Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
It had taken them almost three hours to drag themselves away from the boat on the beach: the chance to explore each other’s bodies, completely alone with nature, was too great.
But eventually, hunger of the stomach overrode hunger of the heart, and they dressed, and made their way back to the cottage.
“And I really must have my own things again,” Pierre chuckled as he opened the front door for Helena to walk through. “It does seem strange, wearing someone else’s clothes. Where are mine?”
Helena pointed to her pile of mending. “I washed and dried them as best I could, but they are sorely torn, so I wanted to – ”
He threw himself onto the sofa, no longer a prison so able to be enjoyed, and grinned. “You do far too much for me, mon ange. I do not deserve you.”
For a moment, he thought she was going to disagree with him, and then she laughed. “Perhaps you are right!”
Still laughing, she wandered through into the kitchen muttering something about tea, and Pierre smiled as he watched her go.
What an incredible woman: to give herself to him so freely, to relish the chance to share such joy with him – and not to shy away from him now, now that he had seen all and touched all…
He shifted uncomfortably. If he was not careful, he would find himself growing hard again for her, and even he could not expect her to allow him that freedom here, in her home.
Moving across to one end of the sofa, Pierre picked up his jacket from the mending pile and smiled. All traces of his horrendous sea journey had been expunged; you would hardly know that it had even been wet, let alone doused in seawater.
His smile faded as he recalled the moment that his mother had given him the jacket, and he shook his head, as though to shake the memory away from him. There was no use dwelling on such things, no point at all.
Pierre moved the jacket to reach into the pockets, and found…nothing.
He fought the disappointment as he reminded himself that he was lucky to be alive, let alone with the jacket still after that riot in Whiteridge. But to have come so far with his mother and sister’s jewels, and to lose them in the depths of the Channel…
Throwing the jacket down in disgust, Pierre watched a button break off its meagre thread, and roll under the sofa. He sighed, reached down, and drew out not just the button, but a small wooden box.
It was curiously hidden, and Pierre’s curiosity was not something he had ever learned to control. He pulled the box out, placed it on his knee, and opened it.
His mouth fell open. Lying on top of what looked like a series of letters were his family jewels.
A quick scrabble was enough to tell him that they were all there. It was unaccountable: how had they been rescued from the depths of the sea to rest in this small box.
“The tea will be ready shortly!” Helena’s voice called out from the kitchen.
Pierre slowly raised his head. Helena. She was the only one who could have done it: gone through his pockets when she was about to wash the jacket, and realised that he would not want such jewels to be mangled.
But then, why place them in this box?
Pierre looked around the room. There were few other places, it was true, where such jewellery could be placed in safety. That must be it, he told himself. They had been placed here for safekeeping. What other explanation could there be?
But his heart sank as he looked around the room more carefully: the fading wallpaper, torn in some places. The frequently scrubbed but never truly clean floor, the mending pile that never ended.
It would be very tempting to take these jewels and trade them for a better life.
As soon as the thought had entered his head, he felt ashamed of himself. Did he really think that little of Helena? Had she given him any reason to think that she was a thief?
No. Everything she did was from elegance and kindness, and he would be a brute to suspect anything ill of her.
Pierre bit his lip, and wished to God that he had not found the box which he soon placed back underneath the sofa.
And yet with the box out of sight, it could not be put out of Pierre’s mind. That evening he could feel the coldness in his voice and he tried to pour the affection that he felt for Helena over it, masking the suspicion.
“You are very quiet,” she said with a look that he could not understand.
She was seated on the sofa, curled up at one end while he sat at the other.
He shrugged. “Perhaps.”
“I do not think that there is any perhaps about it,” Helena continued, nudging him with her foot with a smile. “Is anything amiss?”
Pierre did not know what to say. ‘Did you try and steal my family’s inheritance’ was quite a bold statement to make, and not one that he felt he could do with any justice.
The closeness that he had felt, that utter nakedness that he had experienced with her, seemed gone, and it was his own doing.
She still looked at him with the eyes of a lover.
“I am afraid the little food available to me is a little repetitive,” she said quietly, gazing into his face as though attempting to read his mind. “Does it fatigue you, to have the same meal over and over again?”
Wild horses would not drag the truth from him, which was a very certain yes; Pierre knew too much of her relative poverty now to make such an assertion.
“Not at all,” he assured her, with what he hoped was a winning smile. But he drifted back into silence once more as the thought of his possessions, hidden in a small wooden box out of his sight, returned to his mind.
She looked at him, curiously. Her hair was unpinned, flowing down her shoulders and back, ever-present earrings dangling down, and her face was so open and vulnerable that Pierre could not help but smile, albeit gently. Helena was not a woman to do such a thing, surely.
But what if he was wrong? The temptation, he knew, would be very great – and while he could not imagine living like this, in these circumstances, for long, he had experienced enough of hunger during his time on that godforsaken boat: enough fear of safety, longing for water, and hope of warm shelter, to know that he would probably have robbed anyone who had come in his path to attain such securities.
“You are a thousand miles away,” Helena cut into his thoughts as she poked him with her foot again. “France?”
Pierre forced a smile, and lied. “Yes. I know that it is not so far away, but it feels a great distance now that I know the boat is essentially irreparable.”
“Oh, I would not say so,” she said warmly, but with a smile that appeared sad rather than joyful. “A little coin will be required, of course, to get it back on an even keel, but I suppose that will not be…you have said before how wealthy you are, so…”
That was the moment, Pierre often said when he looked back at that evening, that he should have asked her.
