Dawn Song

For a dazed instant she thought the storm itself was responsible, then she saw the dark, caped figure framed in the doorway, staring in at her, and shrank back in her seat. She wanted to scream, but her vocal cords seemed paralysed with fright.

‘Are you quite mad?’ His voice was low-pitched, vibrant, and almost molten with rage. ‘Do you want to be killed? Move this car now—at once.’

No spirit conjured up by the storm, but an all too human and angry male. He spoke in French and Meg replied automatically in the same language, her heart thumping violently in mingled alarm and relief.

‘What gives you the right to order me about?’

‘The right of someone who obviously knows this country better than you,’ was the crushing retort. ‘It isn’t safe to park under a rockface in conditions like this, you little fool. There are often landslips. Your car could be buried, and you with it. So move. Quickly.’

However unpleasant he might be, he seemed to know what he was talking about, Meg realised uneasily. Perhaps she’d do well to accept his arrogant and unwelcome advice.

‘Where do you suggest I park, then?’ she asked, coldly.

‘There is a safer place two hundred metres further on. Follow my car, and I will show you. And hurry,’ he added grimly.

Her door slammed shut again, and he disappeared. A moment later, Meg saw the dim shape of a car overtake hers and halt some distance ahead of her, hazard lights blinking. Reluctantly, she turned the key in the ignition, but instead of the usual reassuring purr into life from the engine she was greeted with a profound and ominous silence.

Oh, no, Meg groaned inwardly, and tried again. And again. But the wretched engine stubbornly refused to fire.

‘What’s the matter now?’ Her caped crusader, his temper apparently operating perfectly on all cylinders, reappeared beside her.

‘What does it look like, you prat? The blasted car won’t start,’ Meg flung back at him in a savage undertone, while she searched for the appropriate and slightly more diplomatic phraseology in French.

‘So you are English?’ he remarked, switching effortlessly to her language. ‘I should have guessed.’

His tone bit with contempt, and Meg stiffened in annoyance. Of course, he would have to be bilingual, she thought, feeling faint colour rise in her cheeks at the memory of her schoolgirl rudeness.

‘What’s the problem with the car?’ he continued. ‘Has it given trouble before?’

‘It’s hardly had the chance,’ she said wearily. ‘I only rented it today. But now the engine’s dead. I suppose some water’s got into the plugs, or the carburettor.’

He muttered something under his breath which Meg chose not to hear.

‘Leave it here, then,’ he ordered peremptorily, raising his voice above the crashing of the rain, ‘and come with me.’

‘I can’t just abandon the thing,’ Meg protested. ‘It doesn’t belong to me. And besides…’ she hesitated ‘… I don’t know you from Adam.’

‘Sit here much longer, mademoiselle, and you may make the acquaintance of the original Adam—in Paradise.’ His tone was caustic. ‘You have more to fear, I promise, by remaining where you are than from accepting my assistance, such as it is.’

He paused. ‘And rape, be assured, is the last thing on my mind in these conditions. Now get out of the car before we both drown.’

Meg obeyed unwillingly, flinching as the water soaked up through the thin soles of her sandals. Reaching his car was going to be like fording the river itself. She’d be drenched before she’d gone a couple of metres. She wondered glumly what Madame de Brissot’s reaction would be if her new companion arrived at Haut Arignac with double pneumonia.

There was a swift impatient sigh beside her, and she found herself suddenly enveloped in his cape, held with disturbing force against his body under its voluminous folds, as she was half led, half carried to the other vehicle. Her nostrils were assailed by a tingling aroma of warm, clean wool, coupled with the individual and very masculine scent of his skin. She was aware too of the tang of some expensive cologne.

‘Thank you,’ she gasped with irony, as she was thrust without particular ceremony into the passenger seat.

‘Pas du tout,’ he returned. ‘Now let’s get out of here. It’s always been a danger spot.’

