A Marriage Betrayed

“I want a room for tonight. Only the one night,” she answered with pointed emphasis, hoping such a brief stay would win his toleration. At least he couldn’t fault her French, she thought, having mimicked the exact modulation of his voice.

He hesitated, uncertainty flicking over his face. “We have a suite....”

Kristy looked him in the eye. He had probably surmised she couldn’t afford an expensive suite. “I want a room. A regular room. For one night. Are you saying you can’t accommodate me?”

He seemed to take fright at her assertive challenge, perhaps sniffing the possibility of an unpleasant scene. “Non, Madame,” he answered hastily. “A room can be arranged.”

“Your cheapest room,” Kristy spelled out so there was no mistake.

His eyebrows shot up. His face dropped. “Oui, Madame,” he choked out.

He pushed across the registration form and Kristy filled it in, feeling she had won a minor victory over petty snobbery. Why the staff here was automatically addressing her as madame was a puzzle, but she shrugged it off as irrelevant. She was in. That was all she cared about

Having written down the information required and signed her name, she handed the form back. The clerk started to glance over it. Kristy could have sworn his eyes actually bulged as he took in her particulars. Probably stunned to discover she was an American, not French at all.

Nevertheless, that didn’t explain why he then became quite agitated, shoving the form under the desk as though it was contaminated and passing a room key to the bellboy with fussy officiousness, gesturing pointedly to the elevators.

The bellboy set off smartly with her key and bag, but the clerk’s manner had irked Kristy. A streak of stubborn pride emerged, prompting her to loiter in the lobby. She didn’t like being pushed around, or viewed as disposable garbage. Her independent spirit insisted she ignore such pressures.

Her gaze was drawn to a couple seated behind a low table, conversing quietly but with the kind of animation that was distinctly French. The woman was a striking brunette, superbly groomed, and wearing a black and white outfit that had to be the creation of one of the top Parisian designers. She gave chic a new meaning.

Her companion was even more striking, the perfect image of aristocratic elegance. He was handsome in a distinctly Gallic way: a high intellectual forehead, a slightly long but very refined nose, a firm imperious chin, and an extremely sensual mouth. He was clothed in tailored perfection, his dark grey suit encasing a body that conveyed grace, virility and vitality.

Something about him tugged at her, as though she should know him, yet she was sure she’d remember if she’d ever met him before. The feeling caused her to study him with keener interest.

His black hair was sleekly styled, as though he knew he needed no flamboyance to distract from the fine sensitivity of his face. She imagined him having a deep appreciation of art and music and good food and wine. The quizzical arch of his brows suggested he would take pleasure in questioning everything, and the dark dancing brilliance of his eyes seemed to promise he missed nothing.

There was passion in the slight flare of his nostrils, a worldly but not unkind cynicism in the faint curl of his beautifully moulded mouth. He was in his mid-thirties, Kristy guessed, with the mature authority that came with many years of being successful at whatever he did.

She found herself envying the woman who was with him. They had to be celebrating something. A bottle of champagne rested in a silver ice bucket on the table and two flute glasses of gleaming crystal were at hand. Their honeymoon? she wondered, and felt a sharp inner recoil from the thought.

The man suddenly bestowed a brilliant smile on his companion and Kristy caught her breath as his attraction took a mega-leap. She was riven by a fierce wish for that smile to be directed at her...only her...which shook her so much she wrenched her gaze away.

The bellboy was shuffling impatiently by the elevators. She hadn’t asked for his services, Kristy thought irritably. As a guest in this hotel, she had every right to move at her own convenience, not his. No doubt the couple she’d been watching did as they pleased, assuming it was the natural way of things. She looked back at them with a burst of burning resentment that was quite alien to her normal nature.

What happened next was inexplicable. Had she somehow shot a blast of negative force across the lobby? The man must have felt something hit him. His head jerked, attention whipping away from his companion and fastening on Kristy with such sharp intensity, her heart contracted. He started to rise from his seat, his face stricken with...what? Surprise . . . astonishment, shock...guilt...anger?

His hand flashed out in aggressive dismissal. It struck the glass nearest to him. Over it went, rolling towards the edge, splashing fluid across the table. He moved instinctively but jerkily to grab it and the whole table tipped. Ice and shards of crystal splattered over the chessboard floor in a spreading foam of spilled champagne.

Momentarily and automatically his gaze left Kristy to follow the path of destruction radiating out in front of him. A totally appalled look flitted over his face. Yet his gaze stabbed back at her, dismissing the mess, projecting some savagely personal accusation at her, as though this was all her fault and she knew it as intimately and certainly as he did.

It made Kristy feel odd, as though time and place had shifted into a different dimension. Her pulse went haywire, pumping her heart so hard her temples throbbed. Vaguely she saw the woman leap up and clutch the man’s arm, commanding his attention. Then a hand touched her own arm, jolting her out of the strange thrall that had held her. It was the clerk from the reception desk.

