Could she do so now? Admit such fear and weakness? ‘When I first came to the castle Louis, my husband, took me down to the family vault under the chapel. At first it was exciting, fascinating, like a Gothic romance—the twisting stairs, the flickering torches. I didn’t realise where we were going.’
The smell of the air—that was what had hit her first. Cold, dry, infinitely stale. Old. Louis had held, not a lantern, but a torch, the flames painting shapes over the pillars and arches, making shadows solid. ‘Then he opened the door into the vault—it seems to go on for ever, right under the castle, with arches and a succession of rooms.’
She had been a little excited, she remembered now. These must be the dungeons. It was all rather unreal, like a Gothic novel. Until she had realised where they were.
‘We were in the burial vaults. All there is down there are these niches in the walls, like great shelves, each one with a coffin on it.’ Jack must have felt her shudder at the memory and tightened his hold.
‘The newer ones were covered in dusty velvet, there were even withered wreaths.’ How did the flowers and leaves hold their shape? she had wondered, still not quite taking in what she was seeing. They had moved on, further and deeper into the maze of passageways. ‘The older ones were shrouded in cobwebs. Some of them were cracked.’ There had been a hideous compulsion to move closer, to put her eye to those cracks and look into the sarcophagus as though into a room.
‘Then Louis started to show them to me, as though he were introducing living relatives; it was horrible, but he seemed to think it quite normal, and I tried not to show what I was thinking.’ Already, by then, she was learning that she must not show emotion, that she must show respect for Maubourg history and tradition, that weakness was unforgivable. Somehow she applied those lessons and did not run, screaming, for the stairs. Or perhaps she had known she would never find them again.
Then they had moved on. She had felt something brush against her arm and had looked down. ‘There was one—an old wooden casket where the planks had cracked and a hand had come out.’ She had tried never to think about it while she was awake, but whenever the nightmare came, this was the image that began it. ‘A skeleton hand, reaching out for me as we walked past. It touched me.’
Her voice broke. Jack made a sound as if to tell her to stop, that it was too distressing, but she was hurrying now. It must all be said. ‘And then he came to two empty shelves and said “And these are ours”. I didn’t understand at first, and then I realised he meant they were for our coffins.’
One day she would lie there, enclosed in a great stone box, sealed up away from the light and air for ever. There would not even be the natural, life-renewing embrace of the soil to take her back.
‘I don’t know how I got out without making a scene. That night I dreamt I had died and woken up in my coffin. I knew I was down there, and they were all out there, waiting, and that any moment Louis would lift the lid and he would be dead, too, and—I am sorry, such foolishness.’
Eva sat up, smoothing her hair back from her face with a determined calm. Discipline, remember who you are. There was pity and respect in Jack’s grey eyes as he looked at her. She could not let it affect her. ‘Ever since then, I have been afraid of very tight, dark, spaces.’
‘I’m not surprised, that is the most ghoulish thing I have ever heard. Did your husband not realise what an effect it was having on you?’
‘Louis was a firm believer in self-control and putting on a good face,’ Eva said with a rueful smile. ‘I soon learned what was expected of me.’
‘Did you love your husband?’
‘No, of course not, love was not part of the expectation,’ she said readily. She had just confessed her deepest fear—to tell the tale of her marriage was easy in comparison. ‘I was dazzled, seduced and over-awed. I was seventeen years old, remember! Just imagine—a grand duke.’
‘A catch, indeed,’ Jack agreed. There was something in his voice that made her suddenly very aware of where she was and that Jack’s body was responding to holding her so closely
‘I…Mr Ryder, Jack, please let me go.’ She struggled off his lap, suddenly gauche and awkward, knowing the colour flaming in her cheeks. ‘Thank you. I appreciate your…concern.’
She settled in the far corner, fussing with her skirts and pushing at her hair in a feminine flurry of activity. ‘You say you have the dream quite often?’ Jack said slowly.
‘Yes.’ She nodded, keeping her head bent, apparently intent on a mark on her sleeve.
‘Very well. You must remember, the next time, that when the lid begins to move, it is me opening it. I will have come to rescue you. There will be nothing unpleasant for you to see, and I will take you safely up those winding stairs, up into the daylight. Do you understand, Eva? Remind yourself of that before you go to sleep.’
‘You? But why should you rescue me in my dream?’ No one has ever rescued me before.’ He had her full attention now. She fixed her eyes on his face as she worried over his meaning.
‘You did not have me as a bodyguard before,’ Jack said simply. ‘All you need to do is believe in me, and I will be there. Even in your dreams. Do you?’
‘Believe in you? Yes, Jack. I believe you. Even in my dreams.’
It was a fairy tale. Eva looked down at her clasped hands so that Jack would not see that her eyes were suddenly swimming with tears. Such foolish weakness! She was a rational, educated woman; of course he could not stride into her nightmare like a knight, errant to slay the ghosts and monsters. And yet, she believed him. Believed in him.
Only the year before she had found an enchanting book of fairy stories by some German brothers and had been engrossed. What was the name of the one about the sleeping princes? Ah, yes, ‘Briar Rose.’
And it was a dangerous fairy tale, for she wanted more than protection from her knight errant—she wanted his lovemaking, she wanted him to wake her from her long sleep.
Jack wanted her, too, she knew, if only at the most basic level of male response to the female. He could not hide his body’s response from a woman nestling in his lap. And that frightened her, for she realised that she had responded to it, been aroused by it, before her mind had recognised what was happening to them. She should have been alert to that danger, she had thought she was. Had she not resolved to maintain everything on a strictly impersonal level, as recently as this morning? That attack of panic had upset all her carefully constructed aloofness like a pile of child’s building blocks.
‘What are you thinking about?’ He was matter of fact again. It almost felt as though he was checking on her mental state in the same way as he would check on the condition of a horse, or test the temper of a blade he might rely upon.
‘Fairy stories,’ she said promptly, looking up, her eyes clear. Telling the truth was always easiest, and this seemed a safe and innocuous subject. Her early training came back—find a neutral topic of conversation that will set the other person at their ease. ‘I found a wonderful book of them last year.’
‘The Brothers Grimm? Yes, I enjoyed those.’ He grinned at her expression. ‘You are surprised I read such things?’
‘Perhaps you have nephews and nieces?’ she suggested.
‘No, none. And I do not think it is a book for children, do you? Far too much sex, far
