The Cinderella Factor

by Sophie Weston

  What did a world-weary reporter have in common with Jo Almond? Nothing. He never could have.

  He knew it. Of course he did. In his heart of hearts. Even though he really didn’t want to listen to it. She even worked for him, for heaven’s sake. Desire must have driven him momentarily barking.

  And then he thought: Not desire. Longing.

  And now he had set them up for a romantic meal in the rose garden that was straight out of the Courts of Love. Madness!

  ‘Hands off, Burns,’ he said aloud. ‘This one’s not for you.’

  But she did not feel as if she were not for him. She felt as if they were made for each other. As if he had been waiting for her sweet, astringent sanity all his life.

  And he heard her crisp voice in his head, ‘I reckon there are three ages: child, adolescent, grown-up. I am a grown-up.’

  Oh, you are, Jo. You are.

  His body ached with awareness of how grown up she was. And not just his body.

  So this is what it’s like, thought Patrick Burns, wondering. He was in love, he realised. For the first time in his life.

  He planned the evening’s picnic with very great care.

  First he sent the Morrisons to the cinema with Vincent Petaud from the village. He gave them instructions to stay for a meal after the show and told Vincent not to get them back before midnight. Then he rounded up a long rustic wooden table from the gardener’s store, chairs from the kitchen, a starched and rosemary-scented linen tablecloth from a chest that hadn’t been opened since the party for Godfrey’s funeral, a branched baroque candelabra from the salon.

  By the time Jo went shyly down to the rose garden the evening twilight was enhanced by candles, gleaming silver and the scent of a thousand roses stuffed with sunshine. There were even the measured strains of a string quartet.

  Patrick, in dark trousers and a pristine white shirt, was frankly stunning.

  Jo stood on one leg at the entry to the rose garden. She had sighed with pleasure as she walked through the pleasaunce, where cherry trees were loaded with fruit, marigolds bloomed and birds flitted happily from yew hedge to blossom-strewn ground. But the rose garden offered another dimension to the senses.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ she said in a small voice. ‘This is a bit out of my league.’

  Patrick came towards her with both hands out. ‘It’s a first for me, too,’ he said, taking her hands and leading her to the sundial in the middle of the garden.

  ‘It can’t be,’ said Jo.

  ‘This? Believe me. Never done anything like it in my life.’

  She looked at the goblets and china on the snowy cloth. They reflected the candlelight as if she were looking into another world.

  ‘No one would guess,’ she said on a shaken laugh.

  ‘It’s distinctly rough round the edges,’ Patrick admitted. ‘With enough time I would have ordered you troubadours with lutes. As it is, you’ll have to make do with Vivaldi on an iPod.’

  ‘It will be a sacrifice,’ Jo told him gravely. She remembered troubadours from history and lutes from an old Robin Hood film. ‘But I’m sure we’ll manage.’

  ‘So am I.’

  He raised her hand to his lips. This time she didn’t withdraw it.

  ‘This evening,’ he said, ‘is an exploration. I want to know everything about you. What you like. What you hate. What you want to do with your life.’

  Jo put her head on one side. ‘Really? And does it work both ways?’

  ‘You’d better believe it.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Seriously. Ask me anything you want and I’ll tell you the truth.’

  His mouth stayed serious but his eyes crinkled up at the corners, as if they shared a secret.

  Jo shivered voluptuously. It was an exploration, all right. She had never felt anything remotely like this before.

  He gave her wine that tasted of peaches and sunlight. It was not champagne but it fizzed gently on the roof of her mouth, making her laugh.

  ‘This tastes nice,’ she pronounced.

  He looked mildly offended. ‘So it should.’

  ‘Well, I never thought I would like alcohol. Not after my uncle coming home night after night drunk and angry,’ she told him frankly.

  He nodded gravely. ‘Tell me about that.’

  Patrick peeled her a tiny, beautiful quail’s egg and fed it to her while she told the story. She was matter-of-fact about most of it. Some bits, as she told them now, were even funny. When she described locking Brian in the broom cupboard Patrick laughed aloud.

  But when she’d finished he said, ‘You seem remarkably forgiving. Don’t you want revenge?’

  She shrugged. ‘Getting away from Carol was revenge enough. She really got a buzz out of putting me down. I suppose I’d like to see they’re never allowed to take any other child, though.’

  ‘So would I.’ His voice was grim.

