Shadows (13 page)

Rory’s thumb indicated somewhere behind him.  “Gone to retrieve his book from the car.  How’s the steak?”  He opened a bottle of wine, filled generous glasses, and paused to look at her.  “You look very pretty this evening.  I hope it’s not all for this Frenchman.”

Surprised, she laughed.  “It’s Saturday night and we have a guest even if he did invite himself, so I thought I’d dress up a little.  For you and me rather than the Frenchman.”

Christophe hurried to join them.  Rory returned to his barbeque.

“Voilà.”  As Christophe laid a large battered leather-bound book on a chair, a bookmark slipped and fluttered to the patio.  Melissa bent to scoop it up and as she did so, she noticed a small deformity, a purple growth about the size of a grape, standing proud above Christophe’s little toe.  No wonder he wore sandals.  Shoes must be painful.

She returned the bookmark with a smile.  The kir fizzed and bounced in her veins and tonight, with a guest to add to the conversation, she had no fears of ghostly interventions.  Christophe took the chair she offered, and immediately looked slight next to Rory’s broad shoulders.

Rory offered wine, flipped steaks from barbecue to plate and handed them over.  Melissa pressed the salad bowls toward their guest.  Waiting until he was settled, she indicated the book he had carefully placed on the cushion of the chair next to him.

“What does it say, this book?”

“They write of the mill in 1609.  We know the mill was ’ere then.”

Christophe spoke English in slow, short sentences that were pleasant on the ear, partly because of the rhythm and cadence of the French language behind his use of English, and partly because his light tenor had some resonance behind it.  An excellent contrast to Rory’s deeper tones.  He probably had a very good singing voice.  She hadn't heard Rory sing as yet.

“1609?”  Rory lifted his wine glass.  “That makes the mill over four hundred years old.”

“It made flour for the monastery and the ’ouses in the valley.  Pierre worked ’ere in 1729.  He was a lay brother.  Justine comes 1735.  That year, she goes.  The book says ’e fell in the millstream.  Also, ’e is buried here but it does not write where.”

Christophe picked up his fork.  “The house, it has not been lived in—”  He waggled his fingers beside his ears and shot a questioning glance at Melissa.  “Forme fixe.”

Melissa shrugged her shoulders to show she didn't understand him.

Rory ate salad, chewed steadily and swallowed.  “Regularly, I think you mean.”

Melissa looked over at the smooth white walls of the mill, the gleaming brown varnish and the tamed, manicured creeper cascading neatly over the bolly rail.  “The house seems quite cared for.”  She looked at Rory.  “Has it stood empty for long periods?”

Rory sipped his wine before answering.  “Jonny's slowly been doing it up over the last couple of years, and employs a man to care for the pool and general maintenance.  He said it was a wreck when his uncle bought it.  Freddie had the living room made habitable, stayed a month or two and then lost interest.  Jonny’s done a lot of work recently.”

Melissa turned back to Christophe.  “And the ghost, le fantôme?  What does the book say about him?”

“Ah, the book.”  He smiled at her interest, and his blue eyes twinkled.  “Let me read to you, s’il vous plait.”  Christophe dabbed his mouth with one of Monsieur LeClerc’s better paper napkins, took a pair of glasses from his top pocket and slipped them on his nose.  They changed him into the intense librarian she had met yesterday.  He opened the book at a marked page and ran his index finger quickly down the squiggly lines of small black writing.

Melissa exchanged a swift, amused glance with Rory, who dropped one eyelid in a lazy wink.  Melissa pressed her lips together to stem her laughter.  She could not remember when she had last been this happy.

“It is en francais, naturellement, but I translate.”  Christophe regarded her sternly over the top of his glasses as if aware that her attention had wavered.  Melissa assuming an expression of polite interest, while Christophe glanced back at the page under his finger.

