Soft Limits - Page 1
Chapter One
Evie
I’m not paying attention when it happens. The laneway is deep with silence and noonday shadows, and there’s a fresh breeze blowing. My eyes are following tiny birds as they hop among the cow parsley and tangled wildflowers, but my mind is far away, in a dark and bitter East Berlin winter of razor wire and searchlights and snarling German shepherds. I picture Mrs. Müller, not as I left her just now, a sturdy, gray-haired woman in a cream blouse, but as a young woman of twenty with a pale, determined face and clear blue eyes. She laid photos out before me of friends long dead. Shot going over the Wall. Arrested by the Stasi. Arrested. Disappeared. This one betrayed us—she was an informant and we didn’t know it.
There’s a break in the hedgerow and I cut across the laneway, heading for the stile. The path beyond leads a mile across the fields to my parents' country house, where I’m staying over the summer with my mother, father and my sisters. All three of them.
Suddenly a car races around the bend. I freeze, turning toward this black, rushing thing, as silent as it is sleek—Why is it so quiet?—but then the driver slams on the brakes and the air is filled with the screech of tires and smoking rubber. The car stops six inches from my legs and I’m finally released from terror-induced paralysis. I scurry to get out of the way but my feet tangle and I go down with a yelp. Papers and books cascade from my shoulder bag. I stare at my burning hands pressed against the gravel, my chest heaving.
A car door opens and rapid footsteps approach. Someone hovers over me, saying something about the driver and not seeing me and asking me if I am hurt.
“No, really, I’m fine, the car didn’t touch me, I just fell,” I say, brushing gravel from my bare legs and scraped palms while simultaneously trying to grab at loose pages that are fluttering into the hedge.
His hand catches mine. “Miss,” he says, in a voice that cuts through my babble. He’s got an accent of some sort. “I will collect your papers. Are you sure you’re all right?”
I look up, and recognition and dismay stun me into silence. The man bending over me has dark, curly hair with a few silver flecks and slanted green eyes above pronounced cheekbones. His mouth is full and slightly parted. It’s a mouth I’ve seen thinned with anger, twisted into sneers and plumped with self-satisfaction. It’s the mouth of a villain.
“Monsieur d’Estang,” I say automatically.
His eyebrows shoot up, and then his concerned expression becomes a sleek smile. “Oui, mademoiselle.”
Oh, god. He thinks I’m a fan. Well, you are a fan. No—not really, not anymore. “I’m not—” And I take a deep breath, because even I can only bear making a fool of myself so many times in one day. “I think you are on your way to see my father.”
Dad didn’t mention that Frederic d’Estang, the French Canadian musical theater performer, would be coming to the house, but then he’s not much in the habit of warning us about these things. As he’s a theater agent, and a gregarious one, it’s not unusual for a star to pull into the drive while you’re eating your toast or plump down next to you at dinner.
Monsieur d’Estang studies me for a moment. “You are Anton Bell’s daughter?”
“Yes. Well, one of them.”
He puts a hand over his heart. “Miss Bell, I deeply apologize.” And he continues to apologize in the most eloquent way for several minutes while he helps me up and collects all my notebooks and papers. I try to get them off him but it’s hard to get a word in while he talks on, and then he’s taking my elbow and steering me toward the car.
“No, please, I’m fine to walk, it’s not far across the fields.”
“But Miss Bell, we are going the same way, I believe.” His eyes are so much greener in person and I feel like a mouse pinned by the jeweled gaze of the cobra. He’s had more than twenty years' professional experience convincing people of things with those eyes and I’ve only had minutes to try and discover how to refuse them.
I fail, and get into the car.
The driver adds his own apologies to Monsieur d’Estang’s while I’m buckling on my seat belt. It’s an electric car, he explains, which is why I didn’t hear it. I mutter something about not getting many of these in the countryside around Oxford.
“What were you thinking about so deeply when we nearly knocked you down?” Monsieur d’Estang’s accent is unusual, a slight North American inflection with a clipped Frenchiness about the vowels. It’s a very nice voice, and surprisingly gentle for such a tall, sultry man. I think about all the actresses and singers he’s been romantically linked with over the years. He probably knows it’s very nice.
Source: readsnovelonline.net