He drove off, and for a moment she almost relented. She was hungry and the thought of food made it even worse, but she was deeply sure that he was either laughing at her inside or being cruel in order to keep her firmly to heel, so she said nothing. She was surprised therefore when a few miles further on he drove into the car park of a pleasant-looking country inn and stopped the engine.
'A dingy hostelry for a dingy bird,' he explained smoothly when she looked at him questioningly. 'This place I do know. I have eaten here before and the food was good. Come, Beth, I have no wish to see you collapse, and the lights are low, I assure you.'
He got out and came around to help her, urging her forward, his hand lightly on her shoulder. 'Be easy,' he remarked in an amused voice. 'Nobody will notice that you are not in a ball gown.'
'I don't need…!' she began in a quiet but irritated manner, but he interrupted speedily.
'I know exactly what you need, and that is why I am taking you to Paris. Inside out of the cold!' he ordered, pushing her forward. 'Courage, ma fille!'
Wonderful, she thought angrily. He intended to treat her like a child! Even so, she was grateful for the hand that squeezed her shoulder encouragingly and reassuringly as she hesitated in the lighted doorway.
In the morning sunlight, Beth looked out of the window with interest as they left Calais and headed for the motorway. She had been here often before on her visits to France with her uncle and it did not seem to have improved much. The road from the port was still very bad and very crowded even in March and it took all Gaetan's attention to negotiate the narrow, rutted roads.
The previous evening still lingered in her mind but she was feeling a little better, and he had been extremely kind, she had to admit that. When they had left the small hotel where in spite of her hunger Beth had found it difficult to eat at all, they had driven straight to Dover, and although she had been able to keep her eyes open until they were on the ferry, once settled in a seat, she had fallen asleep.
She had awakened startled in a few minutes to find Gaetan was watching her closely and that she had slipped down in her seat uncomfortably.
'Do not be so jumpy,' he cautioned softly as she stared at him wide-eyed. 'Having gone to such lengths to find you I am not about to drive off the ferry at Calais and leave you.'
She shivered, her face very pale, and he reached out, pulling her against his shoulder, settling her comfortably with his arms around her, ignoring her anxious murmur.
'You do not look at all well. You will be more comfortable here. A night crossing is boring and you can catch a little sleep. It will be daylight when we reach France, and then we will press on straight home.'
Home! It sounded comfortable and safe. He seemed comfortable and safe, and after a few minutes she relaxed, resting against him until drowsiness overtook her again, sleeping deeply with his arm firmly around her.
Now they were speeding on into a new life for her as, with the motorway reached, Gaetan breathed a sigh of relief and let the beautiful car have its head like a thoroughbred horse. She had never been in such luxury. Even with all his wealth, her Uncle John had not surrounded himself with such things, and she had never been close to a man like Gaetan Vernais either.
'Have you any children, Gaetan?' she enquired shyly, using his name for the first time. It seemed stupid to be continually formal with someone who had held her sleeping against him for the time of the crossing, and in any case, it was not that he was in any way old. He was merely forbidding for most of the time.
'None that have been brought to my attention,' he said, glancing at her with a wicked gleam in his eyes. 'I am not married, Beth.'
'Oh!' She blushed at his remark, wishing she had stayed with formality. Now she didn't know what to say at all.
'I remember your uncle saying that you speak French very well,' he said after a minute of silence when her discomfort grew.
'Yes, I can manage quite well.' She hadn't spoken French for over a year, but she had been to France so many times and her uncle had insisted that she speak in French when they were here, forcing her to make conversation with people even when she didn't want to. She was glad of that now.
'You will need to speak in French all the time, even during your lessons now,' he said rapidly in French, and she answered in the same language without even thinking. Her mind was alerted to something else entirely.
'Lessons? I don't understand quite what you mean, monsieur.'
