Escape from Passion E-Book

Barbara Cartland

• Herausgeber: Barbara Cartland Ebooks Ltd
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: The Eternal Collection
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 336

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

With the death of her mother, her father's subsequent suicide by drowning in the English Channel, all in the foreboding shadow of imminent war, the beautiful young Fleur Garton is vulnerable to say the least. Even more so when her new love, Lucien, a French airman, is killed just two weeks after the Second World War is declared and followed after by the death of his mother. Left bereft and alone at a remote Château in German-occupied France, Fleur has to find a way home to England before the Germans discover her and in a French Resistance safe house she meets and falls in love with another airman, Royal Air Force pilot Jack Reynolds. Sadly her heart is about to be broken once more on arrival in England after a gruelling voyage of escape from France. Desperate to escape Jack's family home, Fleur seeks employment at Greystone Priory as housekeeper-companion to the ailing mother of the renowned motor car tycoon, Sir Norman Mitcham. Instantly she falls in love with the grandeur and beauty of the house and with the arch but kindly Mrs. Mitcham. But, although she takes an intense dislike to Sir Norman, who seems cold, ruthless and aloof, she decides that this is where she will achieve her aim, 'to hate all men, to dispense with love in her life and forget about it'. Gradually, though, as she begins to discern the man behind the façade, she warms to Sir Norman. And perhaps her heart is ready for a different kind of love from a man who will never ever break it.

Leseprobe

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1942

Fleur came from the room where the Comtesse de Sardou lay dead.

After the heavy warm atmosphere of the sick room the air in the passage was chill but invigorating like a drink of cold water.

She went to one of the windows and pulled back the thick curtains. Outside in the garden the first rays of a pale sun were dispersing the white ground mist which covered the green lawns.

Fleur sighed and leant her hot forehead for a moment against the grey stone. There were dark lines of sleeplessness beneath her eyes, but she felt strangely at peace.

Away on the horizon she saw a wisp of black smoke, dark against the hazy blue of the sky. She knew that it was from the destruction of yesterday. All night its fire had glowed fiercely red, the result of Royal Air Force machines swooping low over the country early in the afternoon.

She had heard and felt the bombs that had fallen on the factory nearly ten miles away, a factory in which Frenchmen were turning out hundreds of lorries week after week for the use of their German masters.

The house had shivered and rattled at the impact, but the Comtesse, when she had been told what was happening, had murmured,

“It is good. Only the British can bring us freedom.”

“Hush, madame,” Marie, her lady’s maid, had cautioned her. “It is not wise to say such things.”

But Fleur had smiled proudly. Yes, it was her countrymen who would bring freedom to the cowed and conquered French nation.

Now, looking at that thick pall of smoke, she thought of Lucien and thought how he too had ridden triumphantly through the skies only to fall, as some of those brave men had fallen yesterday, broken and burning to the ground.

At the memory Fleur’s eyes filled with tears.

‘It is odd,’ she thought, ‘at this moment for me to be crying for Lucien and not for his mother.’

It had been almost like a stage death, Fleur found herself thinking.

The fine aristocratic old lady with her white hair and finely chiselled features, a perfect portrait of the Grande Dame, the Priest beside her in his vestments and the grave grey-haired doctor.

Marie was sobbing audibly at the foot of the curtained bed in which generations of the Sardou family had come into this life and had departed from it.

Yet in the picture, unreal and slightly theatrical, there had been nothing to fear, nothing even of desperate unhappiness and misery.

Only now it was over was Fleur conscious of an immeasurable personal relief. It was as if some part of her had been tense and nerved for something horrible had shrunk in sensitive anticipation from a terror that had never come.

She had never seen anyone die and the thought of death was inexpressibly frightening until she found that it was nothing more than the closing of the eyes and the folding of the hands.

But death was not always like that. It was not how Lucien had died, yet perhaps for him it was quick and clean suddenly in the battle and in a moment of triumph.

For they had learnt that he had shot down his enemy, shot him down in flames and then met a similar fate himself. Lucien, gay, excited, laughing and falling out of the sunlit sky on to the earth of his beloved France.

