Meg, about to draw a deep, indignant breath, checked the impulse. It would have totally the wrong effect in the circumstances, she told herself tersely. Perhaps Monsieur Moncourt was completely au fait with the effect he had on women, after all, she thought with angry derision, and was confident of an easy seduction. Payment, maybe, for helping her out. Well, don’t count on a thing, she assured him in grim silence.
This was the kind of game that Margot would enjoy, she realised. A sophisticated advance and retreat, spiced with unspoken promise and sexual innuendo, from which at the end she would walk away. Or not, as she chose.
And perhaps, just for one evening, it would do no harm to play the game herself—or at least learn some of its rules. Maybe this is my day for living dangerously, she thought.
Jerome Moncourt finished his drink and glanced at her empty glass. ‘Shall we go?’ he said. ‘I hope your adventure today has given you an appetite?’
‘My first experience of French cooking.’ Meg smiled brightly as she pushed her chair back. ‘I can’t wait.’
The sun was beginning to set in a blaze of crimson as they drove out of the valley.
‘Oh, how wonderful.’ Meg craned her neck. ‘It’s going to be a fine day tomorrow.’
He smiled. ‘No more storms,’ he said teasingly, and she shuddered.
‘I hope not.’
‘You were unlucky,’ he said. ‘It is more usual for the storms to come at night. Sometimes as you drive you see the lightning playing round the hills, like a gigantic silent spotlight. We call it the éclairs de chaleur. Then suddenly a fork will streak to the ground, and the world goes mad. As you saw.’
‘I did,’ she said ruefully. ‘Don’t you have any gentler form of son et lumière for the tourists?’
‘Perhaps the dawn would suit you better,’ he said. ‘That trace of pure clear light in the sky that drowns the stars, before the sun even lifts its head over the horizon.’
‘You sound like a poet,’ Meg said, stealing a sideways glance. ‘Is that what you are?’
He laughed. ‘No, I regret, nothing so romantic, although my grandfather was deeply interested in the poetry of the region—the songs of the troubadours and those that followed.’
‘Did he write himself?’
Jerome shook his head. ‘He lived on the land in a mas which belonged to his family. Grew his own vines. Adopted the simple life.’
‘It sounds—good.’
‘I think it was, for a time. Unhappily, even the simple life can become complicated, and eventually he returned to Paris.’
‘And do you—lead the simple life too?’
‘When I can.’ He slanted a smile at her. ‘But most of the time I’m an architect. I used to work in Paris, but our business expanded quite remarkably, and now I am based in Toulouse.’
‘Back to your roots.’
‘As you say. I work mainly as a consultant, advising on the preservation and restoration of old buildings—houses, usually, which have been allowed to become derelict during the drift from the land to the cities, but which are now in demand again.’
‘Actually, I think that’s quite as romantic as poetry,’ Meg said thoughtfully. ‘Repairing the fabric of history.’
His smile widened. ‘And actually I agree with you, but I don’t tell my clients, or they would expect me to work for love and not for money.’
‘Are you working on a project at the moment?’
‘In a way, although I’m officially on leave.’ He didn’t seem to want to enlarge on the subject, so Meg left it there.
‘Do you miss Paris?’ she asked, after a pause.
He shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t miss any city,’ he said flatly. ‘My family chose to live there. I did not.’
‘Were they from this part of the country originally?’
‘Yes. Our roots have always been here. My grandfather was the first to move away completely, in fact.’
‘Was he never tempted to return?’
Jerome shrugged. ‘My grandmother was a Parisienne,’ he said tonelessly. ‘She had no taste for the country.’
‘But you’ve come back.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘To the country of my heart. The place where I belong.’
It must be good to have such certainty, Meg thought rather wistfully. She wasn’t sure where she stood in the scheme of things. She still lived at her late father’s house, but it had been totally transformed to Iris Langtry’s taste, and Meg felt like an outsider there most of the time. And she no longer had a job to hold her. So, she supposed, the world was her oyster now. Maybe it was time she found where she belonged. Put down some roots of her own.
In the meantime, she was beginning to wonder where they were going. She’d presumed he was taking her to some local restaurant where the electricity was still functioning, but they were still travelling purposefully, the Citroën eating up the kilometres. She wished she’d been watching the signposts, so that she could have followed their route on the map she had in her bag.
‘You would like some music?’ He seemed to have noticed her slight restiveness.
‘No,’ she denied quickly. ‘I like to watch the scenery, and talk. But you must stop me if I ask too many questions.’
‘You’re unlikely to ask anything I won’t wish to answer.’ The dark eyes flickered towards her, then returned to the road. ‘Can you say the same, Marguerite?’
‘Of course,’ she said stoutly, crossing her fingers metaphorically. ‘I’ve nothing to hide.’
‘A woman without secrets,’ he said musingly. ‘Unbelievable.’
She laughed. ‘No, I just lead an uncomplicated and rather boring life.’ Or I did, she thought.
‘Yet you travel alone through choice, and have a deeper interest in this region than the average tourist. That is hardly dull. I think you have hidden depths, Marguerite.’
There was a note in his voice which made her heart leap in sudden ridiculous excitement. She said rather breathlessly, ‘But then they say that everyone’s more interesting on holiday.’ There was a brief silence.
‘Tell me,’ he said softly, ‘why you were so reluctant to answer when I asked you to dine with me? There is a man in England, perhaps, who might cause—complications?’
Meg stared ahead of her. Tim Hansby? she thought with a kind of desperate amusement. She said shortly, ‘There’s no one.’
‘Vraiment?’ Jerome Moncourt sounded sceptical. ‘I cannot believe there is no one you care about.’
She shrugged, pride making her reluctant to admit that up to now she’d occupied a fairly undistinguished place on the shelf—that there were only two people she really cared about, she realised with a pang. A retired second-hand bookseller, and the elderly woman who’d taken the place of her mother, and given her the affection and comfort that her father, dazed with grief at the loss of his young wife, had been unable to bestow. For whose sake she was here in the first place. She swallowed. Not a lot to show for her twenty years, she thought. Although this was not the time to start feeling sorry for herself.
And what the hell? she argued inwardly. It’s nothing to do with him if I prevaricate a little. Although why she should wish to appear marginally more interesting than actual reality was something she didn’t want to examine too closely,