Temptation of a Teacher Page 5

  Dinner turned out to be a formal meal that for a Governess and two small children she found incredible.

  Waited on by a butler and three footmen, they sat in the huge Baronial dining room, which could have accommodated nearly a hundred people.

  The Duc’s chair at the far end of the table, which, carved and painted with the Arms of the Sauterre family, looked like a Royal Throne.

  They sat in what were their proper places at the far end of the table and as course followed course of delicious food, Arletta who was hungry enjoyed every mouthful, although she was aware that by the end of the meal that Pauline was half-asleep.

  David, however, ate heartily and chatted away, answering her questions about the Château.

  He had obviously, she thought, been indoctrinated with the great consequence of the Sauterre family to the exclusion of a great deal of French history that might have been more useful to him.

  As for the English, they were obviously the enemy.

  “Uncle Etienne’s ancestors were at the Field of the Cloth of Gold,” David announced. “And they fought to try to save St. Joan of Arc, who was burnt to death by the English, although she was a Saint!”

  “All that happened a long time ago,” Arletta pointed out firmly.

  “The English may well have won the Battle of Waterloo,” David persisted, “but Uncle Etienne claims that they were very cruel to Napoleon Bonaparte when he was a prisoner on the Isle of St. Helena.”

  “I think what you have to do,” Arletta said eventually, “is to learn a little about the English before you come to England. Don’t forget, David, that you belong to an ancient and very distinguished family. In fact the Redruths were Chieftains or perhaps Kings in Cornwall long before William the Conqueror invaded us from Normandy.”

  Jane had given her this information, but she had not realised at the time how important it was going to be.

  “He was French and he won!” David asserted.

  “But now the English Empire spreads over half the world,” Arletta said, “and I think you must learn about it as well.”

  She sighed before she added,

  “Actually you are very, very lucky.”

  “Why?” David asked in a somewhat hostile tone.

  “Because you are both English and French and you therefore must try to understand both countries and do your best to keep them at peace with each other.”

  David looked surprised and Arletta went on,

  “Some of the Redruths have been Statesmen and Diplomats. I must learn about them and how they managed to prevent war and create friendship between nations who previously had always loathed each other.”

  She was not sure that this was true, but David would not be able to contradict her!

  “Do you think that war is wrong, mademoiselle?” he asked.

  “I think it is horrible, wicked and cruel and many men lose in war the most precious thing any of us can possess, which is life.”

  David thought this over for a moment and then he commented,

  “Suppose they don’t mind dying?”

  “Everybody minds dying, especially when they are young,” Arletta answered. “Life is exciting and an adventure. There is so much to do, so much to learn and so much to enjoy.”

  She saw that David was listening and then asked,

  “Why should one lose something so precious just because of some political quarrel or because the Ruler of one country is greedy and wants to take away what another Ruler owns?”

  She thought as she spoke that this was a theme that she must enlarge upon and perhaps describe the concept better than she was doing at the moment.

  It was obvious that David was impressed and after a moment he said,

  “Uncle Etienne wants me to go into the French Army!”

  Without thinking Arletta replied,

  “But, of course, you cannot do that! I know that your father would be horrified if he found that you were fighting against your own kith and kin in another country!”

  She spoke so violently that David stared at her.

  Then she felt that maybe she had been overemotional about something that was so much a part of her own upbringing that she could hardly believe she was listening to an English boy saying what David had just said to her.

  She cried quickly,

  “I think if you have finished, we should go upstairs. I am sure that Pauline wants to go to bed.”

  “I’m tired,” Pauline moaned.

  “Yes, of course, you are,” Arletta said. “Who puts you to bed? Shall I do it?”

  “No, ma Bonne,” Pauline said. “I want her! I want ma Bonne!”

  Waiting outside the Dining Room door was a middle-aged gentle-faced Frenchwoman, who swept Pauline up into her arms.

  “La petite gets ever so tired, m’mselle,” she explained to Arletta. “She is not strong and should have plenty of sleep, but Monsieur insists that the children dine downstairs and with you arrivin’ she did not have a rest before dinner.”

  “Then that is something we must prevent another time,” Arletta smiled.

  “I’m tired – I’m very tired,” Pauline whimpered.

  The Frenchwoman carried her away and Arletta asked,

  “Are you ready to go to bed too, David?”

  “Not yet,” he replied.

  “Then perhaps you will show me a little of the Château or is it too late?”

  David grinned.

  “No one can stop us now that Uncle Etienne is away and I would very much like to show it to you.”

  “Very well,” Arletta nodded. “Let’s see as much as we can before it grows too dark.”

  She realised that it was just impossible to see everything.

  The Château seemed to extend for miles and there were three other towers similar to the one that the children used, as well as enormous Reception rooms in the centre block, which looked out, she discovered, over the most entrancing formal gardens.

