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  She expected some flattering response, such as that no walk could be too long if he was at her side.

  “Oh well, they do say that exercise is good for the soul,” was all he muttered.

  Which just increased Valeria’s anger.

  “I think it would be best if we headed for the road,” he added. “The horse will find it easier on the flat.”

  Valeria would have liked to argue against this, but she could not dispute his reasoning.

  Despite herself she was rather impressed with his knowledge of the way the land lay and how quickly he led them onto a well-trodden path.

  “This should lead us to the road to the Desrivières’ château,” he commented amiably.

  Valeria bit her lip and said nothing.

  They proceeded in silence for a mile or so, Valeria keeping an eye on the stallion’s gait.

  Politeness dictated that she should at least attempt to engage him in light conversation to ease the tedium of their progress, but many unpleasant feelings were boiling inside her, not least of which was the knowledge that she was behaving exceedingly badly.

  Eventually they joined the highway and soon after that a roadside inn came into view.

  He halted the mare.

  “I think we deserve a little refreshment. They may well have hot chocolate and I would appreciate an ale.”

  Against all her instincts, Valeria found her mouth watering at the thought of a delicious cup of hot chocolate.

  She wondered if anyone would be worried at her late return, then she dismissed the thought. Juliette and her parents never stood on ceremony. They would assume that she was enjoying the beautiful countryside.

  “Why don’t we sit outside?” he suggested. “Then we can keep an eye on the horses.”

  He tied the two horses to the hitching post, invited Valeria to sit on a wooden bench and then went inside.

  Soon he reappeared with a mug of ale.

  “If I followed the French, your hot chocolate will be along shortly,” he smiled. “Madame was all of a fluster at having to produce it, but I do hope she understood my fractured attempt at her language.”

  Valeria thought that he suddenly seemed much less sure of himself and it made her feel a little more confident.

  He sat down and put his mug on the table.

  “Have you known Mademoiselle Desrivières long, Miss Montford?” he asked.

  She explained that they had been at school together.

  Charles Waterford listened with an appearance of interest and encouraged her to talk about the school and their adventures together.

  While she talked Madame brought out a mug of hot chocolate. As she thanked her in her fluent French, Valeria realised with a start that, apart from a small boy, they were now alone outside the inn. So very involved had she been in their conversation, she had not seen the other patrons of the inn disappear.

  It did not seem to matter.

  She tried the hot chocolate, then continued with a laugh,

  “I’m afraid Juliette and I were threatened often with dismissal. My father had to write me a severe letter.”

  “Did you have a lecture when you returned home?”

  Valeria shook her head.

  “Papa tries to be strict, but he loves me too much. You see, Mama died two years ago and I have no brother or sister, so we only have each other.”

  “How sad that sounds.”

  “Oh, but we have enormous fun together! He is so intelligent and loves his music. We go out to concerts and I accompany his violin on the piano.”

  “I wonder if I have met him,” Charles Waterford murmured. “What is his full name?”

  “Sir Christopher Montford Baronet, a very ancient title,” Valeria replied proudly.

  She considered her father the epitome of a perfect gentleman. He was as tall as Charles Waterford and even more handsome. He knew exactly what to say to everyone and women clustered around him.

  But Valeria was certain that he and her mother had enjoyed such a perfect marriage that no other female could tempt him into marrying again.

  “I miss Mama very much,” she sighed in a sad little voice and then laughed, “but while I have Papa I am happy. We talk about Mama often and recollect how beautiful she was and how she made our lives such fun.”

  He gazed at her seemingly fascinated by her words.

  Then suddenly he reached down behind him.

  “No, you don’t, you thief,” he howled.

  Valeria glanced around and saw that the small boy had crept up behind her and was now securely grasped by Charles Waterford.

  “He was trying to cut off your purse,” he cried.

  Looking down at her waist, where a small leather purse was secured by loops, she saw the boy held a knife.

  She gave a small scream as she realised how nearly she had lost her purse.

  “Méchant garçon,” she shouted at him and raised her hand to give him a slap.

  “No,” intervened Charles Waterford in a voice that brooked no argument.

  “What do you mean? He tried to rob me. We must call for the law.”

  “He’s terrified and looks half starved.”

  He sounded so compelling that she swallowed her anger and took a good look at the young thief.

  He could not have been more than seven years old. His eyes flickered from the man who held him to the girl he had tried to rob and back again.

  Anguish was written all over his dirty pinched face. He wore a torn shirt and breeches. His bones were birdlike and small.

  Valeria reached and took the knife from his hand.

  Tears came to the boy’s eyes and he hung his head.

  “Alors, garçon,” stammered Charles in a very poor French accent. “Que faites vous? Or should it be tu?” he asked Valeria.

  “For a child, tu.”

  “Oh, darn my French. Please, you speak it so well, ask the boy why he is stealing.”

  Valeria was taken aback.

  To her mind, if they were not going to hand the boy over to the law, he should be given a good talking to.

  But there was something about Charles Waterford and the intent way he was looking at the urchin he still held by the wrist.