Fleur stirred and, turning from the window, walked along the passage to her room.

Even after nearly three years it was hard for her to think of Lucien for any length of time without feeling that agony of physical loss that at first had seemed almost unbearable.

In her own room she bathed her face and started to take off the crumpled frock that she had worn all night.

While she was still half-undressed there came a tap at the door. It was Marie. In her hand she held a glass containing some whitish liquid.

“What is that?” Fleur asked.

“Monsieur le Docteur has sent it,” Marie replied. “You will drink it and sleep. You need sleep, ma pauvre, we all do.”

Wearily Fleur let her last remaining garments drop to the floor and then slipping over her head the soft silk nightgown that Marie held out for her, climbed into the lavender-scented, hand-embroidered linen.

“Drink this, ma petite,” Marie said soothingly and without argument Fleur swallowed the draught. It tasted slightly gritty and bitter so that she made an involuntary grimace as she handed the empty glass back to Marie and then snuggled down on her pillows.

“I will call you later, mademoiselle.”

Marie pulled the heavy curtains over the open window. The room faded into a grey twilight and she went softly out and closed the door behind her.

Fleur closed her eyes.

It was sheer ecstasy to feel her muscles relax and her limbs sink into the softness of the featherbed. She felt sleep creeping over her in soft warm waves, encroaching, retreating and each time a little more of her consciousness was enveloped.

*

She awoke suddenly with a start to find that Marie was standing by her bed with a tray on which there was a steaming cup of coffee and some biscuits.

Fleur rubbed her eyes and sat up.

“I have had a marvellous sleep, Marie. What time is it?”

“Nearly three o’clock.”

“As late as that? Oh, you should not have let me sleep for so long.”

Marie smiled, her old eyes were swollen from crying but then she looked, Fleur thought, happier and less stricken than she had earlier in the day.

“What has been happening?”

“We have taken Madame down to the Chapel. She will lie there tonight and tomorrow and the day after will be internment.”

Fleur sat up and put out her hand for the coffee.

Then she gave a little exclamation.

“But Marie! This is our best coffee from our store and Madame’s biscuits!”

“Why not?” Marie asked defiantly. “What are we keeping them for? For those Germans? For those cousins who could not even come to receive her last blessing? No! You eat them, mam’selle, she would like you to have them. For the others, let them enjoy their ersatz.”

Marie almost spat out the words and her old hands were trembling.

“We must not condemn Madame’s relations unheard,” Fleur said reprovingly. “Perhaps they could not come here as permits from unoccupied territory are difficult to obtain.”

“They have never tried to come,” Marie said, “not all this time since Monsieur Lucien has been gone. But now that they are sure there are pickings, you will see they will gather round like vultures ready for the feast.”

“What do you mean?” Fleur asked. “The doctor notified them weeks ago that Madame was ill, but there was no reply. Have you heard now that someone is arriving?”

Marie shook her head.

“But they will come all the same,” she remarked.

“And only you and I to receive them,” Fleur said, dropping her chin reflectively on her hands. “I shall have to go away, Marie. It is all very well to deceive the Bosche but the family will not be so easily taken in.”

“But where will you go, mademoiselle?”

“I don’t know.”

Fleur reached out her hand and took one of the sweet biscuits sprinkled with sugar that had been kept especially for Madame during all these months of privation.

But, although Marie might hide biscuits and brandy and other little delicacies to which Madame had been accustomed, she could not hide human beings and Fleur realised for the first time how dangerous her position was.

The months had gone by like a dream, smoothly and uneventfully.

The Germans had come to the house, it was true, but Madame had dealt with them, had made her own explanations and had granted their demands with a cool dignified disdain more insulting than abuse.

The Château was off the beaten track, they had not been required to billet men or Armies and they had not been molested in any way save that a certain part of the farm produce was removed, the car that had belonged to Lucien was taken from the garage and various farm implements were commandeered without explanation or excuse.

