With This Ring Read online

  “Shall we go?” Claude said in the small silence. “My quarters await you, ma belle Tania.”

  The slight mocking note was back in his voice again. Ignoring it, she followed him through the lower corridors to a heavy oak door. On the other side of it was Claude’s bachelor establishment, into which no-one went without invitation or permission. One day the entire château would be his, but in his quarters, he was already king. He gave her a brief look round before entering the study, and one room in particular drew her undoubted respect.

  It wasn’t a room she could like. On every wall were maps and charts of the mountains, those in the immediate vicinity, and those farther afield. There were red areas marked in, which Claude explained were the danger areas, and every known facet of them was marked meticulously. The room was businesslike, the centre of the mountain rescue operation headquarters. There were two desks, with phones and recording equipment, and Tania had the feeling that Claude would be out of here in seconds if a rescue was needed. As if to confirm the thought, he pointed to a contraption on one of the desks.

  “We’re trying out a new system of communication with walkie-talkies for climbers. As long as they remember to switch on, we can record their movements and warn them of any changing weather conditions and so on, especially any soft snow traps or impending blizzards.”

  It was hard to think of such things right then, with the sun blazing down from a brilliant blue sky. She didn’t want to think of them. It reminded her too much of James.

  “My assistant, Marc, will be here soon,” Claude said. “But if you’ve seen enough, we’ll go into the study. My notes are all pretty chaotic, I warn you. I’m not a writer, as I said. I prefer doing the climbs than writing about them, but James always did have a hankering to see our work put down in print for posterity.”

  Tania had certainly seen enough of the rescue operations room. Marc must be the new assistant. James had been Claude’s partner and the two of them had been the team here … The whole thing was becoming more of an emotional strain than she had imagined. She thought she had got used to her brother’s death. Six months had dulled the pain a little, and dulled also the useless regrets that theirs had never been a really close relationship. Now, suddenly, all the sorrow was back with her again, stabbing at her with little emotional pin-pricks, each time she thought of James here in these rooms. Sharing the love of the mountains, the dangers and the exhilarations Tania simply couldn’t understand, this environment somehow brought him very near. She hadn’t felt so close to him since his death.

  Claude showed her into his study. His desk was a jumble of files and papers massed around a typewriter. One file had fallen to the floor, and Tania automatically bent to pick it up. Several glossy photos of James fell out. Laughing, full of the youthful vitality she remembered, looking into her eyes with all his enthusiasm for living, confident, in a way Tania had never been confident. Because James had found what he wanted out of life, and she had not — not yet.

  As she looked at the photos, they suddenly blurred in front of her, and her hands trembled. Then her whole body was gripped in a gigantic bout of shaking. She couldn’t seem to stop. It seemed an eternity that she stood there, feeling as if the earth was shifting beneath her feet, crumbling into nothingness. She felt as James must have felt plunging from the mountain, with nothing, nothing …

  From the sudden coldness she felt, Tania was suddenly warmed by Claude’s arms. Hardly knowing that she did so, she was rocked against the hardness of his body, while the releasing tears she had been unable to shed for so long burst from her like a dam unleashed. She sobbed against him, uncaring that she proved herself vulnerable at last. Not even thinking of him in any way but a pair of strong arms to support her and hold her when she most needed support.

  And Claude, forgetting everything but that she turned to him, and clung to him, murmured soft, comforting words in her ears. Forgetting that she understood his language as if it was her native tongue, he murmured words of love to her, over and over, telling her that she need be afraid of nothing ever again. That she was here, where she belonged, where she had always belonged …

  The words swam in and out of Tania’s senses, little more than a sweet warm panacea to her pain. His voice was a soothing narcotic, no more, and for the moment she never heeded or looked for any meaning behind it.

  Finally, the paroxysm was over, and Tania leaned weakly against Claude. Trembling with embarrassment now, she raised her swollen eyes to his face. He was against the light, and she couldn’t really see the expression in his own eyes. She swallowed thickly.

