Temptation of a Teacher Read online

  “I enticed Mademoiselle here,” Comte Jacques carried on, “because, when I saw you looking at her in a way I considered dangerous to my future, I knew if she disappeared without any trace, as I planned, who would be blamed!”

  “Of course,” the Duc agreed, “there would be no doubt about that.”

  The Comte laughed and Arletta felt that there was a distinctly mad note in his merriment.

  “No one had any idea, did they, Cousin Etienne,” he jeered, “that it was I who pushed your wife over the battlements! You left her crying and it was easy, almost too easy, to make sure that she did not produce the son who would have disinherited me.”

  As he spoke, Arletta started and she began to understand now what this was all about.

  “As you say,” the Duc said slowly, “you were very clever and no one suspected you, Jacques.”

  “I made sure of that,” he boasted.

  “I suppose,” the Duc said and now his voice was cynical, as it had been when Arletta first arrived at the Château, “you also killed Madeleine Monsarrat.”

  “Of course!” the Comte replied. “It was easy, because she was always drinking coffee, to put an overdose of laudanum into her cup. Poor Cousin Etienne, you really have been very unjustly accused.”

  “I am only surprised that you have left me alone for so long!” the Duc remarked.

  “I was just a little worried in case your sudden disappearance might focus on the fact that I am the next Duc,” the Comte retorted. “But now you and the delectable English teacher will disappear and, of course, I shall spread the rumour that you have run away together. There will be no other possible explanation.”

  Arletta gave a cry.

  “How can you think of – anything so diabolical – so wicked?”

  As if for the first time she drew his attention, the Comte parried,

  “You have no one to blame but yourself! I tried to take you away from the Duc, if you remember, by inviting you to come with me to Paris.”

  “I cannot really believe you ever thought I would consider – such an idea,” Arletta said angrily.

  “Why not?” the Comte asked. “We would have enjoyed ourselves together, I would have made sure of that and I should not have been afraid of my cousin becoming infatuated with you, as he was with the Comtesse.”

  “But you cannot – mean to do anything so – terrible as to – kill us!”

  Arletta tried to speak pleadingly, but her voice trembled and she knew how frightened she was.

  “I am told that drowning is quite a pleasant death,” the Comte answered, “and, although I shall be sorry to lose the company of my delightful and charming cousin, I shall make up for his loss by being a most exemplary and dashing Duc.”

  He looked down at Arletta as he spoke and she reckoned that it was only a question of seconds before he pulled the lever.

  “Now, listen, Jacques,” the Duc said harshly, “I have something to suggest to you.”

  “What is it?”

  “Drown me if you wish to, but spare Mademoiselle’s life. She has nothing to do with our quarrels or the succession of the Ducs of Sauterre. She is English. Let her go back to her own country and forget that she has ever been involved in anything quite so unsavoury.”

  The Comte laughed and it was a very unpleasant sound.

  “A heroic suggestion!” he sneered. “But I am not quite so foolish, my dear cousin, as to let a woman free who would talk. And what woman would not talk in such circumstances?”

  He laughed again and went on,

  “There is nothing you can do, nothing! I have beaten you, as I always wanted to, and now I have won!”

  As he spoke the word ‘won’, it brought back to Arletta the witch’s words that she was a winner and also that she was the only person who could save herself.

  She thrust her right hand into the pocket of her negligée and grasped the butt of the little jewelled revolver.

  “Goodbye, Cousin Etienne!” the Comte was crowing triumphantly. “I am sorry there is no time for you to say your – prayers.”

  Before he could finish the last word, Arletta drew out the revolver and shot straight at him.

  The explosion seemed to echo deafeningly around the small chamber and she felt almost as if it cracked her eardrums.

  Then, as the Comte took his hand from the lever to clutch at his shoulder where the bullet had struck him, the Duc stepped forward.

  Regardless of the fact that he held the oil lamp in his left hand, he hit the Comte with the clenched fist of his right hand on the point of the chin.

  With a groan he staggered back against the stone wall unconscious and then he slid slowly down from it to the floor.

  As he did so, his evening coat flew open and Arletta saw the crimson blood already staining his white shirt.

  The Duc turned back to hold out his hand to Arletta.

  As she took it, feeling as if it was a lifeline, he pulled her out of the dungeon and into the chamber outside.

  It was then that the horror of what had happened swept over her and she held onto the Duc, hiding her face against his shoulder.

  He put the oil lamp down on the protruding part of a buttress and then he put both his arms around her.

  “It’s all right,” he said gently, “it’s all right and you have saved us both.”

  “D-did I – k-kill him?”

  It was difficult to speak the words because her teeth were chattering.

  “No, he is alive,” the Duc replied, “but I will deal with him later.”

  Still with one arm round her he drew her back to the door that they had entered the chamber through and shut and bolted it, leaving the Comte inside.

  Then he said,

  “I have to carry the lamp. Do you think you can walk up the stairs?”

