And Be Thy Love (7 page)

“And you weren’t afraid? The sound didn’t disturb you?”

“No—curiously enough it didn’t disturb me!”

“Perhaps you really are very bold and brave?”

“No, I’m not—I can assure you I’m not!” Their glances came together, and clung for a moment. “Perhaps I sensed that you were

not—an intruder.... ”

“So far as you’re concerned, knowing less than nothing about me, I might well have been an intruder!” Then he walked to the tiny, deep-set window, and stood looking out at the tangled garden. “But history will not repeat itself to-night, for I have arranged that someone will move in before dark, and that someone will be well able to look after you. As a matter of fact, we’re going to call in and see her on our way back, but I’ve already sent her a note, and I know she won’t fail me. She is one of Armand’s favourite tenants.” “Oh, yes?” looking at him for further information.

He ground out his cigarette on the window-ledge.

“I’ve told you that Armand has one virtue, and one virtue only, and that is generosity! He really can be extremely generous on occasion—it’s a kind of weakness, actually, and he probably fancies himself as a noble benefactor when he can so easily afford it, and nobody ever acted the part of a noble benefactor to him! It’s the sort of thing people wish to do when they want to possess some sort of saving grace..! However, this young woman’s husband was sent to prison for some sort of a housebreaking offense, and Armand came to the rescue with a spot of financial assistance. It was badly needed, for there are two small children, and Monique couldn’t very well leave them to earn money. So we are now on our way to Monique....”

“I see.” She stood up. “But if it was the Comte who was generous to her, why should this Monique do something to oblige you?” “Because we’re in the same boat, she and I—we both find it so comforting to lean upon the Comte!” and once again there was a mocking gleam in his eyes.

She looked at him a little doubtfully, and then a little frown drew her soft brown eyebrows together.

“At the present time we’re all three a nuisance to the Comte, aren’t we? I ought to be looking round for a little hotel to stay at, and not put you to the trouble of finding someone to look after me.”

For answer he picked up her hat from the stone floor of the cottage, dusted it carefully with his own immaculate handkerchief, and then handed it back to her with a little bow.

“Shall we go now and find Monique?” he said.

She sighed.

“Nevertheless, I am a trouble....” Then, as she followed him outside she asked curiously: “But why did we come here?” She looked up at the creeper-clad front of what had once been a delightful, if diminutive, dwelling. “It’s in an appalling state, isn’t it?” with regret in her tones. “And it must once have been very pretty.”

“It was.” His eyes were on the gaping thatch, and he shook his head. “I did once spend a very pleasant few weeks here, and I wanted to see it again. I must report to Armand that unless he does something soon there won’t be any roof left to this place, and that would be a pity.”

“You think you might like to come and stay here again?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps,” he repeated, and let his glance rove over her, and her cool pink linen, before he once more shut her into his car.

Monique’s cottage was in a much better state of repair than the one they had just left, and she was hanging out a line of washing in her small garden when the car stopped outside the gate. She looked confused when Caroline stepped from the car, patted her windblown brown hair, and fumbled with the strings of her apron, as if she didn’t quite know whether or not to remove it. She had very rosy cheeks, and bright brown eyes, and Caroline liked her on sight.

“Bonjour, mdm selle!—Bonjour, monsieur”she greeted.

De Bergerac addressed her with his most attractive smile.

“We’re here, Monique, and I know you’re not going to let me down, are you?” looking down confidently into the slightly—in fact, rather curiously—awed brown eyes. He introduced Caroline. “This lady has been ill, and she must be looked after. I know you can do it excellently, Monique.”

Monique looked long, and rather carefully, at the English girl “Mademoiselle looks pale and spirituelle” she announced, at last. “She has undoubtedly been very ill!”

“Oh, I’m much better now,” Caroline assured her, smiling.

“But, all the same, it is as well to take care! The good Marthe has already told me all about you and your illness.”

“Oh!”

Caroline felt a little awkward, knowing that she had been discussed.

