‘So… it fixed itself?’
He shakes his head. ‘If places this old could fix themselves, there’d be a hell of a lot of building contractors out of work.’
‘So why is it working now when it wasn’t yesterday?’
‘Ghosts?’ he says with a smirk on his face.
‘No.’ I point a stern finger at him. ‘No ghosts. Not funny.’
‘I don’t know what to tell you. I can’t make head nor tail of the electrics in this place. My theory is there’s an electricity box outside where everything’s connected and we just haven’t found it yet. I’ve been cutting back the weeds to see if I can uncover something of the sort.’
‘And?’
‘And I haven’t found anything. I haven’t touched any electrics today. I’ve done nothing to make this work.’
I narrow my eyes at him. ‘You’re winding me up. You’re pretending now but when you get into bed later, you’re going to say something about The Shining and ghosts and flickering lamps. I know you better than that, McBeath.’
He grins. ‘Well, this time I’m not joking. Whoever or whatever got a second power outlet working, it wasn’t me. Maybe it was the magical walls my great-aunt was so keen on.’
‘She wasn’t your—’ I stop myself before I finish the sentence. It’s a pointless argument now. She was his great-aunt. She would have wanted him here. Instead, I take leave of my senses and say something nice to him. ‘She’d have liked you, you know.’
He beams at that, a wide smile that lights up his face and makes his eyes smile too. ‘And the more time I spend in this place, the more I think I’d have liked her too.’
When we’ve finished our tea and thrown away a bin full of empty muffin cases, it’s got so late that it’s early morning, and I can feel the weight of tiredness settling over me.
I’m still sitting on the unit when Jules holds a hand out to help me down. I slide my hand into his and he slots one hand around my hip, lifting me easily off the unit. I’m perfectly capable of jumping down by myself, it’s not that high, but he makes me feel like a celebrity doing an elegant lift on Strictly Come Dancing, not an overweight baker clambering off a kitchen unit. When I’ve safely made it to the floor, he squeezes my hand for just a bit longer than necessary but refuses to meet my eyes.
He’s silent when we go up to bed, and I know I should just leave it alone, but it’s bothering me much more than it should be, and I lie awake long after his breathing has evened out next to me. I shouldn’t care, but all I can think about is what happens to a person to make their entire self-worth boil down to how they look.
Chapter Fourteen
When Kat has left the next morning, I take my fresh bread inside and cut two thick slices off, grill them in the oven part of the Aga and slather them with local butter from the pot she’s brought to show me how good her Theo is. I make two cups of tea and stack the toast on a plate.
Julian’s in the chestnut orchard, slicing through weeds.
‘Jules!’ When he turns to look at me, I beckon him over with my head. ‘Tea and toast for breakfast. Fresh local bread. Finest local butter from, according to Kat, the most gorgeous man in France.’ I take my slice and hold the plate out to him.
I think he’s going to have a go at me for trying to feed him up, but after barely a second of hesitation, he takes it.
‘Cyanide?’
I grin at him. ‘Not today.’
‘I must’ve done something right. Cheers.’ He clinks his mug of tea against mine and I find myself smiling for no reason. He looks good out here under the chestnut trees. He’s still topless, but he’s swapped the tiny shorts for longer ones and his feet are in his black boots again.
He groans in pleasure at the first bite, and the noise makes me blush as I instantly think about other kinds of moans I could draw from him, what kind of moan he’d make as my fingers ran along his solid chest or massaged his muscular shoulders, skimming that patch of freckles…
Bloody hell, what’s wrong with me? What other kind of moan do I want to hear from him? The rattling death moans of his last breath? A groan of despair as he scratches pen across paper, signing the château over to me, as Eulalie intended?
‘This is so good,’ he mumbles.
I look up at him, distracted by his hair in the sunlight, wondering what it would look like if it wasn’t stuck down with gel. ‘Good. I think you could use a little less protein and a little more proper food.’
