“Chocolat, ma chérie?” His eyebrows shot up.
Throwing a cushion at him she leant back again with a smile. “I always have room for chocolat, ma chérie,” echoing his words. “But first a little siesta,” she added, closing her eyes against the force of his gaze.
She’d only closed her eyes to get away from him and get back to her thoughts, but the rich food and wine at lunchtime on top of a late night worked their magic and soon enough she’d fallen into a deep sleep.
She woke with a start, unsure of where she was to find her eyes staring up at deep heavy clouds where before there had only been clear blue sky. She wasn’t scared just puzzled as the morning unfolded before her and she remembered those kisses, kisses she’d hug to her for as long as she lived.
Turning she found Pascal asleep and, propping herself up on an elbow she examined his face. The faint lines across his forehead and around his eyes smoothed, giving her an inkling of the boy he’d once been before the strain of the past few years had clearly etched their mark on his skin. His hair was tousled, and she longed to reach out and smooth it straight but he wouldn’t want that. He wanted nothing from her other than perhaps the odd kiss between friends. Her eyes scrolled down his body before returning back to his face only to find his eyes upon her. He lifted a sleepy hand and brushed her hair off her forehead where it hung like a curtain before curling his hand around her face.
“You’re beautiful, Sarah, so beautiful.”
She laughed, unsure of what to say. She’d never been called beautiful before. Pretty at a push after a visit to the hairdresser and dressed up to the nines but far from beautiful. She eyed her rumpled clothes and ratty hair, a smile hovering as she remembered the look she’d spotted on his face earlier. If he didn’t want sex, then perhaps she could trust herself to believe his words. After all, if he truly adored her, he’d probably not see the lack of make-up and mound of freckles that were sure to have taken over her nose like a military invasion.
“You have freckles, I hadn’t noticed before.”
There, she just knew she should have worn her hat. Pulling away from his hand she sat up and poked him in the shoulder. “What about that cake you promised me, not to mention the coffee? This falling asleep on the job just won’t do, you know.”
“Slave driver,” he grumbled, but stood to his feet all the same before pulling her up, their hands still linked.
“Sarah about before…”
But she interrupted with a little shush. “Pascal, we’ve had a lovely day. Let’s leave it at that. I’m just going to pop upstairs.”
“First door on the right.”
She was a woman and snooping was second nature. In fact, just like her mother, she had a degree in nosiness and a diploma in curiosity, not that you’d ever get her to admit to being anything like her mother.
After washing her hands she made her way across the excuse of a landing before peering into the master bedroom. This time he’d chosen a bright sunny yellow for the north facing room, but looking out of the window at the glorious French countryside she could fully understand why he’d chosen it. The furniture was minimalist at best; the only thing filling the room was a large bed. There were no knickknacks or pictures; there was nothing to tell her anything more about him except that he was tidy and that he liked a big bed, her eyes transfixed to the plain virginal white cover.
Her mind worked overtime as she imagined just how many girlfriends he’d tested the springs on, even one being one too many. It was none of her business. Her gaze focussed on the slight head shaped indent on the pillow. It was none of her business and yet all of her business she thought on a sigh, finally backing out of the room. Thoughts like that only lead to unhappiness. She had no hold on him, and yet she was his. She was his completely, utterly, entirely. He didn’t even need to ask.
Pushing the door open on the second bedroom was more of a surprise. Expecting either an unfinished room or an impersonal guest bedroom the bright office was a shock. Looking across at his work board she expected to find a drawing, but all that was pinned to the centre was a blank piece of paper. The rest of the office space was filled to the gills with wall to floor built-in bookcases stacked high with books and drawings and, also devoid of any personal touches. It could be any architects office anywhere apart from the view out of the window.
“So what did you get up to over the weekend then? I’ve been trying to phone you for what seems like days to find out what happened on Friday night with your parents.”
