Strange Adventure

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Former journalist SARA CRAVEN published her first novel ‘Garden of Dreams’ for Mills & Boon in 1975. Apart from her writing (naturally!) her passions include reading, bridge, Italian cities, Greek islands, the French language and countryside, and her rescue Jack Russell/cross Button. She has appeared on several TV quiz shows and in 1997 became UK TV Mastermind champion. She lives near her family in Warwickshire – Shakespeare country.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE PAGE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

ENDPAGE

COPYRIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

THE last triumphant chords of the sonata died a lingering death, as Lacey stayed her fingers on the piano keys, savouring their harmony.

For a moment she sat motionless as silence surged back into the small room set aside for music practice at the convent of Our Lady of Grace, then with an impatient movement she thrust back under her Alice band the long lock of silver-gilt hair which had come loose while she gave herself to her music. She was thankful that Sister Thérèse had not been within earshot of this particular performance. Too much passion, too much feeling and too little technique would have been her verdict.

She got up from the piano stool and walked across to the square-paned window that overlooked a small corner of the convent garden and the high wall that surrounded it.

She thought, as she had begun to think so often in those long months since her seventeenth birthday, ‘I could be safe here always.’ And, as before, she noted ironically that she had said ‘safe’ and not ‘happy’.

To the other girls at this convent boarding school, it would have seemed incredible that Lacey Vernon, cherished only daughter of an English merchant banker, could possibly lack any kind of security. Lacey could see a dim reflection of herself in the wintry panes. The dark blue dress with its decorously fashionable length and neat white collar. The dark band holding the smooth, shining fall of hair hanging below her shoulders.

Alice in nowhere land, since … Since when?

Since that terrible day at the Conservatoire when the so-eminent professor had dismissed kindly but quite finally her hardly expressed hope to become a concert pianist?

‘A charming talent—but not the steel, the fire that takes one to the top. For that one requires a special genius which few possess. Which you, ma soeur,’ he threw a darkling look at Sister Thérèse, quietly self-contained in her dark habit, ‘might have possessed, had it not been for this—calling of yours.

‘But for you, my child.’ He laid a hand for an instant on the bowed fair head. ‘I must speak the truth. Look at that little hand. It can span an octave at the most. For many of the great works, more facility would be needed. Content yourself that you will always play better than most of those you will meet, and leave the concert platform for those with the strength to bear its demands.’

She had not cried. The nuns would have deplored such an unseemly display of emotion. Even Sister Thérèse had not shown a flicker of reaction to this crushing of the hopes of her star pupil—or even regret for the career that might have been hers, Lacey recalled wryly. All she had said on the long drive back to the convent had been, ‘It is God’s will, my child.’

Lacey had often wished since that she could achieve that kind of acceptance. It had been hard not to rebel when she had written to ask her father if she could opt for the commercial training offered to the older pupils instead of the more usual course in the higher flights of home economics designed to prepare the majority of the girls for the day when they became wives and hostesses. But the reply from home had been as unexpected as it was unwelcome. There were no plans, ran her father’s letter, for her to be employed in a secretarial capacity in his firm, or any other, for that matter, and any such training would be a complete waste of time. She would please him far better if she concentrated on the domestic side of the course in her last months at the convent as Michelle would no doubt be glad of some help with the entertaining.

When some of the hurt had died down from this rejection of her attempt to carve out a career for herself, Lacey was able to smile a little at the thought of her glamorous French stepmother permitting her to meddle in any of the domestic details in London or at their country home. Michelle ruled a small but efficient staff with absolute sway and she would not welcome any interference from anyone.

Lacey had often begged to be allowed to help even in a menial capacity when guests were expected, but all her offers had been met with a fairly brusque refusal until her father had intervened before one minor dinner party and suggested that she should be allowed to do the flowers for the centrepiece. She had spent time and thought on her arrangement, floating a mass of full-blown roses around the bases of delicately tapering candles in a shallow but exquisitely shaped dish. Just before the guests had arrived she had peeped into the dining room to see the table in all its finished glory. Her flowers had disappeared and a bowl of long-stemmed hothouse beauties stood in their place. Lacey had looked and bitten her lip, and later, when her father congratulated her boisterously on her efforts, she had given a little noncommittal smile.

