A Place of Storms (13 page)

'Oh, lord!' Andrea pushed her hair back irritably when the tour of inspection was over. 'These rooms are all huge. Surely there must be a smaller one somewhere?'

She looked at the last one they had visited with a jaundiced eye. Any five-year-old would feel totally lost in the depths of that massive bed.

She turned to Madame. 'Isn't there anywhere else?'

Madame spread her hands. The rooms on the floor above were unusable, she pointed out. They had been attics for many years and were even larger than the bedrooms she had seen.

Andrea bit her lip exasperatedly, then sudden inspiration came to her. She swung to Madame. 'What about the tower?'

Madame shook her head. 'No one has been in there since the death of the old Monseigneur,' she insisted. 'It is said it is not safe.'

'I think we'll take a look just the same,' Andrea said determinedly.

The doors that gave admittance to this part of the chateau were all locked and it took a prolonged search to find the keys. Andrea felt a sense of odd excitement as the heavy door on the ground floor swung back, and she stepped inside. The room she entered was crowded with furniture. Everything that had been broken or discarded from the chateau for the past hundred years seemed to have found its way there, she thought, looking round, her nose wrinkling with distaste. It was dirty and gloomy and would need a lot of work to restore it to order. But wasn't a lot of work just what she wanted? She sniffed experimentally, but although the air smelled musty she could not detect any telltale odours of rot or damp. She made towards the steep flight of stairs that led upwards in a sharp spiral, emerging through a sort of open trapdoor in the room above. This had escaped the jumble that had accumulated below and was also bare. Andrea moved out tentatively across the floorboards, testing each step she took. But the floor seemed as solid as the day it had been constructed and even suffered her jumping up and down on it without any signs of stress. She looked round her with a feeling of optimism. A child, she thought, could be happy here in this odd-shaped room with its curving walls. These had been roughly plastered, and were grimy and discoloured, but nothing, she felt, that a coat of paint couldn't improve. The furniture should be kept light and simple, she decided—perhaps just a small divan bed and a chest of drawers for clothes. If the downstairs room was cleared out and painted up, it could make a playroom, she thought, mentally adding gay curtains and warm washable rugs for the floor.

Madame Bresson's head poked rather apprehensively up through the trap. 'Take care,
madame
!'

'It's quite safe,' Andrea assured her. 'And it will be ideal for little Philippe, don't you think?'

But Madame was frowning as she looked around, and Andrea stared as she saw her make a furtive sign of the cross.

'What's the matter?' she asked rather irritably. 'You're surely not going to tell me that the tower is haunted or something?'

Madame shook her head, but the uneasy expression did not lift from her face.

'The spirits of the dead rest in peace at Levallier, madame, may
le bon dieu
be praised. But there are still stories.'

'About this tower?' Andrea said disbelievingly. 'Now, if there had been stories about any of those gloomy bedrooms, I could have believed it.'

But Madame did not share her amusement. 'There have been tragedies,
madame
.'

'Every old house must have its share of them,' Andrea pointed out gently. 'And people have been happy here as well, so perhaps one thing cancels out the other.'

Madame sniffed, obviously unconvinced.

Andrea walked across to the window recess and stared out through the grimy panes. If the ledge was cushioned, she thought, it would make a wonderful window-seat, and the view looked down over the village, and the gleam of the distant river. In many ways she wished she was fitting out these rooms to occupy them herself, but she knew Blaise would not allow her to move so obviously out of the main part of the building.

'Madame,' the housekeeper sounded really anxious, 'be-fore you decide, will you not consult Monseigneur?'

Andrea turned and stared at her. 'I'll mention it to him, naturally. But I can't imagine he'll object. This is an altogether cosier proposition than any of the bedrooms in the chateau. And I think the novelty of the shape will appeal to a child.'

She turned back to the window and began to wrestle with the catch that fastened the narrow casement. It was old and stiff, covered in rust, and Andrea was afraid if she forced it too much it might break off altogether, but eventually it gave way and the window swung open with a protesting squeal of disused hinges.

She gave the housekeeper a triumphant smile. 'That's all this place needs,' she announced. 'Some fresh air. The wind of change.'