“Justine, a girl of the village, formed an attachment for a young man, a lay brother.  She pursued him.  The monastery warned him of his danger.  Pierre—”  Christophe’s delicate, long fingered hands mimed pushing someone away.  “But she persisted.  Then one night of flood and storm, she—pouf.  ’ow you say?”

Melissa took a wild guess.  “Vanished?”

Christophe nodded and went back to the book.  “Her family say she went to Pierre.  Pierre—at the mill.  Monsieur l’Abbé writes that Pierre was alone.”  Christophe shrugged.  “It is a mystery.”

And a disappointment.  She'd expected more.

“Is that all?”  Rory soaked a heel of bread through the garlicky oils on his plate, popped it in his mouth and watched Christophe.

“C’est tout.”

“It’s not a lot to go on, is it?”

“Oh, Rory, I think for 1730 something it’s quite a lot of detail.  It’s long before the French Revolution.  It’s creepy, too.”  Though not as creepy as discovering a naked stranger in the living room.

“The only creepy thing is that he’s buried here, if that’s true.  The rest is just gossip.  What possible danger could he be in from the girl?”

“I suppose the monks would think any woman a danger to their vows of celibacy.”  Melissa glanced around the table, checking the progress of the meal.

Rory shook his head.  “Lay brothers are not monks.  It takes years at different levels even now before they are acknowledged as full monks.  Postulants for a year, Novitiates for a further two years and another three years as Juniorates before they take their final vows.  I know different houses interpreted the rule of St. Benedict differently, but the basic pattern was probably the same back then.  The primary duty of a monk is to love with all his heart.”

Melissa’s eyes widened in delight.  “Oh, that’s beautiful.  How do you know all that?”

“A friend of mine went through his school years wanting to join the Cistercians.  He bored us all rigid with it.”

“Is he a monk now?”

“No.”  A smile flicked across Rory’s face and disappeared.  “He reached the age of nineteen and his hormones became too much for him.  He’s married with two children already.”  He glanced at Christophe.  “It seems as if our chap Pierre had the same problem.”

Christophe pushed his glasses up into the thick black curls, and listened with a frown of concentration.

“Is it Pierre and Justine that we see?”  Melissa sipped her wine carefully and looked at Christophe over the rim of the glass.  She didn’t want to befuddle her senses tonight.  A clear head was required if she wanted to remember all this tomorrow.  She sensed the kir had been a mistake, for the evening seemed to have a rosy glow to it.

The Frenchman nodded and tapped the page with his finger.  “The book says he was a man of beauté.”  He looked at each of them in turn.  “Tell me what you see.”

Rory savored the last of the olive oil and garlic, filled everyone's glasses and kept his gaze on Melissa as he spoke.  “They were both young, both had brown hair.  His was curly, hers was long and straight.  He wore in something dark brown or black, and she was in a brownish red color.  Both floor length.  I saw them very briefly.  Melissa saw them for a little longer.”

Rory had given the sort of observant report she would have expected of a lawyer even though he had only seen them for a few seconds.  Melissa shut her eyes and ran over the pictures in her head.  “Dark hair, yes.  His was curly, rather like yours, Christophe, but much longer and shaggier.  Both colored by the sun, as if they worked outdoors.  He was wide across the shoulders but not very tall.  Dark eyes, good features, a lovely smile.  Yes, a man of beauty, I think.  She was small, and curvaceous.”

Melissa opened her eyes.  Both men stared at her across the table, waiting for more.  “He was dressed in a plain brown robe, a long one, down to the floor and with a piece of knotted rope for a belt.  It was a sort of grey-black-brown.  She wore an ankle-length skirt and some kind of a blouse, very low here.”  Melissa patted her cleavage.  “And a shawl round her shoulders.  All a bit drab, really.  But she was small, and pretty.”

“He wore sandals when I saw him,” Rory added.  “The girl was barefoot.”

Christophe frowned suspiciously.  “This word shaggy.  What does it mean?”

Melissa stared wide-eyed, but could find no words to explain.  A faint tinge of heat crept through her face, and Rory hid a smile behind his hand.

