Tower Of Shadows

He shrugged. ‘Then I will have to try other methods.’

She stared at him. ‘What do you propose to do? Evict me from my mother’s house? You have no right.’

‘Legally, perhaps no,’ he said softly. ‘But the moral grounds are a different matter. Your mother, mademoiselle, left a trail of devastation behind her when she departed from our lives. I was only a boy of ten at the time, but it left its mark on me too. I do not propose to allow this to happen a second time—with you.’

‘You can do exactly as you please,’ she said thickly. ‘But I will not listen to any more of your rotten insinuations about my mother. I loved her, and when she died I felt as if every light in the world had dimmed.’

For a moment, he was granite-still. The he said icily, ‘You were not alone in that. My stepfather, whom I loved dearly also, had a complete breakdown when she left—when she abandoned him as she did.’ His face was bleak. ‘Presumably she never told you that either? No, I thought not.’ He shook his head. ‘If she never spoke of us, mademoiselle, believe me, it was through shame.’

‘I’ve heard enough,’ Sabine flung at him. ‘If Maman ran away, it was because she had good and sufficient reason.’ She took a deep breath. ‘You ordered me off your land a few hours ago. Now I’m telling you to go, and don’t come back. I am not for sale, not now, not ever.’

He took a step towards her, and she bent swiftly and snatched up a stone from the flowerbed beside her.

‘Go.’ Her voice rose. ‘I said get out of here.’

He raked her from head to foot with one long, contemptuous look, then turned on his heel, and strode away under the arch and out of sight.

The tension drained from her, and she sagged limply against the front doorpost. She realised she was still gripping the stone, and dropped it with a little horrified cry. What the hell had she thought she was going to do with it—throw it at him?

She couldn’t have. She wasn’t violent—or hysterical. She’d never behaved in her life as she’d just done, and she couldn’t understand or justify her reactions.

She wasn’t a total dummy where men were concerned. She was reasonably attractive, and outgoing, and normally she had little difficulty in establishing cordial relationships in both her working and social life. She’d always had boyfriends, although so far she hadn’t been tempted to engage in any serious commitment. Casual encounters that ended in bed had never been her scene, and in today’s sexual climate they were not simply tacky, but positively dangerous.

Usually, she met people halfway, and tried not to make snap judgements about them. She hoped they would make the same allowances for her.

But this man—this arrogant de Rochefort creature—galled her as no one had ever done before. It wasn’t just the terrible things he’d implied about Isabelle, although, God knew, they were bad enough. It was his totally unwarranted attitude to herself.

He seemed to have hated her on sight, yet he knew nothing about her, except that she bore a passing physical resemblance to Isabelle. And on such flimsy grounds she’d apparently been tried and sentenced. It was just assumed that she had some ulterior motive in coming here, and she wasn’t allowed to defend herself. The injustice of it numbed her.

The worst her mother could be charged with was running away. And was it any wonder she’d fled, if she’d been subjected to the same bullying and threats by an earlier generation of de Rocheforts? Sabine thought hotly. That—arrogant brute had implied that her mother had taken his family for a ride financially, yet, according to Ruth Russell, Isabelle had been pregnant and penniless, reduced to working as a mother’s help when Hugh met her. The two stories contradicted each other.