Love Me Forever. Barbara Cartland
Palace or in the Luxembourg.”
“But surely a – a Nobleman would not stoop to such treachery!”
The Duke smiled.
“There is little a man will not do when he hates.”
“And nothing a woman will not do when she loves,” Amé added softly.
The Duke raised his eyebrows.
“Who told you that?” he enquired.
“I don’t think anyone told me, I think I have always known it.”
The Duke glanced at her for a moment and then walked to the windows.
“The point is we have to get away from here, but how I have not the slightest idea. Force is out of the question. Chartres has made quite certain that I should realise this. No, our cunning has to equal his.”
“But how?” Amé asked. “What can we do?”
“For the moment we can only wait for our opportunity. There is no other course open to us but doubtless something will turn up. I do not intend to accept defeat easily.”
“I cannot imagine you ever being defeated,” Amé said swiftly.
His lips twisted a little.
“You have a rather inflated idea of my ability,” he said. “I am, as it happens, a very ordinary person caught up at the moment in events that are too big for me.”
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