Chasing Ghosts by Madalyn Morgan (best fantasy books to read .txt) 📕

when she had the chance, Claire declined an after-dinner brandy, saying she was going to her room.

‘I was hoping you’d have a drink with me in the bar.’ She shrugged. ‘Come on,’ Thomas said, getting up from the table. ‘There’s something I need to tell you.’ He waited at the door until Claire joined him.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I don’t usually kick down doors and call tired civil servants bastards.’ Thomas laughed and Claire laughed with him. ‘Am I forgiven?’

Hardly able to speak for laughing Thomas said, ‘I thought you were going to break the door down when the post-guy put out the light.’

‘I felt like it.’ Claire ran in front of Thomas, stopped, and turned to face him. ‘Thank you.’

‘For what?’

‘For dragging me away before the police got there.’ She stood on tiptoe and kissed Thomas near his lips. She giggled, ‘Now I’ve embarrassed you again.’

‘Not at all,’ Thomas said, pushing open the door to the hotel bar. ‘What do you want to drink?’

‘Wine!’ Claire said, ‘a gallon of it.’

Thomas went to the bar laughing and came back with a regular bottle of red wine and two glasses. ‘They’re all out of gallon bottles.’

‘Well,’ Claire sighed, ‘this will have to do, won’t it?’

Thomas poured wine into both their glasses, lifted his and when Claire did the same, he clinked his glass with hers.

‘Do you forgive me for behaving like a hooligan and kicking the post office door?’

‘Of course.’ He took a drink. ‘The guy was so smug, I felt like kicking the door myself.’

Claire was sure Thomas didn’t feel anything of the sort but thanked him anyway. She took a drink of her wine. ‘Mmmm… This is good. I shall know the difference between good and bad wine when I get back to England.’ Anxiety took over, and she began to ramble. ‘You see, where I come from it is beer or whiskey, we never drink wine, except at my sister and brother-in-law’s hotel, they--’

‘Claire?’ Thomas said.

‘Sorry, I’m talking nonsense.’

‘You are not talking nonsense.’ Thomas leant his elbows on the table and looked at her, his face unsmiling, his mouth a straight line. ‘There is something I need to tell you.’

The nerves on the top of Claire’s stomach began to tighten. Thomas took another drink, put the glass on the table and holding the stem, turned it round between his fingers. ‘Thomas, you look serious. You’re worrying me. What is it?’

‘I’m going back to Paris.’

‘When?’

‘Tomorrow.’

Claire felt as if a rug had been pulled from under her. ‘Why? What has happened? Is it because of me?’

‘No.’

What then? The call you made to Paris?’

‘Yes. There is a flu epidemic in the city and my assistant who has been lecturing for me has it pretty bad.’

‘I’m sorry…’

‘The principal said if I don’t return to work on Monday, he would find someone to replace me.’

‘Can he do that?’ Claire asked, knowing full well the principal could, especially as Thomas had taken time off without giving him notice.

Thomas gave her a feeble smile and nodded. ‘Yes, he can do it. He has given me until Monday, so I shall drive you to Fontainebleau tomorrow, find you a safe place to stay, then drive on to Paris.’ Claire cast her eyes down. ‘You do understand, don’t you?’

‘Of course. You can’t lose your job because of--’ She was going to say me, but that wouldn’t have been true. Yes, she needed to find Mitch, but what she had to give Guillaume Cheval from Lucien Puel was much more important. How was she going to do that without Thomas?

He poured the remainder of the wine into their glasses and lifted his to take a drink. ‘Wait!’ Claire said, ‘I want to make a toast.’ With her head tilted on one side as if she was getting the measure of her friend, she said, ‘To the man who saved me from falling down a mountain, falling foul of the police and--’ she was about to say because you are leaving you have saved me from falling in love with you. Instead, she said, ‘saved me from myself.’

The wine left her feeling mellow. She walked with Thomas through the hotel foyer and up the narrow staircase to their rooms. Outside her door, Thomas stopped and gave her a friendly hug. ‘You’ll be fine taking the documents to Guillaume Cheval,’ he said, ‘you know that, don’t you?’

Claire nodded. ‘I know. I’m just getting soft in my old age.’ She laughed. ‘I felt tonight like I felt the first time I came to Paris to deliver money to you. It was something I had never done before, I was scared to death every time a gendarme or SS officer checked my travel permit and identity papers.’

‘And afterwards?’ Thomas said, a knowing smile on his face.

‘Afterwards, I could have done it the next day and the next.’

He laughed. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’ Claire watched the strong good-looking Resistance man amble along to his room and whispered, ‘Good night, Thomas Durand, sleep well.’

Claire had planned an early night, but it was past eleven. She took off her clothes and put on her nightdress. She hung what she was going to wear the following day on the outside of the wardrobe and packed everything else, apart from her washbag which she needed in the morning.

She looked around the room. She’d left nothing out, so she put the fireguard in front of the dying embers in the grate and climbed into bed.

Unable to sleep, Claire tossed and turned for most of the night, falling into a fitful sleep around five o’clock and waking up again at six. Thomas knocked just before seven. ‘I’m ready,’ she called, and crossing the room opened the door.

‘I’ll put your suitcase with mine while we have breakfast,’ he