Prelude to Heaven (29 page)

Governess sounded good, she thought. Better than housekeeper or maid. “They have four children,” she added, thinking of Jeanette and Henri. “One son and three daughters...”

Her voice trailed off as Nigel reached out and lifted her hand. He pulled off her glove, then turned her palm upward. She felt his thumb caress the callouses there. “Governess, my dear?” he drawled. “How fascinating.”

His hand closed over her wrist and he yanked her toward him. “We will not discuss this again until we are at home. In the meantime, perhaps you will be able to think of a more believable explanation, and I will decide what punishment you deserve.”

He pushed her away, and she fell back against the side of the carriage. Drawing a deep breath of relief, she straightened and once again turned to stare out the window.

Explanations, she reminded herself, never made any difference to Nigel. He never believed them, and he would always punish her regardless, but he wouldn't do anything to her here and now. No, he would wait until they were home, until he had complete privacy. She thought about the other two times she had run away from him, and how he had waited then, too. His goal was to heighten her suspense and fear as she imagined what he would do to her. It was all part of the game, but this time she had no intention of playing. She wasn't going to torture herself with speculation.

She closed her eyes, and another man immediately replaced Nigel in her thoughts. Alexandre would wonder what had happened to her. He would go to the village looking for her. He would believe that she had left him. A crack of pain fractured her heart and the first tear fell. She didn't care if Nigel saw it.

The window was open and she moved to put her head through. Perhaps she could see...

Nigel's hand on her knee gave her a moment's pause. “Careful, my dear. I wouldn't want you to fall out.”

“It's stuffy in here, Nigel,” she answered. “I wanted some air.”

Turning back, she put her head through the window, twisting to stare at the peninsula in the distance, where the château stood high on the rocky cliffs. She could see the tower. Alexandre was probably there right now, painting that portrait of Suzanne.

“Good-bye, Alexandre,” she whispered under her breath, staring at the tower through a blur of tears. “Please take care of my baby.”

The carriage followed a bend in the road and the château disappeared from her view, tearing a sob of complete desolation from her throat.

Alexandre laughed, watching the baby shove half of her fist into her mouth. “You are not a good subject, Suzanne,” he chided, waving his paint brush in her direction. “You refuse to keep still.”

The baby removed her fist from her mouth and made a gurgling sound.

“Don't be impertinent,” he told her. “This is very serious work. I—”

“Comte! Comte!” An agitated male voice and the clatter of hurried footsteps on the stairs up to the studio interrupted him. Alexandre turned just as Paul took the last two steps at a jump and came flying into the studio.

The young man stumbled to a halt, knocking over a table in the process. Out of breath, he grasped the edge of the table, righted it, and gasped, “Comte, the mademoiselle is gone!”

Alexandre frowned, puzzled by Paul's vague statement and obvious agitation. “Gone where?”

“I don't know. I came out of the tavern and saw her stepping into a carriage with the English fellow. I tried to run after it, but I couldn't catch it. I'm sorry, sir. I tried. I didn't know...”

Alexandre strove to make sense of this chaotic jumble of words, and failed. “
Sacré tonnerre
! Speak slowly, Paul. I can't understand a word.”

The young man waited a moment, taking several deep breaths, then began again. “I took the mademoiselle to the village and left her at the draper's shop. She said she would be there for some time, so I went to the tavern for a glass of wine. I didn't mean any harm, monsieur,” he hastened to add, seeing the frown darkening his master's face. “I was only gone only half an hour. As I returned, I saw the mademoiselle stepping into a carriage with the Englishman. The carriage drove away, taking the road to Marseilles, and as I said, I tried to run after it, but I was too late.”

Alexandre fought the sick feeling that knotted his guts, refusing to believe what he was hearing, refusing to listen to the fear that whispered to him. “What Englishman? What carriage?”

“The Englishman, Comte. Everybody's talking of him. He arrived only this morning, looking for the mademoiselle. Talk in the tavern was that she was his mistress. He was showing her portrait to people in the village, asking if they'd seen her. A rich
aristo
, by the look of him. He had a fine carriage and servants, too.”

The paintbrush snapped in his hand, and Alexandre looked down at the broken pieces in bewilderment. Tess was gone? Why would she go off with a stranger?

Unless the Englishman wasn’t a stranger and the talk in the village was true.

He tossed aside the pieces of the broken paintbrush and headed for the stairs, his heart hammering. “Take the baby down to Leonie,” he told Paul. “I'm going after her.”

He was in the carriage and on the road within minutes. The weather seemed to match his mood, for though the day had started sunny and beautiful, a storm was moving in and ominous clouds of gun metal gray gathered above his head as he drove toward the village. During the journey, the skies continued to darken and his thoughts spun as fast as the carriage wheels beneath him.

Paul was mistaken. She'd just gone for a ride. Or she'd been forced, kidnapped. Desperately, his mind sought sane reasons for an insane thing.

He yanked on the reins and halted the carriage in front of the draper's shop. Tossing aside the reins, he jumped down. The shop was closed, however, and it was only then that Alexandre realized that it was evening. Not to be thwarted, he pounded on the door.

Madame Giraud finally heard his loud, insistent knock and came to open the door. She knew Alexandre's reputation, but the moment she tried to close the door in his face, he blocked her effort. With no other choice, she answered his questions readily enough, though what she told him was not what he wanted to hear.

She confirmed that the Englishman had been looking for an Englishwoman, the same Englishwoman who had purchased fabrics from her shop the day before. The miniature the man had shown her matched Alexandre’s description of Tess. Madame Giraud also verified Paul's statement that the Englishwoman had gotten into a carriage with the man, but when asked if she had seemed unwilling to go, Madame Giraud denied it. Indeed, the Englishwoman had walked to the carriage arm in arm with the Englishman.

