A Place of Storms (2 page)

'We?' Clare caught her breath on a little sob. 'You mean you will help me?'

Andrea was taken aback for a moment. 'Well, I'll do anything I can,' she said cautiously. 'Only it's difficult to see what…'

'The first thing is to get that letter back—the one where I said I'd marry him.' Clare sat up eagerly, miraculously restored to optimism. 'And that contract thing. I must have been mad!'

'Yes,' Andrea agreed drily. 'What are you going to do? Write and ask him for them so that you can check if they're legally binding? I don't think he'll swallow that somehow.'

'No, of course he wouldn't. You'll have to go to St Jean des Roches and steal them back. He's bound to keep them at the chateau.'

'I'll
have to go…' Words momentarily failed Andrea, then she looked squarely at her cousin. 'No, Clare.'

'But it's the obvious solution. I daren't go myself. He might force me to do—anything.'

'And what will he do when I arrive—get out the welcome mat, I suppose.' Andrea gave her an irritated look.

'Well, he would—if he thought you were me,' Clare said.

'Now I know you're mad,' Andrea said faintly. 'You really think I'm going to career halfway across France and pretend to be you in order to steal some letters from a man whom by your own admission you've led up the garden path. You say yourself you dare not go anywhere near him. If he thinks I'm you, he might force me into—anything!'

'No, no.' Clare spoke soothingly. 'If anything like that were to happen, you would simply tell him who you were. He has no hold over you, after all.'

Andrea stared at her wonderingly. 'You've got it all worked out, haven't you?' she managed at last.

'I've had precious little else to think about,' Clare said tartly. 'I couldn't possibly go. I've got the wedding to get ready for, for one thing, and Peter would think it very odd if I dropped all the preparations and disappeared to France. And I can't delay much longer, or this Levallier man will come to London and then everyone will know.' She shivered and turned pleading eyes on Andrea. 'Peter would be so angry. He might leave me. And his beast of a mother would encourage him—she's always hated me. Oh, Andy, if I lose Peter, I don't know what I'll do. I shan't want to go on living.'

Andrea looked at her coldly. 'You could always marry this—Levallier. It can't have seemed such a repulsive prospect at one time.'

'You're utterly heartless.' Clare's lips were trembling ominously again. 'And I thought you would understand.'

'I do understand—I think.' Andrea gave an exasperated sigh. 'But it's not as simple as you seem to think. You're asking me to commit an actual crime—to steal some letters.'

'But they're my letters.' Clare looked at her wide-eyed.

'I think the law takes a different view,' Andrea said grimly.

'Oh—the law.' Clare dismissed the combined weight of French and British justice with a wave of her hand. 'I wrote that letter, and I want it back. And you're the ideal person to get it for me!'

'How have you arrived at that conclusion? Is there some criminal element in the family that I don't know about?'

'No, but you do work in public relations, so you're used to dealing with awkward people. And you are owed some leave—I heard you telling Mummy so last week.' She paused, her eyes searching her cousin's unyielding face. 'Andy, if you won't do it for me, do it for Daddy. He's always treated you as if you were his own daughter…'

'If you're reminding me that he paid for my school fees as well as yours, it's unnecessary.' The colour was suddenly heightened in Andrea's cheeks. 'Blackmail must be catching, I think.' She stood up abruptly and reached for her suede coat and bag.

'Now I've made you angry,' Clare said disconsolately. 'I didn't mean it, Andy. I'm just so worried.'

'I know.' Andrea relented slightly as she studied the woebegone figure. 'All I can promise is that I'll think about it. There must be some solution.'

'Oh, there is,' Clare said flatly. 'I can write and tell him to go to hell.' She gave a little shudder. 'Oh, Andy, there'd be the most dreadful row. If there was a court case, it would be in all the papers. It would destroy Mummy and Daddy. They've worked so hard to keep our private lives —private.' Her eyes widened as another dreadful thought occurred to her. 'They might even find out about Jacques and drag him into it.'

Andrea's thoughts were troubled as she descended the staircase to the hall. Although she had resented Clare's words, they had struck home, she was forced to acknowledge. Her own parents were dead, her father when she was a small child, her mother more recently. But this large London house had been a second home to her for as long as she could remember. Without a hint of patronage, neither Uncle Max nor Aunt Marian had ever allowed her to want for anything. Nor had she felt any sense of obligation—until now.