  There were pools ornamented with ancient urns and a huge fountain sculpted with cupids and dolphins, which flung water like a thousand iridescent rainbows high into the sky.

  It was so lovely and at the same time traditional and formal and very unlike the gardens at Weir House that Arletta was so familiar with.

  Everything seemed to have its place and she thought it impossible even for one revolutionary weed to raise up its head between the paved walks or the tightly clipped yew hedges.

  She was not surprised to find that everything in the Château was very luxurious.

  As she had seen when she arrived, the furnishing was predominately Louis XIV and she wondered how so much had escaped the French Revolution until David explained,

  “Uncle Etienne says that in the Revolution most of the great treasures were hidden in safe places like caverns in the mountains or deep dungeons that no one could find an entrance to.”

  In fact the Château had not been ransacked in the same way as those nearer to Paris.

  “As it is so isolated here,” David went on, “there were not many people to revolt against the reigning Duc of the time.”

  “He was very lucky,” Arletta pointed out.

  David shrugged his shoulders.

  “It has made Uncle Etienne more puffed up with pride than he would be otherwise. I heard one of the servants say once that he thinks he is God!”

  Arletta gave a little exclamation.

  “I am sure, David, that you should not say such things about your uncle.”

  “Why not to you?” David asked. “You are the enemy, who has been forced upon him and he already hates you before he has even met you!”

  Arletta was startled.

  “Do you really mean that?”

  “He said to us when Aunt Margaret had left, ‘your aunt has forced an English Governess upon me against my will, who will teach you the barbaric language which you, David, have to assimilate before you suffer Hell in what the English call a Public School’!”

  “That is not true!” Arletta exc
laimed. “I am sure that your father loved being at Eton and all my family who have been there are very proud and very fond of their old school. They would be shocked and horrified to think that you thought of it like that.”

  “I am prepared to go to Hell, or anywhere else, as long as it is a long way from here,” David replied.

  They were in the library and, looking at the thousands of books in the enormous room, Arletta thought it strange that any child should not be intrigued by living in such a fine Château with so much to occupy and entertain him or her.

  She sat down on a stool in front of the empty fireplace and then quizzed him,

  “Tell me, David, why do you hate living here?”

  For a moment he looked over his shoulder in the same surreptitious way that he had done before to make certain that there was nobody near them.

  Then he came closer to her and he almost whispered,

  “It’s horrible. I could just bear it when Mama was alive, but now it is worse than any prison could possibly be!”

  “But why? Why do you say that?” Arletta asked.

  David hesitated and she wondered if he would tell her the truth.

  Then he said,

  “It’s Uncle Etienne! He hates us because Papa was English and the whole Château is just horrible!”

  He lowered his voice before he went on,

  “And Uncle Etienne is a murderer! He has killed two women!”

  Chapter Three

  Arletta, standing at the window of her bedroom, thought that on the whole it had been an extraordinary but very good day.

  First she had been delighted to find that David was not so ignorant where English was concerned as she had been led to believe.

  His father had died when he was six, but until then he had talked to him in English and only after that, when his mother had brought the children to the Château, had that language been barred.

  But once he began to talk with Arletta the words came back even if his grammar was rather hazy and, as he was very eager to learn, she thought that in one day they had made a surprising amount of progress.

  She insisted on teaching David alone and then tried very gently to interest Pauline in the English names for flowers, food and everything around her.

  The little girl tried hard, but it was obviously very much more difficult for her and Arletta thought that it was more important to get David ready for his English school.

  There were so many small things too that had to be corrected, for instance the way that he wrote out his sums in arithmetic and the way that he addressed people, which was entirely French and would she reckoned be laughed at in England.

  It was all going to take time, but she found that she was not only extremely interested in what she was doing but she had to admit very curious as well.

  When David had told her last night that his uncle had murdered two women, she had thought at first that it was some kind of joke and later that the boy was lying for the sake of shocking her.

  Finally she recognised that this was a puzzle that she had to unravel, but it could not be done in a few minutes.

  She therefore talked about other subjects until they both went up to bed.

  *

  In the morning what he had said to her was still vividly in her mind and she found herself wondering how any child could hold such an idea about his uncle.

  She could understand that he found it hard in the circumstances, if that was what he believed, to live happily in the Château.

  After she had finished her lesson with David, they went outside and continued talking in English as he showed her first the formal gardens and then took her to the stables.

  She had expected that the Duc’s horses would be exceptional, as she had admired the fine team that had met her at the Station.

  But she was not prepared for row upon row of stables filled with Arab-bred superfine horses that were better than any she had seen in the whole of her life.

  “Uncle Etienne has his racing stables at Chantilly,” David informed her, “but these he rides himself and, of course, we are allowed to ride them too.”

  Arletta’s eyes lit up instantly and then she asked,

  “Do you suppose I might ride with you?”

