’t until I’d parked at my hotel, turned off the car, and tried to start it again that I realized what a fateful mistake I’d made.
CHAPTER TWO
“Mademoiselle? Mademoiselle?”
I heard the voice as if from the bottom of a well. It was insistent but oddly pleasant, and accompanied by brisk pounding that sounded like a hammer. One moment I was deep in a foggy sleep, the next, I was jerking awake to an eyeful of sunshine and the jiggling of my doorknob.
“Mademoiselle! Okay?” The voice belonged to the owner of the bed and breakfast, the same woman who’d stomped to the door in her robe last night after I rang the bell twelve times. She’d already given my room away but had one left, a glorified closet on the second floor with magenta carpet and pink flowered wallpaper that made me dizzy if I looked at it too long. Which I was doing right now, wondering how to avoid her and why my mouth tasted like a barrel of French cabernet.
I sat up squinting, the blouse I’d put on back in New York wrapped tightly around my ribs. The only thing I’d taken off the night before was my shoes, which lay soles-up by the door the proprietress was in the process of breaking down.
“Just a second!” I said, but it came out as a whisper.
By the time I turned the knob and peeked out, she was rattling through a large ring of keys.
“Ah, Mademoiselle Quinn!” she said, her pale eyebrows shooting up. “You are alive!”
“Just barely.”
“You missed breakfast,” she said with an air of maternal disapproval, though she wasn’t older than thirty-five. “Nothing left but a little fruit.”
“I’m sorry – did you say breakfast?” I tried to look at my watch, which had spun around and imprinted itself against the inside of my wrist.
“It’s eleven o’clock,” she said. “Almost time for lunch.”
I slumped against the doorway. “When’s the next train to Paris?” I asked.
“At four, but you must first get to the station near Aix-en-Provence.”
“Where’s that?”
She gestured off to the left, as if that was all I needed to know.
“Do I need to check out now?” I asked, suddenly curious about her appearance at my door.
“Not for one hour, but I knock because you have a visitor. A man is waiting downstairs for you from nine o’clock.”
My body went stiff. “A man.”
“His name is Mr. Brayden. You know him? I don’t normally wake guests but I feel pity for him. He’s so patient downstairs in his chair, like he will wait forever.”
“Forever sounds just about right,” I said. “Is there another way out of here?”
“Mademoiselle?”
“Back stairs? A ground-floor window?”
Her eyes widened as my meaning became clear. “You don’t want to see him.” She gave me a knowing nod, as if she’d been in my exact situation many times.
“Can you tell him you made a mistake, that I checked out this morning?”
She shrugged. “I will try. Many times he came here to my restaurant. A lie is not easy with someone you know. They see it in your face.” She gave me a sympathetic pat on the arm and turned to go.
I was about to slip back into my room when I saw the dark top of a head come up the staircase down the hall. “Lisette?” called a male voice cheerfully. “Please save me. I’ve lost my way.”
He must have heard her calling for me outside my door. She stopped him at the stairs, switching into rapid-fire French. He said something I didn’t understand, and both he and Lisette laughed. Quietly clicking my door shut, I went to the window hoping to see him leave, but two stories down sat the reason he’d been waiting for me all morning. My dearly departed rental car, parked right in front of the hotel and practically still dripping. I’d thanked my lucky stars for that spot last night, and now I was cursing them.
Marc knocked. There was no getting out of it. I glanced in the mirror on my way across the room, but it was too late to change my clothes, my face, or my dangerous mood.
“I’m afraid you’re a victim of mistaken identity,” he said before I’d finished opening the door.
“I don’t understand,” I said, stealthily trying to arrange my hair. He wore a striped dress shirt open at the neck, a blazer, and jeans, and this time, shoes – dark blue leather loafers. He was so effortlessly gorgeous and confident that I marveled at the unfairness of it all.
“I heard that you checked out this morning and took the train to Paris,” he said. “But there you are, standing like a vision before me and wearing the same clothes you had on last night. Somehow I’ve stumbled into an Agatha Christie novel.”
“Why are you here?” I asked, not kindly.
He lifted his arm to show me the briefcase in his hand. “You left last night without taking photographs of these manuscripts, that’s one thing. Another is that I owe you a sincere apology. I’m driving you to Paris to make up for what’s become a pattern of shocking behavior on my part.”
I would not be swayed by his eyes, which glowed in the light like burnished silver. “I suppose your sister put
you up to this.”
“You suppose right, but I agree with her. If I don’t treat you well, I’ll be exposed in the American press for the monster I am. My reasons are purely selfish, but you probably knew that already.”
“I’m not going to mention your personal details in the article, remember? I told you that. Twice.”
His smile faded, replaced by an expression of pained sincerity. “We can stop at my father’s house on the way north. He has an old library with some of Sade’s first edition books that my mother never took with her.”
“Wait – your father’s house?” It was all I could do not to gape at him.
“It’s a fantastic place, even if we have to put up with him for a few hours. He’s not a bad guy, just an opinionated and frequently drunk one. The sad fact is that he never got over my mother.”
The idea of first edition books and meeting Marc’s father intrigued me. As I stood there looking at him, my instinct for self-preservation was shoved aside by greedy ambition. It wasn’t that I wanted to spend more time with Marc, he of the drastic mood swings and cocky attitude. Agatha Christie novel – did these lines work on other women? Was I the only one who wanted to wring his perfect neck?
“I’ll need to shower,” I said.
“No objection,” he said.
“And eat. I slept late and missed breakfast.”
He put a hand to his heart. “I felt so badly about last night that I couldn’t eat a thing this morning. I’m famished.”
“And my car. I have to return it at the train station.” I hesitated. “If it starts.”
“If it starts?”
“There was a lake by the main road when I drove out.”
“Hm,” he said with a perplexed frown. “Two hours ago I drove through a very small puddle at the same spot.”
“Well, last night it was a lake and it may have – killed the car. It wouldn’t start after I parked.”
I could see him fighting a smile. “You could have stayed at the house, you know. There were five extra beds, all empty and very comfortable.”
“Too late for that now. Can you suggest a solution to the car problem?”
Descended (The Red Blindfold Book 1) Page 3
