The House of the Wolf

20

Not again, Chantal thought sometime later, as she awakened to a pounding head.

Someone had deposited her on a couch, in a room she did not recognize. Her family had shown her their usual consideration, lugging her unconscious body out of the Salon Rose in full view of everyone before dumping her in here. No doubt they had explained to any bewildered hotel patrons they encountered that she'd fainted at the dance, or taken too much wine... Chantal sat up, feeling groggy and sick, and gingerly put her hand to her head. Her hair had come loose, tumbling down around her neck and shoulders; reaching under it, she probed the tender swelling at the base of her head and then snatched her hand back, wincing. What had they hit her with? It was a wonder she wasn't concussed.

She looked around her. Apparently she was in the Château still: through a nearby window she could see the tapered tip of a floodlit turret, glowing green against a still-dark sky. But this was no ordinary hotel room. She was in an elegant suite, containing both bedroom and furnished sitting room. She had been placed in the latter; the bedroom must lie behind the door in the wall to her left. In addition to the couch there were three upholstered chairs matching the green-gold leafy wallpaper, a coffee table, a cabinet, and a carved wooden mantelpiece. One side of the room was set into a tower, creating a nook with rounded walls which contained a writing desk and chair. Only a person of wealth could afford such accommodations as these. As always, Thérèse Boisvert spared no expense.

She groaned aloud. How could she have been so foolish? She should have known better than to go with Lysette. The Boisverts had succeeded in disarming her suspicions by using the innocent child as a lure. Now she was a prisoner.

As she sat there the connecting door to the bed chamber opened. She tensed, but it was only her Tante Genevieve. The woman looked even more haggard and guilt-ridden than usual. Chantal stood and confronted her face to face, and Genevieve's eyes immediately dropped in submission.

Chantal took full advantage of it. "What's the idea?" she demanded, advancing on the woman. "Conking me on the head and carting me around – you people have really crossed the line this time, you know that? This is assault and abduction; you could all go to jail. Anyway, if you don't let me out of this room right now I'll yell until somebody comes."

The older woman did not answer right away. She sank into a chair – almost she seemed to collapse, like a deflating balloon. "It is no use," she said at length. "They will just tell the hotel staff that you suffer from nightmares, which is the truth. Your people at home in America will confirm that. And if you keep it up, they will gag you. There is nothing at all that you can do."

She did not say this like a villain gloating over a victim. Her tone was dull and hopeless, like that of a long-term prisoner counseling a newly arrived captive to despair. But Chantal was so used to fear now that it no longer paralyzed her; it only stoked her anger. "That's it!" she snapped. "I disown this family. You hear me? I won't have anything to do with any of you after this. I'm surprised you haven't kissed them all off yourself by now, if they make you so miserable. Is this why your husband left you? Did he just have to give up on you?"

At that Genevieve's eyes flashed, in the first show of spirit Chantal had ever seen in her. "My husband did not leave me!"

"Thérèse said – "

"What she told you was a lie!" Genevieve sprang up and commenced pacing about the room. "Oh, she was not deceiving you: she believed what she said, but it was false all the same. The lie was mine, not hers. I told her Henri had left me, but it was I who left him."