Page 72 of Mrs. Endicott's Splendid Adventure

“I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I was on a boat. Caught in the storm. I couldn’t make it back to land, so I saw the jetty and came here. I won’t bother you long ... I only needed to—”

“No,” the voice interrupted. “I just told you. You cannot stay. This is a place of men. No women allowed. Now go. Go.”

Ellie stood up, hesitated. She was loath to go out into the storm but had a feeling this man would hound her until she did. At that moment a door opened nearby, and another man came out.

“What’s happening, brother?” he asked. “I heard a cry, raised voices.”

“I found this woman, Father Abbot,” the first man said. “A woman. Wandering around. Here.”

“I’m so sorry,” Ellie said. “I was on a boat and was caught in the storm. I just came to seek shelter until the storm passed. I had no idea this was a monastery. I didn’t even know anyone lived here.”

“Not a monastery, an abbey,” the newcomer said.

He had a soft, gentle voice. Ellie looked up into the face of the most handsome man she had ever seen. It was hard to tell his age. He had a square jaw, and his blond hair was trimmed very short, making him look like a Roman general, and—Ellie had read of piercing blue eyes in novels but had never experienced them until now—his eyes were an alarming blue. They observed her now, with a hint of amusement.

“Brother Michel,” he now addressed the younger man. “You mean well, but rules must give way to charity. Didn’t our Lord say we must welcome the stranger? And I’m sure this lady has not come with the object of bringing us temptation.” Now the humour spread to his lips, and he smiled. “Go back to your task.”

“Yes, Father Abbot,” the man mumbled and shuffled away.

The abbot turned to Ellie. “My dear, you are soaked and shivering. Come into my study to get warm.”

He held open a door for her, and she stepped into a simple room, one wall lined with books, the others whitewashed and bearing only a crucifix. There was a big desk with neatly stacked papers on it. At the far end, two well-worn armchairs faced a fire.

“Just a minute,” he said. Ellie waited. He disappeared, then came back, handing her a towel. “You’ll want to dry yourself a little, then you can wrap yourself in this.” He put a rug down on the arm of the chair. Ellie dried her face and hair, conscious of the man standing a few feet away, then wrapped herself in the rug as she sat down.

“I’ll fetch you a tisane,” he said. “Ginger, I think, is warming,” he told her when he returned, handing her a cup.

Ellie sat, feeling the warmth of the fire on her legs and the hot liquid spreading through her body. “I had no idea this place existed,” she said. “Nobody in the village ever mentioned it.”

“We do keep ourselves apart,” the abbot said. “We are a contemplative order. We pray, we grow our own produce and of course we make the liqueur for which we are famous and which keeps our abbey going.”

“Oh yes,” she said. “I did hear once about the liqueur from the abbey, but they never said where it was.”

He came to sit in the other armchair, regarding her with interest. “You are not French, I think, although you speak it remarkably well.”

“I’m English.”

“You are visiting Saint-Benet?” he asked.

“I’m living there now, at least for the present. I’ve rented a villa.”

“Villa? That sounds impressive.”

She smiled. “It was a ruin, abandoned. We have been restoring it.”

“We? You and your husband?”

“No. I’m not married any longer.”

“Ah. A widow. A merry widow?”

Ellie shook her head. “Not widowed. Cast aside. He chose a younger woman.”

“Clearly a man of bad taste,” he said. “So who has been restoring the villa with you?”

“Two other Englishwomen ... an old lady who has been told she didn’t have long to live and wished to see the blue Mediterranean again, and my former housekeeper, who escaped from an abusive husband.”

“And you? Why here?”