‘Do you want to tell me?’ Annette asked.

Hélène did. Speaking in a flat, monotonous voice, she told Annette everything.

‘I can’t bear him near me,’ she said. ‘The thought of him touching me, touching me in any way, makes me feel physically sick. Can you understand that, Annette?’

‘Oh yes, Hélène, I understand only too well.’

‘But I don’t know what to do.’

‘There’s only one thing you can do,’ Annette told her. ‘You go to your parents and tell them that you’ve changed your mind.’

‘Changed my mind?’ echoed Hélène faintly.

‘Changed your mind. That you don’t want to marry Simon Barnier after all.’

Hélène stared at Annette in horror. ‘I couldn’t.’ She shook her head violently. ‘I just couldn’t do that. Not now. It’s too late.’

‘It’s not too late,’ insisted Annette. ‘Too late is when you’re married to him. Then there really is no chance of escape.’

‘But it wouldn’t work, just saying that. They’d all go on at me about the shame of jilting him, of how I would shame not only myself and our family by refusing to marry him but him and his family as well. I would end up having to marry him anyway, and he’d never forgive me for saying I didn’t want to.’

‘You could do what I did,’ suggested Annette. ‘Just walk out.’

‘I couldn’t, Annette. I really couldn’t. Where would I go?’

‘I didn’t have anywhere to go,’ Annette reminded her. ‘But I knew I couldn’t stay and nor can you. We’ll find somewhere to go, just you and me.’

‘But he’d come looking for me. He’d come looking for me and if and when he found me, my life wouldn’t be worth living.’

‘If you simply disappeared, before you were married, he’d have no claim on you. Do you really think he’ll bother to come searching for you?’

‘Yes,’ replied Hélène. ‘I know he will. However long it takes.’

‘And you really think it’s better to be married to a man like that than take the risk of leaving while you still can?’

‘Yes,’ replied Hélène. ‘He would find me.’

When Annette returned to the kitchen for her supper, she whispered to Pierre that she and Madame Sauze wanted him to come to the sitting room once the meal had been cleared away and coffee served in the drawing room.

‘What’s up?’ he said when they were sitting beside Agathe’s fire.

‘I’ll tell you,’ Annette said, ‘but you must promise me to listen without interrupting until I’ve finished. All right?’

Pierre shrugged. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Fire away.’

Annette told him what had happened at Gavrineau, finishing by saying, ‘She’s terrified of him. We have to get her away from him.’

It was then that Agathe said, ‘She was abducted when she was a child. She used to have nightmares.’

‘We need to make a plan,’ Annette said, ‘and then we have to convince her that it’s her only chance unless she wants to be tied to him for ever.’