it reminded her of the sound she had heard in her dream the other night—a sound like the sea. This was it, not traffic, not the sea, but the rustle and whisper of hundreds of branches swaying and bending in the wind.
Why on earth had she heard that sound in her dream? There was something uncanny about it. It made her shiver. She had never been here before; why had this sound got into her dreams? Maybe he had rung her from here. Maybe the noise had been a background sound on the answering machine tape.
‘Did you ring me from here?’ she asked him, and he gave her a sharp look, shaking his head.
‘The phone has been cut off.’
She was sorry to hear that, but maybe it had been telepathy. He must have had this sound in his head when he talked to her on the phone and she had picked up on it. Nothing uncanny about telepathy—she had several times had ideas leap into her head from Di or Phil when they were working together. If you were on the same wavelength it could easily happen.
But she wasn’t on this man’s wavelength! she hurriedly thought. She couldn’t be.
‘Why has the phone been cut off?’ she asked, thinking that the house had the strange, echoing feel of a house which was always empty; it didn’t feel like anybody’s home.
‘I didn’t need it.’
‘Then where did you ring me from?’
He didn’t answer, eyeing her drily.
She noticed that from the hall several doors opened into rooms which were gloomy with shadow because of the closed shutters over the windows. She only got an impression of them, a fleeting glimpse of dark oak furniture and leather chairs, a wallpaper with trails of ivy and blue flowers.
‘Is there anyone else here?’ she asked huskily, listening.
He half smiled again. ‘No, we’re quite alone, Annie.’
She tensed, bit her lower lip, watching him and wishing she knew what went on inside his head. Or did she? Maybe she was better off not knowing! ‘At least tell me what this is all about! Why have you brought me here? Do you want money? Are you going to ask my record company for a lot of money before you let me go?’ Her mind worked feverishly. But even if Philip paid him whatever ransom he demanded, would he let her go? Alive?
She had seen his face now; he hadn’t tried to hide it. Didn’t kidnappers usually kill their victims so that they could never identify them? Fear made her stomach clench, sent waves of sickness through her.
‘This has nothing at all to do with money!’ he bit out, and she stared at him, afraid to feel relief. If he wasn’t holding her for ransom, what did he mean to do with her?
‘Then why have you brought me here?’ She searched his face for a clue. The hard, insistent lines of it did nothing to lessen her tension. ‘Are you sure you really know who I am? You aren’t mixing me up with someone else, are you? Because you keep asking if I remember you, but I don’t, and I’m sure we’ve never met before. I have a good memory; I’d remember if we had met.’
His dark eyes hypnotically stared down into hers. ‘You’ll remember Annie,’ he said softly. ‘I can wait; I’ve waited a long time already.’
A shiver ran down her back. If she wasn’t careful, he would start convincing her! He didn’t look it, but he must be crazy.
‘Stop arguing, Annie,’ he said. ‘Come upstairs and I’ll show you your room.’
She dug her heels in, resisting the hand that seized her elbow and tried to move her towards the stairs.
‘You can’t keep me here against my will and get away with it! I don’t know what the penalty is for kidnapping in France, but you don’t want to go to prison for years, do you? Look, if you just want to get to know me, I’ll have lunch with you now, and then you can drive me back to Paris, and I’ll see you again there. I’ll get you a ticket for my concert and—’
He laughed harshly. ‘You know you don’t mean it; if you made a date with me it would be the police who kept it, I imagine. I’m not stupid, Annie. You’re ready to promise me anything to get away. Do you think I don’t know that?’
‘What are you going to do to me?’ She tried to hide her fear, but he would have had to be blind to miss that look in her eyes.
His brows met. ‘I’m not going to hurt you, Annie; don’t look like that!’
He sounded so convincing. She let out a long sigh, put her hand out to him. ‘Then please let me go, Marc—please...’
Taking her hand, he looked down at the slight, pale fingers he held, slowly entwined his own tanned fingers with them. Annie felt her heart skip sideways in a little kick of awareness.
‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Just for the moment, you’re my guest. You’ll find the house very comfortable, and it’s tranquil here, much more peaceful than you would have been in Paris. No media clamouring for interviews, no telephones, no fans waiting outside to hassle you. Why don’t you stop worrying and enjoy it?’
Annie considered him soberly. If she kept her temper and was not unfriendly maybe she would be able to talk him round, get him to see sense and take her back to Paris.
She pulled her hand away; he let it go without comment. Annie began to walk upstairs, aware of him following close behind her.
‘In here,’ he said, throwing open a door on the landing above.
Halting on the threshold, she watched him walk across the darkened room to the windows. He opened them, flung back the shutters, and light flooded in, making her blink, dazzled, staring at him.
She felt a strange flash of surprise, a jerk of dislocation, like mental whiplash, and for that instant had the oddest feeling, and then it was gone, and she was watching him with wide, half-blind green eyes.
He stared back at her with a curious eagerness, as if he knew that something had happened to her just then, as if he could read her thoughts, or her feelings; and that bothered her. That could be very dangerous. From now on she must try to hide from him what she was thinking, or she would have no defences against him.
‘Annie?’ he whispered.
‘Where’s the bathroom?’ she asked, trying to keep all intonation out of her voice.
She thought she heard him sigh. Then he gestured. ‘Through that door. I’ll go downstairs and start preparing lunch, so don’t be long. I’ll bring your cases in from the car later and you can unpack after lunch.’
She waited until she heard him reach the bottom of the stairs, then she went over to the window. How far was it to the ground from up here? If there was a handy drainpipe it might be worth risking the climb down. She peered down at the garden below and grimaced. No, that was out.
There was no drainpipe close enough—the nearest was outside the bathroom, and the bathroom window looked far too small for her to climb through it. From here, too, the ground seemed a very long way off. She wouldn’t like to risk breaking a leg, or worse, by jumping out of the window. In films people knotted sheets together and climbed down them; maybe she could try that.
But not now. She could
