A Place of Storms (27 page)

He chuckled softly. 'That is silly,' he agreed. 'Because I am here.'

'Of course you are.'

'Tante Andrée, I don't want to play the game about Marie-Denise ever again. She broke my sledge, you know.' 'Marie Denise or Tante Simone?'

'I don't know.' His eyelids drooped again. 'I used to get muddled sometimes. Tante Simone said she
was
Marie-Denise, but I don't see how she could be.'

'No,' she said gently. 'No more than Uncle Blaise could have been La Cicatrice.'

He did not reply, and she did not say any more. It was a beginning, she thought.

She heard footsteps and voices in the room below and relaxed.

'Alan,' she called. 'Come up the stairs as far as you can and I'll pass him through to you.'

She carried Philippe awkwardly across the room, and knelt down by the hole.

'Look,
mon brave
,' she said. 'The silly door has stuck and I have to lower you through this hole. You can pretend that you are a parcel and I am posting you.'

He giggled feebly and she had to resist an impulse to hug him again.

'
Allans
. We must be careful, for there are lots of splinters. Keep still,
mon gars
. Parcels don't wriggle, you know. That's right. And Alan will catch you.'

'No,' Blaise said. 'I will catch him.'

For one dreadful moment Andrea felt Philippe go tense and rigid in her arms. Then with a deep sigh, the stiffness seemed to go out of him. Blaise's hand gripped his legs securely and guided him down.

'Off with you,
petit
,' Andrea heard him say. 'Tante Andrée and I will come later to see how you are. The doctor is waiting to look at you.'

She heard Philippe mutter something sleepily in reply, and uttered a little prayer of thankfulness, conscious for the first time of how cold she herself was becoming. She peeped down through the hole in time to see Philippe being carried away by Gaston.

Blaise was speaking again. 'Do you wish to wait while we open the door properly?'

'No,' she said, her teeth beginning to chatter in spite of herself. 'I'm too cold. I think I'd rather brave the splinters again.'

She put her feet and legs gingerly into space, and felt them gripped and guided on to the top step. She slid through, scraping her arm and wincing a little. Blaise helped her down the steps in silence. Alan was standing at the bottom, still holding the axe.

'Well done,' he said awkwardly, and blushed.

She suddenly had a fair idea of the picture she must present—torn, dusty jeans and a brief lace bra which was no covering at all. As if he could read her thoughts, Blaise shrugged off his jacket and hung it round her shoulders. She thanked him and there was a long silence.

Alan cleared his throat. 'I'd better be going,' he said in a voice that sounded as if it was trying hard to be jocular and normal. He held up the axe. 'Better put this back.' He gave them an uncertain grin and went off whistling.

Andrea said in a subdued voice, 'He was very kind.'

'He is a little bit in love with you, I think,' Blaise said calmly.

'Oh.' She swallowed nervously. 'Oh, no, I don't think so.'

'But then you are not very experienced in recognising love when a man offers it to you, are you,
ma mie
?'

There seemed to be no answer to that, so she made none.

'We found Simone,' he continued eventually. 'Her car had skidded off the road and hit a wall.'

'Was she hurt?'

'No.' His lip curled. 'She is a great survivor, Simone. It took very little persuasion to get her to tell us what she had done with Philippe. She claimed it was a joke. I think she found it less amusing when she discovered that I was neither prepared to bring her back here nor drive her to the nearest garage.'

'You mean you abandoned her there?'

'Someone will discover her sooner or later,' he said almost idly. 'As I have said, she is a great survivor. Philippe, I think, is not. I have to thank you,
ma mie
, for your prompt action.'

'I don't need thanks,' she said hurriedly. 'I—I'm very fond of Philippe. I shall miss him.'

There was another loaded pause, then she said, very quickly, before her courage had a chance to fade, 'Blaise, I thought the worst of you without any justification, and although I know nothing can ever undo that, I want you to know I'm sorry. And there's another thing,' she added, afraid that he might interrupt. 'When we were—talking earlier, you said that I had hurt you by turning away from you on our wedding night because—I found you repulsive.' She took a deep breath. 'That—that just isn't true. I never have found you repulsive in any way.'

'Then why did you close your eyes and turn your head away when I was kissing you?' he asked.

'Because I didn't have anything on and I was shy,' she said baldly.

He raised an eyebrow. 'Give me my jacket,' he said, holding out his hand.

'That's mean,' she protested helplessly, holding it more tightly round her.

'Do you really find my looking at you so distasteful?'

'No,' she said honestly. 'Or at least I shouldn't if—if I could be sure why you were doing it. If it's to—teach me a lesson again, then it would be awful. And if it's because you're sending me away, and you'll probably never look at me again, that would be even worse.'

'And what if I tell you that to me—whether you're clinging to the back of a horse you can't ride, covered in soot, half-dressed or naked—you are all the beauty I have ever seen and that's why I want to look at you, and will do until I die? What then? Do you still imagine,
mon amour
, that I really intend to let you anywhere out of my sight?'

'Oh, Blaise!' Slow tears that she made no effort to check began to trickle down her face.

'I don't know what sort of life I am offering you,' he said. 'But it won't be easy, especially with Philippe feeling about me the way he does.'

'It will be better when he isn't an only child any more,' she said, smiling through her tears. 'Oh, Blaise, I love you.' She let the jacket slip to the floor and held out her arms to him. As he came to her, she lifted her face almost blindly to meet his kiss.

Eons later, lying with his head pillowed on her breasts, he murmured lazily, 'Did I hurt you?'

Andrea put up her hand, tenderly smoothing the hair back from his forehead. 'I didn't notice.'

'How shameless,' he said with a quiver of amusement in his voice.

She gave a sigh of utter contentment. 'We really ought to go and make sure that Philippe is all right.'

'Philippe is fine and already receiving more attention than he knows what to do with.' His arms tightened possessively round her. 'Don't be in too much of a hurry to leave our ivory tower,
ma mie
. The world can be a cruel place, as you have found.'

'But it can never touch us again,' she said dreamily.

'No.' Blaise lifted himself on to one elbow and looked down at her, his mouth twisted a little ruefully, but his eyes magically tender as he studied her, still flushed and glowing in the aftermath of their lovemaking. 'Don't expect too many miracles,
mon amour
. I don't want you to be hurt again.'

'How can I be hurt,' she said simply, 'with you to heal me?'

His lips were fierce on hers, but Andrea knew no qualms as she surrendered. Here, in this place of storms, she had found her haven at last.