Relentless Storm

by Claire Lorrimer

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

While skiing in the French Alps, a wild mountain storm forces art student Rory Howes and his friend Knut Olsen to seek refuge at the remote Abbaye St Christophe. They are offered hospitality by the beautiful and enigmatic Baroness Inez Leyresse. Rory finds himself attracted to Alex, the English au pair, while the Baroness? passion for the young artist becomes obsessive and disturbing. Conscious of this uneasy love tangle, Rory is aware of something far more sinister ? the aura of evil, which surrounds the abbey and its inhabitants. Gradually, they all realise that the centuries-old curse carried by generations of the Leyresse family is gaining a terrifying relevance?

Release date: February 13, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 176

Sample

It was the Great Dane, Tristan, who gave the first warning of the events which were subsequently to change the whole of Alex’s life. He quivered, lifted his massive head and gave a deep rumbling growl. His mate, Isolde, instantly alerted, pricked up her ears and barked. At that moment Alex, too, heard the hammering of the heavy iron knocker against the front door.

Alex glanced at her watch. It was half past five. Gilbert, the old butler, had not yet carried out his evening ritual of drawing the curtains. Through the tall casement windows Alex could see nothing. Darkness had fallen early tonight because of the snow storm that was sweeping the mountainside where the Abbaye St. Christophe stood, huge, grey, imposing, hewn from the same rock as the mountain itself.

Tristan and Isolde were both standing now, their brindled hackles bristling with nervous anticipation. Alex hushed them as she listened to Gilbert’s shuffling footsteps crossing the flagstone floor of the hall as he went to open the great front door.

The Baron and Baroness Leyresse were away at their apartment in Paris; their young daughter, Eloise, was at school in Switzerland. Alex was alone in the abbey except for the servants and the two huge dogs. No one ever visited except by appointment. The abbey, situated as it was, was not a place where people stopped en route to some other destination, hoping to find the Baron or Baroness at home.

Tristan and Isolde were now standing side by side at the door, furiously barking as their keen ears detected the sound of voices. Beyond the petit salon in which she stood, Alex, too, could hear voices—the soft low tones of Gilbert and those less easily distinguishable of another man.

When she was at the abbey the Baroness was very strict with the servants. She insisted that the old standards be maintained regardless of the changing times. Had she been here now she would not have permitted Alex to go and find out what was happening, but would make her wait until the old butler came and announced their visitor. Fortunately for the Baroness, most of the servants were elderly and well enough paid not to resent the continuance of out-dated formalities.

As she thought of the Baroness, Alex’s mouth curved in a mischievous little smile as she took advantage of her employer’s absence to break one of the rules. With the dogs, now securely held by their chain collars, flanking her sides, she opened the door of the petit salon and walked into the hall.

‘Qu’est que c’est, Gilbert?’ she asked the old man, her French almost flawless after six months at the abbey.

In front of her stood a young man not much older than herself. His dark brown hair and shoulders were covered with snowflakes, which were melting rapidly into a pool on the stone floor beneath him. He was in ski clothes but without an anorak, and it was small wonder, she thought, that he was shivering so violently he could barely stand upright.

In halting French he began to explain the reason for his presence, but Alex cut him short as she told Gilbert:

‘A large cognac for Monsieur, quickly, Gilbert. And send Jules for some warm clothing from the Baron’s room.’

She turned back to the young man, and with a smile said in English:

‘There’s a big fire in the study. Come and get warm whilst you tell me what has happened.’

The young man stared speechlessly at Alex. She was wearing a long wool dress of deep forget-me-not blue. It matched her eyes, which were too large for her pale, thin face surrounded as it was by a cloud of soft, shining fair hair. Flanked on either side by the Great Danes, the girl seemed totally unreal to him—an angelic apparition suddenly turning the nightmare of the last few hours into a miraculous dream.

The fire she had promised him was, indeed, a big one. Huge pine logs burned in the massive stone grate. Colder than he had ever been before, the young man hurried towards the warmth.

‘Here, put these underneath you,’ Alex said practically as she handed him a bundle of newspapers. She smiled at him, the smile somehow dispelling his first ethereal impression of her so that now she seemed no different from any pretty English girl back home.

He stood with his back to the fire, his ski-boots, clothes and hair dripping onto the newspapers covering the crimson Bokhara rug.

‘Can you tell me what happened?’ Alex asked. ‘Did you get lost?’

He took a deep breath. Until now, his teeth had been chattering too violently to speak.