She rubbed her dirty fingers of her handkerchief, then gave a slight jump as a loud whistle sounded from the courtyard below. She glanced down and saw Alan staring up at her.

'What are you doing up there?' he called. 'Playing Rapunzel?'

'Something like that,' she laughed. 'What a pity I haven't any hair to let down.'

'I think stairs would probably be less painful. Are there any? Can I come up?'

Behind her, Andrea heard Madame Bresson give a small dry cough of disapproval and guessed she felt this was an unseemly exchange for a bride to take part in on her wedding day.

'It's all a bit complicated,' she returned. 'Wait there and I'll come down.'

She went carefully down the stairs, spreading her hand on the stone wall to balance herself, and saw the pale glimmer of her wedding ring. She grimaced slightly. She had some explaining to do to Alan. Only forty-eight hours before she had been convincing him that her relationship with Blaise was purely on a business level. Now she was married to him.

She went back into the main building, leaving Madame Bresson to lock up behind her, and emerged into the courtyard where Alan was waiting. It had stopped raining, but the air was still and chilly, and she shivered a little, wrapping her arms across her.

'Want some tea?' He looked at her hopefully.

'No, thanks.' She smiled at him, robbing her refusal of any offence. It was probably just as well to be direct, she thought. 'I'm too full of champagne and other delights.'

'Champagne?' he said uncertainly. 'Has there been a party?'

'In a way.' She removed her hand from the pocket of her jeans and held it out.

'Good God,' he said blankly. He took off his glasses and polished them carefully on a fold of his disreputable sweater.  'When did this happen?'

'Today. This morning, to be precise.' Her voice was brittle. 'You must think it very strange…'

'It's really got nothing to do with me,' he said politely. Too politely.

'Oh, hell!' Andrea caught his arm as he turned away. 'Is the offer of tea still open? I really would like to explain.'

His hesitation was only momentary. 'Yes, of course. But there's no need to explain. God, it's your life after all. It's just that—you and the Dark Lord—I can't picture it somehow.' He flushed slightly. 'I suppose I shouldn't call Monsieur Levallier that to you either, but it just seems appropriate.'

'Yes.' She pushed her hands into her jeans pocket and began to walk slowly with him across the courtyard.

'This is all right, is it?' Alan asked suddenly when they were ensconced in his room, steaming mugs in their hands. 'It's only just occurred to me that officially you're on your honeymoon. I'm amazed he even lets you out of his sight for a minute.'

She gave a constrained smile. 'I wasn't joking when I said I was here on business,' she said after a minute. 'There— there's no romance involved. You aren't intruding on—an idyll.'

She had not realised until then what pain that spoken acknowledgment of the situation would cost her. She took a quick sip of her tea, finding an odd comfort in the scalding liquid.

'Well, I'm not even going to pretend I understand.' Alan stirred at his own brew with a pencil. He gave her a faint grin. 'I'm just checking up, you know. Making sure that no irate bridegroom is going to burst in here and cut me down. Is the
crime passionel
still a defence in France, do you know?'

She smiled and shook her head, without speaking. It was peaceful here in the gatehouse, she thought, and she would have to be careful not to start using it—and Alan—as a refuge. There were inherent dangers in this, which she could already see plainly. Alan obviously found her attractive, and it would not be fair on him to spend too much time in his company and let him draw assumptions from this that would be totally unfounded. She could like Alan very much and enjoy being his friend, but that was as far as it would ever go for her, and for him, it might not be enough.

Alan was speaking again. 'You haven't explained yet what you were doing in the tower. I thought no one ever went in there.'

She looked at him in surprise. 'Not as far as I know—although Madame Bresson didn't seem awfully keen.'

'I'm not surprised. She probably thought she would come face to face with Marie-Denise.' He looked at Andrea's uncomprehending face. 'Don't tell me no one's told you about Marie-Denise?'

'I've never even heard the name mentioned,' she said, mildly exasperated. 'Is she someone I should know?'

All kinds of thoughts were racing through her mind. Was this Blaise's fiancée—the girl who had treated him so callously?

