In the Best Man's Bed Page 16

  Surprisingly, so did Anne-Marie, for all that she’d been so anxious to leave before. Without the fear that Ethan might show up at any minute, the slow and easy pace of island life soothed her troubled soul, and the day drifted past, its tranquility broken only by quiet conversation, the clink of china during lunch and afternoon tea, and the sound of Adrian’s laughter as he splashed in the pool.

  That evening, she kept him company while he ate a light supper, then tucked him into bed, read him a story, and at his request, listened while he said his prayers.

  “Make Anne-Marie stay forever, heavenly father,” he ordered, closing his eyes and clasping his hands, “and that’s all for today because I’m tired.”

  Clearly, he had a unique relationship with God!

  Hiding a smile, Anne-Marie tiptoed out of the room and joined Louis and Josephine for dinner on the terrace. It was dark by then, and although the sky overhead remained clear, the usual late onshore breeze had died, leaving the atmosphere thick and breathless. By the time the meal was over, a line of cloud creeping up from the south had obscured the stars.

  “We’re in for a spell of bad weather,” Louis remarked, leading the way inside. “Hurricane season’s come early this year.”

  They were lingering over coffee and cognac when the tranquility came to an abrupt end—not, as might have been expected, because of the approaching storm, but by the arrival of the chief of Bellefleur’s tiny police force.

  “Forgive me for interrupting your evening, but I’ve received a report from the authorities in Caracas,” he began, and his tone alone was enough to tell them he wasn’t bringing good news. “Monsieur Beaumont left there by helicopter this morning, en route to an oil platform some seventy miles from the Venezuelan coast. However, possibly because of adverse conditions, he never arrived at his destination, nor has he been heard from since.”

  Josephine turned as pale as parchment and reached for Louis’s hand. “Have they sent out a search party?”

  “Non, madame. By the time anyone knew he was missing, night had fallen, but they will start looking at first light tomorrow.”

  “Who else was with him?” Louis asked shakily.

  “No one.”

  “No one?” Anne-Marie smothered a gasp. “He flew out there alone, knowing the weather was poor?”

  “Oui, Mademoiselle, but he is an experienced pilot.” The chief backed toward the door, his expression grave. “I’m very sorry to be the bearer of such distressing news. Be assured every effort will be made to bring Monsieur Beaumont home safely again.”

  “You’ll keep us informed?” Louis said.

  “Of course, monsieur. As soon as I hear anything, I will be in touch. I am certain we will receive good news in the morning.”

  But they didn’t, not that day, or the next, or the one after that. Instead, the weather responsible for his disappearance closed in over the island in a series of storms which left the garden littered with debris.

  Not once during that time did Anne-Marie cry, because to do so would have been to admit the worst—that Ethan would never come home again. And that she couldn’t bear to dwell on. A world without Ethan simply wasn’t a world she wanted to be part of.

  “We have to have faith,” she told an increasingly distraught Josephine. “We have to believe he’s coming back, for all our sakes, especially Adrian’s. He needs his father.”

  But with the staff aware and talking among themselves of the disaster which had struck, eventually there was no keeping the news from the child. He couldn’t be allowed to find out by accident that his beloved papa was missing.

  No one expected he’d take the news well, but nor was anyone prepared for the way he responded. “It’s my fault,” he said, in a bleak, resigned little voice, when they explained that there’d been a storm at sea. “I wished bad things and now they’ve happened. I told Papa I hated him, and now he’s dead.”

  “No, darling,” they rushed to assure him. “Papa is just lost, and it was an accident. Nobody’s to blame. Certainly not you.”

  But there was no moving him. “It was me. I did it,” he said, and when they tried to hold him and comfort him, he wriggled free and ran up to his room.

  “Let him be, child,” Josephine said sadly, when Anne-Marie made to go after him. “He’s his father’s son, taking the blame for everything that goes wrong, and shutting himself off from those who love him, to bleed in private. That’s just their way. He’ll come to us when he’s ready, you’ll see.”

