Captivated By The Brooding Billionaire

“Thank you. What about you?”

Was she worried about him? He liked the idea of that. “If I need to, I’ll grab one.”

Raoul would have loved to help her put it on, but worried he wouldn’t be able to restrain himself, he jumped back out to untie the ropes, then climbed in to start the engine. Once he’d backed out at a no-wake speed, he took off. Being with this woman was like a breath of fresh air.

She didn’t have an agenda that prompted her to ask a lot of questions. He decided she was at peace with herself and seemed to enjoy the world around her. Raoul believed she was the kind of woman you could be with and not have to make conversation if you didn’t want to.

“Why don’t you sit opposite me?”

She sank down and glanced in the direction of the sailboats. “There’s no wind. How sad they have to rely on motors.”

Her comment was the same one he’d reflected on while being here. “Where have you been living in Switzerland?”

Abby eyed him curiously. “All over. Grindelwald, Lauterbrunnen, Mürren, Interlaken, Lake Thun, the Reichenbach and Staubbach Falls, Montreux, Geneva, Cologny.”

“Why?”

“I guess you wouldn’t know why our boss gave us this vacation.”

“I only recall that she’s a movie director in your country who was friends with Auguste.”

“That’s right. Magda is working on her most important film to date. It’s a new look at the life of George Gordon Noel Byron, the Sixth Baron Byron, known as Lord Byron. She needs new eyes for fresh research to make the script authentic. The girls and I were picked to help because we teach college students about the romance writers of the early nineteenth century.”

Abby Grant was an expert on Lord Byron?

The coincidence of meeting her at all, let alone here in St. Saphorin, where Auguste had made his find years ago, blew Raoul away. Excitement filled his body.

He shut off the engine so they could really talk. “You’re all university professors?” He was still incredulous.

“Not tenured yet, but one day. Our goal has been to help supplement the script with new facts and a different look. There’s been so much material written about Byron, but Magda has been hoping for something more. So have I.”

“In what sense?”

“I’d hoped to come across a poem he was supposed to have written while he was in Switzerland. The girls dropped me off at the village library this morning so I could do a little investigating, but nothing came of it so I walked back here. Of course no one in the last one hundred and ninety years has ever pretended to find it, so maybe it doesn’t exist.”

This woman was not only intelligent, she had an enquiring mind that made her a very exciting person. Raoul’s heart pounded like a war drum. “Did it have a title?”

“Yes. Something like Labyrinths, but there was another part to it. I don’t know exactly.”

“‘Labyrinths of Lavaux’.” Raoul could tell her it did exist and where to find it! Chills ran up and down his spine.

“For the last five months we’ve been doing research in the different parts of Europe where Byron traveled. Magda’s goal is to illuminate Byron’s virtues and leave the negatives alone.”

“Now I understand,” he murmured. “You’ve been following his travels here with Shelley and Mary Godwin that put the Swiss Riviera on the map.”

A quiet smile curved the corners of her delectable mouth. “I can see you’re well-informed. Do you want to know something funny he wrote in his journal? When he left the mountains and returned to Lac Léman he said, ‘The wild part of our tour is finished...my journal must be as flat as my journey.’”

Raoul was impressed with her knowledge, but his thoughts were racing. “He could have been reading our minds right now.”

“Exactly. Too much peace and tranquility needs some stirring up. Byron saw nature as a companion to humanity. Certainly natural beauty was often preferable to human evil and the problems attendant upon civilization, but Byron also recognized nature’s dangerous and harsh elements.

“Have you ever read ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’? It connects nature to freedom, while at the same time showing nature’s potentially deadly aspects in the harsh waves that seem to threaten to flood the dungeon during a storm and—” But she suddenly stopped speaking.

“Please go on,” he urged her.

“Sorry. I forgot I wasn’t teaching a class. Though I’m ready to move on with the girls tomorrow, I’ll never be sorry I was sent here to work. I’ve always had a special love for that poem.”

“We’re looking at the Château de Chillon right now.” The lake steamer had pulled up to its dock.

She nodded. “It’s a magnificent château. I’ve been through it half a dozen times, but after seeing the dungeon where the Swiss patriot Bonivard was imprisoned, I’ve been haunted by Byron’s words.”

“Can you quote any of it?”

Her eyes lit up. “Would you believe I memorized all 392 lines in high school for a contest?”

There was fire in her. He sat back against the side of the boat. “Did you win?”

“Would it sound like bragging if I said yes?”

She was getting to him in ways he would never have imagined. “I bet you could still recite it.”

Abby shook her head. “That was too long ago.”

He leaned forward. “I know I read it in my teens with my grandfather who loved Byron’s works, but I would be hopeless to recall it. Come on. Give me a taste of it. We’re right here where he was inspired. Enchant me.”

She cocked her blond head. “Maybe some of the first part.”

“I’m waiting.” Mon Dieu—he was far too attracted to her for only having known her such a short time. Whatever was happening to him had come like a bolt out of the blue and wasn’t about to go away.

Once she started to recite, the emotion she conveyed filled him with a myriad of disquieting sensations.

“My hair is grey, but not with years,

Nor grew it white

In a single night,

As men’s have grown from sudden fears:

My limbs are bowed, though not with toil,

But rusted with a vile repose,

For they have been a dungeon’s spoil,

And mine has been the fate of those

To whom the goodly earth and air