She reached the bottom of the stairs and stood for a moment, rummaging in her bag for her car keys. Whatever happened, it was essential that the news of Clare's folly should be kept from her uncle, she thought. She had been in London when he had suffered that first attack, and had stayed with her aunt, and she knew better than Clare just how precarious his health was, and how entirely necessary it was that he should have a considerable period without stress or worry.

She gave a little restless sigh, and stood turning the keys in her hands, her eyes fixed unseeingly on the parquet floor. If Peter had been a different sort of man, she thought she might have gone to him and pleaded for Clare. But as things were, she knew Clare was right to keep it from him. His conventional soul would be shocked to its core, and he would possibly decide that all his mother's none too subtle hints about Clare's unsuitability as a wife were well founded. In all justice, Andrea supposed that Lady Craigie had right on her side. Clare's sowing of her wild oats had been pretty blatant at times, and Jacques, of whose existence Aunt Marian and Uncle Max were fortunately unaware, had been one of many. Clare had teetered on the edge of disaster on a number of occasions—Andrea recalled with a shudder an abortive plan to move in with a pop singer shortly before her mercurial cousin had taken off for Paris—and it was a miracle that she hadn't been involved in more than one set of unsavoury headlines before now.

And yet for all her wildness, there was something very sweet about Clare. At times, she could be almost touchingly naive and trusting, and Andrea had often consoled herself over Peter's dullness with the thought that his reliability and worthiness might be the shield from her worse self that Clare needed.

She was brought back to earth with a start as the drawing door opened and Aunt Marian came out.

'So there you are, dear. Clare is naughty to keep you all to herself. Max has gone to bed early, and I've no one to drink my chocolate with. Come and keep me company.'

Andrea complied with less than her usual willingness. Aunt Marian was no fool, and she was not convinced of her own ability to keep her inner disturbance to herself. She sank down on to one of the luxurious sofas and took the cup she was handed.

'Have you been talking weddings?' Aunt Marian busied herself with the tall silver pot. 'Max said today he was thankful that Clare was our only daughter. He didn't think he could bear to live through all this uproar a second time.' She smiled across at Andrea affectionately. 'But he'll make an exception for you, dear. When can we start planning your wedding?'

Andrea smiled back constrainedly. 'Oh, there's no one at the moment—no one serious anyway,' she said. 'I think Uncle Max has a few more years of peace ahead of him still once Clare is off his hands.'

'Hmm.' Aunt Marian's eyes studied her for a moment, taking in the slim yet rounded figure, the creamy skin and the soft, vulnerable girl's mouth. 'I don't understand today's young men at all. When I was a girl, you'd have been snapped up in your first season.'

Andrea sighed. 'Maybe I don't want to be snapped up,' she pointed out. 'I do have a career.'

'Yes, I know.' Aunt Marian's tone made it clear what she thought about careers. 'I'm just thankful that Clare seems settled at last. I can speak frankly to you, dear, and I think you know how worried your uncle and I have been over the past two years. We've never wanted to interfere— to stop her living her own life, but there have been times when I've been so frightened for her—frightened that she'd take some disastrous step that she wouldn't be able to recall. Some of the men she's been involved with…' Aunt Marian shuddered slightly. Her eyes looked shrewdly at Andrea. 'I know you don't think Peter is very exciting, dear, but he'll be so good for Clare, believe me he will.'

Andrea forced a smile. 'Yes, I do believe it I just wish that he was a little more…' she paused, searching for the right word.

'Demonstrative,' her aunt supplied. 'I thought so too at first, but now I'm not so sure these outward displays of affection mean a great deal. Clare seems perfectly happy with the situation. She says Peter is shy, and she may be right. It would certainly explain his rather stiff manner sometimes.'

'Perhaps you're right,' said Andrea, setting her cup down on the small table in front of her. 'How is Uncle Max?'