'Naturally, you will want to continue your studies. I understand that you are very clever, verging on the brilliant. You have passed many examinations with ease and yet you have not availed yourself of the chance to go to either of the great English universities. It does not matter, however, there are also great universities in France, you may go there. Your French is excellent and from now on we will speak in French all the time in order to improve it further before the new university year begins.'
'I do not intend to go to any university, monsieur!' Beth said sharply. 'Had I known that this was your intention, I would not have come with you, even though you had already lost me my job and my flat!'
'I would advise you to keep your temper, mademoiselle!' he warned with equal sharpness. 'You may have noticed that I have a temper of my own, and it would be better if we were to come to some sort of a truce, otherwise, our lives are likely to be stormy for the duration of your—sentence!'
'Don't worry, monsieur,' Beth said coolly. 'I will hardly ever speak, especially if you pursue this idea of university! I will not be ordered about!'
'It comes to my mind, mademoiselle,' he said coldly, 'that some of the time you will be lying across my knee as I beat some courtesy into you!'
'You wouldn't dare!' She looked across at him with her head tossed high and his eyes flared over her too slender form and her flushed, delicate cheeks.
'The thought grows by the minute, mademoiselle,' he assured her with a wry twist to his mouth. 'You are in France now, under my care. Discipline will be as strict or as lenient as I think necessary!'
'Discipline! I am grown up, monsieur!'
'At the moment, mademoiselle, I very much doubt that. You are a rebellious teenager, nothing more! The idea of spanking you into obedience has growing possibilities. Beware!'
She looked away from the black and gleaming eyes and stared straight ahead. Once she was feeling better, she would ignore him. He had brought her here when she did not want it, had caused upheaval in her life, she would remain only as polite as was necessary to have her own way.
She remained stubbornly quiet and he seemed content to ignore her. She was quivering with anger inside. He might have succeeded in getting her here but she had plans of her own, and they could be summed up very quickly: she intended to go back to England long before her time was up.
The satisfaction that the thought gave her was somewhat marred by the memory of how good he had been to her on the journey, as if he really cared about what happened to her. She was being driven to a luxurious house where every care would be given to her, where she would not be obliged to go to work when she felt ill. It had been good to feel his hand on her shoulder when she was nervous. It had felt as if she had someone of her own. She glanced across to apologise, but his dark, forbidding face took her courage away. She was planning to battle with this man. It would not be easy, especially when his frequent and unexpected acts of kindness could undermine her determination.
She closed her eyes, pretending to sleep, drifting back to the time when her life had been dramatically changed. She had been eight years old when her parents had been killed in an air-crash while she was staying with her Uncle John, and then she had been a happy but shy child. Even now, she remembered the misery and her Uncle John's blundering attempts to comfort her. He had been her only remaining relative, her mother's brother, and even then, she knew in the back of her mind that she would not be able to stay with him for ever. He was in the Diplomatic Service and travelled widely, a confirmed bachelor, so she had not been surpri
sed when after only a few weeks he had told her worriedly that she would have to be sent to a school as a boarder.
That was when she had gone to St Margaret's, the school where she was to spend the next ten and a half years of her life, a place where she had learned to distance herself from a seemingly uncaring world. Unless she was on holiday with Uncle John, she rarely left the school grounds. At first, she had been invited out to the homes of friends, but she could never invite them back and finally she had refused invitations altogether.
She had been more than old enough to leave and had intended to leave that autumn when her uncle had died so unexpectedly. She was going to live in his house, work from there, be free at last. The will, however, had stipulated that the house be sold, the money held on trust for her with the remainder of his wealth, and she discovered to her horror that she had a guardian. She had taken her freedom anyway, refusing to go to France, moving into London and getting a job.
Gaetan Vernais had acted swiftly, well within the terms of his guardianship. He had cut off her allowance. She knew too, although he had not mentioned it, that he could also take steps to withhold her inheritance if she did not follow his wishes. Deep inside, she knew that he would do whatever he felt was right. He would carry out his obligations with no regard for her wishes. She would have to stay in Paris. To continue to defy him was really madness. There was no hope of victory. The time would pass. Time had passed before.