‘Well, this is the place to get it. I haven’t ventured into town on a market day, but Mr Adelais says it’s unmissable. He rattled off a list of all the local things we need to try. It’s pretty unbelievable that so many sellers will fit into that tiny village.’
‘I’m going on Saturday,’ I say. ‘Kat wants me to meet this guy she fancies and I need to try some local delicacies. I’m only gonna be here another couple of weeks so I’m running out of time.’ My voice catches and Julian raises a questioning eyebrow.
That’s one distinct benefit of living in London. It might be damp and mouldy and smell of vomit and stale Indian takeaways, but at least there’s no Julian McBeath to pick up on every nuance of every sentence and ask questions that make it look like he cares.
‘Maybe I’ll go on Saturday too then,’ he says. ‘I’m not sure I can resist the lure of meeting the most gorgeous man in France.’
‘Apparently he’s really something,’ I say with a grin. ‘And you’ve gotta admit he makes damn good butter.’
‘Personally, I think Kat makes such good bread and you make such good cakes that they’d make any butter taste good.’
I narrow my eyes at him. ‘All right, what are you after? Why are you being nice?’
He looks sad for a split second but covers it quickly. ‘Maybe it’s just because you brought me tea and toast for breakfast. No one’s ever brought me breakfast before.’
It kicks off a train of thought that my brain shouldn’t be on. Why has no one ever brought him breakfast? Does no one care enough? His phone is still untouched on the kitchen unit where it’s been since the day we got here, and it makes me wonder again about who he’s keeping in touch with, or more specifically, not keeping in touch with. Most people are permanently fused to their phones, but he disappears into the garden for hours and doesn’t take it with him. If anything, he seems glad to be without it, and reluctant to look at it on the rare occasions he does give it a glance.
And I shouldn’t be thinking so much about his life or relationship status.
‘How’s the hand?’ I ask to distract myself.
He wiggles his thumb towards me. ‘It’s fine. Down to just a plaster now, no bandage or anything.’
‘Good.’ I want to take hold of his hand and have a proper look, but he’s already got a plaster stuck over it and I can’t ask him to take it off just for the sake of it. It’s probably a good idea not to have an excuse to hold Jules’s hand anyway, in the same way I shouldn’t be watching the flex of his tanned forearms as he downs the last of his tea.
‘Thank you, m’dear,’ he says as he hands the empty plate back to me and sets the empty mug down on it with a clink and a wide smile. His use of the term of affection makes something melt inside me, and I have to force myself to turn around and walk away.
Going home to where there’s no Julian McBeath is definitely a good thing.
‘I take it that was your influence,’ Kat says, nodding towards Julian as we wander into Toussion village for the Saturday morning market.
I look at his back as he jogs in front of us in the distance. ‘He’s wearing a vest and three-quarter-length trousers. He’s hardly a nun, is he?’
‘You’ve spoilt everyone’s fun now.’
I laugh. ‘That had nothing to do with me. It might not look like it most days, but he is capable of dressing himself.’ I don’t tell her about the Simpsons pyjamas in the kitchen the other night. Somehow, I don’t think she’d appreciate the idea of Julian fully dressed.
‘Besides, he has to wear something in public. That’s not my influence, that’s basic common decency. You can’t inflict that body on unsuspecting villagers. It’d put ‘em right off their breakfasts.’
She sighs and tilts her head to the side, wistfully watching Julian jogging ahead. ‘You’re right. There are a lot of elderly people in the village. Him wandering around topless could definitely cause some cardiac arrests, but it’d be a hell of a way to go. Death by abs carved of pure marble. He’s walking perfection.’
‘Exactly. You watch, when we catch up to him in the village, he’ll still look flawless even though he’s done a four-mile jog in the sun. There’s something suspicious about anyone that perfect.’ I say it even though I’ve started to wonder about Julian’s flawlessness lately. He wasn’t perfect when I caught him in the kitchen the other night. He was quiet and soft, more unguarded than I’ve ever seen him, and he didn’t mean for me to see it. It feels private, and I don’t want to share it with Kat. I don’t want to share it with anyone. It’s made me question everything I thought I knew of him and I’m intrigued about why he walks around half-naked all day and then wears comedy pyjamas and only eats cake when he thinks no one’s watching.