Otherwise the ways of the household had continued uninterrupted, except that at the back of their minds there was that fear, unexpressed but nevertheless as real as if each knew that they were being watched by some animal, crouched and waiting to spring.

It was there, always there, never for a moment could one escape it.

Even locked in her own bedroom two floors up in the Château and in the middle of the night, Fleur must take the wireless set from its hiding place, put it under the bedclothes and there listen in.

Sometimes she chided herself for being so very careful, yet she well knew that it was not cowardice but a simple realisation that they were surrounded by the enemy, that every wall had ears and that the slightest slip might bring death and destruction not only to herself but to those others who loved and housed her.

“We must think, Marie,” she said now. “We must think of something. In the meantime I will get up and dress.”

She finished her coffee, drinking it slowly, savouring every mouthful. It was a long time since she had tasted anything so good. It was delicious. And the biscuits too, how she craved at times for something sweet!

Marie pulled back the curtains and the afternoon sun, hot and golden, came streaming in.

“There have been no aeroplanes this afternoon?”

Marie shook her head.

“None,” she replied, “but Fabian came up from the village a little while ago and he told me that those devils had two down yesterday and one fell about ten miles from here in a field. The villagers ran to help, but it was too late. The brave men were burned, all save one, and the Germans took him away to hospital.”

“Was he badly hurt?”

“Fabian did not know, but I would much rather be in the hands of le bon Dieu than at the mercy of those cochons.”

Fleur swept back the hair from her eyes. For the thousandth time she wondered whether she would have preferred Lucien to have been a prisoner or to have been certain of his safe keeping, as Marie put it, in the hands of le bon Dieu.

Stories of the prisoners being hungry and without heat or the proper clothing had been whispered over France after the departure of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk. But now, if one could believe such reports, things were better and there was always a chance that the French prisoners might be repatriated.

Yet it was a slender hope as so very few had come back. There was a great deal of talk, a great deal of unquenchable optimism but nothing happened. Perhaps things were best as they were.

But it was hard to be certain when one thought of Lucien, shot down that first fortnight in September 1939, when the world had hardly grasped the fact that hostilities had begun or that the last war to end all wars, which had slaughtered the flower of the European nations, had been a failure.

In the first fortnight Fleur could remember, as vividly as if it was still happening, that moment of incredulous surprise, a moment more of astonishment than of agony, when she had heard that Lucien had been killed flying over the Maginot Line.

It was then that the coldness between herself and Lucien’s mother had broken and the barriers had fallen. The two women had wept together, united by an agony of loss as they could not have had Lucien lived.

Strange now to think how frightened she had been of the Comtesse and yet nothing in Fleur’s life had prepared her for someone like Lucien’s mother.

Now, at last, she could understand what had seemed to be the mystery surrounding her own French grandmother, after whom she was named, and could realise why her mother had always spoken of her with what amounted to reverence rather than affection.

Aristocrats! It was impossible, Fleur thought, for her or any of her generation to emulate the dignity, the poise and the composure of such women.

‘We do not have the leisure to be graceful and calm,’ she thought once. ‘So we have to grasp greedily at everything we want in case someone else gets it first.’

That made her think of Sylvia. Sylvia, with her red-painted nails, her red curving mouth and her bold eyes. Sylvia, slopping about the house until luncheontime in a tattered tawdry dressing gown and an old pair of slippers with worn down heels. Sylvia, blowsy untidy and sometimes dirty and yet always triumphantly beautiful with a lewd lustfulness that could not be ignored, flamboyant, gaudy and yet desirable.

Fleur could still shudder at the agony of the days when her father had first brought Sylvia home. When she had laughed at the decorations and at the treasures tender with childish memories, when she had turned the place upside down, filling it with her mocking laughter, her lipstick-stained cigarettes and her noisy rollicking friends.

Impossible to believe that any man could put such a woman in her mother’s place and yet, despite all her antagonism, despite what was a bitter live hatred, Fleur could understand a little of her father’s besotted infatuation.

Everything that was fastidious and decent within herself was revolted by her stepmother, but then she could not help seeing Sylvia’s attractions, the attractions of an animal, but so obvious that they could not be ignored.