  Jo was startled. ‘Hey, you sound as if you’re taking it all personally.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Why on earth? If I’ve got over it—’

  ‘But I’m a nastier person than you, my love,’ Patrick told her. ‘I still want revenge.’

  Jo met his eyes. She saw he meant it. She shook her head, not believing, overwhelmed.

  ‘Hey. Don’t look like that. I’m not going on the warpath tonight,’ he said softly. ‘Drink your wine. It’s time we ate.’

  Patrick had raided the fridge and the kitchen garden to good effect. As well as the pretty quails’ eggs there were tiny spears of succulent asparagus, dripping in warm butter, a crisp salad of lettuce and fresh peas that smelled of the kitchen garden, mighty pâté and sweet roasted peppers, delicate slivers of fish that he told her was trout caught in the river that afternoon, hams and salamis and fat black olives. Whenever he felt she was missing some particularly delicious morsel, he speared it and fed it to her.

  By the time the sun finally sank over the horizon Jo was dazzled witless and knew it.

  ‘Will you tell me something?’ she said, reaching for some sort of sanity.

  ‘I told you. Anything.’ He added reflectively, ‘Although I think you already know more about me than most people who’ve known me all my life.’

  Jo was shaken. ‘I think it’s the same for me,’ she said unwarily.

  His eyes lifted swiftly at that. She saw them gleam in the candlelight.

  ‘Yes,’ he said deliberately.

  A solitary bird was trilling. The cicadas scissored busily. A faint breeze, like the river breathing drowsily in the night, lifted the feathers of Jo’s hair from her neck and wafted the evening scent of roses all around them. The perfume was headier than wine: voluptuous damask; tea and nectarine and pepper; cloves and spices. It was hypnotic.

  It was magical.

  It was dangerous.

  She thought: I must go.

  But she was rooted to the spot, as if he were a magician and had cast a spell on her.

  ‘Ask what you want,’ he said, his eyes intent. She could see little candle flames reflected in them.

  ‘Isabelle—’ Jo couldn’t remember her full name. ‘You said that she wouldn’t accept that it wasn’t going to happen, you and her. But why did she think it in the first place?’

  His eyelids dropped. ‘Ah. Yes. Right to the heart of the matter, as usual.’ He poured wine into her glass, then sat back and crossed one leg over the other, looking rueful. ‘Well, if I have to confess all my sins, so be it.’

  She took the wineglass and cradled it protectively against her chest—more for something to hold on to than because she wanted more wine.

  ‘Isabelle managed to convince me—or maybe I convinced myself—that I would have a better chance of adopting Pavli if I were married. I—considered it. I knew I didn’t love her. But I thought it might work.’

  Jo flinched. To hide it, she drank in a great gulp.

  ‘Does that shock you, Jo?’

  It did, but she was not going to say so. She shrugged, looking away fro
m those mesmerising eyes. ‘You told me you weren’t a gentleman. I suppose I’m not surprised.’

  He gave a quick grimace, as if she had hit him where it hurt. ‘Ouch. You don’t pull your punches, do you?’

  She drank again, too quickly to savour the wine. ‘And now? Will you still marry her if that’s the only way you can get what you want?’

  He stared, utterly silenced. At last he said slowly, ‘But surely you know—after what we said today—?’

  ‘You said I could ask anything,’ Jo reminded him. Her words came out slightly louder than she’d expected.

  ‘Of course.’

  The pale shirt rippled in the almost total darkness as he poured more wine for her. How had her glass emptied so quickly?

  ‘And I’m going to ask the difficult one, too. Tell me about this—Mark.’

  She jumped. ‘What?’

  ‘The boyfriend who jumped ship. Or maybe didn’t.’ He sat back in his chair, playing with his wineglass, never taking his eyes off her. Then, as she did not answer, he said incredulously, ‘Never tell me that you’re still seeing him?’

  ‘Well, yes. But he’s not my boyfriend,’ began Jo. ‘I just ring sometimes to make sure he’s all right.’

  But her words were slipping every which way, and Patrick was in no mood to listen anyway.

  ‘It’s crazy. I know you’re ready to forgive everybody almost anything, but this is self-destruct mode. First the guy dumps you. Then you call him to check if he’s all right.’ His mimicry was savage. ‘He wants kicking.’