'Behaving very well—avoiding stress and doing what he's told,' his wife said affectionately. 'And Clare's happiness has helped his peace of mind as well. He's even talking of giving up the board altogether and retiring early. He would like to have more time to devote to his charity work, and I'm all for it.' She lowered her voice. 'I don't suppose I should be telling you this, but there's talk of a knighthood in the next Honours list—something he's always dreamed of.'

'But that's wonderful!' Andrea forgot other worries momentarily in her pleasure for her uncle who had given so much of his time for children's charities in recent years. 'And of course, I won't mention it to a soul. Is it definite?'

'Almost, I would say,' her aunt conceded smilingly. 'As long as nothing happens to spoil it for him.' She sighed. 'That's one of the reasons I'm so delighted about Clare. Your uncle's very old-fashioned in some ways, you know, and he has very strong views on the honours system and all it stands for. He wouldn't countenance anything that might bring it into disrepute. And I've always known that if Clare had ever done anything really—foolish, something that might cause a public scandal—these gossip columnists can be quite unscrupulous, dear—then he wouldn't accept the knighthood.'

'You can't be serious.' Andrea stared at her aunt, her brows wrinkled frowningly. 'Uncle Max can't still regard himself as responsible for Clare's dottiness. She's a grown woman.'

Aunt Marian gave a slight smile. 'If she were a grandmother, I don't think it would alter his attitude in the slightest degree. He doesn't approve of this decline in morals they talk about. He feels people in public life should set an example—he always has done.' She sighed. 'Of course, I've never breathed a word of this to Clare herself. I didn't want to burden her with that kind of responsibility, but I don't know whether I was right. Anyway, she's found Peter, so I no longer have any worries on that score.'

Andrea looked at her aunt for a long moment, registering the air of serenity that hung almost tangibly about her. Could she really sit back and see that destroyed? she thought despairingly. Clare was a fool, but marriage to Peter might be the salvation of her, after all.

She got up, forcing a smile.

'Excuse me, will you? I've just remembered—there's something I have to tell Clare.'

Andrea pulled the car into the side of the road, applied the brakes and sat for a moment with her eyes closed. Then she twisted round in her seat and stared back grimly, assimilating almost with disbelief the road she had just ascended.

The late October sun hung low over the valley, and she could see the road like a thin white ribbon winding along the valley side, disappearing at intervals into sheltering clumps of bare trees. On one side of her there had been a towering wall of forbidding black rock, on the other an un-fenced drop down to the gleam of the river far below her. She was thankful that the long drive from Paris had given her a chance to at least familiarise herself with the car before she was faced with these conditions, and she had clung to the wheel with grim determination as she mounted through a succession of hairpin bends, praying she would not meet anything coming in the opposite direction.

She looked at the heavy clouds massing in the west and grimaced. All during the drive, the weather had been perfect—golden and autumnal. She had put to the back of her mind all the things she had heard about Auvergne— she'd read somewhere, where the weather was eternally in conflict with itself. Judging by those clouds, war would soon be declared once again!

She reached for her road map and sat studying it, her brows furrowed slightly. Blaise Levallier was making few concessions to his future wife, she thought, asking her to make her own way to this inaccessible place. In itself, this seemed to contain an element of warning, silently conveying the amount of courage and self-sufficiency it would require to survive in this bleak mountain region with its dead volcanoes, and buildings that seemed to have been hewn from solid lava. Yet, in spite of her nervousness, Andrea had to acknowledge its strange compelling beauty. And of course, she told herself, she was not going to be asked to survive here. She gave a slight mischievous grin as she imagined what Clare, a nervous driver at the best of times, would have said when confronted with the valley road she had just traversed. That might have been one way of solving the problem, she thought, stifling her mirth. How would the unknown Blaise Levallier have coped with a bride who applied her handbrake and stubbornly refused to budge? Anyone as determined as he seemed to be would probably have hired a tractor from one of the hill farms and had her dragged to St Jean des Roches.

She sobered slightly as she put her map away. She had only a few kilometres to go to her destination, and the thought was singularly unappealing. A warning voice inside her seemed to be saying it still wasn't too late to turn the car around and drive back to the comparative sanity of Clermont-Ferrand. She could leave the car there and get a train back to Paris. If Clare had been her sole consideration in all this, she might just have done it, she thought as she re-started the car.