“It means…um, it means rough, wrinkled, tousled….”  Plainly none of the words meant anything to the Frenchman.  Melissa sensed a growing snigger on her left and glared at Rory.  “Do we have a dictionary here?”

He shook his head, found a sliver of charcoal among the burnt vine clippings at the bottom of the barbecue and spread out his napkin.  He drew a swift line on the paper.  “That’s straight.”  He looked at Christophe, who nodded.  Rory drew again.  “That’s curly.”  Christophe nodded again.  “And this is shaggy.”

“Oh, well done.”  Melissa grinned.  The three separate illustrations made it quite clear.

Christophe, however, was not pleased.  “You say my ’air is like this?”  He tapped the third drawing, outrage clear in his tone.

“No, no.”  Melissa rushed to placate him.  “Pierre’s hair is shaggy.  Yours, Christophe, is curly.”

He folded his arms, sat back in his chair and regarded her.  His frown dissolved and he flicked a quick, bright, mischievous glance at Melissa from beneath long lashes.

She sighed in mock frustration and shook her head.  Glancing at Rory to share the joke, a tingle of shock ran through her at his heavy frown.

No one spoke.  The silence became uncomfortable.  Melissa resumed eating.  Rory must dislike her flirtation with Christophe.  Melissa concentrated on her meal, darting silent glances at each man in turn.  There was too much emotion around the table tonight.  Christophe had hardly been here an hour and already Rory disliked him.  Even if she wanted to flirt with Christophe, which she did not, what was Rory going to do?  He had no rights over her, even if he had paid for her to come here.

Rory’s expectations must be very different to hers.  He must have wanted her to come here very much.  That must mean he liked her.  So of course he would resent her liking Christophe.  She almost smiled, but caught the impulse in time.  Enjoying a man's jealousy was not something to smile about.

The Frenchman seemed oblivious to any undercurrents, and encouraged her to recount each sighting of the mysterious couple.  Slowly, haltingly, she did so, from the first midnight glimpse of a dark shape on the bolly, the sighting in broad daylight and the horror of Pierre walking toward her across the room.

“Pierre walked to you?  You are sure he saw you?”  Christophe shoved his elbow on the table and stared at Melissa.  “Est-il cela he thought you were Justine?”

She recoiled from the idea.  If it was correct, then she might never be free of the ghostly monk.  “Well, I can’t tell, can I?”  The evening sunlight was full on Christophe’s face, his eyes were a very definite blue within long lashes.  “I only know he walked towards me, smiling as if he knew me.  I panicked, I suppose.”

Rory frowned into his wine glass.

Darting a sideways glance at Rory, Melissa hoped the frown indicated a deeper understanding as to why she had been so scared.

Melissa left Rory and Christophe drinking wine and nibbling olives in the mellow sunlight while she made coffee and collected the hazelnut tart from the fridge.  By the time she'd brought the tray down the steps, the sun had moved round behind the walnut tree and flung its shadow across the flagstones.

Rory rose quietly, met her with a meaningful glance and took the tray from her.  She flashed a grateful smile his way as he carried it to the table, and cut him an extra large slice of the tart, which he ate with obvious enjoyment.  Relaxing, sipping strong black coffee while a wisp of a breeze moved across the valley, Melissa sat quietly and enjoyed the moment.  A lizard ran up the wall of the mill not three feet from her and disappeared into a crack under the eaves.  Two fields away a russet cow moaned to her calf.

“We could always leave.”

Rory's words startled her.  She looked across the table in surprise.  Was he frightened of the ghosts?  Or was it an excuse to get back to London and ditch her?  “We’re not due to leave for another fifteen days.  Where would we go?  We’ve nowhere booked.  And I love it here.”

Astonished at her outburst, she sat and stared at Rory.  All her old insecurities had rushed to the surface at his words.  Yet the moment he suggested leaving the mill, she wanted to stay.  There was no doubt in her mind.  Around her the flowers and trees sighed as if in agreement.