She had been twelve years old when her father married again and she had soon learned that to fight Michelle was to lose. But there had been battles in the early days. Lacey, used to being first in her father’s affections since her mother’s death, could not reconcile herself to the fact that this slender, dark stranger with her beautiful face and incredible chic had simply taken over. And when her initial hostility had given way to genuine admiration for all that glamour and she was prepared to become a worshipper at her stepmother’s shrine, she had discovered with bewilderment that her adoration was unwanted. That in fact her own small person was the one flaw in Michelle’s vast contentment at having married a man as wealthy and easygoing as James Vernon.

Which, of course, was why she was here at the convent where Michelle herself had been educated. Her friend Vanessa, both of whose parents had embarked on other marriages, had explained it succinctly.

‘It’s “being got out of the way”. If I’d been a baby or a three-year-old my stepmother could have dressed up for photographs with bows in my hair, it might have been O.K. At our age, we’re just a pain in the neck. Della said it made her feel old just to look at me.’

As it was, Lacey had grown accustomed to being ‘out of the way’. She had learned that it was not always convenient for her to go home for her vacations, but as the alternatives had included carefully selected parties for skiing, sailing and sightseeing, she could not feel too hard done by.

But now she had to face the fact that her schooldays were strictly numbered, and that her future was by no means clear cut. Her father was being over-optimistic, she thought, in envisaging any role-sharing between Michelle and herself, and yet what else was there, if she was not to be allowed to work for her living?

Lacey sighed and leaned her forehead against the cold glass for a moment. There was an alternative which she had come to consider with increasing seriousness as the weeks had passed. She could ask Reverend Mother to allow her to enter the novitiate of the order. It was not an ideal solution, and there were immediate snags. Lacey was not yet eighteen or indeed a Roman Catholic, but none of these obstacles seemed as insuperable as the prospect of being an unwanted third in her stepmother’s home. She knew too that the nuns considered a sense of vocation as essential for the religious life, but she also knew from books she had read in the convent library that in bygone times many girls had become nuns because they were unwanted by their families and had become excellent religious. Lacey supposed, rather dubiously, that this could happen to her in time.

She looked again at the high wall, which as Sister Thérèse had often commented, was not to keep the nuns from the world but the world from the nuns.

Lacey sometimes wondered what this ‘world’ was like that had to be kept at bay, but she had never shared with the other boarders any burning desire to come to terms with it as soon as possible. She knew that many of the other girls were already sexually experienced, although she was rarely invited to join the little groups that gathered secretly late at night to discuss boy-friends and sex, and she realised wryly that she would have had little to contribute if she had been.

Lacey had never had a boy-friend, unless she counted Alan Trevor, the son of neighbours of theirs in the country, whom she had known since her early childhood. Lacey rode with him sometimes in the holidays and found him attractive with a sense of humour, but he had never attempted even to kiss her, and Lacey was secretly relieved that he had not. But it did not prevent her from speculating on how she would cope if and when that momentous occasion ever came about.

The worldly-wise Vanessa had told her that it was rarely the kiss that counted—more what men expected to follow it, but Lacey had never been able to apply any of this information to herself. Her body was something that she bathed and clothed and which obeyed the demands she put upon it without effort. The realisation that there were demands that others might make of it was utterly alien to her. At the convent her studies and her music filled her life. At home, usually in the country, she enjoyed the open air, often in Alan’s relaxed company or that of his sister Fran.

Convent life, she supposed vaguely, would go on in much the same way, except that Alan would not be there, and if she was honest that would be no great deprivation although she was fond of him.

She wandered back to the piano and perching on the stool began to pick out a melody with one finger. What, she wondered, was it like to be in love? Her cheeks flushed as she recalled some of the more lurid discussions she had heard from the others, but what had that to do with love?

And this was where one province where even her usual mentor, Sister Thérèse, would not be able to help her, she thought, then started guiltily as Sister herself suddenly spoke from the doorway.