Then, round the side of the house, came a small child struggling along with an enormous cat in his arms. At first Caroline thought he was a girl, for he had such a curly mass of honey-blond hair, but on depositing the cat at her feet she discovered that there was something essentially sturdy and masculine about him. “I am Thibault,” he told her, “and this is Jacqueline, my cat. Jacqueline has had many kittens, but we have drowned the lot!”

“Except the very last lot,” put in a thin, elfin-like girl with a wispy fringe and the most solemn grey eyes Caroline had ever seen in her life. They were positively luminous grey eyes, and they were fixed upon her face. “I had one for myself, and the others were given away.” “Were they, indeed, Marie-Josette?” de Bergerac barely murmured, and the small girl turned, and simply hurled herself upon him. Her thin arms went round his neck until he was almost strangled, and even her undernourished legs went round him and held him tight—until her mother dragged her away with ferocious scoldings.

“Marie-Josette, how could you?” she demanded. “Monsieur’s fine clothes to be spoiled by the muck of the garden and the pig-house! What has come over you?”

But de Bergerac laughed, and snatched her back from her mother, and Marie-Josette shrieked with delight as he swung her round the garden, and she felt like a suspended ballerina in his hold. When at last he set her down she was pushing the fringe out of her eyes and glowing with unexpected happiness, and the happiness was increased when he solemnly mentioned that there was a present in the car.

“In the left-hand pocket,” he said, and both children hurled themselves upon the left-hand pocket of his car, their eager voices calling aloud that he had brought them a present.

The present turned out to be quite a large box of expensive confectionery, and Caroline saw Monique brush something suspiciously like moisture from her eyes as she watched the excitement of her small family, while the man who had caused it stood by with a faint, amused smile on his lips.

“You are too good, monsieur.;” she said, “too good!” and used a corner of her apron to intercept one of the drops that persisted in rolling down her cheek.

“Nonsense,” he returned, and ruffled the wispy hair of Marie-Josette, now decorated with the ribbon from the box of confectionary. “It is impossible to be too good in this world, isn’t that so, ma petite? One spends all one’s time attempting to be even slightly good!”

Monique tried to persuade them to go inside and allow her to make them some coffee, but de Bergerac said Miss Darcy had had a long enough outing for one day, and that she ought to get back and rest in her room. Monique agreed that Miss Darcy must certainly rest, and promised that as soon as she had tidied up her house and dealt with the washing on the line she would be along at the chateau, and would pick up Marthe’s discarded reins until such time as Marthe herself should return to grasp hold of them again, or monsieur should decide she was no longer needed.

The two children would accompany her, she had to make it plain, and de Bergerac said that would be splendid, and Marie-Josette could wait on him personally. And from the adoring fashion in which Marie-Josette hung on his arm, and the way in which her grey eyes seemed anxious never to leave his face—even while Thibault was eagerly disembowelling the contents of the chocolate box —Caroline deduced that to wait on him would be the greatest delight in the world to her, although she was barely eight years old.

On the way back to the chateau at last she found herself studying him thoughtfully as he drove, and believing him to be unaware of her contemplative regard she was a little surprised when he looked at her sideways, and asked with a curious smile:

“Well, what is it that is puzzling you, Carol, Cherie? Or is it perhaps, that you have arrived at a decision?”

“You are fond of children?” she said, as if that was the decision she had arrived at.

He shrugged his shoulders slightly.

“Are not most men?”

‘‘Not all. Certainly not all And children are cautious about forming attachments.”

His smile glinted at her, whiter than ever.

“And you have made up your mind that the little Benoit children have attached themselves to me?”

She could have told him that it was the one thing she could be absolutely certain about, and she could have added that he didn’t surprise her in the least. For there was something about him that was not merely endearing, it was almost a compelling charm. She had been aware of it from the moment they met.