Before they reached Paris, the car swung away to the right and they began to skirt the city, still some miles away.
'I thought, monsieur, that you lived in Paris,' Beth said with a thread of anxiety in her voice that she was unable to disguise. It earned her a look of displeasure as he glanced across at her.
'Do not mistake my every action for villainy, mademoiselle,' he warned. 'I live in Paris, though not actually in the city itself. I have no wish to spend my life in the middle of a traffic jam, and you have yet to see how my countrymen behave when they are pressed for time. I need to be close to the city but I prefer the illusion of the countryside around me.'
Somewhat chastened, Beth held her tongue and contented herself with viewing the surroundings that were to be her home for the next year and a half. They were now driving along roads that were edged with massive chestnut trees, many of them close to bursting into blossom. The villages along the way were small and pretty and she would have liked to stop and walk for a while even though she still felt less than well. She knew, however, that such a request would be refused by her grim-faced guardian.
Most of the things about her seemed to infuriate him, and although he had shown her kindness when she needed it and had been thoughtful and considerate while they were on their journey, there was no doubt whatever in her mind that she would be an unwelcome intruder in his house and in his life. He was simply following his code of honour, keeping a promise, made no doubt long ago when her uncle's death had seemed to be unlikely before she reached the age of twenty-one.
A small shiver of fear passed over her, and her sweet mouth lost its curve. She would have to live out the time, persevere as she had always done, and she would have to try to reach some level of understanding with Gaetan Vernais because he was too much of a man to be cast aside. She feared that ignoring him would only bring on wrath, or at the very least, this disdainful silence that was beginning to hurt.
Soon they were running between long lines of poplars, and on each side she could see massive and wealthy-looking estates, but it was not until the car slowed by high, stone walls and Gaetan pressed a switch to open electronically controlled gates that she realised they had arrived. Immediately her heart began to pound.
They drove through well wooded grounds, and her first sight of the house that she was to call home for the next long months brought a lump to her throat. It was large and white, looking like the country houses that she had seen from time to time in England, with long, elegant windows, the upper ones with stone balconies, the lower ones reaching to the ground. There were pillars of slender height before the front of the house and the great oaken door was reached by a shallow flight of curving steps. It was the house of a very wealthy man, gleaming white in the thin sunlight and utterly unnerving.
She was greatly pleased when he drove straight round to the back of the house and pulled into a courtyard that contained stables and garages and she was not unduly surprised when his arrival brought forth a man who was clearly a chauffeur, his olive-green leggings part of the uniform, his muscular arms even now pulling on the matching jacket.
'You have safely returned, monsieur.' The man was at the door opening it for Gaetan almost as soon as they halted, and Gaetan got out and stretched stiffly.
'Mais oui, Louis, and not before time, I assure you!' He came himself around to Beth's door, helping her out and introducing her to the tough-looking man with dark unruly hair. He was middle-aged, kindly looking, and as he looked at her, Beth saw a brief flare of pity in his eyes, a look that was instantly veiled as he came and shook her hand.
'Mademoiselle Craig, Louis,' Gaetan said easily, clearly on very good terms with his employee. 'She will live here from now on, as you no doubt know from Madame Benoir.'
'Oui, monsieur, we have been looking forward to meeting her.' He gave a little bow of greeting and then stepped back. 'I am at your service, mademoiselle.'
'Charming!' Gaetan breathed sardonically. 'You have scored a hit there, mademoiselle. Our Louis does not give his favours readily. He is a rogue of the worst kind, eh, Louis?'
'Only when off duty, monsieur,' Louis replied with a ready grin, and Beth learned something new about her guardian: he was human and well liked by this man.
As Louis delved into the boot, Gaetan led her to the house and she soon found herself inside the back door, moving down a long passage that ended in the wide and charming front hall. A small and neat woman in her late sixties appeared at the sound of Gaetan's voice and stood beaming at them both as Gaetan again performed the introductions.
