I can get a job at one of the hotels—waiting at tables perhaps, or as a chambermaid.’
‘Les Sables is a small resort. Most of the hotels are family businesses and do not make a habit of employing outsiders, especially foreigners. Any casual work available has already been snapped up by students,’ he said unemotionally. ‘What other ideas have you?’
‘None,’ she was provoked into admitting. She lifted her chin defiantly and looked at him. ‘But I’ll think of something.’
‘I have already thought of something.’ His voice was cool and almost dispassionate. ‘You can remain here.’
‘THAT,’ Marty said after a heart-thumping pause, ‘is the last thing I shall do.’
She spoke carefully, anxious to keep any betraying quiver out of her voice. Her pulses were behaving very oddly all of a sudden, and she wanted to wipe her damp palms on her jeans, but she restrained herself. The last thing she wanted was to let Luc Dumarais know the turmoil his suggestion had thrown her into.
Frantic thoughts began to gallop through her head. If she screamed, would Madame Guisard hear—and if she heard, would she bother to take any action? Could she manage to get past Luc Dumarais to the door? Thanks to Bernard, it was shut. Would he catch her before she could get it open and make her escape? Then there was the dog. Her mouth felt suddenly dry, and she moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue.
‘Mon dieu,’ he said very softly. ‘It’s really true. The prototype English virgin, spying rapists behind every bush. Calm yourself, ma petite,’ he went on, his mouth twisting sardonically. ‘I’ve never been forced to resort to rape yet. And if I wanted a little adventure, believe me I wouldn’t choose an inexperienced child as a partner.’
Marty felt the hot blood invade her cheeks. ‘You’re quite wrong,’ she protested without conviction. ‘I wasn’t thinking …’
‘Don’t lie,’ he said. ‘Has no one told you, mon enfant, that your face is a mirror to your thoughts? Did you really imagine that you had inflamed my passions to such an extent that I could not bear to let you go?’
‘You,’ she said very distinctly, ‘are quite the most loathsome man I have ever met.’
‘But then I would say such encounters have been rather limited, have they not? Nor is it exactly courteous to describe a prospective employer as loathsome.’
‘You’re not my employer. Nothing would prevail on me to work for you,’ Marty declared tremblingly.
‘No? But do you imagine you have a great deal of choice?’ he enquired. ‘You haven’t sufficient money to eat, and travel to a larger place to find work—even supposing there was anyone willing to give you a job. You have no relatives or friends to help you, on your own admission, and I should warn you that the authorities do not look kindly on indigent foreigners.’
‘How dare you call me indigent! I’m a trained secretary.’
‘So I read in your passport,’ he said almost negligently. ‘I should not otherwise be offering you work.’
Marty gave a gasp of utter frustration. No matter what she said, he seemed to have an answer.
‘Oh, this is ridiculous!’ she declared. ‘I—I’m going.’
She tried to march past him to the door, but his hand closed on her arm detaining her. She was aware of an almost overwhelming impulse to forget her upbringing and sink her teeth into his tanned flesh.
‘I advise against it,’ he said infuriatingly, almost as if she had voiced the thought aloud. ‘I can promise you that you would not enjoy the inevitable reprisals.’
She stood very still, her eyes downcast, conscious only of the firm pressure of his hand upon her arm.
‘Will you let me go, please?’ she asked politely.
‘Will you stop turning my salon into a battleground?’ he returned, but he released her arm. ‘You are in no fit state to discuss anything rationally at the moment. You have had a number of shocks today, which I regret. At least let me make amends by offering you a meal and a room for the night. In the morning you may feel better disposed to listen to what I have to say to you.’
‘I doubt that very much,’ she muttered. ‘All I really want to do is get away from this place.’
‘Then your most sensible course of action is to earn sufficient money to make this possible,’ he said unemotionally. ‘You would not find me ungenerous in the matter of wages. In any case, earnings in France are higher than in England.’
There was an awful kind of logic in what he said, Marty told herself despairingly. For a moment, she toyed with the idea of asking him to advance her the fare home on the understanding that she would repay him when she got back home and found another job. But she herself could see the flaws in this. For one thing, with unemployment running rife, she had no real guarantee she would find another job very easily. And when she did, she would need somewhere to live, and had little idea how much she would have to pay for rent, and heating, not to mention her food and clothes. What money would she have to repay anyone?
An involuntary sigh broke from her lips. He had not exaggerated when he had said she was in no state to consider his offer. She wasn’t just physically tired from her days of travel. She felt emotionally battered as well, her grief and disappointment at what she had discovered at the Villa Solitaire now being joined by a very real fear of what the future might hold. She had destroyed what fragile security she had had to snatch at a shadow. It had been the first reckless act she had ever committed, this journey to France, and it had ended in disaster.
And as in a kind of dream she heard Luc Dumarais summon the housekeeper and order her to escort her to a guest room, it occurred to her with a little shiver of disquiet that this might only be the beginning of the disaster …
In spite of her forebodings, Marty fell asleep on the bed Madame Guisard somewhat grudgingly made up for her. The room itself was charming, with its white-painted walls, contrasting with the smooth modern lines of the furniture, and the deep velvety green of the fitted carpet. There were no curtains at the windows, but Marty had grown accustomed to using shutters, and she was used too to managing the long rather hard bolster that fitted under the bottom sheet in place of a pillow. Sleep when it came was dreamless, and she felt oddly refreshed when she woke to find the shadows lengthening in the room, and Madame Guisard bending over to tell her stiffly that dinner was on the point of being served.
Adjoining her room was a tiny cubicle containing a shower, a handbasin and the ubiquitous bidet. As she hurriedly rinsed her face and hands in the basin, and dragged a comb through her sleep-tousled hair, Marty wondered whether she ought to have made the effort to change for dinner. But a swift mental review of the clothes she had brought with her soon convinced her it would only be foolish. She found herself wondering whether Luc Dumarais would subscribe to convention sufficiently to put on a shirt before sitting down to dinner. After a final slightly disparaging glance at herself in the mirror, she went out of her room and downstairs to the hall where she hesitated, wondering where she would find the dining room.
As she stood there, Luc Dumarais walked out of the salon and stood watching her, his dark face enigmatic. He was
