And Be Thy Love Read Online Free Page B

there; and she would probably have to look for some hotel accommodation in the morning—would probably like some coffee also before seeking that benighted cottage he had mentioned in the woods.
    She wasn’t happy about the cottage, and she wondered whether she ought to be the one to offer to spend the night there. But somehow she couldn’t quite see the curiously feline gentleman who called himself Robert of Bergerac agreeing to that.
    But she was able to insist on Pierre going home to his sister, and he looked plainly very relieved as he allowed himself to be dismissed. She heard his footsteps echoing along the gallery as he scuttled away, and it wasn’t until she watched him making his shadowy way across the terrace immediately below her window, and taking advantage of a gap in some shrubbery to disappear altogether, that she knew a momentary feeling of nervousness because she was alone in the chateau. A very, very old chateau, with woods shutting it in on three sides.
    The primordial forest, as she had thought of it earlier. CHAPTER III
    BUT she was in the kitchen, competently getting down to the task of making the coffee when Robert de Bergerac returned with her suit-case.
    He stood in the doorway watching her as she stood beneath the cavernous roof, one of Marthe’s aprons tied round her slender middle, her bright hair making a kind of halo for her face as the naked electric-light bulb sent its rays down upon it. The stove was very black and very shiny, and Marthe’s saucepans and kettles were all very shiny also. The big scrubbed kitchen table looked white as milk in the centre of the room, and at the far end the dresser was crowded with china that looked like Willow Pattern.
    Caroline had brought out one of the cooked ducklings, and a bowl of salad. She had cut up a crisp, long loaf, and placed butter in a crock, and sliced new potatoes she had found already prepared, and garnished them with mayonnaise and sticks of celery. And now she was watching the coffee bubbling in the percolator, and the smell was filling the kitchen, and Robert de Bergerac remembered once more that he hadn’t stopped for
    lunch.
    His eyes looked almost wistful with hunger as he stepped into the middle of the kitchen, but he said disapprovingly:
    “What is this? Did we not agree upon a tray for you upstairs? Where is Pierre?”
    “I sent him home,” Caroline told him. She looked into the brown velvet depths of his eyes, and was glad she had sent Pierre home. “I thought you might need something to eat yourself.”
    “I could have attended to myself.”
    “Instead of which I have made you some coffee!”
    “It smells good,” he admitted. He had left her suit-case in the hall, and now he stood within a foot of her. He looked at her searchingly. “You have recovered,” he said, in faint surprise. “I imagined you were going to be in need of a great deal of attention—perhaps a doctor’s attention!—instead of which you are all at once quite fresh!”
    “You gave me rather a strong dose of brandy,” she answered, smiling. “And I’m not used to neat spirit.” “Perhaps not to spirit of any kind?”
    “No. Mineral water is my only departure from tea and coffee.” “Mineral water? Ugh!” He made a face, and then pulled out a chair for her at the table. “But you must sit down at once, because you still look as if a strong puff of wind might blow you away.” And then his look gloated over the spread she had set out on the table. “All that is lacking is a bottle of wine, which I have in the car. If you will start carving the duck I will fetch it.”
    When he returned she protested that it might be safest if she didn’t touch the wine, but his insistence carried the day. Then, although she hadn’t very much appetite herself, she watched him eat hungrily. The cold duck became less easily recognisable as a cold duck, the bowl of salad emptied, a fruit tart served with cream practically vanished. De Bergerac sighed a