“Your room, Madame,” he pressed anxiously. “The bellboy has the elevator waiting for you.”

“Oh! Yes. Okay,” she babbled, momentarily forgetting to speak French.

She forced her legs to move away from the embarrassing scene. It wasn’t her fault. How could it be? She was nobody here. She didn’t know the man and the man didn’t know her. She must have imagined that weird sense of connection.

The bellboy was holding the elevator doors open for her, the canvas bag already deposited in the compartment. His head shook dolefully over the mess in the lobby behind her as she stepped past him.

“An unfortunate accident,” she offered by way of glossing over the incident.

“Un scandale,” he muttered, smartly stepping into the elevator after her and releasing the doors, shutting them both off from whatever was now happening in the lobby. As he pressed the button for her floor he added on a low note of doom, “Un scandale terrible!”

CHAPTER TWO

WHAT melodramatic nonsense! Kristy thought, determinedly blocking irrational impressions out of her mind and switching it onto a sane, sensible level.

Such an accident might be uncommon in this grand hotel, but staff would be snapping into action, cleaning away the mess fast and efficiently, sweeping it out of sight, out of mind, as though it had never been. Breakage and spillage hardly constituted a terrible scandal.

She decided not to offer any further comment as the elevator travelled up to her floor. Clearly she and the bellboy were not on any common wavelength. Besides, she was still shaken by the sheer force of what she’d felt coming from the man.

She had never experienced anything like it. Perhaps a culmination of grief, stress and fatigue had affected her nervous system, throwing her emotions out of kilter. Even the impulse to come here now looked foolish. Certainly ill-considered, given her reception by the staff. Or was she putting too much emphasis on that, too, blowing niggly little feelings out of proportion?

As for the man who’d triggered such a vivid range of emotions... was there such a thing as knowing someone from another life? She shook her head in wry bemusement. Perhaps it was this hotel making her fanciful...Betty’s and John’s honeymoon hotel. Her strong fixation on the attractive foreigner must have coloured her perception, making her see things differently to the actual reality.

The woman he was with could have said something to upset him. Then he’d probably found Kristy’s staring at him offensive, especially when he’d knocked things over. No one liked having witnesses to an embarrassing scene. It was stupid to read any more into the incident than that.

The elevator stopped. The doors opened. Having recollected herself, Kristy stepped out, resolving not to be flustered by anything else on this one-night stopover in Paris.

The bellboy ushered her into a room which had no pretensions to being the least bit cheap. Her heart quailed a little at the price she might have to pay for it tomorrow, but then she sternly told herself she was here to soak up and enjoy the atmosphere and ambience around her. Cost was to be discounted.

She searched her handbag for a few coins to tip the bellboy. It was a futile exercise. He scuttled away with a rapidity which was startling. Apparently official courtesy ended at the door, now she was safely tucked away from causing any public displeasure.

Sighing away her vexation at being treated like some second-class citizen, Kristy set out on her own tour of the accommodation she had insisted upon. At least, she was on her own here. She wouldn’t bother anyone and no-one would bother her.

The bedroom was lovely. The colour scheme of off-white, beige and brown, smartly contrasted with black, was very stylish and Parisian. It was also too modern to have been in place forty years ago. Reason told her the furnishings had probably been changed many times since Betty and John had stayed here, but she was sure they had been just as delighted with their room as she was with hers. Of course, being in love had probably made it even more delightful.

The marble bathroom was utter luxury. Kristy could well imagine Betty revelling in what she would consider the height of delicious decadence. Sumptuous plumbing was not a feature of the third-world countries where John had frequently been posted throughout his army career. Not that Betty had ever complained about primitive facilities, but whenever they had returned to “civilization”, it was a well appointed bathroom that defined “civilization.”

Kristy was moving to unpack and settle in when a quiet rap on the door drew her attention. She opened it to a distinguished-looking gentleman in a pinstripe suit. His cheeks were full, well-fed and although he was no taller than Kristy, which put him at barely average height for a man, he exuded an air of benign authority.

“Madame, a word with you,” he appealed softly.

She flashed him a smile. “And you are...whom?”

He returned her smile. “A good jest, Madame,” he replied with a jovial little chuckle.

Kristy wondered what the joke was.

“May I come in?” he asked, gesturing an eloquent appeal to her good nature.

Kristy frowned over the request. A stranger was a stranger in her book, especially one who acted strangely. “What for?” she demanded suspiciously.

He made an apologetic grimace. “This room... there has been an error. If you will allow me to rearrange...”

“Oh!” She instantly slotted him into place. He was management. Had he come to tell her this room wasn’t the cheapest available, or was she going to be thrown out of the hotel after all?