CHAPTER VI

The next few days passed with a smoothness that neither Caroline nor de Bergerac would have believed possible when they arrived at the chateau to find that Marthe had met with an accident. Monique wasn’t merely quite as good a cook as Marthe, but being much younger she was able to undertake far more than poor Marthe had found it possible to undertake in recent years, and although most of the rooms at the chateau were under dust-covers, the two or three that were now used constantly began to look really well kept. Monique baked, and scrubbed, and washed, and polished, and looked after her two children, without apparently

finding any of it beyond her, and with very little assistance from Pierre, who stuck closely to his kitchen-garden. And in addition she insisted on waiting on Caroline to such an extent that the English girl began to feel positively useless.

“I’m not used to it,” she protested more than once, when Monique declined to be dissuaded from carrying her breakfast tray up to her, laundered her crisp linen dresses before they were in any real need of attention, insisted on serving “elevenses”, and made odd pots of tea for her because she was used to them. “If Marthe was here I couldn’t possibly allow her to do these things for me, and you have so much to do that I certainly shouldn’t allow you.”

“Marthe is old,” Monique returned complacently, “and one does not expect so much of the old. But I am young and strong, and it is monsieur s orders!”

And by this time Caroline realised that anything “monsieur” ordered would be the last thing that would be disputed.

It occurred to her that de Bergerac had acted as a kind of emissary (in the pleasantest sense of the word!) of the Comte on more than one occasion, so far as Monique was concerned, and that was one reason why she had evolved such an admiration for him. It might be the Comte’s generosity, but Robert had his own method of administering it, and allied with the warmth and appeal of his own personality it attracted to him some of the gratitude that should rightly belong to the Comte.

And as Caroline had hot very high praise of the Comte this didn’t worry her very much. In fact she thought it was poetic justice that the one tenant in whom he interested himself should reserve so much appreciation for his friend.

But she was a little anxious sometimes when she wondered what the Comte would think if he turned up suddenly and found her there, being treated like an honoured guest by someone he would have to recompense.

“I do feel that I ought to have found a little hotel and gone there,” she said, more than once, to a Robert who had joined forces with Monique in spoiling her as much as it was possible to

spoil one single human being. (And that a very ordinary English girl, as she looked upon herself.) “Staying here like this is an imposition. It would have been different if Marthe was here.”

“But Marthe is not here!” His eyes roved over her with a kind of gentle amusement, and he bent forward to adjust the cushion behind her back, and enquired whether she would like another for additional comfort. She shook her smooth and gleaming head.

“I am supremely comfortable.”

“Actually, it is I who should find a little hotel!” he looked at her rather sombrely. “Do you realise that by remaining here I am likely to create a certain amount of talk? And even in out-of-the-way French villages like this one near here people do talk, you know!”

“W-what about?” she asked, although she knew perfectly well what he meant. She avoided meeting his eyes, those velvet-brown eyes that were doing such extraordinary things to her. “Monique is here too, and the— the children....”

“And Jacqueline, the cat who is always creating the need for drowning kittens...! And the fat kitten from the last litter who has not yet acquired a name, but is the property of Marie-Josette! And perhaps Marie-Josette is the best chaperone of all, for she doesn’t leave us alone together very much, does she?” with the whimsicalness back in his eyes.

It was true that Marie-Josette followed them practically everywhere, and even on short drives she accompanied them sometimes, her un-named kitten purring contentedly in her lap. She seemed to have staked a kind of claim where de Bergerac was concerned, and looked possessive every time he was near, and even glanced occasionally with faint hostility in her enormous grey eyes at Caroline, because she was always awarded the seat beside the driving seat, and was so noticeably fussed-over. Caroline felt a little amused, realising that this was the true feminine jealousy that, later on, would make her rather a dangerous young woman to play fast and loose with. And at the moment she had a hero, and she adored him.

But she didn’t always accompany them on their drives, and there were days when the two of them went off together in the cream car, days when Monique packed them up a picnic basket, the contents of which they later enjoyed beside the stream, or in some cool glade of the forest where civilisation seemed far away, and they might have been back in mediaeval France, with the deep silence beneath the trees emphasising their aloneness.