'Hardly—unless you were alive two hundred years ago. She was the wife of the Levallier of his day. There was a title then, but it disappeared at the time of the Revolution, and was never revived.' Alan looked rather pointedly at the floor. 'It was one of these arranged marriages. The couple never saw each other until the wedding day, apparently, and when they did see each other, they loathed each other on sight. Consequently when the Marquis returned to Versailles after his marriage, he left Marie-Denise here to enjoy her new status as Marquise on her own.'

'And did she—enjoy it?'

'She seems to have been a girl of spirit,' Alan conceded. 'She didn't take too long in finding consolation. In due course there was a baby—a little boy, which the Marquis could not possibly have fathered. Someone may have tipped him off, however, because he arrived home quite unexpectedly shortly afterwards. But Marie-Denise must have had a premonition, because the child was safely away from the chateau with his wet-nurse, and when the Marquis arrived everything seemed normal—the peasants quiet, and his wife dutiful. Whatever his information had been, it can't have been too specific, and he soon decided that someone had been playing a trick on him and went back to Paris.'

'How do you know all this?' Andrea asked, intrigued.

He shrugged. 'I told you I'd been studying local history. This is one of the unofficial stories everyone pushes in for free. I've heard at least half a dozen versions of it since I've been here, but they all stick to the same basic points. No one can actually prove who Marie-Denise's lover and the father of the child was, though. Some people say he was the son of a neighbouring landowner, but the most popular belief is that he was a man of the soil—one of the local peasantry—or even the Marquis's own major-domo.'

'Obviously a busy lady,' Andrea commented drily.

Alan smiled. 'Not in the way you think,' he said. 'Once she had the child, there was not another hint of scandal. And she was very popular—kind to her servants, good to the poor—in a way her husband was probably incapable of. Her secret became theirs. When the Marquis put in one of his infrequent appearances, the child was removed and looked after until he went away again.'

'But he must have found out?'

'Oh yes,' Alan said gravely. 'Marie-Denise must have had an enemy after all—perhaps the same person who told the Marquis originally. One day the Marquis took his departure—and came back later the same day. The child had returned by then, and he found them together in the tower. Marie-Denise was playing with the child and singing to him—and she looked up to see her husband standing in the doorway. She made some excuse—pretended it was a servant's child whom she was training to be her page, but he knew.'

'What did he say?'

'Nothing. He seems to have acted as if he believed her. That's what makes it so horrible really…' He drank the remains of his tea and set the mug down. 'For about a week he played the devoted husband—toured the estate, gave dinner parties, talked to his tenants. Marie-Denise played her part too. It was too late to hide her son, but she made sure the little boy was kept out of his way. What the eye doesn't see, and all that… But it was too late. One day when she went to the tower she found it locked, and the key gone. She wanted to know why, naturally. So her husband told her. The place was not safe, he said. Only that morning some servant's brat who must have gone in there to play had fallen out of one of the top windows and been killed in the courtyard.'

'Dear God!' Andrea stared "at him, appalled. 'What did she do?'

'What could she do? She couldn't prove anything. It might even have been an accident. She had to go on with the pretence. She couldn't even mourn. This time when the Marquis went back to Paris, she went with him. They never returned to St Jean des Roches, but both died on the guillotine a few years later during the Terror. They had no children, and the chateau was inherited by a cousin. But the tradition that the tower should be kept locked persisted. Once it was unlocked, I was told, Marie-Denise would return to look for her son.'

Andrea shuddered. 'And Madame Bresson assured me there were no ghosts.'

'Nor are there,' Alan declared robustly. 'It's just a story. I haven't really scared you, have I?'

'No.' She summoned up a wan smile. 'But I was planning to use those rooms for a little boy—my—husband's nephew who is coming to live with us. I suppose I'll have to think again.'

'Oh, I don't know.' Alan busied himself with the teapot again. 'That's how these sort of superstitions gain credence. Using those rooms might be the best thing that could happen.'

'Hm.' Andrea was unconvinced. She now had an explanation for the housekeeper's agitation, and her insistence that Blaise should be consulted before any decision about the tower was made.