Free A Desperate Fortune by Susanna Kearsley

left through the tall arch in the wall between the salon and the dining room.
    I truly loved the dining room. It had a charming shape, with angled corners, and because it was itself set at the rearmost corner of the house it had great rows of windows running all along the back wall and the angle of one corner and again along the side—tall casement windows set with tiny panes of leaded glass, small beveled diamond shapes set at the juncture of the squares, and all contained within a clean narrow double border in two colors, red and gold. I longed to see those windows in the daylight. Last night it had been dark outside while we’d been eating dinner, and this morning it was not yet sunrise and the world beyond the windows was deep blue.
    The blue, at least, was calming. And the antique longcase clock that stood between the windows reassured me I had made it down here with six minutes left to spare, although it seemed that I was on my own. Well, nearly. Within the open doorway to the kitchen, sat a cat.
    I guessed he was a tomcat from his size, which was impressive. Black all over, he sat fluffed in that particularly vain way tomcats did when they were showing off, and stared at me with contemplative eyes as though deciding what to make of me.
    “Hello,” I said.
    The black cat sat and blinked at me as though I’d spoken in a foreign language, which I realized that I had.
    I said, in French this time, “Good morning. You are handsome, aren’t you?”
    This earned me a faint twitch of one ear as if acknowledging the compliment. I smiled. I had forgotten, living for so long without a pet myself, just how much I liked cats. This one had turned his gaze now nonchalantly to the salon just behind me with a focus that assured me I was hardly worth the bother to investigate.
    I laid a challenge down. “Come on, then. Come and say hello and be a proper host. I promise I won’t bite.”
    “ He might.” The man’s voice, coming from the salon, caught me unawares. Surprised, I turned but could see no one, not at first. Not till the one door that had been propped open in the farther corner by the entry hall was pushed a little from behind to change its angle, showing me the man who had been kneeling just behind it by a box of tools and working on the radiator. He hadn’t been purposely hiding there, he’d just been hidden by the door, and when I’d gone through the salon I’d walked straight past him without even knowing he was there.
    Luc Sabran, in jeans and a gray-and-white striped cotton shirt, gave a nod towards the cat and warned me, “Don’t let him fool you. He’s not to be trusted.” He said it good-naturedly, then smiled and added, “Good morning. How are you, Ms. Thomas?”
    I said I was well and returned his “Good morning,” determined this time not to stare. “And it’s Sara.”
    “I’d come and shake hands, but I’m covered in rust,” he said, holding up one hand as proof. “Were you looking for breakfast? Denise just went round to the bakery for more croissants, because Diablo there sat on the ones she made earlier.”
    Glaring, the black cat replied to this second attack on his honor by stalking indignantly forward and making a tidy leap onto the dining room chair nearest me, giving a short but imperious order that needed no translating. Smoothing the black hair and feeling his back muscles arch and twitch under my hand, I said, “Is that your name, then? Diablo?”
    “It goes very well with his character.”
    “Is he your cat?”
    “No.” Luc Sabran put one final twist on a screw and sat back on his heels to inspect the results of whatever repairs he had made. “No, he lives with a neighbor just over the lane, but he visits. The food’s better here.” The radiator was evidently working to his satisfaction now, because he put the tools away and stood and flexed his shoulders and began to walk towards me with that easy stride I had admired last night. In motion, he was even more