‘In a way, yes. But it’s much worse than that. I was skiing back to Valory with my Norwegian friend, Knut Olsen. The snow-storm overtook us when we were only a third of the way down. Knut thought he knew a short cut and we were stupid enough to leave the piste. We ran into a pine forest and then …’ His voice suddenly broke. ‘Then Knut, who was leading the way, hit a tree. His ski broke and also, I think, his leg. It was horrible. I’m not much of a skier and I hadn’t a hope of finding the way down by myself. Knut passed out and there was nothing I could do but wait until he regained consciousness. When Knut came round, he told me to take off my skis and leave them and walk downhill. If I just kept going downwards, he said, I’d be bound to reach the valley sooner or later and then I could get help.’

The sense of urgency suddenly returned to him. ‘I must telephone at once. Is there a rescue team? I must get help to him. I left him my anorak but he’ll freeze to death if he is left there for long. Besides, he’s in great pain.’

Alex heard the rising note of hysteria in the young man’s voice, and was grateful that Gilbert chose this moment to come in with the brandy and an old shooting pullover and jacket belonging to the Baron.

‘Drink this!’ she said curtly, handing him a generous measure of cognac. ‘Then put on these clothes. I’ll telephone the Rescue Service for you. My French is probably better than yours,’ she added, and was pleased to see the visitor’s taut white face relax into a brief smile. ‘Before I phone, can you give me any idea where your friend is? It could be difficult finding him in the dark in this storm.’

She spoke lightly to conceal her steadily growing apprehension. The mountain had a reputation for claiming lives. In good weather it was no different from any other ski slope—a glorious sunny south-facing run down from the summit, the skiing not too difficult and the trails, or pistes, well marked and identified by posts stating directions and degrees of difficulty. But in bad weather, it was different. The vicious storms seemed to gather unseen and break with startling suddenness over the jagged peaks, sweeping downhill into the valley and taking their toll of skiers and climbers who were inexperienced or unprepared. The chances of finding the Norwegian in this weather and in the dark seemed pretty grim.

‘I can’t describe the place,’ the young man was saying. ‘But I’m sure I can find it. I expect it sounds silly but I remembered the old story of Hansel and Gretel and I cut grooves in the pine trees as I came down. I think I could find my way back with a lantern or torch.’

Alex nodded, and went out to the hall to telephone. It crossed her mind that the wires could be down—they frequently were in such weather. But fortunately it was only a matter of minutes before she was speaking to the Mountain Rescue Centre.

When she returned to her guest, he looked much better. The cognac had brought some warmth back into his body, and his face had regained its natural colour. His hair was drying rapidly in the heat of the fire, and she noticed with amusement that it was beginning to curl in small tendrils round his neck and forehead, making him look a great deal younger. ‘Everything’s fine,’ she reassured him. ‘The men will be here in about fifteen minutes. They’ll come up in the snow cat, pick you up and go on by foot. Meanwhile, would you like something to eat? You’ll need to keep up your strength.’

‘I don’t think I could eat anything,’ he replied. ‘Thanks anyway—for everything. You’ve been marvellous.’

‘We haven’t introduced ourselves,’ Alex reminded him, as much to keep his mind off his injured friend as to maintain the social niceties. ‘I’m Alex—Alexandra Amery. I’m a kind of cross between an au pair and a governess, employed by the Baron and Baroness Leyresse who own the abbey. My home is in Surrey and I’m twenty-two years old. How about you?’

The young man held out his hand and shook hers formally.

‘I’m more than pleased to know you, Alex. I was getting quite desperate when I saw the lights of this place glimmering through the trees. I thought I was imagining them—the snow kept covering my goggles and I wasn’t sure at first. Then when I saw the Château—the Abbaye I mean, I thanked God, although to tell you the truth, I’m not very religious as a rule.’ He gave a self-conscious smile. ‘My name is Rory Howes, by the way. I’m from Hertfordshire. Knut, my friend, was at university with me. We’ve both been studying art and were on a trip we planned years ago. We intended to hitch our way across Europe to Italy and spend three months there seeing art galleries and museums and ruins—everything we could. Then Knut, who’s a marvellous skier, suggested we stop in France for a couple of weeks of winter sport in the Alps. I’d not done much skiing and it seemed a wonderful idea. We booked in at a youth hostel and today was our third day’s skiing …’

He broke off suddenly and then said:

‘I keep hearing the sound of his scream and the crack of bone … it was horrible, truly horrible.’

Instinctively Alex put her hand on his arm.

‘Don’t think about it,’ she said. ‘Tell me more about yourself. You haven’t said how old you are.’