  “Of course, if you want to,” David replied, “but I did not imagine at all that an English Governess would be keen on riding.”

  Then he laughed and continued,

  “But then you are not the sort of English Governess I was expecting.”

  “What did the Duc say?” Arletta asked him.

  “He said you would be prim, ugly and very strict!”

  Arletta was not certain if he was being truthful or merely teasing her.

  They arranged to ride after luncheon, but Pauline said that she would rather stay with her Bonne and therefore David and Arletta rode alone.

  He took her over the beautiful countryside and into one of the thick dark woods that she thought of as dragon forests.

  She was not surprised to find that the trees were planted to facilitate not only riding but also shooting and they were carefully looked after by woodcutters who were working in one of the woods they visited.

  By the time they returned she was certain that the Duc ran his estates diligently and efficiently.

  But one little episode had upset her.

  They had stopped to speak to the men who were working in a small vine field and the overseer who obviously knew David came up to speak to them.

  “Nice to see you here, monsieur,” he said politely and looked at Arletta with curiosity.

  “This is Pierre Beauvais, mademoiselle,” David told her. “He looks after all Uncle Etienne’s vines and makes the most delicious wine.”

  Arletta held out her hand.

  “I have come to the Château,” she said in French, “to teach English to le petit monsieur et mademoiselle Pauline.”

  Pierre Beauvais looked at her in astonishment.

  “You are a Governess, m’mselle?”

  Arletta nodded.

  Then, as David moved away to speak to one of the other men working on the vines, he said in a low voice,

  “C’est impossible! You should go home, m’mselle, you will not be happy here.”

  “Why do you say that?” Arletta asked him.

  Pierre Beauvais glanced round and she felt that he was embarrassed that he had said too much.

  Then, as David came back to join them, he said quickly,

  “Go home, m’mselle, it will be better for you.”

  There was no chance to say anything more and, riding back to the Château, Arletta thought that it was a very odd conversation to have had with one of the Duc’s employees.

  Pauline was waiting for them and they went not into the schoolroom but into the library.

  Arletta was determined to find picture books for the little girl, which would make it more interesting for her to learn English when she saw the words nicely illustrated.

  There were, however, so many thousands of books covering the walls that it was difficult to know where to begin to look and there seemed to be no catalogue.

  Then, as the children were helping her search, the door opened and a man came into the library and she looked at him in surprise.

  He was young, good-looking and extremely elegantly dressed.

  She was wondering who he could be when David piped up in a rather offhand manner,

  “Oh, hello, Cousin Jacques. I did not know that you were coming back today.”

  “I am back,” the newcomer said, “and I understand we have a visitor.”

  Arletta walked towards him.

  “I am Jane Turner, monsieur,” she began, wondering as she spoke how he fitted into the organisation of the Château.

  “You are the new Governess?”

  There was no doubt at the astonishment in his voice and on his face and Arletta thought of what a fuss people made about her appearance.

  “I gather,” she replied a little coldly, “that you were no
t expecting to find me here.”

  “I was expecting to find an English Governess, but not somebody who looks like you!”

  “I find it difficult, monsieur,” Arletta said, “to understand what my looks have to do with it. The only reason I am here is to teach the children.”

  “Perhaps I should introduce myself,” the young man said. “I am Jacques de Sauterre – Comte Jacques if you wish to be formal. I am a cousin of the Duc and, when I am not in Paris, I live here in the Château.”

  Arletta smiled.

  “I arrived only yesterday, so you will understand, monsieur le Comte, that I am finding it difficult to understand the complexities of the household.”

  “That is not surprising,” the Comte replied, “and I suppose the children have not enlightened you. They are tiresome little monsters unless you bully them!”

  He seemed to speak jokingly, but to Arletta’s surprise David scowled at him and Pauline, who had only glanced up when he came into the room, now had her back to him as she looked through the book that she had just taken down from one of the shelves.

  “As you see, we are one big happy family,” the Comte said sarcastically and then added, “I suppose, as you have only just arrived, that you have not yet seen the Duchesse.”

  “The Duchesse?” Arletta gasped.

  It had never occurred to her that there might be a woman living in the Château.

  “The Duc’s grandmother,” the Comte explained. “She is very old and in bad health and she seldom bothers with visitors unless, of course, she is curious about them.”

  He looked at Arletta in a manner that was slightly insulting and then resumed,

  “But I feel very sure, Miss Turner, that she will be very very curious about you!”

  There was something in the way he spoke that made Arletta stiffen and she replied,

  “You must excuse me, monsieur, but I am busy trying to find a book that will interest Pauline.”

  “If you are expecting to find any books in English here, you are much mistaken,” the Comte sneered.

  “I was not expecting anything of the sort,” Arletta answered, “but I cannot find a catalogue and it is therefore difficult to know what is available.”