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  Strange Adventure by Sara Craven

  Young Lacey Vernon was horrified when she was whisked out of her convent school, taken home and groomed for what she realised was marriage—a forced marriage to the Greek tycoon Troy Andreakis. to save her father from ruin. But Troy was not without his attractions, and once the first shock was over Lacey began to realise that perhaps she wasn't dreading what lay ahead of her as much as she had thought she had. She might indeed have had a very happy marriage—until she learned that Troy was, to put it mildly, not going to be a one-woman man...

  Printed in Great Britain

  Another book you will enjoy by SARA CRAVEN

  THE GARDEN OF DREAMS

  Lissa wasn't quite sure whether she wanted to marry the attractive Frenchman Paul de Gue or not, so she was glad to accept his invitation to visit the family chateau in France and meet his relatives. Unfortunately, this also involved meeting the austere Comte Raoul de Gue—who made it clear that he did not want Lissa marrying into the family!

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the Author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names.They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the Author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

  First published 1977

  This edition 1977

  © Sara Craven 1977

  For copyright reasons, this book may not be issued on loan or otherwise except in its original soft cover.

  ISBN 0 263 72390 4

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE last triumphant chords of the sonata died a lingering death, as Lacey stayed her fingers on the piano keys, savouring their harmony.

  For a moment she sat motionless as silence surged back into the small room set aside for music practice at the convent of Our Lady of Grace, then with an impatient movement she thrust back under her Alice band the long lock of silver-gilt hair which had come loose while she gave herself to her music. She was thankful that Sister Therese had not been within earshot of this particular performance. Too much passion, too much feeling and too little technique would have been her verdict.

  She got up from the piano stool and walked across to the square-paned window that overlooked a small corner of the convent garden and the high wall that surrounded it.

  She thought, as she had begun to think so often in those long months since her seventeenth birthday, 'I could be safe here always.' And, as before, she noted ironically that she had said 'safe' and not 'happy'.

  To the other girls at this convent boarding school, it would have seemed incredible that Lacey Vernon, cherished only daughter of an English merchant banker, could possibly lack any kind of security. Lacey could see a dim reflection of herself in the wintry panes. The dark blue dress with its decorously fashionable length and neat white collar. The dark band holding the smooth, shining fall of hair hanging below her shoulders.

  Alice in nowhere land, since ... Since when?

  Since that terrible day at the Conservatoire when the so-eminent professor had dismissed kindly but quite finally her hardly expressed hope to become a concert pianist?

  `A charming talent—but not the steel, the fire that takes one to the top. For that one requires a special genius which few possess. Which you, ma soeur,' he threw a darkling

  look at Sister Therese, quietly self-contained in her dark habit, 'might have possessed, had it not been for this—calling of yours.

  'But for you, my child.' He laid a hand for an instant on the bowed fair head. 'I must speak the truth. Look at that little hand. It can span an octave at the most. For many of the great works, more facility would be needed. Content yourself that you will always play better than most of those you will meet, and leave the concert platform for those with the strength to bear its demands.'

  She had not cried. The nuns would have deplored such an unseemly display of emotion. Even Sister Therese had not shown a flicker of reaction to this crushing of the hopes of her star pupil—or even regret for the career that might have been hers, Lacey recalled wryly. All she had said on the long drive back to the convent had been, 'It is God's will, my child.'

  Lacey had often wished since that she could achieve that kind of acceptance. It had been hard not to rebel when she had written to ask her father if she could opt for the commercial training offered to the older pupils instead of the more usual course in the higher flights of home economics designed to prepare the majority of the girls for the day when they became wives and hostesses. But the reply from home had been as unexpected as it was unwelcome. There were no plans, ran her father's letter, for her to be employed in a secretarial capacity in his firm, or any other, for that matter, and any such training would be a complete waste of time. She would please him far better if she concentrated on the domestic side of the course in her last months at the convent as Michelle would no doubt be glad of some help with the entertaining.

  When some of the hurt had died down from this rejection of her attempt to carve out a career for herself, Lacey was able to smile a little at the thought of her glamorous French stepmother permitting her to meddle in any of the domestic details in London or at their country home. Michelle ruled a small but efficient staff with absolute sway and she would not welcome any interference from anyone.

  Lacey had often begged to be allowed to help even in a menial capacity when guests were expected, but all her offers had been met with a fairly brusque refusal until her father had intervened before one minor dinner party and suggested that she should be allowed to do the flowers for the centrepiece. She had spent time and thought on her arrangement, floating a mass of full-blown roses around the bases of delicately tapering candles in a shallow but exquisitely shaped dish. Just before the guests had arrived she had peeped into the dining room to see the table in all its finished glory. Her flowers had disappeared and a bowl of long-stemmed hothouse beauties stood in their place. Lacey had looked and bitten her lip, and later, when her father congratulated her boisterously on her efforts, she had given a little noncommittal smile.