‘Twenty-three,’ Rory replied. ‘Knut’s a year older than I.’

He stared around him as if only now aware of his surroundings.

‘This place is fantastic,’ he said. ‘You called the building an abbey. It’s pretty vast, isn’t it?’

‘It was a monastery at one time,’ Alex explained. ‘Some of the rooms are huge—too big really to live in. I spend most of my time in here when I’m alone. It’s actually the Baron’s study. I like the octagonal shape. Long ago it used to be the abbot’s private oratory. It’s a sort of anteroom to the main salon where the Baroness entertains.’

‘Who did you say the owners are?’ Rory asked, fascinated.

‘The Baron and Baroness Leyresse. He’s a French nobleman of ancient lineage. I believe he can trace his family back to Agincourt. It’s quite interesting, as a matter of fact. The family lost their estates in the French Revolution and the abbey was burned. The Leyresses went to live in England and for a while they had no money, only the patronage of aristocratic friends. Then the Baron’s father married an American heiress and they returned to France and bought back a great deal of the land which had once belonged to the family. The abbey had been vacated by the monks during the First World War, when it was turned into a barracks. When the Baron’s father bought the land he also bought the ruined abbey and spent a small fortune restoring it. The present Baron—he’s now sixty—was born and raised here and he, in turn, also married money. His wife, the Baroness, is South American. She is twenty-five years younger than he, very rich, very beautiful, very cosmopolitan. A great deal of her money has been spent in modernising the abbey, so that it now has every conceivable comfort. But the Baroness spends most of her time in Paris.’

‘And how do you come into this fantastic set-up?’ Rory asked curiously.

‘The Baroness wanted someone English here so that her daughter—the only child—would learn the language. I’m a companion to Eloise during the holidays. In the term time when she’s away, I live here and look after Tristan and Isolde.’ She patted the huge dogs on their heads and their tails thumped the floor, the noise deadened by the thickness of the rug. ‘The Baroness adores them. I sometimes think that she is fonder of them than of her own child, although I can’t say I blame her. Eloise is a spoilt, precocious, egotistical little girl of twelve. Fortunately, I haven’t had much to do with her.’

Alex’s account was cut short by the arrival of the six-man rescue team. They stopped only long enough to collect Rory before they were off into the night again. Within minutes they were swallowed up by the darkness and Alex quickly closed the heavy door against the driving snow.

The huge house seemed suddenly deserted. Alex went back into the petit salon. Despite its name—the petit in comparison with the vastness of the other reception rooms—even this favourite retreat in which she spent most of her evenings had become permeated with a strange feeling of emptiness.

As if in sympathy with her mood, Tristan came across the room. As Alex sat down on her heels before the glowing fire, he lay down beside her and rested his heavy head on her lap. The huge dog had become very attached to her, far more so than Isolde, who was placid in temperament and friendly with anyone who cared to pay her attention. It was Tristan who padded after Alex when she left the room, who insisted on accompanying her when she went skiing, who settled his large body at the foot of her bed as if placing himself on guard at night.

Alex sighed. The Baroness was obsessively jealous of the attentions of her dogs—as, indeed, of any living being. Although she admitted to being glad that Tristan no longer fretted when she was absent, the admission was grudgingly given when she was at home. Tristan was expected to follow her rather than Alex—an order he was becoming less and less willing to obey.

Until recently Alex had tried to shut her eyes to the selfishness of the woman who employed her. Inez Leyresse, many years ago, had been at a Swiss finishing school with Alex’s mother and the two girls had sworn a lifetime friendship. When Alex’s mother married a small-town solicitor and Inez a French Baron, it was inevitable the two lost touch, although they continued to exchange letters at Christmas. Her mother knew very little of the woman Inez had become when she had written asking her if she could find a place for Alex at the abbey. She had believed Alex would be received by a charming, beautiful and vivacious woman, who brightened the lives of all around her, as had the youthful Inez at school.

Alex had not had the heart to write the truth in her letters home. Nor, until a short while ago, had she surfaced sufficiently from her own self-centred orgy of unhappiness even to notice those around her to any marked degree. Each day had been another one she must somehow live through; somehow tolerate, despite the fact that life had ceased to have meaning or purpose since her fiancé, David, had died.

She had tried not to think about David. Purposefully, she had made her mind a vacuum, performing the few duties the Baroness gave her, arranging flowers, answering the Baroness’s letters, taking the dogs for walks, driving down to Valory to make occasional purchases. In the evenings she read, studied French, wrote letters home. She continued to live but only because it would hurt too many people if she, like David, were to die.

