LITMIR.BIZ

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explanation. He went down on one knee beside the older woman. ‘Tante Héloise.’ His voice had gentled quite magically. ‘Keep still, and try to be calm. Jacques has gone to call an ambulance.’

      ‘No.’ A thin hand gestured in agitation. ‘It isn’t necessary. I bumped my head, that’s all. I don’t wish to go to the hospital. Just take me to the house.’

      ‘You should have treatment. There may be some concussion.’

      ‘No, Gaston must not be worried.’ Her voice was stronger, more forceful, and she was struggling to get up. ‘Take me home, and send for Dr Arnaud if you must.’

      As he helped her up, her gaze went past to him to Sabine, who was just getting out of the car to offer her assistance. The returning colour drained out of her face again, and she looked on the point of collapse.

      ‘Mon Dieu!’ she said, her voice hoarse and strained. ‘Isabelle.’

      Sabine flinched, but she kept her tone low, controlled. ‘You are mistaken, madame. My mother is dead.’

      The woman cried out, and sagged against the man holding her, pressing her face against his arm. He turned his head and glared at Sabine. It was a look she recognised instantly, although it was the first time she’d seen it in the flesh. He was the young boy in the photograph, but over six feet now, with broad shoulders and lean hips. The scowl too had gained at least another twenty years of maturity. It had a lethal edge now which cut her to the bone. She knew she didn’t deserve such scorn, but she felt herself shrink back, just the same.

      ‘Get in the car, mademoiselle.’ Contempt scored every word. ‘Haven’t you done enough harm today? You’re not wanted here. Go, and don’t come back.’

      She was trembling all over, holding on to the car door for support, despising herself for her own weakness. Dry-mouthed, she said, ‘I would—only I don’t think I can drive just yet.’ She lifted her chin, glaring back, refusing to allow herself to be bested completely. ‘Or do you want to sacrifice another tree?’

      For a long moment their glances clashed like swords, then there was a shout behind her, and she turned to see the two men he’d been talking to and a short stout woman in a dark overall running towards them.

      ‘Jacques.’ One of the men was singled out with an imperative finger, which was then stabbed at Sabine. ‘Take her wherever she wants to go. Only get her off this estate now, you understand? Before more damage is done,’ he added in an undertone.

      It was unjust and degrading to be hustled away like this, Sabine thought. She’d had a shock herself. She’d rescued this woman—his aunt presumably—from her crashed car, and gone for help. So much for gratitude—and the much vaunted French hospitality, she thought almost hysterically as Jacques, his face expressionless, indicated that she should resume her seat in the car.

      She looked back, and saw that Tante Héloise was being led away on the arm of the stout woman.

      He was examining the damage to the Peugeot, and didn’t even glance in the direction of the departing car.

      She sank back into her seat, still trembling. She hadn’t expected to be greeted with open arms, but the reception she’d actually received had shaken her to the core. Isabelle must have left a legacy of frightening bitterness behind her in this place in order to set off a reaction like that.

      She found it totally incomprehensible. She tried to remember Isabelle objectively—wondering how she would have regarded her if they had simply met as strangers, but all she could call to mind was her mother’s warmth, and gentleness and capacity for love, and a slow anger began to build in her. She could excuse Ruth Russell to a certain extent. She was a jealous and overly possessive woman who would have loathed anyone her brother had married.

      But there was no defence to be made out for the people she’d met today. The small voice inside her, urging her to cut her losses and go back to England, leaving the residents at the Château La Tour Monchauzet to stew in their own rancour, was being overwhelmed by a furious determination to vindicate her mother’s memory at all costs.

      I’m not going to hang my head and run, she told herself. Nor will I be treated like—a pariah. They may have driven my mother away, but they won’t get rid of me so easily.

      Jacques slowed the car for the bridge. ‘Where do you wish to be taken, mademoiselle?’ he asked with chill formality. ‘You have arranged accommodation?’

      She’d noticed an attractive country hotel on her way through Issigeac, and thought she might as well return there. Her lips parted to tell him so, and then she heard herself say, to her own amazement, ‘Take me to Les Hiboux, please.’

      His head jerked round to look at her, and he missed a gear change. ‘Les Hiboux?’ he repeated. ‘But that is an empty house.’

      She said coolly, ‘Which I believe belonged to my mother, Isabelle Riquard.’

      ‘Why, yes, but—’

      ‘I intend to use it,’ she cut across him flatly. ‘Is it far from here?’

      Jacques would normally, she guessed, have an open, cheerful face, on the borderline of good-looking, but now he looked distinctly glum.

      ‘No, not far. But M’sieur Rohan would not wish…’ He hesitated in turn. ‘It would be better, mademoiselle, for me to take you to the nearest syndicat d’initiative. Someone there will be able to arrange a room for you. It would be wiser, believe me.’

      She could guess the identity of M’sieur Rohan only too well, and steel entered her voice. ‘And I prefer to stay at Les Hiboux. If you won’t take me, then stop the car here, and I’ll find my own way.’

      His mouth tightened. ‘The patron, mademoiselle, instructed me to drive you wherever you wished to go. And that is what I shall do.’

      Jacques called this Monsieur Rohan ‘the boss’, but surely that didn’t mean he was the Baron de Rochefort? The girl at the Maison du Vin had said the Baron was in poor health, and this—Rohan looked capable of strangling tigers with his bare hands.

      The thought of him—the way he’d looked at her, and spoken—made her start to shake again, but this time with temper. She looked out of the car window, struggling to regain her composure.

      In other circumstances, this would have been a pleasant drive. Freed from the necessity to concentrate on the road, she could have admired the sweep of the rolling scenery of broad fields dotted with cattle, and tree-crowned hills. There were a few houses here and there, some clearly centuries old, their stones weathered to a cream, and pale sand, dark shutters closed against the power of the south-western sun. Others were distinctly modern, looking sharp and raw against the soft colours of their rural backdrop, but all were built with the steeply sloping roofs and heavy timbering that she’d already come to recognise as typical of the region. She remembered reading that all kinds of property, as well as building land in the Dordogne area, was being snapped up by the British and the Dutch.

      But the only real sign of activity she could see were the tractors, at work in some of the fields, cutting hay. Certainly, they’d passed no other vehicles.

      It was totally tranquil, utterly serene, stamped with an ageless certainty and stability, and, for the first time, Sabine realised what poets had meant when they sang of ‘La Douce France’.

      I belong here, she thought fiercely. They won’t send me away.

      They had turned on to a side-road now. In the fields on both sides, the grass grew high, interspersed with the crimson splash of poppies. They passed a grey stone workshop selling agricultural machines, a small garage with two petrol pumps, and a war memorial surmounted by a statue of Christ on the cross.

      They turned again on to an even narrower track, its tarmac pitted and holed, with grass growing down the centre of it. Far ahead of her, Sabine could see a cluster of buildings, obviously a farm, but on her left, set back from the road across an expanse

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