At first Fleur had been bewildered, had withdrawn into an antagonistic reserve and then, when she realised the depth of Sylvia’s depravity she stood aghast, not for herself but for her father.

It was only slowly that she began to notice and to understand.

She had met a man who liked her and whom she brought to her home. Fleur was at first deceived by Sylvia’s acceptance of him and the charm with which she entertained him.

Then, when the man himself began to make many hesitant excuses and to avoid her, first shamefacedly and then self-consciously Fleur realised what had happened.

She could always remember walking right out of the house into a storm of teeming rain, tramping blindly along the cliffs, a mortal sickness making her oblivious of her surroundings and her soaked clothes.

She stayed on at home because despite all his weaknesses she loved her father. Arthur Garton was a clever man as far as literature was concerned, as regards women he was a fool.

He retired from the family business soon after he was forty-five and then settled down to write and to play golf, building himself a house bordering the links at Seaford. He was happy there, looking out over the downs, writing his books comfortably before his own fireside and trying all the time to improve his handicap.

After Fleur’s mother had died he might have continued the even tenor of his ways until he was an old man had he not met Sylvia.

Sylvia was looking for someone to pay her bills, someone weak and idealistic like Arthur Garton to give her a roof over her head. It was all too easy. They were married just a month after they had first met and Fleur was told only after the Ceremony had taken place.

It was too late then for her to protest and too late for her even to remind her father of the woman who had given him twenty years of her life and who had died loving him. Sylvia saw to that. Sylvia was clever at anticipating danger and at turning it aside before it harmed her.

Yet after four years of being married to Arthur Garton she had grown careless.

She underestimated him and underestimated too, the essential decency of a gentleman. When he found out for certain what he must have suspected for a long time, Arthur Garton went for a long swim early one morning.

It was August and there was nothing unusual in seeing a man leave his clothes in a neat pile on the stony beach at Seaford and strike out into the English Channel.

He left no note behind, no farewells and to the unimaginative world it was an accident. Only Fleur was certain of the truth for it was at least ten years since her father had bathed in the sea.

It was just before this happened that she had met Lucien. She had met him when she was staying in London with a school friend.

He had been introduced to her casually and, yet the moment their hands met and Lucien was bowing with that graceful inimitable inclination of the head that was characteristic of his race, Fleur had known.

She had felt something vivid and alive rise up in her throat, almost threatening to choke her, she had felt as if her eyes were shining like beacons that the message they carried must convey itself to him.

Perhaps he had felt her fingers tremble, perhaps he too had known in that moment the wonder and beauty of a springing flame that would not be denied.

It was a very short time before they acknowledged their love, before they clung together in ecstasy that was all the more poignant because Lucien was going away. He must return to France. He was an airman, he had come over to England on a mission to the Air Ministry. Now he must return and make his report.

“When shall I see you again?”

“Soon – very very soon, my darling.”

“But when?” she had insisted.

He had shrugged his shoulders and then, tipping back her head, he had answered her question with kisses.

It was impossible at such a moment to believe that Fate could separate them or that they could be apart for long.

Lucien had gone away and almost immediately after he had left, when she returned to Seaford, her father was drowned.

Fleur had been frantic, so frantic that she had been almost deranged in her anxiety to leave the house that she had once called home, the house that sheltered now the woman she knew was her father’s murderess.

She had packed feverishly. Without a word to anyone she had crossed the Channel and gone, white-faced and driven by a strong need that was almost beyond fear, unannounced to Lucien’s home.

And he had been glad to see her. If he had been surprised, as his mother had been, at the unconventionality of it all, he did not show it, his expression and his words bore no trace of reproach.

He had held her close, he had promised that they should be married and she had been utterly and completely content, caught up in a rapture that was beyond words.

They had been together exactly twelve hours in the Château before Lucien was recalled. Neither Fleur nor his mother had been perturbed. They had paid little heed to the rumours and troubles of international relations so that, when France and England finally declared war on Germany, it came like a bombshell.

Only then did they begin to understand what it was going to mean to Lucien and to them.

