Now Elizabeth knew how a prostitute felt. She had sold the temporary use of her body for this moment and now she had to force herself to take the unexpected opportunity for payment.
'Perhaps I could come with you,' she said timidly. ‘I mean, I'd be very interested in seeing the St Clair estate...'
'Yes, I remember you expressing your interest on the way over from the mainland,' he murmured, and Elizabeth discovered she was winding her fingers nervously in her hair. Hurriedly she put her shaking hands behind her back.
'However, I think I mentioned my grandfather's been ill. He's not up to meeting strangers.'
'Oh.' Say something, Elizabeth. Give him a pout and say, 'Darling, after tonight surely I'm not a stranger...'
Elizabeth's hands wrung nervously behind her back, wondering whether it was a good sign that Jack didn’t seem to be subjecting her to his interrogating stare. He was looking thoughtfully past her... in to the mirror that she had failed to notice on the opposite side of the room.
Finally Elizabeth forced herself to make the only decision she could. The honour of the Lambs had to come first. She might have fallen in love with Jack but she loved her family. She stopped wringing and firmly crossed the fingers of her concealed left hand.
‘I wouldn’t disturb your grandfather. I'd be happy to just have a look around the house and grounds...'
'Would you?' he murmured, still staring absently over her shoulder.
She crossed the fingers of her right hand, for extra protection. 'Of course.' She swallowed as his eyes suddenly swivelled back to her face. 'And it would mean we could spend some more time ‘I—together...'
She tailed off nervously at the look in his narrowed eyes, a hard, predatory, sinister look that seemed to strip-mine her soul. When he nodded slowly, conceding her victory, she heard the hollow ring.
A slithering coil of excitement tightened in her stomach as she shakily escaped back to her own half of the bungalow. She had a feeling that she hadn’t even begun to pay the price of her folly—and the awful thing was that she was actually looking forward to it!
CHAPTER NINE
THE St Clair estate was as magnificent as rumour and hearsay had led her to expect, but for Elizabeth it wasn’t the beauty of the extensively landscaped grounds or the elegance of the French architecture that captured her imagination—it was the library.
It had taken her nearly an hour of wandering through the procession of exquisitely furnished rooms on the ground floor to find it: two rooms packed floor to ceiling with books, some in temperature-controlled cases, others in meticulously arranged shelves and at least a third of the superb collection in a shambolic stack which suggested that the cataloguer had lost interest in the job halfway through.
Elizabeth's hands tightened on the strap of her heavy bag. She could slip the books out and back on a shelf now and no one would be any the wiser. If they had been missed it would be thought they had merely been misplaced. At least then she would only have the necklace to worry about.
She looked around the cavernous room nervously, touching the necklace beneath her prim floral blouse. Wearing it had taken on the nature of a penance that she was fated to perform. Whenever she took it off—even when she watched it go straight into the huge hotel safe—she suffered severe anxiety verging on physical pain about the possibility of it being lost or stolen. She had been braced to keep Jack at arm's length this morning, or at least from around her neck, but to her chagrin he had been blandly circumspect, collecting her from her doorstep for all the world as if they were teenagers going out on an innocent first date rather than a man and woman who had made passionate love together only a few hours before. The drive to the estate had taken little over twenty minutes in the small hotel buggy and all the way Jack had chatted easily about the island's history and entertained her with stories about the tradition-bound St Clair family's more eccentric members, who apparently included his grandfather. Gradually his casualness had the desired effect, and Elizabeth was able to push the vivid memory of her embarrassingly fierce response to his lovemaking aside in favour of the simple pleasure of enjoying his company.
Seeing the smooth, high concrete wall and barred iron gates that had to be opened by a guard before they could enter the tree-lined avenue to the flamboyant St Clair residence and the impressive alarm system, Elizabeth had come to the rueful conclusion that she would never have got into the place on her own. The only practical way in was the way she had come, by personal invitation.
If only her acceptance had been as innocent as the invitation. Glancing over the locked toughened-glass cases and spotting a rare fifteenth-century thirty-six-line Bible, of which she knew that there were only fifteen in existence—the latest having been auctioned at Christie's for 1.1 million pounds—Elizabeth felt faint with relief that something like that hadn’t been involved. No wonder the place was well protected and casual callers discouraged. She opened her bag and was reaching inside when someone spoke behind her.
‘I thought I might find you in here.'
'Jack!' She whirled around, snapping the bag closed, her hand pressed against her frantically beating heart. 'W—why did you think that?' she managed to ask lightly. He had told her that she was free to explore while he sought his grandfather's room to inform him of their presence.
'With your fascination for books, where else would you gravitate but towards the library?' he answered smoothly.
‘It's magnificent,' she murmured, bringing her ragged breathing under control. 'How's your grandfather?'
‘Isn’t it?' He ignored her question and waved a hand at the shelves. 'And all these have been acquired since the war. Most of Grandpère's original collection went up in smoke when the chateau was bombed. Some of these are bulk-lots bought from other collectors trying to make good their own war losses... or, more recently, their stock market ones. However, Grandpère knows that Jean-Jules and I don’t share his abiding passion for old books, so he's decided to sell off all except a core of his treasured favourites while he's still capable of doing it himself... only to carefully selected, personally approved buyers, of course.'
Elizabeth smiled involuntarily. 'He sounds just like my uncles...' She hesitated, wondering how much he knew.
In deference to his grandfather's old-fashioned ideas of proper dress, Jack was wearing a pale grey suit and tie, and yet he still looked coolly casual as he thrust one hand into his pockets and regarded her with a whimsical smile.
'Probably why they all got on so well. Over the past few months my grandfather has invited quite a number of prospective buyers here to express their interest in his collection. I didn’t realise until he recognised your name that your uncles had been among them. Why didn’t you tell me? I would have better understood your interest in the estate...'
Elizabeth's face pinkened. ‘I—I didn’t realise you were even related until yesterday and then, well... I didn’t want to presume on what was after all a very brief acquaintanceship,' she finished lamely.
He strolled over and took her hand, politely not commenting on the pounding pulse as he raised her wrist to his mouth. 'Are you talking about us or our elders? In future, feel free to presume, ma chère,' he murmured. 'My grandfather remembers your uncles well.'
'Oh, really?' Her pulse erupted even more furiously and she struggled to keep him at arm's length. Why 'well'? Because he suspected them of being ageing con men?