Blackmail. PENNY JORDAN
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The housekeeper, introduced as Madame Le Bon, was dressed in black, plump hands folded over the front of her dress as she obeyed Gilles’ summons, cold eyes assessing Lee in a way which she found unnerving.
There was a portrait facing them as she and Michael followed the woman upstairs. The man in it was wearing the uniform of Napoleon’s hussars, but the lean body beneath the dashing uniform and the face below the tousled black hair—worn longer, admittedly, than Gilles’—were quite unmistakably those of their host. Even Michael was aware of the resemblance, for he drew Lee’s attention to it as they passed beneath the huge painting. The man in the portrait seemed to possess a rakish, devil-may-care quality which in Gilles had been transmuted into a careless arrogance which Lee found less attractive, and which seemed to proclaim to the world that its opinion of him mattered not one jot and that he was a man who lived only by rules of his own making. A man whom it would be very, very, dangerous to cross—but then she already knew that, didn’t she?
‘You are on the same floor,’ the housekeeper told Michael and Lee. ‘If you wish adjoining rooms …’
Lee felt the colour burn along her cheeks at the manner in which the woman quite deliberately posed the question. She glanced at Michael, pointedly.
‘Miss Raven and I are business associates,’ he pointed out very firmly. ‘I’m sure that whatever has been arranged will be admirably suitable. Adjoining rooms are not necessary.
‘Not that I wouldn’t want to share a room with you,’ he told Lee a little later when he had settled in and come to see how she was progressing with her own unpacking. Her bedroom faced out on to the formal gardens in front of the château, although with the dusk creeping over them it was impossible to make out more than the shadowy outlines of clipped hedges, and smell the scent of early flowers. ‘Always supposing you were willing, which I know quite well you’re not, but it doesn’t say much for the morals of our countrymen and women, does it? Perhaps they’ve had a surfeit of visitors with ‘‘secretaries’’,’ he added with a grin.
It could well be that Michael was right, Lee reflected, but there had been something about the way the housekeeper had looked at her when she had spoken which had made Lee feel that the remarks had been directed specifically towards herself. Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
‘You never told me you had connections in high places,’ Michael teased. ‘Had I known you knew the Comte personally we needn’t have bothered coming down here. You could have used your influence to get him to agree.’
‘I didn’t know he had inherited the title,’ Lee told him. ‘As you’ve probably guessed, our relationship, if you can call it that, is very tenuous, and there’s certainly no blood connection. I’ve only met him once before. I couldn’t even call us acquaintances.’
But there was more to it than that—much more, Lee reflected when Michael had left her to finish her unpacking and change for dinner. Such as her foolish sixteen-year-old self imagining she was in love with Gilles. It must have been the crush to beat all crushes. A small private boarding school where many of the girls were the daughters of strict Spanish and South American parents was not the ideal place to gain an adequate knowledge of sexual matters. She had been greener than grass; completely overwhelmed by the powerful attraction she felt for Gilles. Had he asked her to lie down and die for him no doubt she would have done so. Her infatuation had been of the order that asks no more of the beloved being than merely that he existed. There had been no sexual awareness in her adoration apart from that which goes hand in glove with a girl’s first love. She put it all behind her long ago, especially its grubby, sordid ending, which had done so much to sully her memories of that year.
Her bedroom was vast. Their visit to the château was to be a short one—three days—which would allow them to see the vineyards, the cellars where the wine was stored, and still allow some time for the negotiations which Michael hoped would result in them securing the Chauvigny label for Westbury’s. She wondered if she ought to alert Michael to the fact that her being his assistant might seriously detract from his chance of doing so, and then decided against it. She was remembering Gilles with the eyes of a sixteen-year-old child. It was surely hardly likely that an adult male of thirty-one would bear a grudge against a child of sixteen.
Gilles certainly believed in treating his guests lavishly, she reflected, hanging the neat, understated toning separates she had brought with her in the vast fitted wardrobes which lined one wall of the room, their fronts mirrored and decorated with delicate panel mouldings to match the rest of the bedroom, which was furnished with what she suspected were genuine French Empire antiques. It wasn’t hard at all to imagine a provocatively gowned Josephine reclining on the pale green satin-covered chaise-longue, waiting impatiently for her lover.
Everything in the room matched; from the self-coloured design on the pale green silk wall coverings, to the curtains and bed covers.
A beautiful ladies’ writing desk was set beneath the window with a matching chair; the dressing table was French Empire, all white and gold with delicate spindly legs, the table lamps either side of the huge double bed the only modern touch, but even these might have been made for this room.
Lee wasn’t a fool. The furnishing in this room—from the precious silks down to the faded but still beautiful pale green and pink carpet which she suspected must be Aubusson—must surely be worth a king’s ransom; and this was only one of the château’s many rooms. Gilles must obviously be a very wealthy man; a man who could afford to pick and choose to whom he sold his wine. No doubt after the vintage he would hold those dinner parties for which French vignerons are so famous, when the cognoscenti gathered to partake of lavish dinners conducted in formal surroundings, all carefully designed as a paean of tribute to the evening’s guest of honour—the wine.
This was the first time Lee had visited such an exclusive vineyard. In Australia, where she had spent a year working alongside a grower in his own vineyards, things were much more casual, in keeping with the young vigour of their wines. Now she was grateful for the momentary memory of her teenage visit to a French vineyard which had urged her to pack a slender sheath of a black velvet dress.
Her bedroom had its own private bathroom; so blatantly luxurious that she caught her breath in bemusement as she stared first at the sunken marble bath and then the gold fittings. Even the floor and walls were marble, and she felt as decadent as a harem girl whose one desire in life was to pleasure her master, as she sank into the deep, hot water and luxuriated with abandoned delight. In London she shared a flat with two other working girls, and there was rarely time for more than a workmanlike shower, and the odd long soak when she had the flat all to herself.
Lifting one long, slender leg from the suds, she eyed it dispassionately. Gilles certainly knew how to live. Why had he not married? Surely a home and responsibilities such as his must make the production of a son and heir imperative, and Frenchmen were normally so careful in these matters. He was, after all, thirty-one. Not old … she laughed aloud at the thought of anyone daring to think such a vigorous and aristocratic man as Gilles old. Even when he did eventually reach old age he would still be devastatingly attractive. She frowned. Where were her thoughts leading her? Surely she was not still foolish enough to feel attracted to Gilles?
She got out of the bath and dried herself slowly. Of course she was not; she had learned her lesson. She glanced towards the telephone by her bed. She would ring Drew. Michael had assured her that she might, and that he would ensure that the call was paid for.
It didn’t take long to get through. Drew’s Boston accent reached her quite clearly across the miles that separated them. He sounded rather brusque, and Lee’s heart sank.
‘You decided to go, then?’
His question referred to the fact that he had not been pleased to learn that she was due to travel abroad with Michael. In fact he had tried very hard to dissuade her, and they had come perilously close to their first quarrel. Now, squashing her misgivings, Lee replied firmly, ‘It’s my job, Drew—you know that. You wouldn’t expect me to make a fuss because you have to work in Canada, would you?’
There was a pause, and then