‘So you are here, Lacey. Reverend Mother has asked to see you, and I guessed where you might be.’

Lacey closed the piano and rose bewilderedly, shaking out her skirt.

‘Reverend Mother? But why? I haven’t done anything wrong, have I?’

Sister Thérèse gave a slight smile. ‘Now why should you all imagine that Reverend Mother only sends for you when you have been in some kind of mischief?’ she asked chidingly. Then, after a slight hesitation, ‘You have a visitor, Lacey.’

‘A visitor?’ Lacey stared at the older woman with sudden joyous disbelief. ‘It’s Father. It must be,’ she blurted out, and regardless of Sister Thérèse’s restraining ‘Lacey!’, she ran out of the room and along the spacious panelled corridor to the main staircase.

The door of Reverend Mother’s study was slightly ajar, but Lacey still knocked and waited for the word to enter in spite of her inner excitement. Then she slid through the door and dropped a slight curtsey to Reverend Mother, her eyes turning eagerly to see who else was in the room.

Her hands clasped involuntarily in front of her and she stood quite still with all the joy and laughter fading from her piquant little face as Michelle rose from a high-backed chair, a formal smile barely curving her exquisitely made up mouth.

Questions were beating and tearing at Lacey’s brain as she forced herself to reply to Michelle’s polite greeting and pecked obediently at one scented cheek. One that had to be answered forced its way into speech. ‘Father—he is all right?’

Michelle’s brows rose. ‘Perfectly, but very busy, as he no doubt explained in his last letter. That is why he asked me to perform this errand for him.’ She glanced at her wristwatch, then turned to Reverend Mother who was standing, her usually calm face a little troubled. ‘If the child’s things could be packed, ma très révérende mère.’

‘Mais oui, ma chère enfant. I will give the necessary instructions and leave you to talk.’

She moved past Lacey as she spoke and the girl with great daring touched her sleeve.

‘But why must my things be packed, Reverend Mother?’

The nun hesitated, sending a swift glance towards Michelle.

‘Because the time has come for you to leave us, my child,’ she replied. ‘Your stepmother will explain all to you now, sans doute.’ She looked down into Lacey’s stricken face and her own softened perceptibly. ‘It is not the end of the world, ma petite,’ she said gently, and moved to the door.

‘But it is!’ Lacey cried, almost hysterically. ‘I—I don’t want to leave, Reverend Mother. I was going to see you and ask if I could stay here always——’

‘How would that be possible, my child?’ Reverend Mother stared at her. ‘Unless you obtained some teaching qualification, and even then …’

Lacey shook her head, almost pleadingly. ‘I didn’t mean that, Reverend Mother. I intended to ask you to accept me as a novice—to permit me to become a nun.’

There was a stunned silence for a moment, then Michelle exclaimed furiously ‘Quelle bětise!’ only to be halted by Reverend Mother’s upraised hand. Her calm eyes bored into Lacey’s flushed, unhappy face.

‘So you think you are called to the religious life, my child. Sit down and we will discuss the matter.’

‘Reverend Mother,’ Michelle protested, and the nun gave her a faint smile.

‘If you would be good enough to wait in the parlour, ma chère. Sister Monique will bring you some coffee and cakes.’

Michelle hesitated, but Reverend Mother’s authority was still absolute and after a moment she left the room with obvious ill grace. Reverend Mother gave an almost imperceptible sigh, then moved briskly back to her large desk and sat down.

‘Now, Lacey,’ she said gently. ‘Why do you think you have a vocation?’

There was a long silence. Lacey’s hands twisted together in her lap as she tried desperately to marshall her whirling thoughts into reasoned arguments that would convince Reverend Mother of her sincerity, but no words would come and the only sound in the hushed room was the steady tick of the small clock that stood on Reverend Mother’s desk.

At last, it was Reverend Mother who spoke. ‘Many people have a mistaken idea of what it is to be a nun. They see it as a refuge—an escape from the pressure that life in the world imposes. But they are wrong, Lacey, and you too will be wrong if you are looking for a sanctuary, as I suspect.’