  “Thank you — for being here just then,” she whispered. “I’m — I’m sorry if I — I embarrassed you.”

  His answer was a short sharp oath, and then he gathered her in his arms again.

  “Don’t ever apologise for being a woman,” he said roughly. “As for my being here — I’ll always be here, whenever you need me. I thought I’d made that plain to you, chérie.”

  Before she could decide whether he was playing the sincere friend or the would-be seducer, his mouth was crushing hers in a kiss that was more like an assault on her senses than an embrace. A hard, demanding kiss, from a man to a woman, leaving her in no doubt that he wanted her. Every taut muscle in his body told her so. His hands moved up and down her back, finding the curve of her waist, and the roundness of her hips, pressing her to him in a wordless enfolding of her body to his.

  Tania felt weightless, floating. Heat suffused every part of her. She felt safe, cherished … how could she feel safe, in the arms of this man who courted danger as if it held all the fascination of a beautiful woman? Yet perhaps safe wasn’t quite the word she would use to describe her feelings. There was an excitement leaping inside her, as if the spot wherever his skin touched hers was suddenly scalding, not painfully, but more pleasurably than anything Tania had known before …

  She wrenched herself out of his arms. Claude Girard stood for danger, and never had she been more conscious of that danger than right now. He was dangerous to her. He said he would be here whenever she needed him, but she was all too aware of Claude’s needs.

  “Can we work — please?” she said, in a strangled voice. “I’ll try and detach myself from getting too personally involved if I can. At least, I’ll promise not to cry all over you again.”

  “I wasn’t objecting to the experience.” He sounded angry, displeased. Perhaps he’d thought she was ready to forget work, and that being with him had superceded all else.

  Her chin lifted. “I rarely cry,” she stated. Into her mind came the unbidden, half-forgotten memory of her mother telling her in that remote way of hers that being sent away to school was for the best. That it would form her character. That she mustn’t cry, because tears were a sign of weakness. She gave a perceptible laugh.

  “Laying ghosts?” Claude said gently. So typically English a phrase, said with that intriguing accent, stilled the sharp retort on her lips, and she nodded woodenly. As if sensing that she had come a long way in a very short time, Claude led her to a chair and sat her down in it. It was quite a relief, because Tania suddenly realised her legs began to feel as if they wouldn’t hold her up much longer. He became brisk, perched on the edge of the desk and giving her time to control her tumbling thoughts as he outlined his proposals for the book.

  Most of it, Tania would be unable to help him with. But all the background work, the intimate part of James’s early life, in which she played so much a part, she certainly could. A spark of interest began to revitalise her after the emotional outburst that had left her so drained and empty.

  A feeling that maybe Claude was right after all. This was for James. It was what he would have wanted. And Tania was the only one who could ensure that anyone reading the book would have the true picture of his childhood. A sliver of warmth returned to her cold limbs. It was directed towards Claude. He had made this possible. Maybe she owed him something after all. Maybe in giving him an account of her recollections of Jam
es, she would in some way exorcise the painful ghosts of the past and face the future with more confidence.

  * * *

  From somewhere in the château a bell sounded. Tania flexed her back muscles from the cuttings she and Claude had been poring over, and she glanced at her watch. Her mouth dropped open as she realised the time.

  “That’s Alphonse’s idea, ringing the bell for lunch,” Claude told her with a smile. “We tend to scatter about the place, and the bell can be heard just about everywhere. We’ve done enough for one day, anyway.”

  “We’ve hardly rippled the surface,” Tania said ruefully.

  He smiled at her. “That’s all right. I have six months of your time, remember? If we get the book finished in too much of a hurry, you’ll want to go back to England, and I’ve no intention of letting you escape that easily!”

  His smile was like that of the tiger, lazy in its certainty that it could toy as much as it wanted to with its prey.

  “And I’ve no intention of being held here for six months,” she said breathlessly. She noted that she often felt breathless when he gave her one of his intense looks, as if he was exerting some intangible power over her. She would never succumb to it.

