JENNA GOT DOWN on her hands and knees, feeling for the dropped flashlight among the litter of dried needles and pine-cones. There was no sign of it anywhere.
If only the moon would rise over the peaks! Moving methodically, she swept her gloves in wide arcs in the area where she thought the flashlight had fallen. After a thorough search she realized it was useless.
“Thank God I had the sense to leave my headlights on, so I can follow them back to the car!” she said out loud.
But when she scanned the mountainside for their beams, she couldn’t spot them at all. Jenna took several deep breaths of icicle-sharp air, trying to slow the frantic pounding in her chest.
“Where the hell is the car?”
Pushing down her panic, she convinced herself that the thick trees and huge rocks were blocking the lights from view. She would soon locate them if she moved across the ledge. She knew she had to hurry. Her jacket was warm enough, but the unlined leather gloves she wore weren’t made for freezing temperatures and her fingers were already numb with cold.
She heard crackling in the encircling forest. Her imagination went into high gear. Frosted twigs snapping in the cold? Stealthy footsteps? Or a predator seeking its prey?
The sounds grew louder and headed in her direction. The nape of her neck prickled.
“Who’s there?” she called out, first in the French dialect of Fontine and then in English.
There was no answering voice, only the soft pad-pad of something closing in.
She turned her head, scanning the dark mountainside in vain for the beams of her headlights. As she was deciding which way to go, an eerie sound lifted the hair at her nape—a low, growling moan that she felt in her bones as much as heard.
A wolf?
She thought of the waiter’s words: “Beaumont Foret . . . an enchanted castle deep in the heart of the mountains . . . guarded by wolves.”
A crack of thunder split the air, and Jenna felt the ground shift beneath her. She flailed for her balance, but fell, hard. The thick layers of fallen pine needles cushioned the worst of it, but the wind was knocked out of her.
While she lay stunned, she felt herself sliding forward and down—then realized it was the very rock beneath her that was moving. The ledge beneath her was breaking away from the mountainside in a skitter and hail of bouncing stones.
A single clear thought shimmered in her dulling brain: What a stupid, stupid way to die.
For a moment she was weightless, a leaf on the wind.
Then, although she could see nothing but air beneath her, her fall was gently cushioned. For a disbelieving instant she rested in space above the void. Jenna felt it give, heard a soft pop! Her invisible support gave way abruptly.
The night erupted in a silent explosion of scintillating lights of vivid rose and violet and green. She was falling again, caroming into entwined branches that cracked and snapped beneath her weight. Grasping desperately, she caught at one, but her gloves were ripped from her frozen hands. She was gaining momentum, tobogganing over the ice-glazed rock.
A stunning blow stopped her wild descent. Surprisingly, there was no pain, only a flash like a strobe light. Then everything was blotted out by darkness, far deeper, far blacker than midnight.
Philippe threw himself forward to block the women’s wild descent and winced when he heard her body strike a glancing blow off the tree trunk. For a split second he lay there, panting with the effort and fearing the worst.
He rolled away and pushed himself up to examine her. She was limp and unmoving, her face so white it seemed that every bit of blood had drained from her body. He said a prayer to a god in whose mercy he no longer believed and touched the angle beneath her jaw. Her pulse beat frantically against his fingertips, and she took in a soft gasp of air.
Mon Dieu! She is still alive! he thought.
Not, he realized quickly, that there was any guarantee she would remain that way. She was injured and in shock, and it was a very long way down the mountain to Beaumont Foret. There was little he could do until his men worked their way up with the equipment, except to try and keep her warm with the heat of his body.
It had been years since he’d held a woman so close. Her breath ruffled against his cheek, and the scent of her hair and skin once again evoked memories he’d pushed to the back of his mind. A warm summer night . . . paper lanterns illuminating the garden . . . music and wine . . . the taste of apricots and first love . . .
Bitterness filled him. Those fleeting moments of golden promise had turned to lead, and all these long years later, he was still dealing with their consequences.
He’d made faulty decisions then, and now he wondered if he had erred again. Taking a stranger, a woman, to the château was a risk—yet how could he do otherwise?
He pushed the pale hair from her face and a scent rose around him. Now he knew why the memories had battered him so strongly tonight—it was her perfume, with the warm fragrance of apricots, taking him back to a summer eleven years ago.
She looked touchingly fragile, like a snowflake that would melt at his touch. And very, very beautiful. Her lips were blanched but beautifully shaped, and her thick lashes cast shadows on her lovely cheekbones. What cruel trick of fate had caused this exquisite creature to stumble out of her world and into his?
His knuckles grazed her cheek. Why are you here? What in the name of heaven—or hell—has brought you to this dark mountainside?
And, he thought with a sudden sense of foreboding, what am I to do with you when you awaken?
If you awaken.
She aroused all his chivalrous instincts. He thought, with a swift stab of pity, she must live.
And for that to happen he would need all the available resources at the château. He knew that once again he was rushing in where angels feared to tread.
Philippe shrugged. It is said that Le Bon Dieu watches out for fools and children. I will worry about the consequences later.
But try as he might, he couldn’t dismiss the feeling that disaster was sure to follow.
Just as it had before.