  But when noon arrived and still Adrian hadn’t reappeared, Anne-Marie couldn’t bear it a moment longer. It wasn’t natural for a child so young to be bear such a crushing burden of unfounded guilt alone. It wasn’t right.

  “I’ve come to take Adrian down to lunch,” she told the maid she found changing the bed linen in his room.

  “He’s not here,” the girl replied.

  “Do you know where he went?”

  “Non, mademoiselle. He said only that he was going to find his papa.”

  A chill ran over Anne-Marie. There’d been no sign of the child for over an hour. If he’d come downstairs, it had been stealthily enough for none of them to notice.

  Unwilling to heap further stress on the frail shoulders of the old couple waiting so anxiously for word of their missing nephew, she told the girl, “We have to find that child. Help me search the rooms up here.”

  But although they scoured every inch of the upper floor, and roped in other staff members to look in every nook and cranny of the main floor, all they found was Adrian’s kitten curled up asleep under a chair. Of Adrian himself, there wasn’t a sign.

  “And why would he be here?” Anne-Marie exclaimed, running a despairing hand through her hair. “If he was going to look for his father, it makes sense that he’d go outside. We’re looking in the wrong place!”

  “But he knows that his father wasn’t on the island when he became lost,” Morton reminded her. “He won’t find him in the garden and it’s not possible for him to open the main gates and escape onto the road, so he must still be here somewhere.”

  A logical enough assumption, but Anne-Marie’s relief was short-lived as another possibility occurred to her, one so terrifying that she couldn’t bring herself to utter it aloud.

  Instead, she said, “Please go about your normal business and don’t say a word to alarm Monsieur or Madame Duclos. Serve lunch as usual, and if they ask where I am, tell them I’ve gone for a stroll and will be back shortly.”

  “A stroll? In this weather?” Morton raised skeptical eyebrows. “Mademoiselle, I doubt they will accept such an explanation.”

  “I’m used to wind and rain,” she told him. “And that’s the reason you give them, should they question you. But under no circumstance do you let them know that Adrian is missing and I’ve gone looking for him.”

  “Forgive me, Mademoiselle, but it is more than my job here is worth for me to let you put yourself at risk. I must insist on knowing what you plan to do.”

  “I think that boy’s gone down to the beach,” she said, looking the man straight in the eye and not even blinking at telling only half the truth. “He knows his father was lost at sea. In his mind, he expects that’s how he’ll come home again, and he’s down there waiting for him.”

  Please let that be all he’s done! she prayed, racing through the gardens, not to the steps below the guest pavilion, but to that other trail which led to a different part of the beach, and to the boathouse.

  In places, the way was slippery and so thick with mud that it sucked at her feet, impeding her progress even though the hillside sloped in her favor. The return journey would be uphill all the way. If she’d guessed wrong and Adrian wasn’t at the beach, it would take her another half hour to make it back to the house and raise the general alarm.

  Half an hour—half a minute!—lost in the search for a missing child could mean the difference between life and death.

  But intuition was stronger than fear. He’d come this way,
she was certain. And as she skidded around the last corner to where the trees thinned out and the shore came into view, she saw a sodden red running shoe, which she recognized as Adrian’s, lying in the middle of the path, and knew she’d been right to follow her instincts.

  Clutching at the overhanging vines to keep her balance, she fought her way over the remaining distance and, breathless from the exertion, jumped down to the sand. To her left, the boathouse rose up, its wide door standing open, its interior empty. And at the sight, everything in her hung in fearful suspension—her breathing, her heart, and the hope which had driven her this far.

  With slow dread, she turned her head and looked to the right. The normally placid blue sea heaved and rolled restlessly in choppy green waves across the narrow bay. Beyond the shelter of the headland, whitecaps dotted the horizon. And some fifty yards from shore, a small boy in a red life jacket clung to the tiller of a sailboat being tossed around like a matchbox.