  “You speak as if the château is a prison,” he said, amused, dismissing her words as if they were of no importance. “If you think that, Tania, I hope you will admit that it’s the most beautiful, luxurious prison you ever saw!”

  “I won’t deny that,” she retorted. “And I hope you will admit that I came here voluntarily, and that I’m free to leave whenever I wish!”

  Her eyes challenged his. He saw the fire in their amber depths. His own were veiled, the lids heavy, half-closed, as the tiger’s smile played around his mouth.

  “But of course,” he said simply. “Whenever you wish.”

  Tania shivered, as if the silken threads that held them in a shared venture were subtly spinning closer together, enmeshing them in a tapestry from which there was no escaping. It wasn’t the place. It was the man.

  He opened the long french doors of the study to allow them a walk back around the walls of the château to the dining-room. It was so easy for Tania to lose all sense of direction, but she realised that for all its age, the château was installed with efficient air-conditioning. As soon as they stepped outside, the motionless, mid-day air hit them like a blast of furnace heat. Tania’s fair skin prickled, and after the concentration of the morning, the thought of an afternoon swim in cool, refreshing water, was a very enticing one.

  Monique wasn’t there at lunchtime. Madame told Tania that her daughter needed the outside stimulus to recover from her mental trauma after the child’s accident, and then her husband’s death. These people had known tragedy too, Tania thought. And the fact that Madame talked to her quite freely about it didn’t seem odd at all. They didn’t treat her as a stranger, because to them she wasn’t a stranger. James had spoken of her too often for that. Briefly ashamed at the way she had blocked out any reference to Claude or his family from her own letters to her brother, Tania gave James credit for having a better nature than she did! Or at least a more extrovert one, and it was obvious that in speaking of his sister, James had never said anything bad about her. He had never let them know how much she disapproved of his mountaineering or his friends who lived as reckless a life as he did. Reckless, to Tania’s mind …

  “Can I sit by Tania for lunch?” Henri said, when Claude appeared behind his wheelchair a few minutes later.

  “You’ve made another conquest,” Claude smiled at her, and she concentrated on moving the wheelchair close to the table, rather than look into Claude’s eyes. Another conquest? Did he mean he was the first? Tania’s mouth twisted a little. She thought Claude did all the conquering … or tried to.

  “I just talked to Maman on the telephone,” Henri gabbled excitedly in his quick French accent. “She says Denis is coming to stay for the weekend. We will take a picnic to the sea.”

  “It sounds lovely,” Tania murmured, not knowing who Denis might be. Claude supplied the answer in English.

  “Denis is Monique’s fiance. She has known him for years, and steadfastly refused to become engaged to him, meaning to devote her life to Henri, until we persuaded her how foolish that was. A child can only benefit by having a good stepfather, and Denis is the best. Though when the wedding will be is another matter. Monique is very stubborn when she chooses.” His mouth curved into a smile. “It runs in the family, Tania. We all go after what we want with determination.”

  “I can’t understand you!” Henri’s small voice said plaintively. “Is it about me and Maman?”

  Claude laughed, ruffling his hair. “Do you think we have nothing else to talk about, you vain little peacock?”

  “You spoke my name, and Maman’s,” Henri pouted.

  “So I did,” Claude told him. “But you will have to wait until you learn English to find out just what I said.”

  “Grandmère?” The child swivelled in the wheelchair in protest, and she laughed gently, telling the boy that his uncle was only teasing him, and it was merely to tell Mademoiselle Tania a little about their life here.

  “I must learn English as soon as possible then,” Henri said, with Girard determination. “Then I will understand everything.”

  “Serves you right for suggesting it,” Tania murmured to Claude beneath her breath as the mutinous little look came into Henri’s eyes. Mention that Monique had a fiance had surprised her somewhat, though there was no reason why it should. Though if she did marry again, and she and her Denis set up home away from the château, she was certain that Henri would be very much missed. That he was doted on was very obvious, and understandably so in the circumstances. Maybe the child played on it now and then, but to Tania’s eyes he seemed pretty well adjusted, considering his limitations.