  She had been twelve years old when her father married again and she had soon learned that to fight Michelle was to lose. But there had been battles in the early days. Lacey, used to being first in her father's affections since her mother's death, could not reconcile herself to the fact that this slender, dark stranger with her-beautiful face and incredible chic had simply taken over. And when her initial hostility had given way to genuine admiration for all that glamour and she was prepared to become a worshipper at her stepmother's shrine, she had discovered with bewilderment that her adoration was unwanted. That in fact her own small person was the one flaw in Michelle's vast contentment at having married a man as wealthy and easygoing as James Vernon.

  Which, of course, was why she was here at the convent where Michelle herself had been educated. Her friend Vanessa, both of whose parents had embarked on other marriages, had explained it succinctly.

  `It's "being got out of the way". If I'd been a baby or a three-year-old my stepmother could have dressed up for photographs with bows in my hair, it might have been O.K. At our age, we're just a pain in the neck. Della said it made her feel old just to look at me.'

  As it was, Lacey had grown accustomed to being 'out of the way'. She had learned that it was not always convenient

  for her to go home for her vacations, but as the alternative had included carefully selected parties for skiing, sailing an sightseeing, she could not feel too hard done by.

  But now she had to face the fact that her schooldays were strictly numbered, and that her future was by no mean clear cut. Her father was being over-optimistic, she thought, in envisaging any role-sharing between Michelle and herself, and yet what else was there, if she was n
ot to be allowed to work for her living?

  Lacey sighed and leaned her forehead against the cold glass for a moment. There was an alternative which she had come to consider with increasing seriousness as the weeks had passed. She could ask Reverend Mother to allow her to enter the novitiate of the order. It was not an ideal solution, and there were immediate snags. Lacey was not yet eighteen or indeed a Roman Catholic, but none of these obstacles seemed as insuperable as the prospect of being an unwanted third in her stepmother's home. She knew too that the nuns considered a sense of vocation as essential for the religious life, but she also knew from books she had read in the convent library that in bygone times many girls had become nuns because they were unwanted by their families and had become excellent religious. Lacey supposed, rather dubiously, that this could happen to her in time.

  She looked again at the high wall, which as Sister Therese had often commented, was not to keep the nuns from the world but the world from the nuns.

  Lacey sometimes wondered what this `world' was like that had to be kept at bay, but she had never shared with the other boarders any burning desire to come to terms with it as soon as possible. She knew that many of the other girls were already sexually experienced, although she was rarely invited to join the little groups that gathered secretly late at night to discuss boy-friends and sex, and she realised wryly that she would have had little to contribute if she had been.

  Lacey had never had a boy-friend, unless she counted Alan Trevor, the son of neighbours of theirs in the country, whom she had known since her early childhood. Lacey

  rode with him sometimes in the holidays and found him attractive with a sense of humour, but he had never attempted even to kiss her, and Lacey was secretly relieved that he had not. But it did not prevent her from speculating on how she would cope if and when that momentous occasion ever came about.

  The worldly-wise Vanessa had told her that it was rarely the kiss that counted—more what men expected to follow it, but Lacey had never been able to apply any of this information to herself. Her body was something that she bathed and clothed and which obeyed the demands she put upon it without effort. The realisation that there were demands that others might make of it was utterly alien to her. At the convent her studies and her music filled her life. At home, usually in the country, she enjoyed the open air, often in Alan's relaxed company or that of his sister Fran.

  Convent life, she supposed vaguely, would go on in much the same way, except that Alan would not be there, and if she was honest that would be no great deprivation although she was fond of him.

  She wandered back to the piano and perching on the stool began to pick out a melody with one finger. What, she wondered, was it like to be in love? Her cheeks flushed as she recalled some of the more lurid discussions she had heard from the others, but what had that to do with love?

  And this was where one province where even her usual mentor, Sister Therese, would not be able to help her, she thought, then started guiltily as Sister herself suddenly spoke from the doorway.

  `So you are here, Lacey. Reverend Mother has asked to see you, and I guessed where you might be.'

  Lacey closed the piano and rose bewilderedly, shaking out her skirt.

  `Reverend Mother? But why? I haven't done anything wrong, have I?'

  Sister Therese gave a slight smile. 'Now why should you all imagine that Reverend Mother only sends for you when you have been in some kind of mischief?' she asked chidingly. Then, after a slight hesitation, 'You have a visitor, Lacey.'

  `A visitor?' Lacey stared at the older woman with sudden joyous disbelief. 'It's Father. It must be,' she blurted out, and regardless of Sister Therese's restraining `Lacey!', she ran out of the room and along the spacious panelled corridor to the main staircase.

  The door of Reverend Mother's study was slightly ajar, but Lacey still knocked and waited for the word to enter in spite of her inner excitement. Then she slid through the door and dropped a slight curtsey to Reverend Mother, her eyes turning eagerly to see who else was in the room.

  Her hands clasped involuntarily in front of her and she stood quite still with all the joy and laughter fading from her piquant little face as Michelle rose from a high-backed chair, a formal smile barely curving her exquisitely made up mouth.

  Questions were beating and tearing at Lacey's brain as she forced herself to reply to Michelle's polite greeting and pecked obediently at one scented cheek. One that had to be answered forced its way into speech. 'Father—he is all right?'