Lacey looked at her tormentedly. ‘Oh, Reverend Mother, everything is such a mess!’

‘But running away will solve nothing, my dear child. Even if I believed you had a genuine vocation, I would be very reluctant to accept you at present. One thing that we do require of our novices is peace of mind, and you are too confused at the moment to know what it is you truly want. I feel you should do as your stepmother asks and go home with her.’

‘But she doesn’t really want me,’ Lacey burst out.

‘How can you know that? Would she have come if that was the case? Besides, there is your father to consider.’ Reverend Mother seemed oddly to hesitate for a moment. ‘Perhaps he may need you, ma chère. Have you considered that?’

Lacey was unhappily silent. Reverend Mother rose, tall in her dark robes, and came round the desk, laying a hand almost in blessing on the girl’s head.

‘Go home, my child,’ she advised quietly. ‘Find out what life may have in store for you, and if you still feel it is not enough after a year or two, and that your place is here, then you can write to me.’

Lacey looked at her steadily. ‘But you don’t believe I will, do you, Reverend Mother?’

‘No, my dear. I have an instinct in these things and it tells me that your future lies outside these walls. Now I must see about your packing before your stepmother loses her patience entirely. Shall I ask Vanessa to help you?’

‘Please, Reverend Mother.’ Lacey’s voice was subdued. ‘I didn’t know whether I would be able to say goodbye to her.’

‘But why not? You are not leaving the convent under a cloud, my dear, and we shall all miss you and pray for you. Now come along.’

Lacey had already emptied her clothes cupboard on to the bed by the time Vanessa arrived.

‘So it’s true,’ she observed, as she bounced into the room. ‘Cheer up, flower. You look shattered. I’d be turning cartwheels if my people sent for me!’

‘I’ll be all right.’ Lacey summoned up a wan smile. ‘It’s all been rather a shock, that’s all.’

Vanessa’s shrewd eyes went over her friend as she began folding the clothes and packing them neatly and economically into the open cases.

‘I don’t want to interfere, Lacey, but is everything—quite all right at home?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Lacey smoothing sweaters into a polythene bag looked at her in surprise. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Oh,’ Vanessa shrugged rather vaguely, ‘there’ve been odd rumours in the newspaper lately, that’s all.’

Lacey rarely bothered to glance at the supply of English papers delivered daily to the convent for the pupils, but she knew Vanessa was an avid reader.

‘What sort of rumours?’

‘Just hints that all might not be well with Vernon–Carey—among others, of course.’

Lacey gave a little perplexed frown. ‘Well, Daddy hasn’t mentioned anything in his letters, and he seemed quite cheerful when I was home at Christmas. What did the papers say?’

Vanessa folded some tissue paper around a dress with rather exaggerated care.

‘I can’t really remember. Nothing specific, of course. Just an impression, really.’

‘Just vile innuendoes, you mean,’ Lacey said heatedly. ‘Some of these financial journalists are the limit! They’re quite capable of starting trouble for a company just to get a story.’

‘This wasn’t the gutter press,’ Vanessa said slowly, ‘or I might have agreed with you. But I daresay it is just a rumour. Things are tough for everyone these days.’

They worked for a few moments in silence and Lacey thought over what had just been said with a growing feeling of unease. She recalled the strangeness in Reverend Mother’s voice when she had said that her father might need her. Was there trouble brewing for Vernon–Carey of which she was the only one in ignorance? She made up her mind to ask Michelle about it at the earliest convenient opportunity.

After a pause, Vanessa began to chat of everyday things—of the senior pupils’ concert that Lacey would now miss, of whether she would continue her musical studies at Kings Winston and how she would otherwise fill her day.

‘Perhaps they’ll have a change of heart when you get home and let you train for something,’ she suggested cheerfully. ‘Or you could help Fran Trevor with the stables, perhaps. You’ve always got on well with her, haven’t you?’