'Mademoiselle Craig, Madame Benoir,' he said quietly. 'This is my housekeeper, Beth, who will comfort you, bully you and see to it that you are too well fed.' He smiled across at Madame Benoir as she shook her head in laughing exasperation and added, 'She is here at last, madame! What do you think of her?'
'She is a very beautiful child, monsieur. I think we will all be happy with her.'
'Ah! You have just said the wrong thing, madame,' Gaetan informed her wryly. 'You have called Mademoiselle Beth a child. You will now be cast into the painful depths of silence. She will not speak to you for a very long time.'
'I am very pleased to meet you, madame,' Beth said quickly, stepping forward with a smile at the startled elderly woman. 'Monsieur Vernais is quite wrong! I shall talk to you until you are tired of me!' She glanced in annoyance at Gaetan and his lips twisted in a wry smile as he looked down at her. Then he issued very rapid orders to the housekeeper.
'See that Mademoiselle Beth is shown to her room. She needs a warm bath, perhaps a little soup and then she can sleep. It has been a very tiring journey for her and she is not well.'
'I am perfectly all right, monsieur!' Beth protested sharply, turning to him quickly, her legs almost giving way beneath her as a wave of dizziness swept over her. His arm was around her instantly, a hard, safe warmth, and he looked down at her pale face with a deep frown.
'I will judge the state of your health, mademoiselle,' he said severely. 'Follow my instructions if you please! I will see you later!' He handed her over to Madame Benoir, who placed an arm around her and clucked like a small, worried hen as she helped her to her room.
The room at the front of the house took her breath away. Some people, it seemed, saved their wealth and gathered it around them to hoard and count. Gaetan Vernais spent his and, after her small and barely adequate bedsit, the room that was to be hers simply overwhelmed her. From the delicately draped four-poster bed to the high and elegant windows, from the soft peach of the carpet and the beautifully a
ppointed en suite bathroom that seemed to contain everything that any woman could need in the way of toiletries, to the gilt-tinged chairs and the massive, built-in wardrobe, it stunned her, and she was hard pressed to keep her face free of open-mouthed astonishment.
She was about to snuggle down in the warm bed later, after a sweet scented bath and a delicious bowl of home-made soup, when Madame Benoir returned. After a hasty glance around to see that all was in order and that Beth was well covered in her bed, she ushered a man into the room and behind him strolled a grim-faced Gaetan, his expression showing that he was not about to give an inch in this matter.
'I have sent for the doctor, Beth,' he said firmly. 'He will look you over and make sure that you are not too ill. This is Paul Gerard who is my doctor and also my very dear friend. I will wait in the library and Madame Benoir will stay with you.'
She wouldn't have dreamed of making a scene with other people there, but her eyes were eloquent of her feelings and Gaetan left after one warning look at her. Paul Gerard was little older than Gaetan, but his manner was strictly medical and it was only after what proved to be a lengthy examination that he chatted to her in a friendly way.
'So, at last, mademoiselle, Gaetan has his elusive ward captured and brought to Paris. I have rarely seen him so wild with anger as when you refused to come here and lost yourself in the city. I trust that you do not intend to do any such thing again? We all suffered for it, did we not, Madame Benoir?'
'Indeed we did, doctor.' Madame Benoir smiled, fussing around Beth and arranging the covers neatly. 'Louis was on the point of giving notice at one time. Monsieur Vernais can be very difficult when he is in a rage.'
'Well, he seems to be recovering from it now,' Paul Gerard said in amusement. 'Do be good, mademoiselle, for all our sakes.'
'I'll try, monsieur,' she said with a little smile, rather worried that Gaetan was capable of even greater rage than he had shown when he had thought that she was in the habit of entertaining men in her room. Still, he was extremely high-handed, and this latest act, of arranging for the doctor to come without even consulting her, was a good example. When the other two had gone and Gaetan appeared in her doorway, looking at her with dark and glittering eyes, her annoyance showed on her face.
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