Harlequin Presents January 2015 Box Set 3 of 4(185)

‘You say you love Monsieur Bertrand,’ Ginny whispered. ‘Yet you can do this to him.’

Monique Chaloux gave a contemptuous laugh. ‘Love? What do you know of love, a silly girl with water in her veins instead of blood? No wonder Monsieur Andre amuses himself elsewhere. You deserve no more.’

She reached for a large leather bag on the floor beside her, stuffing the remaining statements into it. ‘Et maintenant, I am finished here,’ she added.

‘But I’m not.’ Ginny lifted her chin. ‘Because you’re not getting away with this. I’m going straight to Monsieur Bertrand.’

She turned and went quickly down the stairs. As she reached the turn, she was pushed violently as Monique barged past her. She grabbed desperately at the rail of knotted silk rope on the wall, missed and fell forward, crying out as her body rolled and jolted down the remaining stone steps, crashing into the door at the bottom.

She felt a sudden blinding pain in her head, and the world went dark.

* * *

There was something shining above her, a light so bright it managed somehow to penetrate her closed eyelids, making the previous darkness seem friendly. She tried to ask someone to switch it off, but her voice wasn’t working.

Also somewhere in the distance, someone else was speaking. Whispering, so that she had to strain to hear him, ‘Virginie, mon ange, mon amour. Wake up, chérie. Look at me, je t’en supplie.’

The voice was familiar but the words made no sense. No sense at all. Just the same, she tried to obey, but forcing her eyes to open was altogether too much of a struggle. Besides, she was aware of pain, a ferocious ache like the jaws of an angry animal waiting to devour her.

It was easier to decide that she must be asleep and dreaming, and let herself slide back into the tenuous comfort of her inner night-time.

But the voice would not let her rest, calling her, ‘Ma douce, ma belle.’ Commanding her, ‘Reveille-toi.’

And he was being joined by others, none of whom she recognised except for Cilla, sounding strangely choked, as she begged, ‘Oh Ginny, please speak to me. Please say you’re all right.’

And she wanted to say crossly, Of course I’m not all right, because the pain was no longer at bay, but all around her, grinding at her when she attempted the simplest movement.

When, at last, she opened her unwilling eyes, she discovered a different kind of light in the form of the sun streaming through a large square window, in a room with ice-blue walls where she lay in a high, narrow bed.

And she thought—Where am I? What’s happened to me?

She turned her throbbing head slowly, wincing, and saw Andre, unshaven, dishevelled and fast asleep in a chair a few feet away.

He looked terrible, she thought, filling her eyes and her heart with him, physical discomfort almost forgotten as she thought of his voice—the things he’d said to her. Until, of course, she also remembered it had only been a dream.

She said his name, her own voice a husky shadow of itself, but somehow he must have heard it because his eyes snapped open and he sat up. For a heartbeat he stared at her with something like incredulity, then, with a noise like a yelp, he was out of the chair and racing to the door, yelling, ‘Philippe.’

Within seconds, the room was full of people led by a thin dark man with lively dark eyes and a goatee beard, who shone something like a pocket torch but infinitely more powerful into both her eyes and took her blood pressure before asking her in careful English if she knew what day it was.

It took a moment, but she told him.

‘You know why you are here?’ the doctor enquired. ‘What happened to you?’

For a moment Ginny was silent, then as if a curtain in her mind was slowly being raised, she remembered being jostled. Trying to save herself but pitching forward.

She croaked, ‘I fell. On some stairs.’

He nodded approvingly. ‘Très bien. Vous êtes couverte de bleus, mademoiselle, mais rien est cassé. Vous comprenez?’

‘I’m very bruised but nothing’s broken,’ she said obediently. Then tensed, smothering a gasp of pain. She whispered, ‘But the baby. I’ve lost my baby, haven’t I?’

‘Heureusement, non.’ He smiled at her reassuringly. ‘As I told Andre, a fall does not always lead to une fausse couche, and the child is still safe and warm inside you.

‘No, our concern has been the blow to your head which has caused une commotion cerebrale. A concussion.’ He nodded. ‘We shall carry out some more tests, but there is no internal bleeding and I believe the injury to be not serious.’

But there had been a serious injury of a very different kind, thought Ginny, as events and images began crowding back into her mind. And the results could be dire.