A fortnight after war was declared Lucien de Sardou was killed.

*

Fleur fastened on her wristwatch and rose to her feet.

“I am ready, Marie. Let’s go downstairs.”

“You will come and see Madame?”

“Of course,” Fleur answered, her voice softening, “but first I want to pick some flowers, the white roses that she loved so much.”

The young girl and the old woman walked down the passage and as there came the sound of a motor car approaching the Château on the long gravel drive, which was now sadly in need of repair.

They both with one accord stood still. Who was it? Their eyes met and they could see each other’s fear.

Then Fleur moved towards the window that looked out over the front door.

The car slowly encircled the sweep in front of the house.

Instinctively Fleur reached out her hand and took Marie’s, her fingers, hard and strong clung to the older woman’s and the car drawing up at the front door belonged unmistakably to the Germans.

They stood there as if they were paralysed as a uniformed soldier jumped smartly out on to the gravel and opened a door at the back of the car. A figure descended, they could see him distinctly, short and squat and wearing dark civilian clothes.

He turned to say a few words to some hidden occupant of the car and then, as he raised his hand, they heard his voice ring out –

“Heil Hitler!”

There came the echo – “Heil Hitler!” and from the depths of the Château the clanging of the front door bell.

CHAPTER TWO

Marie crossed the hall very slowly, her feet shuffling over the marble floor and then she fumbled with the bolts and chains of the great door.

Slowly it swung open, its hinges creaking, and the man who was waiting outside in the bright sunshine stepped in purposefully as if he had been impatient at the delay.

“I am Pierre de Sardou.”

He spoke with some authority and his voice, ringing through the hall, was grating and unpleasant.

“The Comtesse?” he asked, staring at Marie, who was half-sheltered behind the door.

“Madame is dead.”

“So!”

The man came further into the hall. Fleur, listening, had the strongest impression that the announcement held no surprise for him, he had known before he came, she was very certain of that.

She wondered who could have told him. The doctor? The Priest? If so, surely they would have warned her, or at least Marie, that a relation was on the way.

She took stock of Monsieur Pierre de Sardou and was not impressed. He was not so short as he had seemed when she had first viewed him from the upper floor, but he was stocky and inclined to corpulence and it was hard to believe that he could be a blood relation of Lucien.

There was nothing aristocratic in his appearance nor in his bearing for his arrogance and his sharply spoken sentences seemed more assumed than natural.

Then he turned his dark eyes towards her and she had the feeling that he was surprised and unpleasantly so by her presence

“This is – ?” he questioned, speaking to Marie rather than to her.

“La femme de Monsieur Lucien.”

Fleur felt her heart beat quicker, but she said nothing and made no movement, only stood and waited, as it were, for events to come to her rather than making any effort to precipitate them.

“His wife!” Monsieur Pierre expostulated. “But why were we not told? We received no announcement of it when we were informed of his death.”

Neither woman replied and abruptly he strode across the floor towards Fleur.

“It is correct what she says,” he asked, “that you are Lucien’s wife?”

Fleur took a deep breath, then in a voice that she hardly recognised as her own she lied,

“Yes, I am Lucien’s wife.”

“Madame!”

She felt her hand taken and raised to Monsieur Pierre’s lips.

Now he was speaking suavely.

“You must forgive my surprise. I had no idea. I believed that my aunt, the Comtesse, was living here alone with her servants, but I realise that I was mistaken. And are there, you will forgive me for asking, are there children of your marriage?”

Fleur had a sudden insane desire to strike him in the face. She did not know why, it was just that there was something in his smile and the expression in his eyes that made her not only resent his questions but feel afraid of them.

The moment was too chaotic and too unexpected for her to remain cool, but she was certain of one thing, if of one thing only, that there was danger in every word she uttered and that this man was her enemy.

“I have no child.” She spoke quietly. “But will you not come in to the salon? You would like something after your journey, a cup of coffee perhaps?”

“I thank you, but I have not long finished luncheon.”