It was a natural statement, to explain that he had lost his jewels, his fortune, in the ocean during the crossing: he could then wait and see whether she revealed that she had kept them for safekeeping – or hide the fact that she had stolen them for her own use.
But it was not to be. Just as he opened his mouth, half desperately hoping that something would occur to interrupt them for he knew not how to approach such a delicate matter, there was a knock at the door.
Helena jumped up, startled. “Hide!”
Pierre stared at his hissing host. “Hide?”
She gestured at him to ascend the stairs and nodded. “Do you think my reputation will be able to withstand the discovery of a strange man – and a Frenchman, to boot! – in my home, without my father there?”
She spoke in a low hurried tone, but Pierre quickly understood her. Rising from the sofa he threw himself across the room, and only managed to climb up to the fourth step when the door was opened.
“My, Mrs Thatcher,” he heard Helena say warmly. “What brings you out here on such a brisk and cold night? I am not needed, am I?”
The anxious tone that she ended her statement on was not lost on Pierre, who scowled. It was difficult to remember, sometimes, that Helena also rescued others from the depths of that beast of an ocean – and yet how could he claim her all to himself, when he had known her only but a few days?
The memory of her naked body, covered in the sun’s rays, sprang to his memory, and he grinned. Ah, he would always be her possessor in his heart.
“…strange direction,” he caught from an older woman’s voice. “But then I could not think where else to go.”
“‘Tis a strange direction indeed,” Helena’s voice agreed as Pierre stood still on the stairs.
“But I think I comprehend its import. My father spent some time in France, oh, above ten years ago. This letter must be from one of his business acquaintance – I will keep it, thank you Mrs Thatcher, and return it to you if I am in error. Good evening.”
By the sound of it, she did not give Mrs Thatcher the chance to disagree with her decision; the door was shut, and a whispered voice encouraged Pierre to descend once more.
When he entered the parlour, Helena was holding a letter out to him.
“‘To the Frenchman’,” she quoted with a smile, indicating the letter. “I can have no doubt as to its intended recipient, though goodness knows why Mrs Thatcher thought to enquire here – ”
“Or how anyone knows that I am here,” Pierre said with a frown, taking the letter and inspecting the handwriting. “I did not think anyone was aware of my escape from France. Someone must be…watching the house.”
They both stared at the letter in his hand.
“Well,” sighed Helena eventually. “You will never know unless you open it.”
Pierre stared down at the letter. It was written on paper quite elegant and smooth, richly bought, and the writing was elegant and formal. If he did not know any better…
He sat on the sofa, turned over the letter, and his heart jumped.
No. It could not be. It simply was not possible.
His own seal stared back at him: the rampant lion emblazoned on an E.
Heart now thundering, his fingers tore at the seal and opened up the letter to read the fine handwriting evenly laid across the paper in lines.
My darling Pierre,
If you are reading this letter, God be praised! It has reached you at last, and its constant wanderings over this sad globe have been at least as long as our own.
My brother, it has been with the greatest secrecy that I have been living this past year, and I am sure that you will forgive the privacy that has removed even yourself from my intimacy and insight, but it was a necessary precaution.
You were being watched, dear Pierre, in France.
If you are still there, in our own country, then I beg that you would leave it as soon as you complete this letter.
If you have already escaped, then I recommend caution.
I have given this to my trusted network, and if it reaches you, then Paendly should not be too far behind.
Trust no one. Believe nothing. Make no friends save those you need to survive. The tendrils of the Revolution are not confined to the borders of our once great country; they spread far and wide.
I cannot reveal my location as yet, but I hope to see you before too long. I will know where to find you. Do not attempt to discover me, no matter the temptation, for you would put us both at risk.
Until I see you again, little brother, I remain your affectionate and loyal sister,
Giselle
Pierre hurriedly drew breath, his lungs aching as he realised they had been absolutely still while he had been reading Giselle’s letter.
Oh, to see her handwriting once more! To know that she was alive, that she was surviving somewhere out there in the world, perhaps not too far away! He scanned the lines again: it would be sensible, indeed, if she had urged him to leave France immediately, to assume that she had already done so.
His heart leapt. She could be here, in England: there was every chance that he could see her again!
“Does it bring good news?”
The casual question broke into his thoughts and stunned him, bringing him crashing down to reality: a small poor house on the edge of the coast of England.
“Yes,” he managed to say with relative calm. “Yes, I think it is good news.”
But as he spoke, he stared at the handwriting.
Could he be sure that it was Giselle? Could it be a trick, a trap perhaps?
But then, and he read the final paragraph hastily once more, she does not ask his own whereabouts, and is coy with her own.
If it were to be a trap, then surely his location would be sought?
Helena lowered herself to sit beside him on the sofa. “Is it from Giselle?”
Pierre glanced up hurriedly, and hid the letter from her view. “Giselle? Why do you suppose that?”
Her eyes widened at the sharpness of his tone, but he could not help it. How could she know – did she send it, perhaps? Was this all a conspiracy to –
“You said that she was your only surviving family member,” Helena said softly, with a frown. “Who else could the letter be from?”
Pierre relaxed, but kept the letter hidden. Well, that certainly made sense, he could not fault her logic.
“What does she say?”
Was he becoming paranoid now? The jewellery, hidden; the letter, so easily coming to him when no one else in the world knew that he was here?
Pierre smiled, and tucked the letter away. “Nothing of import.”