  The boy looked terrified and Valeria’s heart melted.

  Speaking gently to him she gradually persuaded the frightened boy to give them his story.

  “He says his family are starving. His father had a bad accident and lost half his leg. Now he can’t work. His mother used to take in washing but she is ill. They have no food to eat.

  “The boy is called Pierre and he has been trying to find work without any success. He thought stealing was all that was left to him.”

  Valeria looked carefully at the boy.

  He now seemed less frightened and more confident. How honest were those huge blue eyes, she wondered.

  “If his story is true, it’s tragic,” she said slowly.

  Charles Waterford stared at the boy.

  “You feel that maybe he is embroidering the facts?”

  There was something in the way that he said it that made Valeria feel cynical and mean.

  “I want to believe him, but it sounds too awful.”

  He stood up.

  “Why then don’t we go and check?” he suggested briskly. “I imagine that he lives not too far away. Ask him exactly where his home is.”

  A few minutes later they set out.

  Pierre refused the offer of a ride on the horse.

  Charles Waterford led the horses as Valeria too had refused to ride and walked holding the boy’s dirty hand.

  Pierre’s home was further away than she thought.

  The sun had burned through the morning mist and Valeria began to regret that her habit might be fashionable and well cut, but it was too heavy for today’s weather.

  Suddenly Pierre darted off into an overgrown track. Flies buzzed around them as they followed the small boy.

  Valeria worried that her stallion would damage his sprained
leg further.

  Charles Waterford suggested she stay on the road with the horses and wait there for him.

  “Indeed not!” she responded indignantly. “I want to see exactly what sort of home the boy lives in.”

  At that moment the track ran into an open clearing where sat not so much a cottage as a hovel. Built of the humblest materials, the walls hardly held together and the roof appeared to be on the point of collapse.

  Valeria went and looked inside and Pierre called to his father that they had visitors.

  Immediately an old man emerged. He leaned on a crutch, one leg of his torn trousers turned up over a stump.

  He looked from Valeria to Charles.

  “Monseigneur, Madame – ” he started, but his voice trailed off as though the situation was too extraordinary for him to be able to comment any further.

  Pierre tugged at Valeria’s coat and asked her to step inside and speak to his mother.

  Valeria then wondered if this was wise and glanced across at Charles. He gave her a little nod.

  Next she followed Pierre into the hovel, stooping in order not to bump her head as she entered.

  It was so dark that she had to stand quite still for a moment to allow her eyes to adjust. All she could hear was the sound of heavy laboured breathing.

  Then gradually she could make out a woman lying on a bed of ferns. She seemed hardly conscious.

  Standing by the bed was a girl who looked a little younger than Pierre. Her dress was ragged, her long brown hair was tangled and her face dirty. But her eyes were the same intense blue and she gazed at Valeria in awe.

  Pierre grabbed her by the hand and told her that he had brought a beautiful lady to meet her.

  Valeria smiled.

  Never had she felt less beautiful or more privileged than when she glanced around this dreadful dwelling.

  Pierre seized his sister’s hand.

  “Madame, voilà Rose, ma soeur.”

  In a most pleading voice she asked her brother if he had brought them any money or anything they could eat.

  Pierre put his hands into his pockets and shook his head not able to meet her haunted gaze.

  Tears ran down Rose’s cheeks.

  Valeria’s heart was torn.

  Regardless of the dirt floor, she knelt down beside the little girl. Removing her gloves and taking out a lace handkerchief, she tried to wipe the girl’s eyes, soothing her and trying to tell her that everything would be all right.

  After a while, the girl took the handkerchief, wiped away her tears and then smoothed out the damp lace on the skirt of Valeria’s habit.

  “C’est très, très jolie!” she cried in wonderment.

  Valeria pressed the handkerchief into her hand.

  “Pour tu.”

  “Pour moi? C’est vrai?”

  The girl was unable to believe that such a precious item could possibly be a gift.

  Valeria scrabbled in her purse that Pierre had tried to steal from her and took out all the money it held.

  It was not much, but the boy’s face as she handed it over suggested that for him it was untold riches.

  “Merci, merci, merci bien,” he cried, standing with his hands full of the coins.

  For Valeria they represented the cost of a new pair of gloves and for Pierre’s family, she realised, they meant food for maybe a couple of weeks.

  There seemed little Valeria could do for the mother.

  She rose to her feet and brushed down her skirt.

  Rose stroked the fine material.

  Valeria wished she could take it off and give it to the girl. Instead she took her hand and led her outside.

  She looked helplessly at Charles Waterford,

  “This is worse than we thought. Can anything be done?”

  “I shall discuss the matter with my friends. Maybe they will know whose land this family is on, it could even be theirs. Certainly the local Priest needs to be informed.”

  Suddenly there came a screech from amongst the nearby trees.

  An animal in pain reckoned Valeria.

  Pierre ran off and his father gave an excited cry and Rose clapped her hands together.

  They all watched until, a few minutes later, Pierre came back, his face full of smiles.

  He was clutching a dead hare by the back legs. It looked as though its neck had been broken.

