Barbara Cartland - Love Me Forever

Amé laughed a little scornfully.

“Do you expect me to believe that?” she asked. “Why, no one could ever think you were ordinary. Among those people downstairs you stand out. You are so strong and so different. The man who plays host to us may be the Duc de Chartres but he cannot be compared with you. Big as he is, you could crush him with one hand.”

“That is just the point,” the Duke said, “this is not a trial of physical strength. It is a trial of mental ability and Chartres is in a position of advantage, which, for the moment, I must confess, seems impregnable.”

“You will think of something, Your Grace,” Amé told him confidently.

She turned away as she spoke and began to inspect their suite. The Duke’s sitting room and bedroom both overlooked the lake. The walls dipped sheer down to it with no footholds. Opening out of the sitting room there was a small room, which, Amé realised, was where she was intended to sleep.

There was a window that opened onto the gardens, but in front of it were bars, bars newly erected as heavy and immovable as any in a prison.

“He is no fool,” the Duke said briefly as Amé pointed out the bars. “We are not the first persons whom our host has held in his power and nor will we be the last.”

“What do you mean by that?” Amé asked.

“I don’t exactly know myself,” the Duke said, “yet I have a feeling that what this biased unstable man is plotting is something greater and more far-reaching than the humiliation of one frail woman.”

“The poor Queen,” Amé said softly. “Why should anyone wish to hurt her?”

“You must ask me that question after we have been to Paris and we will get there, never doubt that.”

He went back into the sitting room, leaving Amé alone in the small bedroom with its barred window.

For a moment she stood gazing after him and then she put up her hands to her cheeks.

Here or in Paris, she thought to herself, what did it matter where she was, so long as she could be with him, this man she had met only last night and yet who, at this moment, filled her life to the exclusion of all else?

Were they in danger? She did not know. This strange new world she found herself in was almost beyond her comprehension. People who hid threats beneath honeyed words, people who smiled with their lips and yet whose eyes were hard and venomous.

These were things that she did not understand and a moment of panic filled her lest she should fail the one person she wished to help. And even as she felt afraid, even as she felt herself shiver at the thought of the Duc de Chartres waiting for them downstairs, she knew that she was not so helpless or as ignorant as she had at first feared.

Wherever she might be in a Convent or on the floor of a strange coach or here in a magnificent Château belonging to one of the wealthiest and most dangerous men in France, her sense of values remained. She knew what was right and she knew what was wrong, that was one thing that her life in the Convent had taught her, to know whom she could trust and to know that her instinct in such matters would never be at fault.

She had known, she thought now, exactly who she was dealing with as she felt the fur rug snatched from her and raised her head to see the Duke facing her on the seat of the coach.

The light from the lantern had been full on his face and she thought, as she remembered it, that her first sight of him would be etched for ever in her heart, the clean-cut lines of his features, the firm strength of his lips and the questioning directness of his eyes, they were all there for her for all time.

He had been tense, a man on guard, a man surprised by the unexpected and yet she had not been afraid of him. She had known from that first moment that she could trust him. Why, she could not explain to herself, except that something greater than herself told her that all was well.

Then when she knew that her salvation lay with him and she pleaded with him to save her, she had felt that there was something familiar about it all, he was no stranger to her, this man she had just encountered.

He was very much more than that, someone she had always known in her dreams, or was it in her heart, and someone who in some unfathomable extraordinary way was already a part of her life.

Slowly Amé dropped down on her knees beside the bed. She hid her face in her hands and began to pray as the nuns had taught her, but with winged joy in her heart that was inexplicable.

She was still praying when the Duke came into the room some minutes later.

So intent was she on her prayers that she did not hear him and he watched her from the doorway for some time before he spoke.

Then at length he called her name.

“Amé, we should be going downstairs.”

She started and then raised her face from her hands.

There was colour in her cheeks from the pressure of her fingers and her eyes were shining with a light that the Duke had not seen there before. For a moment she stared at him almost uncomprehendingly as if he called her back from some strange place that she had gone to and where he could not follow.

Then she smiled and her parted lips were sheer delight.

“ Voila ! I am ready, have I kept you waiting?”

“No, but we should go down. I don’t want them to think that we are plotting”

The Duke hesitated for a moment and then quizzed her,

“Were you praying for yourself or for the situation that we find ourselves in?”

“I was praying for you, Your Grace,” Amé answered. “I know that, if you wish to escape, then a way will open. Prayers are always answered, have you not found?”

“I am afraid I don’t pray,” the Duke replied.

“You don’t pray!” Amé’s astonishment was obviously quite genuine and unfeigned. “But why?” and then before he could answer she added, “but, of course, that is a silly question, if you don’t pray, it is because you do not realise how much it can help you.”

“You are sure of that?” the Duke questioned with a sudden twist of his lips.

Amé looked at him in perplexity.

“I am very very sure of it,” she stated, “but perhaps that is because I know nothing of the world. Outside the Convent to pray may be more difficult.”

“It is,” the Duke said briefly.

Still Amé looked perplexed and then abruptly, as if he was almost ashamed of his own sentimentality, the Duke suggested,

“Go on praying. Don’t be influenced by anything or anybody who persuades you against it.”

He turned from the bedroom and crossed the sitting room to the door. His hand was on the latch when he heard Amé’s footsteps on the floor behind him.

“I shall pray for you always, Your Grace,” she said without the least trace of self-consciousness.

“Thank you,” the Duke replied in all gravity, “and now let’s descend and see if your prayers have been answered and we can discover some Heaven-sent way of escape.”

He was sneering at himself, although Amé did not know it for having been beguiled into a moment of unwarranted softness because he had seen a lovely child at prayer.

But Amé seemed unperturbed at his words, she merely smiled confidently and then, as the door opened and a footman was waiting outside, she slipped behind the Duke and followed him downstairs at a respectful distance.

The meal that followed was long-drawn-out and elaborate. Course succeeded course, dishes of great rarity vied with each other to tempt the palate and there were wines of fine bouquet to bestir the blood.

When at length what was nothing less than a feast was over, the party withdrew onto the balcony of the salon, where they were served with coffee and with many and varied liqueurs.

They had dined in the Banqueting Hall where the Duke was amused to note that they were served with a pomp and grandeur far more Royal than anything he had seen at Buckingham Palace or in the past at Versailles. A powdered footman, wearing the Orleans livery with its heraldic fleurs-de-lis embossed on their gold buttons, stood behind every chair. Others carried in the magnificent crested dishes of solid gold.