  Until that moment, she hadn’t thought matters could get any worse, that she could be more terrified or had more to lose than was already lost. Yet even as she stood there, paralyzed with horror, the boat yawed erratically, and the wind whipped the sail to one side, then slammed it back to the other with enough force to flatten the dingy so completely that the hull lifted clear out of the water.

  And when the boat righted itself again, there was no longer a little boy wearing a red life jacket clinging to the tiller. There was nothing but the sail flapping limply as the vessel turned its nose into the wind.

  “Adrian!” she screamed, searching the churning waters until her eyes burned.

  But the wind took his name, tore it to shreds, and flung it away.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THEY didn’t hear him come in and he stood for a moment on the threshold, watching them. They sat close together, she with her head on his shoulder, and he with his arm around her. They’d been like that for as long as he could remember: a couple who allowed nothing to come between them, not even the grief so evident in their posture now.

  A pang of regret shot through him that he should be the cause of their unhappiness, when they’d brought to his life nothing but unlimited joy and affection. “I heard a rumor that I was dead,” he said, stepping fully into the room. “I hope you haven’t planned an elaborate funeral. I’d hate to see it go to waste.”

  They sprang up from the sofa as if they were closer to thirty than seventy, and it was almost worth what he’d gone through over the last three days, just to see the way their faces lit up, and the spring in their step as they came toward him.

  “I don’t believe in wasting good money on funerals,” his aunt said. “I planned a wake instead, and invited everyone on the island.”

  But Louis didn’t have her stamina or resilience, and broke into choking sobs when he tried to speak.

  “Now see what you’ve done, you fool!” she scolded Ethan. “It’s a miracle you didn’t give him a heart attack!”

  None too sure he had as firm a grip on his own emotions as he’d have liked, he wrapped his arms around both of them. “I’m sorry I worried you. If I could have prevented it, I would have. But it’s over. I’m here and as you can see, all in one piece.”

  “Yes,” Josephine said severely. “And you have some explaining to do. Start at the beginning and don’t leave out a thing.”

  “I will,” he said, laughing for what seemed like the first time in years. “But first I need a stiff drink. I think we all do. Morton!”

  The butler came at a run, his face mirroring the same stunned amazement Josephine and Louis had shown shortly before. “Good heavens!” he exclaimed, turning a little gray around the edges.

  “Relax, Morton,” Ethan said. “I’m not a ghost, just a very weary man who could use a single malt Scotch, straight up. And pour one for yourself, while you’re at it. You look as if you could use it.”

  “Scotch?” Josephine scoffed. “This calls for champagne. Don’t look so woebegone, Morton! The night-mare’s over.”

  “I’m afraid not,” the butler said, and Ethan didn’t like the man’s shifty-eyed expression one little bit.

  “What is it? What aren’t you telling us?” he said sharply, the utter and unusual silence throughout the rest of the house suddenly dawning on him. “And where’s my son?”

  “He’s in his room,” Josephine said. “We kept quiet as long as we could, Ethan, but when no news of your whereabouts had come after three days, we felt we had to tell him you’d gone missing. But he’ll be so happy to see his papa again. Get someone to bring him down, will you, Morton?”

  The butler shuffled uneasily from one foot to the other. “I’m afraid I can’t, madame. Young Adrian’s gone missing too, you see. We’ve looked everywhere in the house, and he’s not to be found.”

  Refusing to give in to the thread of panic uncurling in the pit of his stomach, Ethan said, “Well, he can’t have gone far. We’ll search the grounds.”

  “Mademoiselle Barclay has gone already to do that. She believes the boy might have wandered to the beach to look for you, monsieur.”

  “How long ago did she leave?” Ethan barked, his satisfaction at hearing Anne-Marie hadn’t yet left for Canada marred by the news that his son was missing.

  “Nearly half an hour, monsieur.”

  “And you’ve waited until now to mention it? Good God, man, what were you thinking?”

  “She asked me not to say anything until she returned,” Morton said miserably. “She didn’t want to upset Madame Josephine or Monsieur Louis unnecessarily.”