Refusing to believe it, Alexandre went to the inn. But the innkeeper, too, supported what Paul had told him, reiterating the talk in the tavern that the girl was the Englishman's mistress, and he'd spent months trying to find her.

Still refusing to believe, Alexandre returned to the carriage, determined to follow Tess and the Englishman and learn the truth. Paul had said they had taken the road to Marseilles, and without stopping to think about the fact that he had no money and no clothes with him, he headed the carriage in that direction.

When it was too dark to drive any further, he pulled off the road and tried to sleep, but the rain falling on the roof of the carriage, the persistent wind that chilled his bones, and his own turbulent thoughts prevented any rest. She wouldn't go away with a stranger. Was the man her lover? Was he Suzanne's father? Agony and uncertainty were Alexandre's companions that night, and at the first hint of dawn, he was on the road again.

He made inquiries at every inn he passed, eventually locating the one where Tess and her Englishman had spent the night. He continued on, reaching Marseilles by late afternoon.

The rain had turned into a raging storm by the time Alexandre found the address he was seeking in the Rue de Madelaine. Halting the exhausted horses in front of the graceful stucco home, he jumped down from the carriage and mounted the wide steps leading to the front door. He pounded on the door, and when it was opened, he wasted no time on polite introductions to the butler. He shoved his way in, striding toward the sound of laughter the floated to him from the salon.

“Monsieur! You cannot barge in this way! Madame has guests this afternoon. You cannot—”

Alexandre strode through the opened doors of the salon, and paused there, his gaze scanning the faces of the ladies present. As he did so, the sounds of laughter and conversation gradually ceased as the women turned to stare at the dark stranger who was dripping water all over the expensive carpets. A brunette in rose pink silk noticed the stares and the sudden silence and turned around in her chair. What she saw made her gasp in astonishment. She rose and came around the chair, staring at him in obvious disbelief. “Alexandre?”

“She's gone, Jeanette,” he said, his voice choked with all the despair and desperation he felt. “She's gone.”

***

“This would be much easier if you had learned the man's name,” Henri told Alexandre as the two men walked through the doors of the Hotel d'Arterre, one of Marseilles' most fashionable hotels and a favorite with wealthy English tourists.

“I wish you'd stop saying that,” Alexandre muttered, following Henri across the richly appointed lobby to the desk of the concierge. As they approached, the distinguished-looking man behind the desk rose to his feet. “Messieurs? May I be of assistance?”

As Henri explained their search and gave a description of Tess, Alexandre examined the lobby. He saw many people strolling in and out, but there was no sign of the woman he sought. This was the fifth hotel at which they had made inquiries, and so far they'd had no luck at all.

He pulled at the silk cravat he'd borrowed from Henri, only half listening to what his brother was saying as his gaze desperately scanned the faces in the crowd.

“They would have arrived today.”

“A petite English lady with short red hair, you say?” The concierge paused as if pondering the matter. “I seem to recall such a lady arriving this afternoon, though I cannot for the moment recall her name. She was wearing a blue dress.”

Henri and Alexandre exchanged glances.

“Yes,” Alexandre confirmed the concierge's last statement. “It was blue.”

The man gave a disdainful sniff. “Several years out of fashion. The English ladies really have no sense of style. And she wore no cloak. Can you imagine? In this weather?”

Alexandre had no time for irrelevancies. He leaned forward, placing his palms on the desk. “Where would the lady be now?”

“I haven't any idea,” the concierge replied. “However, since it is the dinner hour, she might be in the dining room.” He pointed to a set of doors inset with glass. “I believe an English couple staying here have arranged a dinner party. She may be with that group. But you can’t interrupt—”

Alexandre wasted no time hearing what he could or could not do. He headed in the direction indicated by the concierge, Henri close behind him. Pushing open the door, he paused in the doorway.

Amid the sea of faces, he spied her almost immediately. She was seated with a large group at a long table near the opposite end of the room. Diamonds glittered at her ears and throat and the light of the chandeliers above made her fiery hair glow. The “unfashionable” blue dress had been discarded in favor of bronze silk and the neckline plunged low, revealing a generous expanse of her creamy skin.

The man seated beside her, a blond, typically English dandy, leaned closer to her and whispered something in her ear. The corners of her beautiful mouth lifted in a little smile, and raw pain ripped through Alexandre's chest.

Unable to bear the truth staring him in the face, he turned away and left the hotel, oblivious to the rain pouring over his borrowed clothes and Henri's voice calling his name.

***

Alexandre arrived home two days later. Paul and Leonie asked no questions, and he was grateful. He wouldn't have known what answers to give them.

He could have told Paul and Leonie the truth. That he had been thoroughly deceived. That Tess had told him she loved him and that like a fool, he had believed her. That she had needed him to take care of her and the baby only until her lover decided to take her back.

Her lover had obviously not wanted the baby, and Tess had abandoned Suzanne in order to return to him. Every time Alexandre thought of her sweet deception, of how he'd been used, it filled him with a bitter, corrosive anger like nothing he’d ever felt before.

As a distraction, he tried to paint, but even inspiration deserted him, and he felt more lost and bereft more than ever before.

He stared at the mess he had made of the canvas for a moment, and then, with a curse, he tossed down the brush and left the studio. Downstairs, he went to the front hall and stood in front of the painting he'd done of Tess in the meadow, staring at her face and wondering if his eyes had deceived him that day. In this image, she looked radiant, happy. Had that only been his wish, his fancy?