Black Ice - Anne Stuart [0]
It was M. Hakim. Her relief was palpable—she actually started babbling. “Thank heavens!” she said. “I’ve gotten all turned around and I was afraid I’d never find my room.”
“This section of the château is off-limits to visitors, Mademoiselle Underwood. It has yet to be renovated, as you can see. If you were to get in trouble no one would hear you scream.”
Chloe was suddenly entirely sober. She swallowed, looking into Hakim’s dark, calm face. She forced herself to laugh, breaking the tension. “I think I need a map to find my way around this place,” she said.
He hadn’t let go of her arm. He had thick, ugly hands, with dark hair across the backs of his sausagelike fingers. For one brief, crazy moment she thought he was going to shove her back into the deserted wing. And then sanity returned and he dropped her arm.
“You should be more careful, Mademoiselle Underwood,” he admonished. “Other people might be more dangerous than I am, and I would not like to see anything…unfortunate befall you.”
It was his overformal English that made it sound threatening, of course. Not any real danger. But that uneasy little shiver slid down her backbone, and she wondered if she’d made a very real mistake in taking this job.
Also by ANNE STUART
HIDDEN HONOR
INTO THE FIRE
STILL LAKE
SHADOWS AT SUNSET
THE WIDOW
Watch for a brand-new historical romance from
ANNE STUART
BLACK ICE
ANNE STUART
This was a gift book for me, one the universe
delivered when I was riding in a taxi in Paris,
and it comes with a sound track. Listen to
Japanese Rock and Roll, French rock (Marc Lavoine,
Florent Pagny) and maybe some Pretenders. Enjoy!
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
1
People might go on and on about springtime in Paris, Chloe Underwood thought as she walked down the street huddled in her coat, but there was really nothing to compare to winter in the City of Lights. By early December the leaves were gone, the air was crisp and cool and enough of the tourists had left to make life bearable. In August she always wondered why on earth she’d chosen to pull up stakes and move three thousand miles away from her family. But then winter came, and she remembered all too well.
It might have helped if she could have abandoned the city to the tourists every August, as all the French did, but she’d yet to find a job that included such luxuries as vacations, health care or a living wage. She was lucky she’d managed to find work at all. As it was, her presence in France was quasi-legal, and most days she decided just being there was blessing enough, even if she shared a tiny walk-up flat with a fellow expatriate who seemed to have very little sense of responsibility. Sylvia barely remembered to pay her half of the rent, she’d never swept a floor in her life and she considered any piece of furniture or flat surface a place to leave her astonishingly large wardrobe. On the other hand, she wore the same size eight that Chloe did, and she was not averse to sharing. She was also single-mindedly determined to marry a wealthy Frenchman, and in pursuit of that goal she spent most nights away from their cramped quarters, leaving Chloe with a little more breathing room.
In fact, it was Sylvia who’d found Chloe her current job translating children’s books. Sylvia had worked at Les Frères Laurent for two years, and she’d slept with all three of the middle-aged frères, ensuring job tenure and a decent salary for translating