  Madame Girard would miss him very much. Unless, of course, Claude married and provided the Girard family with children. It was inevitable that Madame must hope for that. It was the way of all wealthy families with huge estates … Tania bit into her crusty bread roll, realising that her heart was beating more quickly at the thought of Claude having a wife and children.

  She vaguely remembered James telling her jocularly once that he didn’t think Claude was the marrying type. He was a target for the ladies, and he’d had more than one serious love in his life, but as for marrying …

  “We’ll have an hour’s rest after lunch, Tania, and then go to the pool. You’ll join us, won’t you? It will be too hot for doing anything else this afternoon, though if you wish, I’ll show you the rest of the château before we swim.”

  Claude’s voice seemed to come to her out of a mist, and she had to concentrate hard on what he was saying. For crazy moments, she had been transported away from the elegant dining-room, imagining herself moving slowly towards him in a drift of white tulle and lace. The scent of orange-blossom was heady in her nostrils, and there was only love in Claude’s sardonic dark eyes as he turned to receive her. Only love …

  Chapter 5

  The tour of the château after lunch confirmed Tania’s thoughts that her own bedroom with its lovely chintz coverings and deep soft carpet, was only a door away from Claude’s. Or to be strictly accurate, several doors. Between them was the end of the corridor, through which Claude had his bachelor quarters. But the first room on the other side of that separating door was Claude’s bedroom. Their walls were adjoining.

  It was purely coincidental, Tania told herself. It shouldn’t matter to her where he slept. And her room was obviously a guest room. The suspicion crept into her mind. How many other young women had spent their nights in the chintz room … or not?

  “You seem preoccupied, chérie” Claude remarked, when she followed him down his own stairs to the lower rooms and out into the rear part of the château’s magnificent grounds. “Isn’t it the way James told you?”

  Tania flushed. Surely Claude must know of her aversion to the mountains, and surely James must ha
ve relayed some of her antagonism to him over the years! He was certainly aware that she had refused to open the sports hall at James’s old college if Claude Girard attended. He was deliberately mocking her.

  “I’m dazzled by it all,” she said airily. “It’s not every day a working girl finds herself in such princely surroundings. If I was a fortune-hunter, I wouldn’t need to look any farther than this!”

  It was out of character for her to talk that way, and she only did it to annoy him as he annoyed her. She had hardly expected to see a hot blazing anger in his eyes, nor to feel the cruel grip of his hand on her wrist as he stood still and forced Tania to do the same.

  “I don’t care to hear you say such things,” he snapped. “You degrade yourself by pretending to be something you are not.”

  “Oh?” Tania was mortified by his aggression, and the knowledge that what he said was true. “What am I, then? Are you so clever that you’ve done an instant analysis on my character? You don’t know anything about me.”

  Even as she spoke, she knew it wasn’t true. He knew too much. But what he knew was second-hand, from her brother. And James had always had a somewhat idealised picture of her. Despite their differences in temperament, he was enormously fond and proud of her, and he would have built her up to something like a goddess on the lonely sojourns on the mountains with Claude. She knew it instinctively.

  “I know you in my heart.” Claude’s words were romantic, but there was nothing romantic in his voice. He was still angry, almost bitter. “You are the woman I have invited into my home, and you are not a fortune-hunter, so don’t play with me, Tania. I have no time for such immature games.”

  “I’m sorry!” She was not. She was affronted at hearing him speak to her like that. As if she was a child! For all his command of the English language and customs, at that moment Claude was very much the dark European, with all the Continental male’s superiority over his woman. His woman! The brief euphoric moments when Tania had imagined herself as this man’s bride were dissipating so fast she knew she’d been absolutely right in disregarding them as nonsense. Any woman who would marry Claude Girard must be a masochist …