  “Alert the outdoor staff,” Ethan said, heading for the terrace at a run. “Have them cover the entire estate, including all accessible sections of shoreline. And get a search team out on the water.”

  She was out of her depth. The waves slapped at her face, stole her breath, threatened to overwhelm her. But at least the wind had lessened some, and she was closing in on the boat.

  Adrian couldn’t drown. He was wearing a life jacket. The water was warm, the tide running toward shore.

  She lifted her head, searching…searching. Tried again to call his name. And was slapped again by another wave.

  The salt water rushed into her mouth and up her nose. Choking, panic-stricken, she flailed her arms, and made contact with something—the hard, shiny shell of the dingy’s hull. Then another wave rolled over her, and the boat slipped away.

  I can’t do this, she thought, but knew she couldn’t give up until she found him, or drowned trying. She owed it to the child and to everyone who loved him. But her arms were leaden weights, her legs aching, and her lungs burning.

  The boat heaved up in front of her again, and with the last of her strength she lunged for it. And missed.

  It bobbed away, as buoyant as she was inept. Then, catching another wave, it floated toward her again, and this time ran over her.

  Eyes wide open with terror, she went under, and bowed to the might of the sea. Green and merciless, it tumbled around her.

  This was the end, and that was just as well. She could never have faced the Beaumonts again, knowing that she hadn’t been able to save Adrian.

  But drowning, so she’d heard, was supposed to be painless, once a person gave up the struggle. So why was her scalp hurting, and what was the dark shape looming above her? A shark? Oh, please let me die before it attacks! was her last coherent thought.

  The tension on her hair increased, yanking her up hard toward the light. Then, like a cork popping out of a champagne bottle and with her lungs fit to burst, she resurfaced and found herself looking straight into the only patches of blue left on earth. Ethan’s enraged eyes.

  “How many times do I have to do this, before you learn?” he shouted over the clamor of the waves.

  Oh, yes, she was dead. Even worse, she’d been sent to hell!

  Warily, she opened her eyes a fraction. A late afternoon sun had broken through the leaden skies and played over the cool, cotton sheets covering her. Hell, she thought ble
arily, looked very much like her room in the Beaumont villa.

  And the devil sounded just like Ethan! “So you’re awake finally,” he said, and turning her head, she found him slouched in a chair next to the bed.

  She ached all over and her throat felt as if it had been put through a meat grinder. “I didn’t know I’d been asleep,” she croaked, struggling to reconstruct the events which had led up to the present moment.

  Something dreadful had happened. She’d been afraid. Exhausted. Stricken with unbearable grief.

  Then she remembered, and a great wash of misery flowed over her. “Ah, no!” she moaned, covering her face as the tears spurted from her eyes. “Adrian…!”

  “Adrian’s in better shape than you, you’ll be happy to hear. But then, he showed a lot more sense.”

  It took a moment for her to absorb what he was telling her. At length, she lowered her hands and dared to look at him again. “Adrian’s…alive?”

  “He’s alive.”

  She shook her head, wanting to believe, but afraid to. “How is that possible? There was no sign—”

  “That’s a very seaworthy little boat.”

  “And he’s a very little boy!”

  “But smart,” Ethan said. “I’d taught him always to wear a safety line, and he knew enough to brace himself low in the cockpit, and wait to be rescued or washed ashore.”

  She digested that for a space. “What if he’d been carried out to sea?”

  “He knew he wouldn’t be. The currents in the bay sweep toward the beach. Why else do you think it’s so littered with shells and driftwood?” His voice softened fractionally. “Relax, Anne-Marie. He really is perfectly fine.”

  “And you?” She half sat up and tentatively touched his arm. It felt reassuringly solid and warm. Still, she had to ask. “Are you fine, too?”

  “Afraid so.”

  She let out a long, heartfelt sigh and flopped back against the pillows. “Oh, thank God!” she said hoarsely and with profound reverence. “Thank God!”