‘Oh yes,’ Lacey agreed abstractedly. It occurred to her that if she was living at home for good, she would probably be thrust more into the limited social life around Kings Winston and would be seeing more of Alan as well, but the thought didn’t generate any enthusiasm.

‘And you will write, won’t you, Lacey?’ Vanessa persisted. There was a glint of tears in her blue eyes as she stared at her friend. ‘I—I shall miss you, you know.’

Lacey shook off her brooding mood and smiled warmly at her.

‘Of course I will, Van. And better than that, I’ll ask Michelle if you can come and stay at Kings Winston for Easter.’

She could see no real reason for Michelle to refuse and the thought gave her a touch of optimism as she carried her cases downstairs to the entrance hall where Michelle waited, her foot tapping impatiently on the parquet floor.

The driver of the hired limousine stowed the baggage away in the boot while Lacey made her round of goodbyes to the Sisters and girls. Reverend Mother was last, accompanying them out on to the steps, ignoring the chill of the wind that made Michelle pull up the collar on her fur coat.

‘Goodbye, ma petite.’ Reverend Mother traced a firm sign of the cross on Lacey’s forehead. ‘Think of us sometimes, and never be afraid of the richness of life.’

Lacey’s eyes were hot and blurred with tears as she walked down the shallow flight of steps and got into the back of the big car where Michelle was already waiting. She looked back once as the car turned slowly down the winding drive between the bare branches of the trees, registering like someone in a dream the tall, solid building and the tiny group of black-clad figures waving from the doorway, then the car rounded a bend and they were gone.

She sank back into the soft upholstery feeling utterly bereft. Beside her Michelle was fishing in her handbag for the inevitable cigarette and clicking her lighter irritably.

‘What an age you made me wait!’ she exclaimed. ‘We will have to abandon any notion of an afternoon plane and fly back tomorrow instead. It will not be such a bad thing anyway. Perhaps we will do some shopping in Paris,’ she added with a disparaging sideways look at Lacey’s neat grey flannel coat and plain dark shoes.

‘But I’ve got plenty of clothes,’ Lacey protested.

‘For a schoolgirl, yes,’ Michelle gestured dismissively. ‘But now you are a woman, ma chère, and you must learn to dress yourself accordingly. Your hair must be styled too.’

‘Oh, no.’ Lacey clutched protectively at a strand of her rain-straight silvery fair hair and Michelle looked grudging.

‘Well, perhaps not,’ she conceded. ‘It has a certain—charm, I suppose, comme ça. And you can always wear it up when you wish to look older.’

‘Why should I wish to do that?’ Lacey stared at her.

Michelle gave a negligent shrug and looked at her sideways, her glance oddly speculative. ‘If you do not, ma chère, then you will be the first girl not to wish to be so. Besides, your father will not wish you to appear at parties looking like a child.’

‘I’ll be going to parties, then?’ Lacey said questioningly, and her stepmother raised her eyebrows.

‘Mais certainement,’ she replied sharply. ‘What else did you expect?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Lacey wriggled her fingers out of the gloves that every convent-trained girl wore as a matter of course when she went out. She had never cared for the feel of gloves on her hands even in the coldest weather, and it occurred to her that she no longer had to trouble about this little bit of discipline. She stole a glance at her stepmother, who was smoking rather jerkily and staring out of the window at the rather drab landscape with a slight frown. ‘Michelle, is everything—all right? At home—with Father, I mean?’

‘Naturally.’ Michelle gave her a long look. ‘Why should it not be?’

‘Oh, nothing.’ It was Lacey’s turn to shrug. ‘One—just hears things and I wondered …’

‘You have heard what?’ Her stepmother’s tone sharpened.

‘Who has been talking to you? What has been said?’

‘Well, nothing really,’ Lacey hastened to assure her, feeling oddly perturbed. ‘But Reverend Mother said something odd—about me being needed, and Vanessa said there had been hints in the papers about the bank—that something might be wrong.’ She paused, but Michelle made no immediate reply. Her frown, however, had deepened. ‘If there is something wrong, I wish you’d tell me. You’ve just said I’m not a child any longer, so please don’t treat me like one if there’s something I should know.’