A Desperate Fortune (28 page)

Mary felt a sudden pricking at the bent back of her neck, and resisting the strong urge to raise her hand to shield the spot, she turned her head instead with careful nonchalance and found MacPherson’s gaze directed calmly at the pages of his book. It was the third time she had felt that he was watching her, yet either the sensation was the product of her overwrought imaginings or else he was too quick in his reactions to be caught.

It was imagined, she decided. There was nothing she was doing that would warrant the attention of the Scotsman, and he impressed her as a man who did not waste the slightest effort without need but only spent it with efficiency. Which meant that even now, when it appeared that he was idle, he most likely had a purpose known to none except himself.

If so, his face revealed no hint of it. He looked less fearsome, reading. With his gaze turned downward it had not the piercing steadiness that hardened all his features; and his mouth, although still crooked and uneven at its corners, was not set into its stricter lines. He looked almost…approachable, she thought. And while he never would be handsome and had not the will to charm, she did allow some women might yet find his hair attractive.

Having rarely seen it but by evening candlelight, and mostly in the day beneath his hat, she had observed today that in the sunlight angling through the window of the drawing room MacPherson’s fair hair had a range of hidden lights within it, from a color much like honey to a reddish tone that only showed when struck directly by the sun. It might have even curled, had not he kept it gathered neatly back into the black band at his collar.

He prepared to turn another page and Mary saw the movement of his eyelids and immediately looked away before he caught
her
looking. With her head bent as before above her journal she continued:

—we can do no more than wait until he leads us onwards. I confess I would not mind to spend more time here in this house, for Mrs. Foster is a very amiable hostess and her son is—

“Sir,” said Johnny Foster, entering the room in some disorder. He appeared to have just come from the outside, though Mary had not heard the front door open, so he must have entered by the back. His face was flushed as if from running. “You were right,” he told MacPherson. “He did come.”

MacPherson closed his book and set it to the side. “When?”

“Not a quarter of an hour ago. I recognized him easily from your description, so before he’d even had a chance to disembark I had got in before the other men and offered him my help, and as you’d said he would he asked if I had seen two men arriving with two ladies, and he gave me an account that matched you perfectly, and I replied as you instructed.”

Here he stopped to draw a breath while all the others, save MacPherson, stared at him.

MacPherson waited. “And?”

His breath by now somewhat restored, the lad went on, “And when I told him you were gone away again this morning towards Avignon, he did not wait to hear another word, but told his boatman to untie the moorings and continue on. He was not but five minutes at the quayside, and once I’d watched him out of sight I ran back here to tell you, sir.”

MacPherson gave a nod, which Mary could have told young Johnny was the closest he could hope to come to getting praise.

“I’m all at sea,” complained his mother. “
Who
has come?”

Beside her, Thomson slowly smiled in open admiration. “Mr. Stevens,” was his guess, and having read the confirmation in MacPherson’s unexpressive face he added to their hostess, to explain, “We had an Englishman who traveled with us and who caused us trouble. We escaped him at Chalon, and I had hoped that was the end of him, but now I do perceive Mr. MacPherson neither shared my hope nor counted on it, for which lack of faith I am inordinately grateful.”

As should they all be, Mary reasoned. With the current of the river, Stevens would be traveling much faster by the water than they’d travel by the road. They’d be behind him now and not before him, which for any hunted prey produced a great advantage.

Rising to his feet, MacPherson stretched as though to sit so long had left his shoulders stiff, and turning, said to Mrs. Foster, “Call your coachman.”

Luc saw me looking at my watch and smiled. “He’ll call us when he needs us. And it’s only been ten minutes since we dropped him off. Relax.”

“It isn’t that.” I wasn’t worried about Noah. Even though he clearly didn’t like to take piano lessons, he’d seemed happy when we’d left him at his teacher’s house. She had three cats.

“What, then?”

“It’s nothing.” I could hardly tell him I was keeping track of time while I was answering his questions to make sure I wasn’t monologuing. “Anyway, I’m boring you.”

“I’m not bored. Why would I be bored?”

“Because it’s really boring, what I’m telling you,” I reasoned. He had asked me about ciphers and their history and I knew I’d rambled on a bit, but thankfully, as he’d said, it had only been ten minutes. I’d been worried it had been much longer, given that I’d only now just realized we were walking down a different street.

I really liked this little town, called Carrières-sur-Seine, a short drive north along the river from Chatou. The oldest section had retained its ancient character, with houses that had clearly stood for centuries, their walls of rustic limestone and rough plaster mellowed warmly by the weather and the years. The town was built into a hillside and its narrow streets were set on different levels, winding down towards the languid River Seine.

We passed a tight gap where a flight of stone steps steeply dropped between two houses, giving me a brief view of the roofs below, a bit of green that might have been a park, the shining silver strip of river, and a smudge of leafless trees.

Luc said, “I’ll tell you if I’m ever bored.”

He wouldn’t, though, I knew. He was too nice. I dipped my chin a fraction so my mouth just touched the soft edge of the scarf I wore—the blue scarf Luc had bought for me a week ago in Paris. It had fast become my favorite.

