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“Thank you. What about you?”
Was she worried about him? He liked the idea of that. “If I need to, I’ll grab one.”
Raoul would have loved to help her put it on, but worried he wouldn’t be able to restrain himself, he jumped back out to untie the ropes, then climbed in to start the engine. Once he’d backed out at a no-wake speed, he took off. Being with this woman was like a breath of fresh air.
She didn’t have an agenda that prompted her to ask a lot of questions. He decided she was at peace with herself and seemed to enjoy the world around her. Raoul believed she was the kind of woman you could be with and not have to make conversation if you didn’t want to.
“Why don’t you sit opposite me?”
She sank down and glanced in the direction of the sailboats. “There’s no wind. How sad they have to rely on motors.”
Her comment was the same one he’d reflected on while being here. “Where have you been living in Switzerland?”
Abby eyed him curiously. “All over. Grindelwald, Lauterbrunnen, Mürren, Interlaken, Lake Thun, the Reichenbach and Staubbach Falls, Montreux, Geneva, Cologny.”
“Why?”
“I guess you wouldn’t know why our boss gave us this vacation.”
“I only recall that she’s a movie director in your country who was friends with Auguste.”
“That’s right. Magda is working on her most important film to date. It’s a new look at the life of George Gordon Noel Byron, the Sixth Baron Byron, known as Lord Byron. She needs new eyes for fresh research to make the script authentic. The girls and I were picked to help because we teach college students about the romance writers of the early nineteenth century.”
Abby Grant was an expert on Lord Byron?
The coincidence of meeting her at all, let alone here in St. Saphorin, where Auguste had made his find years ago, blew Raoul away. Excitement filled his body.
He shut off the engine so they could really talk. “You’re all university professors?” He was still incredulous.
“Not tenured yet, but one day. Our goal has been to help supplement the script with new facts and a different look. There’s been so much material written about Byron, but Magda has been hoping for something more. So have I.”
“In what sense?”
“I’d hoped to come across a poem he was supposed to have written while he was in Switzerland. The girls dropped me off at the village library this morning so I could do a little investigating, but nothing came of it so I walked back here. Of course no one in the last one hundred and ninety years has ever pretended to find it, so maybe it doesn’t exist.”
This woman was not only intelligent, she had an enquiring mind that made her a very exciting person. Raoul’s heart pounded like a war drum. “Did it have a title?”
“Yes. Something like Labyrinths, but there was another part to it. I don’t know exactly.”
“‘Labyrinths of Lavaux’.” Raoul could tell her it did exist and where to find it! Chills ran up and down his spine.
“For the last five months we’ve been doing research in the different parts of Europe where Byron traveled. Magda’s goal is to illuminate Byron’s virtues and leave the negatives alone.”
“Now I understand,” he murmured. “You’ve been following his travels here with Shelley and Mary Godwin that put the Swiss Riviera on the map.”
A quiet smile curved the corners of her delectable mouth. “I can see you’re well-informed. Do you want to know something funny he wrote in his journal? When he left the mountains and returned to Lac Léman he said, ‘The wild part of our tour is finished...my journal must be as flat as my journey.’”
Raoul was impressed with her knowledge, but his thoughts were racing. “He could have been reading our minds right now.”
“Exactly. Too much peace and tranquility needs some stirring up. Byron saw nature as a companion to humanity. Certainly natural beauty was often preferable to human evil and the problems attendant upon civilization, but Byron also recognized nature’s dangerous and harsh elements.
“Have you ever read ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’? It connects nature to freedom, while at the same time showing nature’s potentially deadly aspects in the harsh waves that seem to threaten to flood the dungeon during a storm and—” But she suddenly stopped speaking.
“Please go on,” he urged her.
“Sorry. I forgot I wasn’t teaching a class. Though I’m ready to move on with the girls tomorrow, I’ll never be sorry I was sent here to work. I’ve always had a special love for that poem.”
“We’re looking at the Château de Chillon right now.” The lake steamer had pulled up to its dock.
She nodded. “It’s a magnificent château. I’ve been through it half a dozen times, but after seeing the dungeon where the Swiss patriot Bonivard was imprisoned, I’ve been haunted by Byron’s words.”
“Can you quote any of it?”
Her eyes lit up. “Would you believe I memorized all 392 lines in high school for a contest?”
There was fire in her. He sat back against the side of the boat. “Did you win?”
“Would it sound like bragging if I said yes?”
She was getting to him in ways he would never have imagined. “I bet you could still recite it.”
Abby shook her head. “That was too long ago.”
He leaned forward. “I know I read it in my teens with my grandfather who loved Byron’s works, but I would be hopeless to recall it. Come on. Give me a taste of it. We’re right here where he was inspired. Enchant me.”
She cocked her blond head. “Maybe some of the first part.”
“I’m waiting.” Mon Dieu—he was far too attracted to her for only having known her such a short time. Whatever was happening to him had come like a bolt out of the blue and wasn’t about to go away.
Once she started to recite, the emotion she conveyed filled him with a myriad of disquieting sensations.
“My hair is grey, but not with years,
Nor grew it white
In a single night,
As men’s have grown from sudden fears:
My limbs are bowed, though not with toil,
But rusted with a vile repose,
For they have been a dungeon’s spoil,
And mine has been the fate of those
To whom the goodly earth and air
Are bann’d, and barr’d—forbidden fare;
But this was for my father’s faith
I suffered chains and courted death;
That father perish’d at the stake
For tenets he would not forsake;
And for the same his lineal race
In darkness found a dwelling-place;
We were seven—who now are one”
The last two lines she’d recited brought back remembered pain. He could have rewritten them. ‘In darkness found a dwelling place. We were three—who now are one.’
