Dawn Song

‘Tell me,’ he said softly, ‘why you were so reluctant to answer when I asked you to dine with me? There is a man in England, perhaps, who might cause—complications?’

Meg stared ahead of her. Tim Hansby? she thought with a kind of desperate amusement. She said shortly, ‘There’s no one.’

‘Vraiment?’ Jerome Moncourt sounded sceptical. ‘I cannot believe there is no one you care about.’

She shrugged, pride making her reluctant to admit that up to now she’d occupied a fairly undistinguished place on the shelf—that there were only two people she really cared about, she realised with a pang. A retired second-hand bookseller, and the elderly woman who’d taken the place of her mother, and given her the affection and comfort that her father, dazed with grief at the loss of his young wife, had been unable to bestow. For whose sake she was here in the first place. She swallowed. Not a lot to show for her twenty years, she thought. Although this was not the time to start feeling sorry for herself.

And what the hell? she argued inwardly. It’s nothing to do with him if I prevaricate a little. Although why she should wish to appear marginally more interesting than actual reality was something she didn’t want to examine too closely, she thought, biting her lip.

‘Does it make any difference?’ she challenged. ‘An invitation to dinner hardly constitutes a major breach of faith.’

She took a breath. ‘For all I know, you could be married.’

‘Would it matter if I was?’ he tossed back at her.

That sounded like hedging. Her heart plummeted in a dismay as acute as it was absurd.

‘I think it might matter a hell of a lot to your wife,’ she said curtly.

‘Then it is fortunate she does not yet exist.’ There was a note of mockery in his voice, mingled with something else less easy to decipher.

‘Fortunate for her, anyway,’ she muttered, self-disgust at the relief flooding over her making her churlish.

He clicked his tongue reprovingly. ‘That’s not kind. You don’t think I’d make a good husband?’

‘I can’t possibly tell on so brief an acquaintance.’ Meg kept her tone short. She knew he was laughing at her, even though his expression was serious, almost frowning.

‘But you have an ideal? What qualities should he possess? Would you require him to be faithful?’

Meg twisted the strap of her bag in her fingers. ‘I’d want him to love me, and only me, as I’d love him,’ she said at last. ‘I suppose that takes care of most things.’

‘It is certainly sweeping,’ Jerome said, after another pause. ‘And if, in spite of that love, another woman intervened—tried to take this paragon away from you—what would you do then? Make the sacrifice? Let him go?’

‘No,’ she said, fiercely. ‘I’d fight for him with everything I had.’

‘You would be ruthless?’ his voice probed softly. ‘Use any weapon?’

‘Of course.’ She hesitated uncertainly. ‘Why do you ask me all this?’

‘Because I wish to know, ma petite,’ he said softly. ‘It is part of that journey of discovery I mentioned—to find that you would fight like a tigress for love.’

Again that odd note in his voice. Meg felt herself shiver. He noticed at once. ‘You are cold?’

‘Oh, no.’ She forced a smile. ‘Hungry, perhaps.’ She thought of her picnic lunch, crushed in the car.

‘You’ve been patient long enough. Now you shall be fed.’ He turned the car suddenly off the road, and on to a track leading downhill. Meg braced herself as the Citroën swayed and jolted over stones and deep ruts.

‘There’s actually a restaurant down here?’ she gasped. ‘I hope there’s another road out, or people’s meals won’t stay down for long.’

‘Not a restaurant.’ Ahead of them, bathed rose-pink in the sunset, there was a straggle of buildings, a chimney from which smoke uncoiled lazily in the still evening air.

‘Then where are we?’ They seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, she realised with alarm. And isolated too. There were no other cars around that she could see, so it couldn’t be a very popular establishment.

‘This is my house.’ The mockery was back, full force. ‘The family mas I was telling you about.’

He paused. ‘I decided, ma belle, that we would dine at home tonight. Enjoy our mutual discoveries in private.’ He let that sink in, then added silkily, ‘I hope you approve?’

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

THE SILENCE IN the car was almost electric. Meg was rigid, her mouth dry.

How could she have been such a fool? she asked herself with agonised disbelief. She should have listened to her misgivings, but instead she’d trusted him—because he was the first attractive man to show any interest in her, she flayed herself savagely—and now here she was, in some kind of ghastly trap.

This is my house. Here, in the back of beyond, miles from anywhere—and she didn’t even know where ‘anywhere’ was.

‘“Will you walk into my parlour?” said the spider to the fly.’ And she’d done exactly that. A nightmare coming true.

Her hands curled into fists in her lap.

She said, keeping her voice cool and even, ‘I seem to have lost my appetite. Will you take me back to the auberge, please?’

There was a silence, then Jerome Moncourt shrugged, the dark eyes agleam with amusement, as if he knew exactly the thoughts and fears churning under her calm exterior.

‘Of course—if that is what you prefer,’ he agreed equably. ‘But Berthe will be desolated if you do not at least taste her cassoulet.’

‘Berthe?’ she questioned.

‘My housekeeper,’ he said. ‘She and her husband Octavien have lived here, looking after the house and the vines, since my grandfather left. Now they look after me.’ He pointed towards the house. ‘See?’

A man had emerged from the front entrance, and was standing hands on hips, watching them curiously. He was of medium height and stocky build, his face as brown and wrinkled as a walnut, the inevitable beret pulled on over his shock of white hair. He had bow legs, and a drooping moustache, and bore no resemblance to the kind of sinister henchman who’d collaborate in kidnap and rape, Meg decided, feeling suddenly oddly reassured.

‘Will you risk my dining-table now?’ Jerome Moncourt enquired courteously. ‘Or shall we eat here, in the car?’

Put like that, it did sound ridiculous, Meg admitted to herself, as she got out of the car with all the dignity she could muster.

‘All the same,’ she said, as they walked towards the house, ‘you should have told me we were coming here.’

‘Perhaps I did not dare. You might have refused—and,’ his voice gentled, ‘I so much wanted to see you tonight.’

It was the perfect answer, she thought. Perhaps almost too perfect, as if this was a well-practised line, her head reminded her as her heart began to thud against her ribcage. But then she surely didn’t think she was the first young woman to feel her pulses quicken and her body grow feverish with excitement at the smile in his eyes?

And she’d been stupid to think he’d ever need to resort to rape, or any kind of force, she told herself wrily. His tactics would be far more subtle, and just as dangerous in their way. He was still the spider, and she the fly, and she mustn’t forget that.

But his web was a delight.

The house was built on two storeys, the roof tiled in faded terracotta, sloping gently down to the storage buildings which flanked it. Beneath the roof, the stone walls were washed the colour of rich cream, dark green shutters guarded the windows, and a golden climbing rose flung a triumphal arch over the square doorway.

The door led straight into the main room of the house, the ceiling low and dark-beamed, the floor flagged. At one end there was a large fireplace, its massive hearth empty now. On either side of it two battered leather sofas confronted each other. Opposite the entrance, glazed doors gave access to a courtyard bright with stone troughs filled with flowers. In the corner, a spiral staircase led to the upper floor.