"Thank you, my dear." His voice was still grave, but I saw the unmistakable flash of amusement in his eyes. Then he was saying easily: "It seems, Héloïse, that your excessively silly friend Lady Benchley has justified her existence at last in recommending Miss Martin to us. We were indeed lucky to find you, Miss Martin, and we're delighted to welcome you to Valmy. I hope we'll manage to make you feel at home." He paused. That gleam again. "Not perhaps quite a felicitous expression. Shall I say rather that I hope Valmy will become a home for you?"
I said rather stiffly: "Thank you. You're very kind. I was happy to have the chance to come, and I'll try my best to-"
"Endeavour to give satisfaction? That's the usual bromide, isn't it? What are you staring at?"
"I'm sorry. It was impertinent of me. It was just-your English is so frightfully good," I said lamely. Damn the man; was I never to regain my lost poise? I finished the sentence coldly-"Sir."
He laughed outright then, a quite delightful laugh that at once conceded a point and abandoned the game, whatever it was. He began then to inquire quite naturally and very kindly about the journey and my impressions of the valley; Madame de Valmy joined in, smiling, and soon, under their renewed phrases of welcome, I found my embarrassment relaxing into naturalness once again. More, into liking. The man's charm was palpable, and he had taken the trouble to turn it on full blast… and I was all the more vulnerable for being tired, lonely, and a bit bewildered. By the time the three of us had talked for a few minutes longer I was back on top of the world again with my shattered poise restored and all the tensions and uneasinesses of the past half-hour dismissed as figments. Monsieur and Madame de Valmy were a handsome and delightful couple and I was going to like them and love living at Valmy and belonging even in this humble sort to a family again.
Sulphur? Poppycock.
But all the same, I reflected, it hadn't taken me long to see what had been implied in that remembered snatch of conversation. "You wouldn't,” Daddy had said, and I saw what he meant. The man was damnably attractive, no doubt of that…and I used the adverb deliberately; it was the mot juste. And charm or no, the faintest of resentments still pricked me. Léon de Valmy had played a game with me, and I hadn't liked it. I had been shaken into offering pity and comfort where none was needed… and he had been amused.
Nor did I attempt to explain, even to myself, why I had launched so unerringly on that sea of lies about the elderly lady from Lyons, or how I knew I would never, never have the courage to tell Léon de Valmy that I spoke French even better than he spoke English, and had understood perfectly well what he said to Héloïse when, at length dismissed, I had gone upstairs to meet Mrs. Seddon on the gallery landing.
He had said softly, and I knew he was staring after me: "All the same, Héloïse, it is possible that you've made a very great mistake…"
My rooms were lovelier than anything I had imagined, certainly than any I had ever been in. They had tall windows facing west, which gave onto a balcony and the view across the valley.
This drew me straight away. I stood leaning on the stone balustrading and looking out over that incredible view. So high-perched we were that I seemed to be looking level at the crest of the Dieudonné forest beyond the Merlon; below, along the zigzag, the bare tree-tops moved like clouds. The balcony was afloat in a golden airy space. Soubirous, to the south, glinted like a jewel.
I turned. Mrs. Seddon had followed me to the window, and waited, smiling, plump hands clasped under plump bosom.
"It's-wonderful,'" I said.
"It's a pretty place," she said comfortably. "Though some don't like the country, of course. Myself, I've always lived in the country. Now I'll show you the bedroom, if you'll come this way."
I followed her across the pretty sitting-room to a door in the corner opposite the fireplace.
"These rooms are built in a suite," she said. "All the main rooms open onto this corridor, or the south one. You saw how the balcony runs the whole length of the house. These rooms at the end have been made into the nursery suite, and they open out of one another as well. This is your bedroom."
It was, if possible, prettier than the sitting-room. I told her so, and she looked pleased. She moved to a door I had not noticed, half-concealed as it was in the ivory-and-gold panelling. "That door's to the bathroom and Master Philip's bedroom opens off it the other side. You share the bathroom with him. I hope you don't mind?"
At the Constance Butcher Home we had queued for baths. "No," I said, "I don't mind. It's beautifully up-to-date, isn't it? Baths behind the panelling. Did all the ghosts leave when the plumbing was put in, Mrs. Seddon?"
"I never heard tell of any," said Mrs. Seddon, sedately. "This was a powder-closet in the old days; it runs the whole way between the two rooms. They made half of it into a bathroom and the other half's a little pantry with an electric stove for making nursery tea and Master Philip's chocolate at night." I must have looked surprised, because she added: "This was always the schoolroom wing; the Master and his brothers were brought up here, you see, and then these alterations, with the electricity and all that, were done when Mr. Rowl was born."
"Mr…Raoul?" I queried.
"The Master's son. He lives at Bellyveen. That's the Master's place in the Midi."
"Yes, I knew about that. I didn't know there was a son, though. Madame de Valmy didn't-well, she didn't talk to me much. I know very little about the family."
She gave me a shrewd look, and I thought she was going to make some comment, but all she said was: "No? Ah well, you'll find everything out soon enough, I dare say. Mr. Rowl isn't Madame's son, you understand. The Master was married before. Mr. Rowl's mother died twenty-two years ago this spring, when he was eight. It's sixteen years ago now that the Master married again and you can't blame him at that. It's a big place to be alone in, as you may well imagine. Not that," said Mrs. Seddon cheerfully, chugging across the room to twitch a curtain into place, "the Master was ever one in those days for sitting alone in the house, if you take my meaning. Fair set Europe alight between them, him and his oldest brother, if all tales be true, but there, wild oats is wild oats, and the poor Master'll sow no more of them even if he wanted to, which I doubt he doesn't, and poor Mr. Étienne's dead, God rest him, and long past thinking of the world, the flesh and the devil, or so we'll hope……" She turned to me again, a little out of breath with these remarkable confidences; it appeared that Mrs. Seddon, at any rate, didn't share Madame de Valmy's habit of reticence. "And now would you like to see over the rest of the place, or will you wait till later? You'll be tired, I dare say."
“I’ll leave it till later, if I may."
"It's as you wish." Again the shrewd twinkling glance. "Shall I send Berthe to unpack for you?"
"No, thank you." That look meant that she knew quite well that I wouldn't want a maid exploring my meagre suitcase. Far from resenting the thought, I was grateful for it. "Where's the nursery?" I asked. "Beyond Master Philip's bedroom?"
"No. His bedroom's the end one, then yours, then your sitting- room, then the nursery. Beyond that come Madam's rooms, and the Master's are round the corner above the library."
"Oh, yes. He has a lift there, hasn't he?"
"That's so, miss. It was put in soon after the accident. That'd be, let's see, twelve years ago come June."
"I was told about that. Were you here then, Mrs. Seddon?"
"Oh, yes, indeed I was." She nodded at me with a certain complacency. "I came here thirty-two years ago, miss, when the Master was first married."