“Are you cold?” he asked.

“Not really. Just my hands.”

“My hands are warm.” He held one out to make it clear that was an invitation, so I took it, liking how his fingers closed with care around my own.

I liked the whole sensation, actually, of walking hand in hand with Luc. Our steps matched well. We weren’t so far apart in height—with taller men I had to walk more briskly to keep up, but there was no need to adjust my stride at all when keeping pace with Luc. We fit together naturally.

I would have called it “comfortable” except it wasn’t. I felt too aware of him, too flutteringly nervous on the inside to be comfortable. This felt much closer to the first relationships I’d had in adolescence than the ones I’d had more recently: the thrill and the anticipation and the all-consuming thoughts that I’d begun to have of him. And then again, in some ways it felt nothing like those earlier encounters either, leaving me confused as to exactly what it
did
feel like.

Like
Luc
, I told myself.
It
feels
like
holding
hands
with
Luc
.

He asked, “What would you like to talk about?”

“America.”

“America?”

“I’ve never been. You have.”

“Yes, well, my mother’s an American.”

“I know. Denise told me.”

“You talk about me with Denise?” He didn’t seem put out. In fact, he looked a little pleased.

“Sometimes. Is that all right?”

“Of course.” His fingers moved and slipped between my own until our hands were more securely linked together. “What else has she told you of my family?”

“That your mother and your brother moved to California when he went to school, and left you here,” I said. “Do they still live apart, your parents?”

“No, that was a temporary situation. Now they live together, half the year in Paris, half in California.”

“And your brother?”

“He’s in California, still. He loves it there. He works for the same company I do, for Morland Electronics, only his job is much more important than mine.”

His eyes were crinkled slightly at the corners so I couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not, but since he’d told me that his brother was a programmer, I guessed that Luc was teasing.

“What’s your brother’s name?” I asked, acquiring details for the mental file I was assembling on Luc’s family.

“Fabien.”

“He’s two years older than you?”

“Yes. Two years and two months. Just how much have you talked to Denise?”

“A bit. She only has good things to say about you.”

Luc’s mouth lifted at the corners. “Yes, I pay her well to do that. What exactly would you like to know,” he asked, “about America?”

I liked the way he answered questions, so straightforward, nothing seeming out of bounds. And he was very skilled, I soon discovered, at describing things. We walked along the river for a while, along the gravel pathways of what looked to be the remnants of a formal garden, but instead of truly noticing the fountain and the fishpond I was seeing California in my mind: the rise of vineyards washed by sunlight underneath a sky as blue as Luc’s own eyes, and sunsets flaming on the far horizon over the Pacific Ocean where the great waves rolled and rose and broke along an endless beach of sand.

It sounded beautiful. I said as much.

“It is,” he said. “But every place has something that is beautiful about it, if you only look to find it.”

We climbed another flight of steps to street level, the river at our backs now, and Luc told me, “Come, I’ll show you something beautiful.”

He led me up a little lane, paved red with a cobblestone gutter that ran down its center, and houses to one side that had been half-carved from the pale limestone cliff of the hill. The most lovely of these had blue shutters, a blue-painted gate, and a half-rounded wall like an old castle turret with trees growing in a dark frieze at its top.

“Denise,” he told me, “has a special fondness for these houses. They’re called ‘troglodytes,’ and in the town where she grew up, in Chinon, there are many of them carved out of the cliffs. Some very ancient. But the part I want to show you is up here.”

He led me up the winding lane and round a corner where the hills and walls closed in upon us and we stepped into a dark and quiet passage that must once have been a house carved from the stone—the rotted skeletons of wooden joists and wall supports still showed in some few places—but had now become essentially a cave, with one small section of its roof left open to the sky. I stood there in the dark and felt the welcome safe embrace of walls and ceiling close around me in a hug so nearly physical it made me smile in happiness.

“You see?” Luc’s voice was close, and quiet. “Beautiful. I’m sure it was a good house in its time as well, but sometimes what is left behind when something has been lost is even better than the thing that came before, you know?”

I couldn’t disagree with him, not standing in that ruined place.

Luc told me, “Noah’s friend Michelle thinks this would be the perfect place to keep a dragon.”

“Denise says she’s quite a character.”

“Michelle? She is, but in a good way. Noah wants to introduce you.”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

Luc asked, “Why not?” and seemed puzzled so I tried to share my reasoning.

“Denise says Noah likes it when the people in his life know one another. Right? Well, I don’t think I ought to be in Noah’s life.”

The light where we were standing was enough to let me see his face and know that he was frowning slightly, but I couldn’t really see his eyes. “You’re there already.”

“But I shouldn’t be.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” I told him, “when I leave, he’ll be too sad.” He must have seen how deeply Noah got attached to things, I thought. I didn’t want to be responsible for making Noah sad, the way he’d been when he believed he’d lost Diablo.

Luc, still frowning in the dark, said, “When you leave…?”

“Yes, when my work is done and I go home to London.”

He stayed silent for a moment. Then he told me, “You don’t have to leave completely. There are trains, you know. And planes. And roads.”

“Luc.”