As he sat there staring at Abby, he suffered guilt for finding himself so intensely attracted to her. It seemed a betrayal to Angélique’s memory. It wasn’t this woman’s fault—nor her desirability nor the recitation that had reached his soul, reminding him of the tragedy. He felt Abby had gone to another place too.
“Byron was a great poet,” Raoul said in a voice that sounded thick to his own ears. “Thank you for bringing his words to life for a few minutes so eloquently.”
She shifted in place while she looked at the château in the distance. “It hurts to know how men have been persecuted. Byron had many problems, physical and otherwise. I believe his suffering came through in that poem.” Raoul felt she’d suffered too and wanted to know how.
“There’s no doubt of it. No wonder you were chosen to help on the film.”
She smiled. “I love what I do.”
He stared hard at her. “Do you love it enough to come to France for a few days?”
A stillness washed over her. “What did you say?”
“I asked if you would like to spend some time with me at my home in Burgundy. You said your life needed a little stirring up. Your friends are welcome too.”
His question seemed to have shaken her. It took her a long time before she said, “You’re only saying this because you think the news about Auguste has ruined everything for us.”
“Not at all. You’re not the type of person to fall apart because of a change in plans. I’m quite sure your friends aren’t either. That isn’t the reason I’ve invited you.”
He wanted to tell her about “Labyrinths of Lavaux” but wanted to approach her slowly. Maybe asking her to lunch would help her stay with him long enough to entertain the possibility that he was telling her the truth about his uncle’s find.
She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“There’s something I’d like to show you because I know you would be one person who would appreciate it. If you’ll come to lunch with me, I’ll give you details.”
He sensed she’d try to put him off again, but after this talk on the lake, he was driven by an idea that refused to let go of him.
“If you say no after our lunch, then I’ll take you back to the château and that will be the end of it.”
Without waiting for a response, he started the engine. “Louis will be happy to know this speedboat seems to be in fine working order, but I’ll open up the throttle to be certain.”
CHAPTER THREE (#ua67c944a-76f5-5698-80c3-5cb46ac61b7a)
ABBY STARED AT this striking man wearing a white T-shirt and jeans. If he were featured on a billboard, the sight of him alone in whatever he wore would be worth millions for the advertisers. She found him more fantastic than any fantasy of her imagination.
“You’re not a Realtor are you?”
In a few minutes, he’d pulled into the slip and turned off the engine, but the blood was still pounding in her ears. “I’m afraid that’s an assumption you made.”
“But you let me keep thinking it.”
He slanted her one of those seductive glances he probably wasn’t even aware of. “Forgive me?”
With a look like that, she could forgive him anything and probably a lot more. That’s what frightened her.
“I don’t know,” she finally answered him. It depends on what you do when you’re not picking up strange females, at a lonely train station, no less,” she went on. “In the middle of the week. In a car that looks like the one De Gaulle rode in on Bastille Day after World War II.”
His quick smile took her breath.
She removed the life jacket and climbed out on her own beyond his reach. Abby felt his gaze on her and knew he was still waiting for her answer. To give in to her desire and accept his invitation would be heaven. But at what cost later on, when he no longer wanted her? After she’d sold her soul, she would never be the same again and would never be able to pick up the pieces.
“Who are you?” she blurted in panic. “What are you?”
“Would it help if I told you I’m a vintner?”
“From Burgundy...” She hadn’t seen that coming, but she should have. Chalk it up to her being turned inside out by his male magnetism. “The clues were there. Not every Realtor knows the intimate goings-on during the pollination season at La Floraison.”
“I left out one detail in my résumé. Auguste Decorvet was a distant relative of mine. The Decorvet family has many offshoots, none of them into the selling of real estate. Years ago, one of them came to Switzerland to buy a vineyard, and to get away from the dark internal fighting and struggles between family members who all wanted to be in charge.”
She smiled. “I’m afraid that’s true of some dynastic-minded families.”
“But not yours?”
“No. My parents are quite easygoing. If I do things they don’t like, they show it by being disappointed. I don’t like to disappoint them.”
“You’re lucky to have grown up in such a household.” The tone in his voice led her to believe he hadn’t exaggerated his family’s infighting, which probably contributed to that brooding countenance. “While we eat, you can ask me all the questions you want. But I need to know what kind of a meal will give me the answer I’m looking for from you.”
“I’m afraid it’s not the white fish entrées they sell along the lake.”
“You really do need a change of scene.”
As they walked to the car, she knew what her friends would say if she said he’d invited them to come to France for a few days. Abby had only spent a few hours with him so far.
You didn’t just go off with a virtual stranger who was a vintner, even if it sounded exciting. Even if he had a legitimate familial tie with the former owner of this vineyard. Even if he had something important he wanted to show her.
But was it really so wrong if she wanted to throw caution aside and enjoy an adventure with him for as long as it lasted? To know what it would be like to lie in his arms and forget the world? Heaven help her that she was even entertaining the idea.
“I... I don’t know how soon my friends will be back,” her voice faltered. “If we eat in the village, they might be able to join us, depending on their timing.”
“Maybe they’ve returned. Let’s drive back to the château and check first.”