Now, unaccountably, the presence of the young Englishman here in the salon, looking at her from deep-set dark brown eyes like David’s, had sparked all the memories she had tried so desperately to forget. David—the man she had been going to marry—would have married by now but for the appalling suddenness of that car accident. Alex had also been in the car but only David had died, the steering wheel penetrating his chest and killing him instantly.

For two weeks she had been spared the truth whilst she lay concussed in a hospital in Birmingham, her mother and father at her bedside. When they told her about the accident she wished she had been killed, too. She tried to die but she was too young and healthy. Inexorably her body began to recover its strength, and only her mind remained scarred.

‘You must make a new life for yourself, darling,’ her mother had said.

But how did one make a new life when the only person you had ever loved would never again take you in his arms, make love to you, dance with you, walk with you, laugh with you. She and David had known each other three years and had been lovers for the last year before his death. In a way, their intimacy made his death more difficult to accept, and yet she did not regret that she had given him all the loving of which she was capable for that last brief year of his life. She wished now that she had had a child by him, a part of him to cling to. Sometimes, in the hospital, she had dreamed that she was pregnant, or that she held David’s child in her arms.

It was almost a year now since David’s death. Somehow she had managed to exist, building a cocoon around herself in which feelings, emotions, hopes, desires, played no part. Within this vacuum she walked, talked, observed the fantastic beauty of the abbey, of the Baroness, of the mountains, with total detachment. Only the dog, Tristan, had recently managed to penetrate the world of non-involvement in which she had found it possible to survive. Despite everything, Tristan’s intense devotion to her evoked a response she subconsciously resented, so that on occasions she pushed him away when he nuzzled his great head against her arm, telling him not to be a nuisance.

Instinctively Alex had known she needed a period of time—a period of peace and solitude and quiet in which her bruised heart and mind could recuperate. Her parents had wanted her to find a job where there were other young people, with plenty of fun and laughter and activity to help her forget David. But wisely Alex had known she could not endure a life she could not share with him. The Abbaye, far away from anything either of them had known, isolated halfway up a mountain, remote, almost unreal, had had exactly the therapeutic effect she needed to come to terms with her personal tragedy.

The dramatically sudden appearance of the young Englishman, Rory Howes, had served as a minor electric shock to her system. She was experiencing now, for the first time since the fatal car accident, a feeling of acute loneliness, feeling the solitude as something alien rather than welcome. She was conscious of an urgent desire for the rescue team to return quickly, bringing Rory Howes and his friend here to the abbey where she would make them welcome.

But when, an hour later, the dogs began once more to growl and then to bark furiously, it was not on account of the injured skier and his friend, Rory. As Alex quietened the dogs and opened the door to go through to the hall, it was to see Inez Leyresse and her husband, complete with her personal maid and the Baron’s valet, arriving home unexpectedly from Paris.

‘Ah! So you have not yet retired, Alexandra!’ the Baroness said. ‘We are late arriving—the storm, tu comprends!’

As always, when Alex saw her employer after an absence, she was struck by the flamboyant beauty of the woman. Although now in her early forties, Inez Leyresse still had the slender figure and flawless skin of a girl. Encased in a vast calf-length, white ermine coat, above white kid boots, her flaming red hair piled high in an elaborate Paris coiffure, the Baroness looked like a Russian princess. With her white skin and red hair she could not have looked less South American. Only the narrow, near-black almond-shaped eyes gave a hint of Latin ancestry.

No wonder the Baron is so crazy about her! Alex thought as her gaze went to the grey-haired, thick-set little man fussing over her many suitcases that Gilbert and the valet were bringing in from the car. Despite his rather plebeian figure, the Baron’s face was that of an aristocrat, with a large hooked nose and piercing green eyes beneath bushy silver brows. A military moustache topped a thin, narrow-lipped mouth and carved jawline.

He gave Alex a warm smile. She knew that he liked her and suspected that the reason was not so much personal as because of his wife’s approval. Inez did not find it easy to keep female staff. She took quick dislikes to women, especially if they were young and pretty or had strong wills of their own. Her social secretaries seldom remained in her employ for more than a few months and those that did stay longer, did so only because they were snobbish enough to enjoy working for a Baroness; or because, ill-tempered and critical though Inez could be, she paid well enough to make the subservience worthwhile.

Alex, living in her self-created vacuum, had been happy enough to comply with Inez’s arrogant orders, oblivious to the cruel little derogatory remarks Inez made from time to time about her a. . .