  Michelle's brows rose. 'Perfectly, but very busy, as he no doubt explained in his last letter. That is why he asked me to perform this errand for him.' She glanced at her wristwatch, then turned to Reverend Mother who was standing, her usually calm face a little troubled. 'If the child's things could be packed, ma très réverende mère.'

  'Mais oui, ma chère enfant. I will give the necessary instructions and leave you to talk.'

  She moved past Lacey as she spoke and the girl with great daring touched her sleeve.

  `But why must my things be packed, Reverend Mother?' The nun hesitated, sending a swift glance towards Michelle.

  `Because the time has come for you to leave us, my child,' she replied. 'Your stepmother will explain all to you now, sans doute.' She looked down into Lacey's stricken face and her own softened perceptibly. 'It is not the end of the world, ma petite,' she said gently, and moved to the door.

  `But it is!' Lacey cried, almost hysterically. 'I—I don't want to leave, Reverend Mother. I was going to see you

  and ask if I could stay here always

  `How would that be possible, my child?' Reverend Mother stared at her. 'Unless you obtained some teaching qualification, and even then ...'

  Lacey shook her head, almost pleadingly. 'I didn't mean that, Reverend Mother. I intended to ask you to accept me as a novice—to permit me to become a nun.'

  There was a stunned silence for a moment, then Michelle exclaimed furiously Quelle betise!' only to be halted by Reverend Mother's upraised hand. Her calm eyes bored into Lacey's flushed, unhappy face.

  `So you think you are called to the religious life, my child. Sit down and we will discuss the matter.'

  `Reverend Mother,' Michelle protested, and the nun gave her a faint smile.

  'If you would be good enough to wait in the parlour, ma chère. Sister Monique will bring you some coffee and cakes.'

  Michelle hesitated, but Reverend Mother's authority was still absolute and after a moment she left the room with obvious ill grace. Reverend Mother gave an almost imperceptible sigh, then moved briskly back to her large desk and sat down.

  `Now, Lacey,' she said gently. 'Why do you think you have a vocation?'

  There was a long silence. Lacey's hands twisted together in her lap as she tried desperately to marshall her whirling thoughts into reasoned arguments that would convince Reverend Mother of her sincerity, but no words would come and the only sound in the hushed room was the steady tick of the small clock that stood on Reverend Mother's desk.

  At last, it was Reverend Mother who spoke. 'Many people have a mistaken idea of what it is to be a nun. They see it as a refuge—an escape from the pressure that life in the world imposes. But they are wrong, Lacey, and you too will be wrong if you are looking for a sanctuary, as I ,suspect.'

  Lacey looked at her tormentedly. 'Oh, Reverend Mother, everything is such a mess!'

  `But running away will solve nothing, my dear child. Even

  if I believed you had a genuine vocation, I would be very reluctant to accept you at present. One thing that we do require of our novices is peace of mind, and you are too confused at the moment to know what it is you truly want. I feel you should do as your stepmother asks and go home with her.'

  `But she doesn't really want me,' Lacey burst out.

  `How can you know that? Would she have come if that was the case? Besides, there is your father to consider.' Reverend Mother seemed oddly to hesitate for a moment. `Perhaps he may need you, ma ch
ère. Have you considered that?'

  Lacey was unhappily silent. Reverend Mother rose, tall in her dark robes, and came round the desk, laying a hand almost in blessing on the girl's head.

  `Go home, my child,' she advised quietly. 'Find out what life may have in store for, you, and if you still feel it is not enough after a year or two, and that your place is here, then you can write to me.'

  Lacey looked at her steadily. 'But you don't believe I will, do you, Reverend Mother?'

  `No, my dear. I have an instinct in these things and it tells me that your future lies outside these walls. Now I must see about your packing before your stepmother loses her patience entirely. Shall I ask Vanessa to help you?'

  `Please, Reverend Mother.' Lacey's voice was subdued. 'I didn't know whether I would be able to say goodbye to her.'

  `But why not? You are not leaving the convent under a cloud, my dear, and we shall all miss you and pray for you. Now come along.'

  Lacey had already emptied her clothes cupboard on to the bed by the time Vanessa arrived.

  :So it's true,' she observed, as she bounced into the room. 'Cheer up, flower. You look shattered. I'd be turning cartwheels if my people sent for me!'

  `I'll be all right.' Lacey summoned up a wan smile. 'It's all been rather a shock, that's all.'

  Vanessa's shrewd eyes went over her friend as she began folding the clothes and packing them neatly and economically into the open cases.

  `I don't want to interfere, Lacey, but is everything—quite all right at home?'

  `Yes, of course.' Lacey smoothing sweaters into a polythene bag looked at her in surprise. 'Why do you ask?'

  'Oh,' Vanessa shrugged rather vaguely, `there've been odd rumours in the newspaper lately, that's all.'

  Lacey rarely bothered to glance at the supply of English papers delivered daily to the convent for the pupils, but she knew Vanessa was an avid reader.