Cara’s voice broke into her reverie as she munched through her lunchtime baguette stuffed full of Camembert and blush red tomatoes. Moving up the bench to make room, she finished chewing before smiling at her friend. “Oh, you know just out and about with a certain French builder.”
“Sarah, you didn’t?” Cara’s hand grasped hers, pinning both it and the baguette to the table with fingers made strong from all her piano practicing.
Lady Sarah and Lady Cara, more like sisters than best-friends had grown up on neighbouring estates and had even wrangled being sent to the same boarding school and then the same university where they’d both excelled in their instruments of choice. But where Sarah was happy to bumble along with perhaps a career in teaching, Cara was already set for stardom with concert recitals and even the odd television appearance.
“Not so loud.” She threw a quick look over her shoulder, checking no one was within hearing distance. “I managed to persuade him to come and have dinner with my parents, the one problem being they’d brought Rupert along.”
“What, that creep?” she sighed. “Why they still keep trying to fling him at you, I’ll never know.”
“They were trying to whittle me down, they very nearly managed.” She split her baguette in two and passed the other half over with a smile. “He’s not really a builder you know. He’s this amazing architect with a head full of ideas to develop the most amazing apartments with people’s needs at the heart of his designs,” her eyes staring out over the little patio that bordered onto the cafeteria. “A bit like the NHS, but property instead of healthcare, from cradle to the grave.”
“Not such a great idea then. We all know how much difficulty the NHS is in. It’s all very well being noble, Sarah but who’ll pay for the nanny?”
“I’m not going to marry him, and even if I was I wouldn’t employ a nanny. I’d want to be there. Wouldn’t you?”
She’d never confided in Cara about her fears over motherhood, which made her disclosure to Pascal all the more surprising. But now wasn’t the time or the place for confidences.
“Mmm, that’s all very well, but what about at 3 am when they have colic or some other bratty ailment?”
Sarah eyed her across the top of her roll. “I do think you’re running away a little from the point in hand. I’ve been out with him twice, well actually three times…”
“What, since Friday?” Cara’s mouth dropped open. “So that means Friday, Saturday and Sunday dates does it?” She giggled. “God, I knew when you finally fell it would be bad but give the poor man a break. You must have worn him out. So when are you seeing him again then?”
“Tonight, I said I’d cook supper. It’s to repay him back for yesterday and he does only work across the road,” she qualified, her chin lifting in defiance.
“Of course he does.” She reached out and patted her hand. “Just be careful, hun. You’re not as experienced as me and men can be sneaky. He’ll have you tied to the bedhead with a pile of dirty dishes in the sink and a pile of ironing in the basket before you know it.”
Sarah changed the subject as an image scrolled across her consciousness of waking up next to him every morning for the rest of her life. She wouldn’t mind about the dishes and the housework if she could have him by her side, but that was only a pipedream.
They’d barely spoken on the way back. The weather had finally let them down and he’d needed all his attention for the rain drenched roads, or at least that’s what he’d told her. There w
as so much left unsaid, so many questions still left unanswered. She wanted to know his plans, all of them. She wanted to ask why he hadn’t sold the estate and moved on. All that land was ripe for development being as it was so close to Versailles. He’d sell it in no time and use the money on his latest project instead of having to get investors in, but he wasn’t going to tell her. Instead all she got was the most evasive of answers imaginable. They’d stopped off to pick up some flowers for her cat-loving neighbour Madame Du Pont but it was almost as if, now their day was over, he couldn’t get away from her fast enough. There was no repeat of the heavy, heart thumping kiss of earlier, only a brotherly pat on the back and an almost reluctant promise to pop by after work to check on how Minou was settling in. He obviously had something on his mind, something he wasn’t prepared to share with her so she’d let him go with a shy smile. She’d made up the bit about supper, but there’d be food ready all the same.
Wiping her mouth on a napkin she turned the conversation back to Cara’s favourite topic. “So, where’s your boyfriend then, I thought he’d be joining you for lunch?”
