LITMIR.BIZ

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is assessed as she assesses herself, physical beauty without intelligence, compassion and humour is nothing. No one will judge you unfavourably because you’ve been my mistress, Hope. It’s only in your own juvenile imagination that “fallen women” exist.’

      ‘If that was true you wouldn’t be planning to get back at my father the way you are doing,’ Hope told him scornfully. Did he think she was completely without intelligence?

      The brushing stopped. He bent down until his head was level with her own, grasping her chin and turning her to face him. ‘My dear child.’ His voice was dangerously cool. ‘Your father is far too much a man of the world to give a damn about your virginity, other than as a saleable commodity.’

      ‘I hate you,’ Hope told him pathetically, wishing she had the conviction to deny his allegation. ‘I can’t understand how the Reverend Mother allowed me to leave with you.’

      ‘Quite simple. I forged your father’s signature, and anyway, the Sisters were growing concerned about you. They were too relieved to discover that, after all, your father was not the uncaring parent they had believed to question my authority too deeply. And by the way,’ he added, reading her mind with an ease that shocked her, ‘don’t even think about trying to run away. I have your passport and I intend to keep it. You have no money, no friends here, and this part of France is still feudal in many ways. My family have been here for centuries, the same tenants living always on the land. Unless you give me your word that you will not try to escape, I shall let it be known that you are suffering with a mental disorder which makes you think you are the victim of a kidnap plot …’

      He was still watching her, and Hope knew with a sickening sense of certainty that he meant every word he said. Dear God, how she longed to be able to do something …anything to break through that implacable mask, to hurt and destroy him as he had done her.

      ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she said bitterly, ‘I don’t want to go out to dinner after all.’ She turned away, refusing to look at him although she was aware that he was standing up and then walking towards the dressing room.

      ‘Very well,’ he said from the door. ‘I shall instruct Pierre to prepare something for you.’ He went on fastening his shirt, and it was several seconds before the implications of his words sank in. He would still be dining out, she would be eating alone. Hard on the heels of the knowledge came a sense of … disappointment? No, simply one of anticlimax, Hope assured herself, anticlimax because her opponent had removed himself from the ring. The action of someone who knows he cannot win, she told herself, but somehow the thought was not convincing. If ever a man knew exactly how to win, it was Alexei.

      Pierre brought her meal into the library, placing the tray on a small table in front of the fire. It was some kind of casserole, and Hope saw that he had also opened a bottle of wine and set the tray with a glass. The wine bore the crest of an eagle and Alexei’s name and she sipped it cautiously. Although they had been taught to recognise all the great vintages, and how to select the correct wine to serve with a meal, Hope had seldom tasted any.

      The liquid she had poured into her glass was pale gold, sharp and clean to the palate, bringing out the flavour of the chicken in its delicate sauce. The world, which had seemed a grey hopeless place when she first came down to the library, suddenly seemed less oppressive. In fact, she could well understand why people drank, Hope decided owlishly as she poured herself a second glass.

      She was halfway through her third when Pierre came to remove the tray and replace it with a pot of coffee, and Hope felt that the warm, slightly hazy cloud enveloping her was a definite improvement on the terrifying misery that had gripped her ever since Alexei had told her of his plans. Recognising that she was probably a little drunk, she contemplated the coffee pensively and then decided that her present delightfully relaxed state was infinitely preferable to sobriety.

      The Sisters would be shocked if they could see her! For some reason the thought of the convent was so upsetting that Hope took another few gulps from her glass, dismayed to discover how the room whirled colourfully round her when she tried to stand up. Her only clear thought as she walked unsteadily upstairs was that at least she was spared the ordeal of having Alexei witness her foolishness. Deep down inside herself she knew that there could be no escape, and the rosy glow of good-feeling fostered by the wine started to fade as she opened the bedroom door and stared at the bed. There was no key in the door and somehow she knew that if she found another bedroom Alexei would only seek her out and bring her back. A small sob-turned-hiccup broke the silence of the darkened room.

      It was only ten o’clock, but suddenly she felt very tired, so tired that she almost fell asleep in the bath, but at last she was dry and wearing one of the thin silk nightgowns she felt she hated, her body a tiny bump in the vastness of a bed plainly meant for dual occupation. Just as her eyes closed, for a brief heartbeat her mind cleared and Hope had a vivid impression of how her life would now be, her soul in perpetual torment, unless, as Alexei had suggested, she found a way to live with what had happened, to build on it and grow from it … Could he be right? Was the world not as clearly divided into black and white, good and evil as the Sisters had taught her? She couldn’t withstand him physically, but her mind was still her own, still inviolate, and she could keep it that way …

       CHAPTER FOUR

      HOPE was dreaming. It was an intensely pleasurable dream. She was lying on a warm beach, the heat of the sun caressing every part of her body, its touch so relaxing that she felt as though her flesh and bones were dissolving, becoming part of the sun’s warmth, fluid and formless. But all the time at the back of her mind was the fear that something would take the sun away from her and that without it she would no longer be able to enjoy the languorous pleasure its touch brought.

      Even as she enjoyed its caress her fears grew bigger, growing from a small cloud to a large one, a shadow stalking across the sand, obliterating the heat of the sun, depriving her of its touch. The shadow took on human form. Her heart started to pound, her mouth dry with fear as she struggled to recognise the formless person standing over her, knowing that she could recognise the features while struggling to put a name to them, until it swirled from the depths of her subconsciousness, forcing its way past her lips, breaking and shattering her dream, bringing her shiveringly awake, suddenly conscious of her whereabouts and Alexei’s arm curving her possessively against his body.

      ‘Hope? Are you all right?’ Any hopes she had had that her dream had been pure imagination were shattered as Hope recognised the impatience edging his voice.

      ‘I was having a dream,’ she muttered, suddenly conscious of the spread of his hand against her midriff, and the pleasurable heat of his body against her back, the same heat she had been dreaming about when …

      ‘You called for your father. Why? Were you dreaming about him rescuing you?’

      The warmth of his hand seemed to radiate right through her body, and Hope had to restrain a small murmur of protest when it lifted, both hands going to her shoulders and turning her so that they were face to face.

      ‘I can’t remember what I was dreaming about,’ she lied huskily, ‘but isn’t it only natural that I should want my father, that I should dream that he is helping me …’

      ‘Quite natural, but you cried his name in pain and rejection, Hope, and the tears came afterwards, not before. In short, you were crying because of your father and not for him.’

      She wanted to deny it, but all her energy was absorbed in trying to understand her own emotions. When the dark head bent towards her she made no move to avoid it, lying boneless and unresisting as Alexei’s mouth brushed her lips.

      ‘Pierre has been giving you the Serivace wine, I can taste it on your mouth.’ His tongue licked along the outline of her lips and something seemed to quiver into life inside her, fragile and trembling. She must still be suffering from the after-effects of the alcohol she had consumed, Hope thought dizzily as she lay motionless while Alexei removed her nightgown. She knew she ought to resist, yet

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