  The father took the animal, produced a knife and proceeded to disembowel and skin it.

  Valeria shuddered and, nauseated at the sight, ran back to the horses.

  “It means they can have a proper meal,” muttered Charles Waterford. “You cannot begrudge them that.”

  She shook her head, unable to meet his eyes.

  Her hands trembled as she released the reins.

  “Is there anything more we can do here?” she asked, her voice shaky.

  “I suppose not,” he said and she knew that he must despise her.

  All her feelings of humiliation flooded back and she hated Charles Waterford.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Juliette was very excited.

  “Valeria, chérie, what ’as ’appened to you? You have been away so long! Where you find Lord Waterford and why not invite ’im in for drink? ’E is much the parfait gentilhomme. I like ’im so much.”

  Valeria was astonished to learn her rescuer’s title.

  Lord Waterford was far from her conception of an aristocrat. He might look attractive, but he lacked the dash and élan she associated with members of the Peerage.

  He had led her stallion all the way to the château and Valeria had not been able to keep up a conversation.

  After a little she had given up.

  Back at the château’s stables, Valeria expressed as prettily as she could her deep gratitude for all his help.

  “I would offer you the hospitality of the house and I know the Desrivières would welcome you most sincerely, but I do not feel I should take up more of your time.”

  She should then have asked him to come into the château, but she had had enough of this strange gentleman who seemed to spurn her attempts at civility.

  So she had held out her hand to her saviour.

  He took it, bent over it in a most flattering way, his lips almost placing a kiss on it, but, in the accepted manner, not quite, then he looked up at her, his grey eyes serious.

  “I am the one who should be grateful, this morning has been an – extraordinary experience. I shall hope that, later, we may be able to meet – in a more relaxed fashion.”

  He spoke with hesitancy in his voice as though he found it hard to form his phrases.

  Valeria was too disturbed to notice this.

  As her gaze was caught by the intensity in his eyes, she felt an odd fluttering in her heart.

  Why, she thought, his eyes have silvery flecks, then she blushed unusually as though she had been caught being naughty at school.

  At once she felt angry again, both at herself for her reaction – and at Charles Waterford.

  He had humiliated her and had made her feel that she was lacking in grace and understanding – Valeria was not used to being made to feel she was anything less than perfect in the eyes of any of the men who flirted with her.

  However, politeness was necessary.

  “You will, I am sure, sir, always be welcome at the Desrivières’,” she murmured and gave him her best smile.

  Then she stood and watched him ride away.

  As he moved out of sight, she felt a sudden chill as though dark clouds had passed over the sun.

  She turned to run up the stairs to change into one of her prettiest dresses and put the whole incident behind her.

  Immediately she had entered the château, however, there was Juliette with an avalanche of questions.

  Valeria could only respond with,

  “He is Lord Waterford?”

  “Bien sur, did you not know? ’E want very much to meet you last night, but there were so big a crowd round ma chère amie.”

  Ju
liette slipped her arm through Valeria’s.

  “Come, we will go up to your room and you tell me everything? Hein? Last night you look so pretty, everyone say who that lovely, lovely English miss?”

  Juliette’s endless chatter cheered up Valeria as they climbed up the stairs.

  “It was a lovely party,” she responded vaguely.

  “You like Jean-Pierre? Yes?”

  Valeria entered her room, took Juliette by the hand and sat them both down on the chaise longue at the end of the large four-poster bed.

  “Juliette, my darling girl, I think Jean-Pierre is very handsome and everything a young man should be – ”

  Actually Valeria thought Jean-Pierre’s nose was too big and his ears stuck out. Also his lips were too thick and, like Charles Waterford, he lacked a ready wit.

  “But are you really so much in love with him? He seems so different from the men you usually fall for.”

  Juliette looked at her with interested eyes.

  “Different – ’ow?”

  “Well, he does not flirt in the usual way. He talks seriously.” Valeria giggled. “He wanted to tell me about the new breed of cattle he is raising on his family’s estate.”

  “Oh, but ’e make it so interesting, no?”

  “Well, yes, I suppose so, but I have never before met any man who talks to a pretty girl like that.”

  “Ah, you want ’e should flirt with you? When ’e is engaged to your chère amie?” Juliette said provocatively.

  Valeria laughed again.

  “Of course not, but you know what I mean?”

  Juliette grew serious.

  “I do know, chérie.” She clasped both her friend’s hands. “Not all men flirt and say endless silly things. Lord Waterford, ’e does not make the pretty speech, no? ’E, you would say, is serious. Mais ’e is very kind man and ’e ’as lots and lots of money and a great position. Papa, ’e say Lord Waterford is a man ’e like to ’ave at ’is side.”

  Valeria tried to suppress another giggle.

  Le Comte Desrivières was a very short man and she had a sudden image of him standing beside the tall Charles Waterford.

  Juliette jumped up and glared at Valeria.

  “You make too much fun, ma chérie. I tell you, too many men flirt and – and that is all! Not many gentlemen are at all serious and responsible like Jean-Pierre or Lord Waterford.”