Fleur led the way into the salon. As she opened the door, she caught sight of Marie’s face and knew by her expression that she was warning her that she too had sensed danger.

The afternoon sun shining in through the lowered Venetian blinds made stripes of gold across the Aubusson carpet with stripes reminiscent of bars, prison bars.

“You have been here long?”

“A long time.’”

“I really cannot understand my dear aunt not acquainting me of so interesting an event as Lucien’s marriage. Besides, I should have liked to commemorate it with a suitable gift.”

“We were married only a short time before he was killed,” Fleur said through stiff lips.

“That accounts for it, of course. The shock and the unhappiness must have been terrible. And yet courageously she answered her letters of condolence, I received one myself. She spoke proudly and at some length of Lucien, strange that she should not have mentioned his wife. She must have forgotten it, of course, that is the explanation, but it is so odd you must agree. My aunt was most punctilious in these matters as you may have noticed. When did she die?”

“This morning at half-past six. Would you like to see her?”

“There is plenty of time for that as I shall be staying here tonight, of course. The funeral will be tomorrow?”

“The next day.”

“So. Then we shall have the pleasure of each other’s company until Wednesday. Perhaps other members of the family may turn up, I don’t know, but I myself will have a great deal to do. You understand, I am now the Head of the Family.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes. Of course I am entitled to call myself the ‘Comte de Sardou’, but then we of the younger generation are not in the least concerned with such trifles or the gaudy baubles left over from an effete aristocracy. No, no, I much prefer to be ‘Monsieur’. I am a democrat, as I am sure you are, madame?”

“Of course.”

“I am delighted to hear it. We shall have much in common, I can see that. You have seen the will of Madame la Comtesse?”

The last question was shot at Fleur.

She took her time to answer, stooping to arrange some small china snuffboxes on a table and amused to keep her inquisitor on tenterhooks, knowing that here lay the real crux of the whole situation.

“No, I know nothing at all about it,” she said at length. “If she has made one, it will be with the Advocate.”

“Of course.”

She heard the quick breath of relief that Monsieur Pierre drew. He walked a few paces across the room and then back again.

“May I smoke, madame?”

“Of course, please do. I am sorry I forgot to suggest it.”

“That comes of being in a manless household for so long.” He lit a cigarette. “You were here when Lucien was killed?”

“Yes, I was here.”

“Where were you married?”

Fleur felt herself tremble. This was the question that she had been afraid of. It was only a matter of time now before she was discovered.

“In Paris.”

“At Notre Dame?”

“No, at the Madeleine.”

She did not know why she contradicted him save for the pleasure of it.

“Strange indeed! All the de Sardous have been married at Notre Dame.”

“Lucien wished to be the exception.”

“You will forgive me, madame, if I ask your maiden name?”

Fleur smiled.

She was on safe ground now, no need to lie. She could give her grandmother’s as they were a large family.

“Fleur de Malmont.”

“But, of course, I know the family.”

There was a note of respect now in the suave voice, yet Fleur knew he was by no means satisfied. He was still suspicious, perhaps even more so than he had been before.

Too late she realised that the only possible explanation for a secret marriage might have lain in the fact that Lucien had chosen a nobody, a girl of some doubtful antecedents whom the family would not have accepted.

Well, it was done now and there was nothing she could do but wait for the next question. Then gladly she heard the sound of the door opening. Here, for a brief moment at any rate, was a respite.

It was Marie with the coffee or rather that horrible ersatz substitute which was all that they had been able to purchase for over a year.

“Coffee, monsieur?”

“Thank you. If you will put it down I will help myself in a few moments.”

Fleur fancied that his nose wrinkled at the smell of it. Doubtless Monsieur Pierre with his German friends had ways of procuring much more palatable beverages than his less fortunate countrymen.

Marie turned to leave the room. As she reached the door, he spoke to her sharply.

“I wish to send to the village. Is there anyone who can go?”

“Mais non, monsieur. There is only myself and Madame here in the house.”

“But that is ridiculous! A garden boy, perhaps a man from the farm?”

“No one, monsieur, to whom we can give orders. Before the war there were many who were glad to serve at the Château. Now they serve our conquerors.”