‘Julian’s…’ I trail off because something’s bothering me about him, but I can’t put my finger on it, and I can’t find the words to explain it either.
‘Oh, bless him, is he shy?’
‘Hah. Shy? Him?’ I snort, even though it’s the first word that’s made any kind of connection to what I’ve been trying to put my finger on. ‘He’s, like, an underwear model. His body is up on billboards and stuff. There must be life-size pictures of him nearly naked in gyms across the UK. He keeps going on about his modelling pictures going into tube stations. Shy? As if.’
‘Note to self: next trip to London, get on tube, find these gyms,’ she says with a giggle. ‘And for future reference, Wend, next time you’re influencing his clothing choices, at least influence him into a kilt.’
‘If I could influence him into anything, it would be throwing himself out of a window,’ I mutter, even though, admittedly, it would now be a ground-floor window.
‘He’s a Scotsman in France,’ she says, ignoring me. ‘Kilts should be law.’
I watch his back in the distance. Personally, I think the sky-blue tank top and black three-quarter-length trouser combo is working for him today.
‘Crikey, you weren’t joking about market day, were you?’ I look around the village in awe. The half-dead little street is suddenly alive, buzzing with noise and voices, and colourful bunting strung from each lamppost.
Julian’s waiting by the welcome sign when we catch up to him, looking predictably flawless even after a long run. ‘Someone certainly lit the fuse under this place.’
Even the amount of traffic we’ve passed on the walk to get here didn’t prepare me for this. The tiny street is lined with stalls on either side, so tightly packed that you’d have no hope of driving a car through here, stall after stall of tables under white and blue striped awning flapping in the breeze, sellers standing behind each one struggling to keep up with the amount of money customers are throwing at them. There are so many people that I can’t see what each stall is selling other than a glimpse of colour here and there. The roofed triangular market area is so full that sellers, their goods, and their customers are spilling out of the open sides.
‘Pretty much everything’s locally made,’ Kat says. ‘Sellers travel to markets like this every day around the region. Village markets are all about supporting the local tradesmen.’
‘It’s so charmingly French,’ Jules says. ‘All we’re missing is a bloke in a striped top with onions strung round his neck.’
There are so many goodies to choose from that I don’t know where to start. Julian and Kat wander off in different directions, and I mosey up the street peering at what the different stalls are offering. The thing that surprises me most is how polite everyone is. Each seller greets me with a ‘bonjour!’ and a big smile, no matter how harried they’re looking. People browsing the stalls melt away and let me through, and strangers smile at me as we pass. No one is rude or snappy. No one is rushing. Life moves at a different pace here and everyone seems so much happier. I can’t remember the last time someone smiled at me on the street in London.
By the time Kat grabs my arm and drags me into the covered market area, I’ve got a bag full of local cheeses and homemade jams, honey, and spices.
‘This is Theo,’ she says, dragging me towards a tall man at one of the stalls. There are butter dishes galore on his table, open pots of butter and rounds of bread laid out for sampling, and loads of wrapped cylindrical rolls of the stuff ready for selling. ‘You have to buy some butter.’
‘I do?’
‘Yeah, he’s got loads left and I’ve already bought enough to feed half of France, but I told him I was bringing my friends over to get some.’
‘Theo!’ She’s already blushing before we get anywhere near the butter stall. She introduces me in French, making me think I should really learn some basics of the language.
Theo is tall with floppy blond hair and sparkling green eyes. He claps his hands together and a wide beam spreads across his face. ‘Wendy,’ he says, sounding so excited that he might as well have met the queen. He reaches across the table and gives me an enthusiastic handshake before slathering butter onto a rounded slice of baguette and pushing it into my hand. He says something that probably means I should try a bit.