Even as he spoke, Meg heard a sound like a low groan, followed by a strange rushing noise. She craned her neck, staring back down the gorge, and saw, with horrified disbelief, a tree come sliding down, roots first, from the heights above, and land with a sickening crash on the roof of her little Renault. It was followed by a deluge of earth and stones, bouncing off the bodywork on to the road, like a series of miniature explosions. A few even reached the other car, where they both sat stunned and immobile.

The silence which followed was deafening by comparison. And, as if finally satisfied with its efforts, the rain began to ease off.

CHAPTER TWO (#u375d0a84-80c8-5bf7-98a4-3b9d636e1c37)

MEG’S COMPANION WAS the first to move, to break the profound hush.

He said quietly, ‘Et voilà,’ and shrugged.

‘Oh, God,’ Meg breathed almost inaudibly. ‘Oh, dear God.’

The driver’s side had sustained the most damage, she realised numbly. The crumpled roof was practically resting on the seat, and the windscreen had been shattered by a large branch.

And up to a moment ago she’d been sitting there—right there. If he hadn’t come along when he did—made her get out… Her mind closed off in shock, refusing to contemplate the undoubted consequences. She tried to speak—to thank him properly this time, and instead, to her shame, burst into tears.

He muttered something else under his breath, then swung into the seat beside her, flinging the discarded cape into the back of the car, before reaching into the glove compartment for a packet of tissues and a silver flask.

‘Here,’ he said curtly, unscrewing the flask’s stopper. ‘Drink this.’

It was cognac. She gasped, and choked, feeling the spirit spread like fire through her cold and shaking body. She dabbed at her face with a tissue. ‘My car,’ she whispered. ‘My car.’

‘You insured the car when you hired it,’ he reminded her. ‘It can easily be replaced. But not so your life.’

‘No.’ She shuddered uncontrollably, then lifted the flask again, taking a fierce, searing swallow, fighting back the remaining tears, and feeling the trembling dissipate slowly.

‘I think you have had enough.’ There was a faint smile in his voice as he gently detached the flask from her grasp.

When she was sure she was in control of her voice, she said, ‘All—all my things were in the boot. I—I know it’s silly to mind…’

‘I’ll get them.’ He took the Renault’s keys from her unresisting fingers.

‘No.’ Meg grabbed at his arm. ‘Leave them, please. Don’t risk it…’

‘It’s all right.’ His voice was gentler. He pointed back towards the wreck. ‘See, the boot was hardly touched.’

‘But there might be another landslide.’ There were still lightning flashes in the overcast sky, and thunder was grumbling around in the distance like some outraged but unseen giant. Meg could visualise more rocks, raining down on him, crushing him like the Renault.

She found she was looking at him, seeing him properly for the first time in the sullen light which penetrated the car. She knew that he was tall, and she’d had first-hand experience of the whipcord strength of his body during that headlong dash from the Renault, but that was the extent of it. Now she saw that he was quite young—not more than the early thirties at a guess, although she was no judge of such things. She assimilated a mass of unruly black hair, and a thin olive-skinned face, the lines of nose, mouth and chin strongly, even arrogantly marked. And dark fathomless eyes under heavy lids.

‘I think the worst is past.’ He shrugged again. He slanted a smile at her. ‘Besides, I lead a charmed life.’

She could believe it. Nevertheless, she sat rigidly, staring ahead of her, not daring to look back, waiting for the clatter of falling stones and the cry of agony which seemed inevitable. But there was nothing but the rush of the water in the swollen river, and somewhere near by the shrill song of a bird announcing that the storm was over.

It occurred to her that he was taking a long time. She turned her head, peering back, and saw him standing at the rear of the Renault, very still, as if he’d been turned into a rock or a tree himself.

Maybe the boot was jammed, and he couldn’t open it, she thought. But it seemed she was wrong, because almost at once he headed back towards the Citroën he was driving, striding out with a travel bag in each hand. She heard them thud as he transferred them to his own boot.

When he rejoined her, he looked preoccupied, his brows drawn together in a frown. She sensed a tension in him that she’d not been aware of before, as if he was angry about something, and trying to hide it.