Cara had only been here a month when she’d met and fallen in love with Aaron, as talented with the violin as she was on the piano. Sarah wouldn’t be surprised if she announced one day that they’d run off to get married, but then again, Cara was different. She’d never let her parents dictate what was right or wrong for her, not that they’d have objected to Aaron, the much-loved son of a wealthy Swiss hotelier.
“No such luck. He’s practicing for a recital later and, as you know, music comes first.”
“As if! He’d give it all up tomorrow if you asked him.” They grinned at each other, secure in the knowledge that at least one of them had found their soul mate.
“So, what about grabbing a coffee on the way home if I can’t entice you away from the kitchen?” Cara asked with a smile. “My treat for letting me share your lunch.”
“I can’t.” She rolled her eyes. “I haven’t told you about Minou yet.”
“Minou? Kitty? You haven’t gone and got yourself a little kitty? “she said, clapping her hands together. “Well I’ll just have to pop along to see it, I adore…”
“You won’t adore this one! Minou isn’t a kitten as such,” her mind recalling his scrawny body and uneasy gaze. “More of a street urchin in need of a better hand than life has currently dealt him.”
“Well, he’ll get that,” she exclaimed with a smile. “You were always picking up strays when you were little and spoiling them rotten. There was even that nickname they gave you in school, what was it again? Oh yeah, I remember. Soft-touch Sarah.”
“Don’t remind me,” her head in her hands.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. You just have a greater capacity to love than almost anyone I know.”
“You’re the second person that’s told me that recently,” she said, lifting her head. “It hasn’t got me very far though has it? You’re the one with the soul mate while I…while all I have is a scabby cat.”
“But I don’t understand? What about that builder?”
“Pascal? I think he’s started to go off me already. He almost dumped me at the door last night. He wouldn’t even come in for a coffee.”
“Oh, Sarah,” holding her hand.
“Don’t worry about me, Cara,” her eyes glinting. “I was always planning a career up north, perhaps teaching at some kind of girl’s school with my cat for company and, now I have the cat, I’m halfway there.”
“Here’s the post patron, I’m just nipping out to buy some croissants for the lads if you want one?” Rexi’s eyes landed on the rolled up sleeping bag in the corner with a frown. “Mon Dieu, you didn’t sleep up here again last night when you have that lovely…”
“Fell asleep at my desk,” throwing him a rueful smile, one hand rubbing the back of his neck. “When I woke up, I’d glued my face to that brochure on bathroom fittings the plumber dropped off last week.”
“I’ll be getting you a double expresso.”
“Here.” He threw him his wallet. “It’s on me.”
“What, trusting me with all that lolly.”
“If you can find any, you’ll be lucky.” He waved a hand towards the door. “Off with you, and leave me with trying to find someone to fund the rest of this blanc éléphant.”
Leafing through the post, he quickly separated it into piles. There were more catalogues like the one he’d had to peel from his cheek earlier and then the thick heavy envelopes which screamed of financial institutions. The first and most important was confirmation of funding for the next part of the build. It came at a cost; one he had little choice of accepting. He’d have to sign away 49% of the ownership. But he’d still retain the key 51% and that was all that mattered.
Apartment Plaisant along the Rue Fountain was only the first of the many similarly styled properties he hoped to develop and, providing there was money in the bank for the next one, he’d be happy. His hand stilled on the letter because that wasn’t quite true anymore, not now. To be truthful it wasn’t true at all. He’d be lying to himself if he wouldn’t give it up if she asked him to.
Placing the envelope in his top drawer for later, his fingers tore through the remaining letters in seconds. Another offer for the cottage, this time nearly twice its worth, which he screwed up into a ball before aiming it at the bin in the corner. Over his dead body!