I bite into it and give him a thumbs up because I know all about trying to make customers take samples from you, and also it’s easier to have my mouth full than try to translate what he’s saying.
Theo starts talking to us both in French, but his eyes stay on Kat, only flicking to me occasionally, and he keeps smiling at her and she gives him a blushy little smile back. It’s like a communication only in facial expressions. Theo makes motions of turning something as he talks, and I think he’s probably talking about churning the butter, but his voice gets faster and faster, and it’s impossible to keep up.
Kat makes an empty-handed gesture too.
He seems a nice bloke, smiley and passionate, but I don’t understand a word.
And then I see the answer. ‘Jules!’
He smiles when he sees me and starts making his way through the crowd towards us.
‘Jules speaks French, he can translate,’ I say to Kat.
‘Jules?’ she asks with a raised eyebrow.
‘I just say it to annoy him. He’s always being overfamiliar and calling me Wend, so… payback.’
‘Cute payback.’
‘Wow, that’s gorgeous,’ I say as Julian gets closer. ‘What is that?’
‘I bet you’re used to people saying that when you walk over,’ Kat says.
‘I meant the flower,’ I say, nodding at the stem arching from the pot Julian’s holding in his hands. ‘Obviously.’
‘It’s an orchid,’ he says, and I’m unable to stop myself reaching out to the touch the dark blue petals. Instead of pulling away, he crouches slightly so I can reach it, and it makes me think again about how thoughtful he is. ‘I thought you didn’t like plants.’
‘I don’t,’ I say, unable to take my eyes off the dark blue petals against his light-blue top. ‘But as plants go, that’s a handsome one.’
‘I’m used to people saying that when I walk over too.’
For once, I can tell he’s joking, so I whack him on the arm, making him giggle as he stands up straight again.
‘This is Theo,’ Kat says.
‘No one can understand a word he’s saying,’ I add.
‘Ah, Theo.’ Julian reaches out to shake his hand. ‘L’homme le plus beau de France.’
‘Julian, don’t!’ Kat hisses.
I have no idea what he said.
Theo pumps his hand enthusiastically, a look of delight on his boyish face. He says something in French and Julian agrees, and th
e excitement of someone understanding him is clear to see. He swipes butter onto a slice of bread for him too, and the pair of them start a full-on French conversation.
I find myself watching Julian as he talks, impressed by the ease with which he speaks French. There’s no umming or ahhing, and even though Theo is talking faster than the speed of light, he isn’t struggling to keep up.
Kat looks at me. ‘Now that’s an impressive man.’
‘Loads of people can speak a second language.’
She raises an eyebrow. ‘I don’t know why you’re so adamant that he’s not. Even without the abs, that’s an impressive man.’
‘That’s a man who’s not deaf,’ Julian says in the middle of his French conversation.
Kat blushes bright red.
‘Theo’s telling me about butter.’ Julian turns to us, still hugging his orchid. ‘Apparently the French are strictly against buttering bread, it’s our equivalent of putting the milk in first to them, but Normandy is famous for its butter, so this is one of the only regions in France where you’re actively encouraged to put butter on bread. He’s proud of that.’
‘Ask him if he’s single,’ I say.
‘Noooo,’ Kat hisses, going even redder.
Julian launches back into a French conversation with Theo, and I have to admit that it is pretty impressive.
‘He is,’ Julian says. ‘He says he goes to a different market every day, but he comes back to Toussion twice a week because you brighten his day.’
‘You’re bloody lying,’ Kat says, still blushing.
‘He says he’s been taking classes in English because he wants to be able to talk to you properly but it’s going slowly because everything he learns goes in one ear and out the other. You make him nervous. He thinks he remembers words but he forgets them when he sees you, then starts rabbiting about butter and knows he’s boring you but he doesn’t know how to stop himself because he likes talking to you even if you don’t understand him.’
The Chateau of Happily-Ever-Afters Page 14