Monsieur Pierre gave an exclamation of annoyance.

“I must go myself, then. I have to see the Priest, the doctor – ”

He stopped.

‘And the Advocate,’ Fleur added for him in her mind.

“Yes, of course, monsieur.”

Marie stood patiently waiting, stolidly uncommunicative and unhelpful.

“You can go.”

“Thank you, monsieur.”

“She is telling the truth, of course,” he said, turning to Fleur. There is no one I can send and no other way of telling such people to come here to me?”

“I am afraid not,” Fleur said deprecatingly, “and naturally we have no conveyance.”

“Naturally. The car – ?”

“The Germans took it away over a year ago.”

“Yes, of course. They reimbursed Madame for its value?”

“I have no idea.”

Fleur knew quite well that the Comtesse had received no recompense for the removal of Lucien’s car. She had been told vaguely that if she applied she might be given a voucher for it which in time would entitle her to claim its value. She had done nothing in the matter.

Fleur was determined now that no word of hers should enable Monsieur Pierre to benefit from what had been Lucien’s.

“Well, I must go myself, Mahomed to the mountain!” he laughed with some effort. “Au revoir, madame, I shall not be long. We will dine together, I hope?”

“What time would suit you, monsieur?”

“Seven o’clock would be convenient?”

“Perfectly.”

“Very well. Until then, madame.”

He gave her a glance, which Fleur realised was meant to be gallant and left the room with a swagger, as one who imagines that a woman is admiring him.

Fleur stood very still. She waited until she heard the front door close and the footsteps scrunching on the gravel came fainter and fainter until there was only silence.

Then she sank down on the sofa and put her hands over her aching forehead. Slowly she felt her tension relax.

“I must think,” she said out loud. “I must think.”

What was she to do? How could she escape from the trap that she felt was slowly closing round her? Why had Marie said that she was Lucien’s wife? It was madness and yet what else could she have said? He might have asked to see her papers and then any subterfuge and any other lie might have made him more suspicious than he was already.

How had she been so crazy, she wondered, not to have anticipated all this, to have gone away before and yet she knew that it would have been just impossible for her to leave the Comtesse while she was dying.

She had loved the old lady, had been afraid of her, had not understood her and how could she understand someone of another type of life and of another nationality? But she had been her last link with Lucien and Fleur had clung to that, happy in the fact of being in his home.

Yes, it had been impossible to leave, impossible to go and forsake all these things which had meant so much and yet now she saw the danger.

The ability of the Comtesse to arrange certain matters had rested on her own personal influence and on the power she exerted in the village traditionally because of her position. Now her place would be taken by another and a very different personality – Monsieur Pierre.

Fleur had often smiled at the memory of the Mayor coming up to the Château at the Comtesse’s command.

However much France boasted of democracy, in these outlying villages the aristocrats still had their importance and still held their place in the local hierarchy.

The Comtesse requested his presence and the little man, who was a grocer by trade, came apprehensively into the salon where Madame was waiting for him. He was sweating a little, Fleur noticed, and he turned his hat round and round as he listened to what Madame had to say.

“Monsieur le Maire, our beloved country has been invaded again by Barbarians. Once again our soil is violated and the sacred blood of our countrymen cries out for revenge. You agree, Monsieur le Maire?”

“Yes, Madame – but Madame will pardon me if I suggest that she does not speak of such things quite so loudly.”

The Comtesse had smiled.

“I am an old woman, Monsieur le Maire, and I can only die once. My son has already given his life for France and I should be proud to offer mine in the same cause.”

“Madame is brave.”

Nevertheless, as if he spoke them out loud, Fleur had guessed that his thoughts were of himself, of his large fat wife to whom rumour had it he was consistently unfaithful and of his six children, the eldest of whom was a prisoner in Germany.

“We understand each other,” the Comtesse then went on. “There is no need for me to say more. But, monsieur, in my anxiety to speak of politics I have omitted to present you to my daughter-in-law, Fleur, Monsieur le Maire, Madame Lucien de Sardou.”