“I’m in London every other month on business as it is,” he added.

“Luc.” I felt a sudden weight within my chest, a pressing sadness as I realized he was wanting something more than I could give him; something more than just a simple holiday romance. “I don’t… I can’t…” He mattered more than any of the others had, and so it hurt me more to disappoint him, but that only made it more important he should hear the truth. “I can’t sustain a real relationship. I always mess things up.” I’d meant to state that calmly as a fact, but my voice wobbled on the final words and Luc’s own voice grew gentle in response.

“How do you mess things up?”

In
every
way
conceivable
, I could have told him. “I just do.”

“It might not happen this time.”

“Yes, it will. It always does. I’m just not capable—”

“Who told you that?” His words, still quiet, cut across my own with an insistence that I simply couldn’t bring myself to answer, so I briefly closed my eyes and closed my mind against the memories.

Luc fell silent too, and when my eyes came open he was watching me. Not crowding me, but standing close enough that I was very much aware of him.

He asked me, “If you could…if you were capable of having a relationship, would you want one with me?”

“Yes.”

“You like me.”

“Yes.”

“Good. So your plan was that we should spend time with each other, and then you would leave me?”

“Yes.”

Luc gave a nod, and remarkably I saw the curve of his smile.

“What?” I asked.

“It’s a terrible plan.” He came closer. “No, really, you need to revise it. I’ll help you.” He kissed me—just lightly, but there in the dark of the cavern-like passage his touch left me buried in feelings.

I still tried to argue, “I can’t change.”

He rested his forehead on mine. “You don’t have to. Simple math. You only have to change the value of one variable to affect the outcome of the whole equation.”

My efforts to focus on logic were hampered by feeling his hands at the small of my back. “And you’re trying to tell me that you’re that one variable?”

“Well, of all the men you’ve known before, were any of them me?”

His logic made me smile a little. “No.”

“Then I’m the variable.” Lowering his mouth to mine, he set about convincing me, and did a thorough job of it. I wanted to believe.

He said, “You never need to change for me.” His breath was warm against my cheek. My hair. My neck. “You understand? You never need to change.”

It seemed he somehow needed a reply, but since I didn’t have the focus or the energy to form a proper sentence, I just answered with, “OK.”

I felt him smile against my skin and he pressed closer to my body in the darkness and I really didn’t notice much beyond that till his mobile rang to tell us it was time to pick up Noah.

We had lunch at a café somewhere—I didn’t notice much about that, either—and we took our time in getting back, so when they dropped me at the front of the Maison des Marronniers the lights in some of the château’s front windows had already been switched on against the fall of twilight.

Luc got out and came around to get the door for me, and bent to kiss me one more time with warmth, and touched my arm the way that people sometimes did when they were being reassuring. Then he turned his head and gave a nod to someone on the terrace and in English said, “Good evening.”

Which alone should have prepared me.

But it still surprised me when I turned and saw my cousin standing on the top step.

She returned my hug as tightly as I gave it, and explained when I asked why she hadn’t told me she was coming, “Well, I wanted to surprise you. I appear to have succeeded.”

She was watching Luc’s car trundle off around the circle of the drive.

“Now what, exactly, Sara darling,” Jacqui asked, “was
that
?”

* * *

I saved myself from what I knew would probably have been a very long and disapproving lecture by distracting Jacqui with the pages I’d transcribed of Mary’s diary.

After supper, Jacqui brought the pages from my workroom to the salon, poured a glass of wine, and curled into the sofa near the fireplace. “This,” she said to me, “is fabulous.”

I felt a swell of pride. “You think he’ll like it, then?”

“Who?”

“Alistair. Who else?”

She finished with another page and laid it facedown on the growing pile beside her. “Yes, of course he’ll like it. This is really so much better than the mundane sort of stuff he was expecting. I mean, honestly. This reads just like a—”

“—thriller. Yes, you’ve said.”

My words seemed to intrigue Claudine, who came in from the dining room to join us, switching on another table lamp as she passed by to take her own seat at the sofa’s other end. She’d brought a glass of wine with her as well, and set it down now as she touched the stack of pages overturned between herself and Jacqui. “May I?”

“Have you not read it yet? Then yes, please do,” my cousin said. “It’s fascinating.”

While the two of them were reading, I let my thoughts drift backward happily to Luc and what he’d said to me this afternoon, and how he’d held me. How he’d kissed me.

“Ooo,” said Jacqui. “I’ve got chills.”

I roused myself. “From which part?”

“Mr. Stevens.”

“Has he just begun to travel with them?”

“Yes.”

“Then wait,” I told her. “It gets better.”

For another several minutes I heard nothing but the clinking noises from the kitchen as Denise washed dishes. I’d have helped her, but the times when I had offered she had firmly told me no, then made me coffee so I’d sit and keep her company, and since I hadn’t seen my cousin in nearly a fortnight I decided I had better keep
her
company instead.

Claudine said, “Your diarist—Mary? She seems quite intrigued by this Mr. MacPherson.”

My cousin said, “
I’m
quite intrigued by this Mr. MacPherson.” She grinned. “The allure of the Scotsman, and all that.”