Grave Consequences (Grand Tour Series #2) (5 page)

“What did you think of your mad jump into the Rhône this morning, Mr. Stapleton?” Lil asked him, casting him her best attempt at a flirtatious smile.

I frowned. Arthur was much too old for her. That wasn’t quite fair—there were plenty of May-December romances—but there was something about him that made me hesitate…something I couldn’t quite grasp. It nagged at me.

“I thought it was perhaps the most sane thing I’ve done of late,” he returned.

“Oh? How so?” I asked.

He sat next to Will in the backward-facing seat of our rented motorcar, across from us. The two shared a smile. Their hair was not yet quite dry, and their faces held fresh color.

“Sometimes a man just needs to remember he’s alive,” Arthur said to me, his blue eyes sweeping over Lillian, too. “You step off a ledge like that, and every second feels like a minute. Your whole life runs through your mind as if it’s about to end, and you have the maddest desire to turn and try to catch yourself, claw your way back. But then you’re falling, piercing the water, going under, under, under. You reach for the sky, kicking for all you’re worth, desperate for air, and when your face breaks the surface…” He took off his bowler hat, ran a hand through his blond hair, and then settled it again. “There isn’t anything quite like it. Wouldn’t you agree, McCabe?”

“Indeed,” Will said, a glint in his warm eyes. “I can see why our host jumps each morn. It’s quite the way to start the day.”

The motorcar’s engine roared to life, and the driver got in at last. We joined the caravan of three other vehicles carrying the rest of our traveling party, servants, and guardians off to visit the town of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, which had its own Roman ruins but was more famous for being where the seer Nostradamus was born, and where van Gogh painted
The Starry Night
during a stay in a place for the mentally infirm.

“Perhaps I’ll have to attempt a leap myself,” I said, thinking over the hot, dry day ahead of us and how welcome a swim would feel.

“I think not,” Will said, his brow lowering. “Uncle Stuart nearly had a fit of apoplexy when he learned we had attempted it. He would never hear of our fairer companions doing so.”

“Pish,” said Lillian. “If the boys can do it, so can we!”

Arthur smiled in his catlike way. “It’s a different thing, being on the edge of the precipice. Ten dollars says you won’t get farther than thinking about it.”

“Ten dollars!” I said, outraged by both his attempt to lure my sister in to the jump and his unseemly, costly bet.

His eyes widened at my response. “I only propose a gentlemanly wager,” he said. “Forgive me if I’ve offended you or your sister.” He seemed sincere.

“Not at all,” I said, my tone lower, less defensive. “It’s only that—”

“I’ll take your wager, Mr. Stapleton,” Lillian said, reaching out her hand to shake his in the manner of men.

“Lillian.”

“No, Cora. I’m a woman grown, with quite a generous bank account. If I wish to make it ten dollars fatter with Mr. Stapleton’s money, I shall do it.”

Art threw his head back and laughed at her playful audacity. “We shall see, Miss Kensington. We shall see.”

I sighed and cast a helpless glance in Will’s direction, but he only gave me a shrug. I looked away, out to the rocky landscape beside us. Part of me wanted to stop her. But how could I do that when there was a part of myself that wanted to do the same? Leap, fly, plunge…for a moment, aware of little other than the feel of the wind in my hair and the rush of adventure to tell me I was truly alive.

My life…I shook my head and thought about how mad this whole adventure was. A girl who’d come from a dirt-poor farm in Montana now dressed in such finery, riding in luxurious motorcars, guarded by fierce men determined to keep others from ever attacking us again. That I’d even been involved in such an attack was monumental in itself. I could never have imagined such a dramatic turn of events. And thinking it through, it made me so weary I wished I could hop out and somehow run across these foreign countries, across the sea, all the way home.

I stared up at the white, chalky cliffs, wishing, for the moment, that they were the blue, snowcapped peaks of my youth.

“Are you yet with us here in France, Miss Cora?” Arthur asked over the roar of the engine and the wind from the open window.

I looked up at him in surprise. Were my thoughts so apparent?

“In part,” I said, not missing Will’s slight scowl. Was it my imagination, or did Arthur’s faint flirtation irritate him? “I miss my home in Montana.”

“Ahh, yes. I hear the Kensingtons have a fine manor in Butte.”

“Or is it the farm?” Lillian asked, looping her arm through mine. “I bet you’re homesick for your farm.”

“Farm?” Arthur said with pleasure lighting his eyes. “I thought Felix misspoke last night…I hardly imagined the Kensington clan residing in anything short of the world’s finest abodes.”

“You might be surprised,” I said, giving him a sly smile for once.
Let him wonder over that
, I thought. “So, tell me,” I said, clapping my gloved hands together. “William, what say you of our mighty prophet Nostradamus? Was he a godly prophet or an evil hack preying upon innocent medieval minds?”

“You know of Nostradamus?” Will said, his eyes warming as they met mine.

“A little. We studied the Medicis and learned that Catherine was quite the admirer of the man, making him her son’s physician.”

Will nodded. “He called himself a doctor, but he was thrown out of medical school. He was largely self-trained, after traveling for years, studying the art of herbal medicines. The plague took his first wife and children from him. In subsequent waves of the disease, he did his best to save others.”

“But it was his prophecies that made him most famous, correct?” Arthur asked.

“Indeed. Some say he wrote of the great fire of London in 1666, as well as of the rise of Napoleon.”

“How thrilling!” Lillian said, clapping her hands together. “What else?”

Will shrugged and shook his head. “You mustn’t give it too much credence, Lillian. He attached no specific dates, lending plenty of room for loose interpretations to be ‘proven’ in time. He wrote of floods, wars, famine in the years ahead of us yet.”