Just for a moment the little man had looked surprised and then with the quickness of his race he understood.

“Enchanté, madame, my sincere felicitations,” he had murmured and then he had waited, understanding now what was expected of him.

“My poor daughter-in-law,” the Comtesse continued, “has had an unfortunate accident, monsieur. A little fire occurred here last night, nothing very serious, we were able to put it out ourselves, but unfortunately Madame’s papers were burned including her carte d’identité. There is nothing left and, still more unfortunate, no one had thought to keep its numbers.”

“I understand, Madame, they can be replaced.”

“Thank you, Monsieur le Maire, it is most agreeable of you.”

The Comtesse had held out her hand, the Mayor had bowed over it and the interview was at an end.

The next morning his second son, Fabian, had arrived on his bicycle. An identification card with her new name with the date of issue mysteriously smudged, had been handed over.

Yet now Fleur saw the pitfalls of what had seemed an easy subterfuge. Most of all she regretted that the Comtesse had made her burn her British passport.

“It is dangerous,” Madame had insisted and, despite all Fleur’s protestations, the flames, real ones this time, had licked greedily round the blue canvas cover and the page that held the Foreign Secretary’s name.

Yet how right the Comtesse had been!

The next day the Germans had arrived. Marie, a scared look on her usually placid face, had fetched the Comtesse and Fleur from the garden.

“Madame! Nom de Dieu! excuse me, madame, but there are Germans at the door.”

She was panting and the frilled cap that she wore was askew on her grey hair.

“Germans?”

“Yes, madame. They wish to speak to you.”

“Thank you, Marie. You will be calm, Marie.”

“Oui, madame.”

“And your cap is crooked, Marie.”

“Pardon, madame!”

The Germans then searched the house. They looked in every nook and cranny for French soldiers. They took away the pigs and chickens and a side of bacon that had been hanging in Marie’s kitchen. They drained the petrol from the car standing in the garage and made a note to send later for the car itself.

They came again a few days later and then took away Louis, the man who worked in the garden, no one was told why. At first they did not know whether the Château and the village would be in occupied or unoccupied territory.

They did not talk about it, but Fleur guessed that the Comtesse prayed that they might be favoured in the little grey Chapel where the flags captured by de Sardous in battle hung above the altar.

One day they learnt that the line had been drawn and they were some twenty miles inside German-occupied France.

*

Fleur stood up suddenly and walked to the window. The garden was quiet and peaceful.

Strange to think that there was terror and brutality over the whole Continent, men being shot and imprisoned, concentration camps where those who entered them were beaten into insensibility or tortured until they died or became insane.

Fear and misery everywhere, panic and sorrow, privation and sheer sadism.

‘Oh, God, I am afraid!’ Fleur thought to herself.

Then she knew that somehow, in some way, she could and would escape these horrors.

CHAPTER THREE

Something was happening, something was frightening her.

Fleur stirred convulsively and tried to scream.

Even as she did so a hand was pressed down over her mouth. She experienced a moment of sheer terror and then she heard Marie’s voice,

“It’s all right, mam’selle, it’s me, Marie. Don’t be afraid.”

“Marie!”

Fleur turned over, the terror of her dream still with her so that she could feel her heart beating too quickly and her breath coming pantingly through lips that still felt the imprint of Marie’s fingers.

“Hush! We must be very quiet. I have news for you.”

Fleur sat up in bed. There was a candle by the bedside, but its flickering light illuminated only a portion of the room, the rest was sombre and menacing in shadow.

“What is it?”

Marie came very near her and their faces were almost touching.

“Fabian has brought information. You must leave at once, mam’selle, you are in danger.”

“Tell me, what did he say?”

Marie came a shade nearer and her voice dropped lower so that Fleur must strain her ears to hear what she was saying.

“It is Monsieur Pierre. When he went into the village, he went not only to see the Priest and the doctor, but also to telephone – to telephone to Paris about you, mam’selle!”

Marie paused dramatically, as one who has reached the climax of her story.

“About my marriage!”

Marie nodded.”