His uncle, for all his peculiar ways had willed the cottage to him within a year of losing his parents. There was a letter to accompany the bequest and the hope that he wouldn’t ever feel the necessity to sell it on. Chateau Sauvarin was his home for as long as he wanted it to be. Pascal’s eyes followed the screwed up letter that had missed the bin by miles. They’d have to drag him out of the cottage kicking and screaming. His plan had always been to stay there. He was a man of simple needs. Providing he had a bed to sleep on and room for his work board, he’d manage. He’d even drawn up tentative plans for an extension if he ended up a family man in need of additional bedrooms, but now…
Scattering the remainder of the post across the desk he rested his head in his hands. But now it looked like he wasn’t going to be a father unless they chose to adopt. It had been his greatest hope that, when he eventually met the girl of his dreams, they’d spend long happy hours under the duvet filling the nursery to capacity. He wouldn’t let any child of his have the isolated lonely existence he’d had to suffer. Without the intervention of his uncle, he’d have ended up in an orphanage so he counted himself one of the lucky ones, lonely but lucky, that is until Sarah had come along. Now he didn’t know what to think.
He knew she fancied him. He wasn’t conceited. He didn’t have the time or the inclination to do more than run his hands through his hair in lieu of a comb but he knew he was attractive to women. He could have pretty much any woman he looked at, and even if he wasn’t looking, they plonked themselves in front of his path to trip over. He smiled, remembering the way she’d wrapped her legs around his waist: the feel of her smooth wet skin under his palms as he’d restrained himself from touching any part of her other than her shoulders, her face, her neck, her lips. Squeezing his eyes shut he tried and failed to erase that image of her in the water.
Her fancying him wasn’t going to be enough. He loved her to distraction. He’d do anything and everything for her at the moment except perhaps sleep with her, his hands scrubbing across his stubble. If he slept with her; if he plunged himself into her, body and soul, he’d never recover. He’d drown from an overload of thought, feeling and deed. No, he wouldn’t drown he’d be extinguished by the flame of desire that threatened to engulf him, and he was only sitting at his desk!
He wouldn’t, he couldn’t sleep with her, not if he was to make any sense of this insanity that had occupied his soul ever since he’d first laid eyes on her. He was lost without her. He’d be inconsolable after her, and then what? Work wasn’t the answer. What would be?
Chapter Six
13th
May. All I want is Pascal and I get Rupert. He doesn’t come bearing gifts, unless you can call a sliced white a gift. He doesn’t bring anything except disaster.
“You’re making a huge mistake, Sarah.” He tried to grab her hand, but she managed to hide it behind her back just in time.
Rupert had accosted her outside her building and frog-marched her up the stairs where he’d demanded a sandwich, having missed his lunch. He’d even had the foresight to bring his own sliced loaf, a sacrilege in France.
“I’m not eating any of that baguette rubbish,” he’d said, slapping the bag on the counter. “What’s that flea-bitten rat doing here?” putting out a foot to kick Minou as he entwined himself around Sarah’s leg.
“That’s my cat, and I’ve yet to de-flea, or indeed worm him so I wouldn’t be so keen to touch him,” she added, noting with a smile the way he pulled back out of the kitchen with a look of disgust.
Pushing her hair off her face she listened with one ear to the coffee maker while she tuned back into the conversation.
“In what way Rupert?”
“He’s only after your money, you know.”
“What, and you’re not?”
She watched him, but there was no visible sign of a reaction apart from the slight tightening of his jawline where flab merged with the first of his many necks.
“Well, of course I’m not.” He laughed. “I know I’m a little older than you…”
“By twenty seven years.”
He ignored that. “With age comes experience…”
“Along with a couple of ex-wives and four kids. Just remind me how much she managed to squeeze out of you again; eight million wasn’t it?”
“Sarah, your parents are happy…”
“Don’t bring my parents into this; in fact please don’t mention them. You may be able to smarm your way into their lives and hang onto their coat-tails like a little puppy but that’s nothing to do with me.”
The Englishwoman Trilogy: Box set of: Englishwoman in Paris, Englishwoman in Scotland, Englishwoman in Manhattan Page 8