  “I am – all – right.”

  The Duc did not take his arm from her, but, picking up the lamp to light their way, they moved slowly side by side up the stairs until they reached the corridor at the top.

  There was a table in the passage just beside the entrance to the stairway and the Duc put the lamp down on it.

  Then, aware that Arletta was almost fainting, he picked her up in his arms.

  She wanted to protest that she could manage to walk, but the words would not come and instead she hid her face against his shoulder and, as she did so, she started to weep.

  As the Duc carried her back along the passage and up a few stairs, she did not look or even wonder where they were going.

  She merely went on crying against him.

  Only when he stopped walking and put her feet down on the ground, still keeping his arms around her, did she raise her head.

  “It’s all right, ma chérie,” he breathed very quietly. “We are both alive and I promise you that this will never happen again.”

  The way he spoke, the deepness in his voice and the endearment seemed to seep through the sense of shock that Arletta was feeling and check her tears.

  She raised her face, looking up at him in bewilderment and, as she did so, his arms tightened and he drew her closer.

  He did not speak, but she had the strange feeling that she could feel his heart beating against hers.

  Then his lips came down on her lips.

  Chapter Seven

  For a moment all Arletta could feel was the hardness of his lips against hers.

  Then, as he held her closer still and felt her mouth soft and trembling, his kiss became more insistent and more demanding.

  Because she had never before been kissed, Arletta had no idea that it would mean sensations rising within her that were different from anything that she could have known or felt possible.

  And yet it was all the rapture of her dreams as well as all the beauty of her imagination enveloping everything that she saw and felt.

  The Duc kissed her until she felt as if she had died and in some amazing way was in Heaven.

  It seemed impossible that she could be alive and on earth and feel
at the same time that she was part of the music of the spheres with angels singing around her.

  When she thought that it was impossible to feel any more, while her body quivered with the rapture that was so inexpressible and so wonderful that she could only pray that it would never stop, the Duc raised his head.

  He looked down at her, at her eyes wet with tears and yet shining with a radiance that seemed to light up the schoolroom where he had carried her.

  For a moment they just looked at each other, but, when he would have kissed her again, Arletta gave an inarticulate little murmur and hid her face against his neck.

  He held her close against him, his lips on her hair and then said in a voice that sounded deep and unsteady,

  “You must go to bed, my precious, and I must deal with that devil below who intended us to die tonight.”

  “How – could he have tried to do such – terrible things to – you?” Arletta whispered.

  Her words, because of the depth of her feeling, were almost inarticulate, but the Duc heard her and asked,

  “You are thinking of me?”

  “I-I had to – save you.”

  “As you did, most effectively.”

  He was aware, as she was speaking to him, that she swayed and he picked her up in his arms and carried her from the schoolroom onto the twisting staircase.

  There was just room for him to take her up past the rooms where the children slept and into her own bedroom.

  Although she had taken the oil lamp with her that was beside her bed when she went to the dungeons, she had left two candles alight on either side of the mirror on her dressing table.

  The Duc carried her to the bed and laid her down very gently.

  As he smiled at her, she put her hands up to him and said with a touch of fear returning to her voice,

  “P-please – don’t – leave me.”

  “I must,” he answered, “but you will be all right.”

  “Will you – come back and – tell me if the Comte is dead?” Arletta faltered.

  Then with a little cry she added,

  “If he – d-dies – will I have to – stand trial?”

  The Duc sat down on the bed and took her hands in his.

  “There will be no trial. Jacques is not dead, which in some ways is a pity. I will deal with him and try to put right all the evil he has perpetuated.”

  There was a hard note in his voice as he spoke and Arletta held onto him as she stammered,

  “You are – quite certain if you – go back to him now – that he will not – manage in some way to – k-kill you?”

  “You would mind if he did?” the Duc enquired.

  She gazed at him for a moment not comprehending what he was saying.

  Then, as she understood, the colour crept up her face and the Duc thought that it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

  “There is no need to answer that question, ma belle,” he said. “You love me as I love you and we will talk about it later.”

  He bent forward and she thought that he would kiss her lips, but instead he kissed her forehead.

  “Get into bed and rest,” he went on. “I may be some time, but I promise I will come back to tell you what has happened.”

  He kissed her hair and then, as she watched him, her eyes seeming to fill the whole of her face, he left the bedroom, shutting the door behind him.

  She listened until she could no longer hear his footsteps going down the stairs.

  Then she closed her eyes as if she could not believe that she had not been dreaming the weird and terrible things that had happened.

  At the same time what she remembered more vividly than anything else was the feel of the Duc’s wondrous lips on hers.

  *

  A long time later, as the first faint glow of the dawn was breaking in the sky, the Duc knocked gently on the door and then came into Arletta’s bedroom.

  She was lying back against the pillows, her long fair hair falling over her shoulders.