“How did he learn of such things so far in advance?” she pressed. “Séances? A trance?”

“No, no. And you mustn’t consider such things glamorous,” Will told her gently. “The man himself feared the Inquisition, and for good reason.… He was in tenuous territory. It was fortunate for him that prophets and astrologers were exempt from the hunt for heretics.”

“But do you believe he had the gift? That he was a true prophet?” Lil asked.

Will gave her a kind smile. I liked that he seemed to be able to show that he cared even as he corrected. And it was always wrapped in a quiet strength. Being around him was reassuring. Calming. “I personally think he was a student of human nature and history, watching the rise and fall of rulers and kingdoms, the rhythm of nature in drought and flood. His predictions were merely recitations of those observations. But you can decide for yourself.”

~William~

Will wasn’t certain what Stapleton’s game was, but there was definitely a game in play. Hugh had invited him along on their excursion before Will had had the opportunity to intervene. His uncle preferred that they travel with only their clients. It was a common issue on the tour—once acquaintances latched on they were difficult to shake loose. But Kensington and Morgan were paying for this tour, not Stapleton, so while an afternoon together was acceptable, Will hoped the man would have the good sense to bow out in the coming days.

Will picked at a loose thread around the button on his jacket, electing to wrap it around the base of the button rather than risk pulling it and sending the button flying. He felt God’s nudge and knew his Father was asking him about his real agitation over Arthur’s presence.

Truth be told, it was because he was finally free of Richelieu. Or at least, Cora was free of Richelieu for a few precious days, and he’d hoped he’d be able to find more time with her. He hadn’t expected another man to enter the picture, more than nominally curious about the newest Miss Kensington.

But he had no right to such feelings. He was her guardian, her tutor, her guide, nothing more. To lay claim to anything else would endanger every future goal he’d ever held. If Wallace Kensington thought for a moment that Will held any illusions that something might come of his friendship with Cora, the consequences would be grave indeed. He’d be dismissed on the spot; his uncle would have to carry on without him—and Will doubted he had the stamina to do so—and the family business itself would be in jeopardy. Who would send their daughters on future tours if word got out that the guide preyed upon innocent young females given to his care?

His eyes narrowed as they pulled to a stop and Cora leaned forward to admire the Autographic Kodak camera that Arthur pulled from his pocket and carefully began to wind.

“Oh, take our photograph!” Lillian said, leaning toward Cora.

“Gladly,” Arthur said, stretching out the lens and leaning over the viewing piece, then clicking the button at the end of a wire. He opened a small window on the back and wrote with a special pen, reading his words as he did so. “Two of the loveliest women in all Provence—Cora and Lillian Kensington.”

“Indeed,” Will muttered, not waiting for the driver before he opened the small door and escaped, stretching out his long legs and brushing out his trousers. He lifted his hand to Lillian, helping her step down, and then Cora. Arthur followed, and Felix came alongside him, asking about his camera.

“I should pick up one myself. It’d be an ideal way to document our travels,” Felix said.

“Of course!” Arthur said. “It’s a shame you haven’t had one to date.”

“I’m afraid my uncle doesn’t favor them,” Will said regretfully, coming up on Arthur’s other side. “He prefers our clients catalog their own memories. Or sketch or journal.”

“Perhaps it’s time for your uncle to embrace the future,” Arthur said lowly, as the old bear lumbered toward them.

Will bristled at his words. Over the course of the afternoon, Arthur took three rolls of film—thirty-six frames—of the Kensingtons and Morgans attempting their hand at pétanque with old men in berets beneath the slim shade of dry, city-bound trees, on hard dirt ideal for the rolling-ball game. Will resented Art’s continual demand for the group to hold still as he documented the moment, and Uncle Stuart’s jowls began to grow red with irritation as it went on.

Art took photographs of them listening to Uncle Stuart sharing a legend of Nostradamus’s burial—that the Provençal-born prophet had a brass plate on his chest with the date his body would be disinterred, even when he’d left explicit instructions never to disinter his remains. Art took photographs of them exiting the Roman ruins of the mausoleum. And he took photographs of them sitting in two rows before blank canvasses, attempting to re-create van Gogh’s famous painting of a night sky as afternoon shadows grew deep. It seemed he had no regard for the cost of the film, or the coming cost of developing, telling the group that the photographs could be printed out on special paper and mailed home as postcards.

More often than naught, Cora was at the center of his compositions. Will was certain of it. His eyes narrowed, and for the first time, he sincerely hoped Richelieu would show up this week in Provence.

I’d rather take the devil I know than the devil I don’t.

~Cora~

I resisted the pull of the dive for the next couple of days. At first my resolve was to give Lillian a good example, after she hovered on the brink of the castle wall and ultimately had to forfeit ten dollars to Arthur—which he graciously tried to refuse. Will had insisted he accept it, because he wanted Lil to remember that she ought not wager at all.

But after another dry and dusty day about in the countryside, I found the pull increasingly difficult to ignore; I caught myself constantly daydreaming of my leap, especially after watching the men pierce the water for three days in a row from my secret view on my balcony. Our suppers, shared on the sprawling stone patio of the chateau with a pleasant breeze off the river, eased my angst some. We dined together outside on the wide porch, eating roasted chicken with lemon and sprigs of fresh rosemary and crepes filled with mushrooms and cream. But the river seemed to whisper to me, and I looked to her again and again. When dinner was done, we milled about, sipping at champagne with raspberries bobbing in the bubbly depth, posing for a new round of photographs by Arthur. We admired the setting sun, which cast the river below us into a deeper hue of teal, and it seemed to call to me again, enticing me in.