[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

 Even someone who was already inside, she said, astounded by
her own boldness. In the scathing look he gave her, Claire sensed
danger.
 Don t be silly! he growled.  And leave the people in this house
alone! You remember my telling you that certain things in this place
were none of your affair. That hasn t changed.
 Maybe not, Claire retorted.  But some things in this house have
become my affair. Like the snake on my bed! I think Simone put it
122
Drums of Darkness
there! Now she had gone too far. She d gotten drunk on her own
audacity. Thrusting out her chin, she waited for Philippe s retaliation.
He only looked at her, a long, quiet time.  You re right about
that, he said at last.  It was Simone. I ve been wondering how best
to tell you.
Claire s hands rose to her face, fingers cold against her cheeks.  How
long have you known?
 She told me this afternoon. She said she wanted her heart to be at
peace for the burial ceremony.
 Why, Philippe?
 Why do you think? The hostility had gone from him. He spoke
softly. The flame of the candle, flickering on his face, made black hol-
lows of his eyes.
Claire clenched and unclenched her hands, more uncomfortable
with this gentle side of him than with his anger.  It s Marie-Thérèse,
she said finally.  Simone s jealous, isn t she?
 That s right. She felt you d come to take the child away from her.
We talked about it. I don t think there ll be any more trouble.
 Thank you, Claire murmured. He stood disturbingly near to her.
She was fearfully aware of the sound of his breathing, the rise and fall
of his chest, remembering how he had caught and held her against
him at the instant Simone had plunged the knife into Bertrand s body.
A warm panic began to surge through her.  Excuse me, she whis-
pered,  it s late. I think I ll go to my room now. She could not look up
into his eyes. As she turned away from him, something white at the
bottom of the staircase caught her eye. Philippe stiffened; he had seen
it too. He walked down the stairs slowly, his shoulders drooping.
There on the parquet squares of the foyer, in a heap of lace and bro-
ken china, lay the shattered remains of another of Angélique s dolls.
Philippe knelt at the foot of the stairs and picked up the fragments
of china, putting each sharp little piece on the doll s lacy white skirt.
Only the doll s hands and head were made of china. The rest of the
doll was stuffed cloth, soft and unbreakable. Like Angélique, he
thought, smiling bitterly at the irony of it. Only her head was subject
to damage.
The blue glass eyes had broken loose this time and rolled under the
stairway. Tilting the candle, he reached down and scooped them both
123
Elizabeth Lane
up in his hand. Claire had offered to help him, but he had dismissed
her gruffly. Too gruffly, perhaps, the way she had turned and fled to
her room. He d been hard on her today. Philippe reflected, and she
hadn t deserved it.
It was just that the sight of her, sitting there on the piano bench
with Marie-Thérèse beside her, her fingers dancing through that
ridiculous music, had so torn at his heart that his defenses had surged
to attention, throwing up the necessary barricades against any form
of emotion. He cursed himself, remembering her softness when he
had jerked her against him there in the stable, tasting again the fra-
grance of her hair. Claire. Damn her! He was beginning to feel again.
After years of blessed nonfeeling, the frozen springs within him were
beginning to thaw. And, by heaven, he did not wish it!
Gathering up the doll so that the skin contained the loose pieces,
he slowly mounted the stairs. He had thought Angélique was safely
asleep. Either she had deceived him  she did that from time to time
 or something, the piano perhaps, had awakened her. She would
be waiting for him, up there in her blue sitting room or her pink and
white boudoir, ready to attack him like some snarling, spitting wild-
cat. And Simone was gone. He would have to hold her fast with one
arm and handle the hypodermic with the other, no easy feat.
Angélique, when enraged, was a strong woman.
Briefly he considered the possibility of simply locking her in her
room and leaving her for the night, then dismissed it. He d tried that
before, and she d become so violent that she d hurled pieces of furni-
ture through the windows, cutting herself on the glass and leaving her
arms and legs black and blue where she d pounded and kicked the
door. Claire could help him. He could have asked her  but no. Claire
was small, and he had no wish to involve her  not with any of it. Not
with Angélique, not with the dynamite, and certainly not in any way
with Prestan. Let Paul Sagan rot! He was dead and buried, the matter
of his guilt or innocence reduced to an academic question. And he was
innocent. Knowing Prestan s tactics, Philippe had little doubt of that.
But if the proving of it endangered one hair of Claire s delicate head .
. . Damn her! he thought again as he rounded the topmost curve of
the staircase and looked down the hall at the door of the room where,
crouching in the darkness, Angélique waited for him.
124
Ten
The broken doll, Claire learned in time, was one of many. Philippe
ordered them from Paris by the dozen, each identical to the others,
with blond curls and vacant blue eyes. Given one doll at a time,
Angélique would mother the thing as she had never mothered her
own child. She would wrap it in the pink, satin-edged blanket and sit
in the rocking chair for hours, cuddling the pink bundle and humming
deep down in her throat.
Then, at unpredictable intervals of days or even weeks, some frus-
tration, some twisted instinct would erupt in her and the doll would
go flying and bouncing down the spiral staircase to land in a shat-
tered heap on the parquet floor. For hours afterward Angélique
would be twitchy, restless, often violent. Finally she would withdraw
into herself, moping in her blue-cushioned rocker. Then it would be
time to bring her another doll. It was a cycle with which Claire soon
became familiar.
Angélique never spoke. That faint humming was the only sound
Claire had ever heard her make. At first, having heard her for no more
than a few seconds at a time, on those occasions when necessity forced [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]