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“Why?”
“Because you came to see me anyway.”
Definitely a flirt, I thought, as he walked back round to the driver’s side of the car. Smiling faintly, I watched the Porsche’s back lights twinkle out of sight along the Place du General de Gaulle.
It was a lovely night for late September, crisp and clear, filled with the drifting scents of autumn—pungent leaves and petrol fumes and slowly burning coal. My watch read ten past eleven, but there were still people passing me by on the pavement—young people, mostly, in boisterous clusters, making their way to the lively bar on the nearest corner. The mingled sounds of dance music and laughter spilled out across the square. Saturday night, I thought. I thrust my hands in my pockets, feeling suddenly at a loss.
I could almost hear my cousin’s voice reminding me, in disapproving tones: It’s been six months since you so much as stopped in at the pub for a drink.
Frowning, I hovered there a moment, trying to decide whether to go out for a drink or go up to my room. In the end I did neither. I crossed to the fountain and sat on the bench where I’d found Lucie Valcourt.
Here, beneath the whispering tangle of acacia branches, it was easy to go unnoticed. I sat back, facing the brilliant glow of the Hotel de France and the bustling bar on the corner, and focused on the pleasantly murmuring fountain in front of me.
The bottom pool was perhaps two feet deep, a stone hexagon raised on a sloping step. Water cascaded into it from a bronze basin set high overhead like an upside-down umbrella, and that basin in turn was fed by the overflow from a smaller bronze bowl above it. From the center of the fountain rose three women, cast in bronze, supporting the entire structure. Back-to-back the women stood, arms lowered to their sides, their fingers linked in an eternal show of sisterhood. There was no mistaking their classical origins—even without their flowing draperies and tightly coiled hair, there was a depth of beauty to their faces that told me they belonged in ancient Greece.
A hopeful nudge against my legs disturbed my contemplation. It was a cat, a rather familiar-looking black-and-white cat, and when the green gaze locked expectantly with mine I fancied that I recognized it. It was the same cat, surely, that I’d seen that afternoon perched on the high wall of Christian Rand’s house. It rubbed itself against my legs a second time, more demanding now than hopeful, and I tapped my fingers on my lap. “All right, then,” I coaxed it, “it’s OK.” Pleased, the cat leaped up and padded round in circles on my knees, pausing once to sniff my face in a delicate sort of greeting.
It was clearly a stray—one stroke of my fingers along the dirt-encrusted back told me that—but it was nonetheless affectionate. And trusting. It stopped circling and curled itself inside my jacket, claws working against the stiff fabric, and within seconds the green eyes closed. Head nestled heavily against my breast, the cat breathed deeply with a steady, rumbling purr that vibrated up through the thick fur to my caressing hand. Surprised, and oddly moved, I crooked my neck to stare down at the sleeping animal.
I ceased to be aware of time. I don’t know for certain how many minutes had passed before I heard the footsteps coming down the steps from the château, between the shuttered buildings.
Neil Grantham’s hair was almost white beneath the street lamps, white as his shirt beneath the soft brown leather jacket he was wearing over faded jeans. Oh, damn, I thought, feeling again the unwanted stirring of emotion, like a persistent hand tugging at my sleeve. I shrank back further into shadow, hoping he’d go straight into the hotel without seeing me. His head came round as if I’d called to him, and with easy strides he crossed the square to join me on my bench beside the fountain.
“You’ll get fleas,” he said, looking at the cat.
“I don’t care,” I tightened my hold protectively, lifting my chin. “He just wants some attention, poor devil. I’ve a soft spot for strays.”
He smiled and stretched his long legs out in front of him, elbows propped against the top rail of the bench’s back. His presence, like the cat’s, was very peaceful, but for some reason that only made me more nervous. If only he would flirt, I thought, like Armand Valcourt had, then I’d be fine. But Neil was not Armand. He just went on sitting there, perfectly still, as though he were waiting for something.
I stroked the cat’s head, and cleared my throat. “Were you just up at the château?”
He nodded. “My nightly walk. It’s the only exercise I enjoy, really—walking. You ought to come with me some time.” I glanced at him then, but he still wasn’t flirting. His face was dead serious.
I made a noncommittal noise and swung my eyes back to the trickling fountain with its trio of lovely bronze women.
Neil followed my gaze. “Enjoying the fountain, are you?”
“Yes,” I said, and then because the silence stretched so long I cleared my throat again and told him, childishly: “There used to be a fountain in our garden when I was very small. My father worked in Rome, then, and we had this marvelous house, with a courtyard and everything, and the fountain in the middle of it. A wishing fountain, my father called it—he used to give me a coin at breakfast, every day, for me to make a wish with. Anything I wanted.”
Now why, I thought, had I told him that? It was a foolish thing to tell a total stranger.
Neil went on looking at the dancing fall of water. “And did it work?”
Did it work? I remembered the day I wished for a kitten, and found one wandering in our back lane. And the day the horrid girl next door fell off her bike. I tucked my jacket round the sleeping cat and shrugged. “I don’t remember.”
He brought his quiet gaze back to my face, and I hastily changed the subject. “Are these women in the fountain sculpture Greek?”
“That’s right. Splendour, Joy, and Beauty. The three Graces.”
“Oh, I see.” I peered more closely at the downturned faces. “Which one is which, do you know?”
“Lord, no.” His smile was disarming. “I only know their names because I looked them up last Tuesday. Simon asked me, and I didn’t want to appear ignorant, not when I’ve been coming to Chinon for so long.” His eyes slid from me, looking at the figures with new interest. “Still, I imagine there’s some way to tell them apart, if we approach it logically. Splendour means brilliance, doesn’t it? So the lady facing into the sunset would be my choice for Splendour—she’d get the best light, vivid colors. And the prettiest one is round the other side, facing the hotel, so I’d say she’s Beauty. Which leaves Joy, and that fits,” he decided, “because she’s got the widest smile.”
I frowned. “She’s not smiling.”
“Of course she is. They all are. That’s what Graces do, you know. They smile upon you and make life beautiful.”
“Oh.” The man was seeing things, I thought, as I stared back at the nearest statue, the one Neil had pegged as Splendour. She certainly wasn’t smiling. Not at me.