  She had been unable to sleep and instead was praying fervently that now that the Comte had been unmasked and his wicked plotting against the Duc exposed, there would no longer be the whispering in the Château that had been so prevalent since she had arrived.

  She understood now why it had affected everybody who was living there including the two children.

  It had poisoned the atmosphere and prevented it from being, as she so wanted, a Château of happiness and love.

  ‘Now the Duc can be happy and look happy,’ she told herself.

  Then, as if a knife pierced her heart, she thought that there would be no reason, now that she had saved him, why he would want her after she had finished teaching David English.

  There would be women as beautiful as the Marquise, who would love him even though they were married.

  There would be other women like the Comtesse, whom the Comte had killed, whom he would love and one of them would make him a suitable wife.

  ‘He kissed me just in gratitude,’ she told herself.

  While to her it had been the most wonderful thing that had ever happened, to him she was just another woman he had kissed in a long line of beauties.

  ‘I love – him,’ she admitted to herself at last and knew that it was inevitable when he was so handsome and so magnificent.

  But, because he had been cynical and unhappy, it had in a way been a challenge that she could not resist.

  She felt that she had wanted to help him or at least find out about him, perhaps from the first moment that she had seen him, staring at her in amazement as she had danced under the chandeliers in the Château ballroom.

  Looking back, she had first been intrigued by what Jane had told her about him and then by the way that the Duchesse had accused her of trying to ‘catch’ him and, of course, by all the tales that everybody in the Château and the children had told her.

  ‘Now the darkness and shadows that spoiled everything have been lifted,’ she pondered. ‘I have saved his life and there is nothing more I can do for him.’

  She tried to think about it logically and calmly, yet she could only remember his arms around her and the way his lips had sent electric thrills through her whole body.

  She felt again the ecstasy he had given her and the rapture that was part of her prayers. She knew that it was not only something she could never forget but that she would never find it with any other man.

  It was a white and worried little face that Arletta turned towards the Duc as he came towards her bed, looking, she thought, so magnificent in his evening clothes and so elegant that he might have come straight from a Royal dinner party.

  There was a smile on his lips and she could see by the light of the candles that he looked happy and, she believed, younger.

  “You are still awake?” he asked. “I hoped you would sleep.”

  He reached her side and stood looking down at her and, impulsively because she could not prevent herself, she held out both her arms.

  “You are – safe! He – did not – hurt you?”

  The Duc smiled and sat down on the bed, taking her hands in his.

  He kissed them both and then turned them over to kiss first one palm and then the other.

  It was a gesture that had never happened to Arletta before and she felt a thrill sweep through her that was like a streak of lightning.

  As the Duc felt not only her fingers but her whole body quiver, he said,

  “My precious, I have so many things to tell you, far more important than what has just happened.”

  “I-I have to – know,” she stuttered

  He gave a sigh and then, holding both her hands in his, he started,

  “I took Byien and my Major Domo with me down to the dungeons where you and I left Jacques.”

  “He is – alive?”

  “Very much alive,” the Duc answered, “and swearing and cursing in a manner that has made me realise, as I should have done before, that his brain is unhinged.”

  �
�I thought he – must be – mad!”

  “That is the kindest thing we can say about him.”

  “What have you – done with – him?”

  “I have taken him to the doctor who looks after everybody in the Château. He has a small hospital, a very small one, where the bullet that lodged in his shoulder when you shot him will be extracted. However, I have made sure that he will not escape from there and tomorrow I will deal with his future.”

  “There will – not be a – trial?”

  Arletta’s voice trembled with anxiety.

  “Because I cannot have you involved in this and also because, as you will understand, I wish to have no scandal surrounding my family and so Jacques will be treated far better than he deserves.”

  “W-what do you – mean?”

  “I am planning to have him sent to an estate I own in French Colonial Africa. There he will stay working on a farm until he dies. If he returns to France, he will be arrested.”

  The Duc’s voice was firm, but not hard and Arletta queried,

  “I think you – are being – too kind.”

  “As I have already said, far kinder than he deserves,” the Duc declared, “and very much kinder than the way he treated us.”

  “You had no notion that he was – obsessed with the idea – of taking – your place?”

  “I did not realise that Jacques had killed my wife although I knew that it was he who had spread the rumour that I had killed her because we quarrelled.”

  He then paused and, because she hated to think how much he had suffered from the whispering campaign against him, Arletta’s fingers tightened on his.

  “I guessed, however, that it was what had happened,” the Duc continued, “when my friend, Madeleine Montsarrat, died of an overdose of laudanum.”

  He paused and in a very small voice Arletta asked,

  “Were you – very much in love with – her?”

  “I loved her as much as I was capable of loving anyone at that moment,” the Duc admitted, “and I felt that she would make me a very suitable wife and give me the children I wanted.”

  Again it seemed to Arletta that a knife pierced her heart.

  She did not speak and the Duc went on.