King of the Castle by Victoria Holt Read Free Book Online Page A

that she was thinking how like a governess I was.
    “I am not very good,” she said.
    “They are all afraid of me.
    “I don’t think they are afraid of you. They are perhaps distressed and disgusted by the unbecoming way in which you sometimes behave.”
    This amused her but she was serious almost immediately.
     
    “Were you afraid of your father?” she asked, lapsing into French. I sensed that because she was interested in the subject she must speak in the language easier to her.
    “No,” I replied.
    “I was in awe of him, perhaps.”
    “What’s the difference?”
    “One can respect people, admire them, look up to them, fear to offend them. It is not the same as being afraid of them.”
    “Let’s go on talking in French. This conversation is too interesting for English.”
    She is afraid of her father, I thought. What sort of a man is he to inspire fear in her? She was an odd child wayward, perhaps violent;
    and he was to blame, of course. But what of the mother what part had she played in this strange child’s upbringing?
    “So you weren’t really afraid of your father?”
    “No. Are you afraid of yours?”
    She didn’t answer, but I noticed that a haunted expression had come into her eyes.
    I said quickly: “And … your mother?”
    She turned to me then.
    “I will take you to my mother.”
    “What?”
    “I said I would take you to her.”
    “She is in the chateau?”
    “I know where she is. I’ll take you to her. Will you come?”
    “Why, yes. Certainly. I shall be delighted to meet her.”
    “Very well. Come on.”
    She went ahead of me. Her dark hair was neatly tied back with a blue ribbon and perhaps it was the way of dressing it which so changed her appearance. Her head was set arrogantly on sloping shoulders; her neck was long and graceful. I thought: She will be a beautiful woman.
    I wondered whether the Comtesse was like her; then I began rehearsing
    what I would say to her. I must put my case clearly to her. Perhaps she as a woman would feel less prejudiced against my work.
    Genevieve halted and came to walk beside me.
    “I’m two different people, am I not?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “There are two sides to my character.”
    “We all have many sides to our character.”
    “But mine is different. Other people’s characters are all of a piece.
    I am two distinct people. “
    “Who told you this?”
    “Nounou. She says I’m Gemini-that means I have two different faces.
    My birthday is in June. “
    “That is a fantasy. Everyone who is born in June is not like you.”
    “It is not fantasy. You saw how horrid I was yesterday. That was the bad me. Today I’m different. I’m good. I said I was sorry, didn’t
    I?
     
    ”
     
    “I hope you were sorry.”
    “I said I was, and I shouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t.”
    “Then when you are being foolish remember that you’ll be sorry afterwards and don’t be foolish.”
    “Yes,” she said, ‘you should be a governess. They always make everything sound so easy. I can’t help being horrid. I just am. “
    “Everyone can help the way he or she behaves.”
    “It’s in the stars. It’s fate. You can’t go against fate.”
    Now I saw where the trouble lay. This temperamental girl was in the hands of a silly old woman and another who was half scared out of her wits; in addition there was the father who terrified her. But there was the mother, of course. It would be interesting to meet her.
    Perhaps she too was in awe of the Comte. Most assuredly this was so since everyone else was. I pictured her a gentle creature, afraid to go against him. He was becoming more and more a monster with every fresh piece of information.
     
    “You can be exactly as you wish to be,” I said.
    “It is absurd to tell yourself you have two characters and then try to live up to the unpleasant one.”
    “I don’t try. It just happens.”
    Even as I spoke I despised myself. It was always so easy to solve other people’s troubles. She was