He left no note behind, no farewells and to the unimaginative world it was an accident. Only Fleur was certain of the truth for it was at least ten years since her father had bathed in the sea.
It was just before this happened that she had met Lucien. She had met him when she was staying in London with a school friend.
He had been introduced to her casually and, yet the moment their hands met and Lucien was bowing with that graceful inimitable inclination of the head that was characteristic of his race, Fleur had known.
She had felt something vivid and alive rise up in her throat, almost threatening to choke her, she had felt as if her eyes were shining like beacons that the message they carried must convey itself to him.
Perhaps he had felt her fingers tremble, perhaps he too had known in that moment the wonder and beauty of a springing flame that would not be denied.
It was a very short time before they acknowledged their love, before they clung together in ecstasy that was all the more poignant because Lucien was going away. He must return to France. He was an airman, he had come over to England on a mission to the Air Ministry. Now he must return and make his report.
“When shall I see you again?”
“Soon – very very soon, my darling.”
“But when?” she had insisted.
He had shrugged his shoulders and then, tipping back her head, he had answered her question with kisses.
It was impossible at such a moment to believe that Fate could separate them or that they could be apart for long.
Lucien had gone away and almost immediately after he had left, when she returned to Seaford, her father was drowned.
Fleur had been frantic, so frantic that she had been almost deranged in her anxiety to leave the house that she had once called home, the house that sheltered now the woman she knew was her father’s murderess.
She had packed feverishly. Without a word to anyone she had crossed the Channel and gone, white-faced and driven by a strong need that was almost beyond fear, unannounced to Lucien’s home.
And he had been glad to see her. If he had been surprised, as his mother had been, at the unconventionality of it all, he did not show it, his expression and his words bore no trace of reproach.
He had held her close, he had promised that they should be married and she had been utterly and completely content, caught up in a rapture that was beyond words.
They had been together exactly twelve hours in the Château before Lucien was recalled. Neither Fleur nor his mother had been perturbed. They had paid little heed to the rumours and troubles of international relations so that, when France and England finally declared war on Germany, it came like a bombshell.
Only then did they begin to understand what it was going to mean to Lucien and to them.
A fortnight after war was declared Lucien de Sardou was killed.
*
Fleur fastened on her wristwatch and rose to her feet.
“I am ready, Marie. Let’s go downstairs.”
“You will come and see Madame?”
“Of course,” Fleur answered, her voice softening, “but first I want to pick some flowers, the white roses that she loved so much.”
The young girl and the old woman walked down the passage and as there came the sound of a motor car approaching the Château on the long gravel drive, which was now sadly in need of repair.
They both with one accord stood still. Who was it? Their eyes met and they could see each other’s fear.
Then Fleur moved towards the window that looked out over the front door.
The car slowly encircled the sweep in front of the house.
Instinctively Fleur reached out her hand and took Marie’s, her fingers, hard and strong clung to the older woman’s and the car drawing up at the front door belonged unmistakably to the Germans.
They stood there as if they were paralysed as a uniformed soldier jumped smartly out on to the gravel and opened a door at the back of the car. A figure descended, they could see him distinctly, short and squat and wearing dark civilian clothes.
He turned to say a few words to some hidden occupant of the car and then, as he raised his hand, they heard his voice ring out –
“Heil Hitler!”
There came the echo – “Heil Hitler!” and from the depths of the Château the clanging of the front door bell.
CHAPTER TWO
Marie crossed the hall very slowly, her feet shuffling over the marble floor and then she fumbled with the bolts and chains of the great door.
Slowly it swung open, its hinges creaking, and the man who was waiting outside in the bright sunshine stepped in purposefully as if he had been impatient at the delay.
“I am Pierre de Sardou.”
He spoke with some authority and his voice, ringing through the hall, was grating and unpleasant.
“The Comtesse?” he asked, staring at Marie, who was half-sheltered behind the door.
“Madame is dead.”
“So!”
The man came further into the hall. Fleur, listening, had the strongest impression that the announcement held no surprise for him, he had known before he came, she was very certain of that.
She wondered who could have told him. The doctor? The Priest? If so, surely they would have warned her, or at least Marie, that a relation was on the way.
She took stock of Monsieur Pierre de Sardou and was not impressed. He was not so short as he had seemed when she had first viewed him from the upper floor, but he was stocky and inclined to corpulence and it was hard to believe that he could be a blood relation of Lucien.
There was nothing aristocratic in his appearance nor in his bearing for his arrogance and his sharply spoken sentences seemed more assumed than natural.
Then he turned his dark eyes towards her and she had the feeling that he was surprised and unpleasantly so by her presence
“This is – ?” he questioned, speaking to Marie rather than to her.
“La femme de Monsieur Lucien.”
Fleur felt her heart beat quicker, but she said nothing and made no movement, only stood and waited, as it were, for events to come to her rather than making any effort to precipitate them.
“His wife!” Monsieur Pierre expostulated. “But why were we not told? We received no announcement of it when we were informed of his death.”
Neither woman replied and abruptly he strode across the floor towards Fleur.
“It is correct what she says,” he asked, “that you are Lucien’s wife?”
Fleur took a deep breath, then in a voice that she hardly recognised as her own she lied,
“Yes, I am Lucien’s wife.”
“Madame!”
She felt her hand taken and raised to Monsieur Pierre’s lips.
Now he was speaking suavely.
“You must forgive my surprise. I had no idea. I believed that my aunt, the Comtesse, was living here alone with her servants, but I realise that I was mistaken. And are there, you will forgive me for asking, are there children of your marriage?”
Fleur