  Jo was alarmed. She jumped to her feet. ‘You don’t understand.’

  But suddenly the star-filled sky was doing strange things, and the moon was lurching towards her like a fighter’s punching bag. The glass fell from her fingers and spilled the rest of its contents. Jo hardly noticed. She felt very peculiar all of a sudden, and held on to something firm with both hands.

  It turned out to be Patrick.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, his anger dying as if it had never been. ‘The Viognier effect. What’s your normal limit, my lovely?’

  ‘Limit?’

  ‘On wine.’

  Jo shook her head. Once she started it was not easy to stop, she found.

  ‘I don’t have a limit. I’ve never drunk wine before.’

  Patrick gave a laugh that was half a groan. ‘Something else I should have asked earlier.’

  He stilled her head by the simple means of taking it in both hands.

  ‘You know,’ he said conversationally, ‘you’re absolutely right. I need to learn a lot more about people.’

  She leaned against his shirt front. It felt like heaven. She thought he touched her hair. But it could have been her imagination, fuelled by the night, the stars or the wine.

  ‘I’m sorry to say this, Jo, but you’re plastered.’ He sounded rueful—resigned, even. ‘The only thing I can do for you is take you home and tuck you up with a couple of litres of mineral water.’

  He must have done just that, though she did not remember any of it. The sun was already high when Jo woke up and her mouth tasted like sawdust. But when she finally struggled upright she saw the bottle of mineral water, half empty, on the bedside table with two of her coffee mugs beside it.

  Had he sat with her to make sure she drank it all? Her face flamed at the thought. She felt a total fool. How was she going to face him again?

  But when she went across to the kitchen for her morning coffee she found she did not need to worry about that any more. He had left for a flight to London before breakfast.

  Mrs Morrison, disapproving, said she hoped that meant that he had finished working on his book.

  ‘And telephoning till all hours. He’s already at that desk when I go in to open the curtains in the morning. And he’s still there long after we’ve gone to bed. I came down last night to get some hot milk because George couldn’t sleep, and I could see the light under the study door. Gone two, that was.’

  Jo could just imagine him, sitting at his desk, concentrating, blocking out all thoughts of their evening in the rose garden. Back to his real life, in fact. She felt cold in spite of the morning sun.

  George propelled his wheelchair into the kitchen.

  ‘I was looking for you, Jo. Couldn’t get an answer earlier. Patrick left you a message.’

  Her heart leaped. ‘Oh?’ she said, trying to keep her tone neutral and forget how her heart raced.

  ‘Yes. He wants you to move all the cars. He’s got the Picard brothers coming up to decorate the garage. Doesn’t want paint spilled on any of those babies.’ And he laughed heartily.

  The freeze crept back down Jo’s spine. ‘Decorating? Yes, of course I’ll move them,’ she said automatically.

  ‘He said take the day off after that. Go and enjoy yourself.’

  She tried. She really tried.

  She took a picnic down to the river. But the home-made bread with a sharp local cheese and a few grapes only reminded her of last night’s sumptuous fare. And the shimmering ribbon of water and sunshine made her eyes ache as she forgot everything except Patrick Burns.

  What had he done to her?

  You don’t know when you’re well off, Jo told herself grimly. Grow up, can’t you? You probably won’t see him again. He’s got more on his mind than you. After last night’s little—what did he call it? Exploration. Yes, that’s it. Exploration. Like a holiday safari, from which you go back to your real life. He enjoyed it, but now that it’s over he’s probably even forgotten that you’re here.

  But when she went back to the barn it did not seem as if he had forgotten.

  The main garage had been painted a brilliant white that made her blink. But upstairs—her room was transformed.

  Jo ran up the rickety staircase. She just had time to notice that it did not creak, and that the handrail no longer wobbled, before she flung open the door to her domain—and stopped dead.

  The walls were now a soft parchment colour. The wooden beams gleamed in the sun. And the furniture—

  Looking round, Jo found that now she had a little walnut desk. It was weathered, but it looked like an antique. She touched the pretty thing tentatively, wonderingly. There was also a low table-cum-bookcase that rotated on its own axis, as well as several new shelves on the walls. All were full of books. There was a small scrubbed pine table by the little basin, another by the bed. Everything was old, even the books.

  And then she registered the bed. Jo’s eyes widened.

  It was half as big again as her old iron bedstead. And it was carved and polished and curlicued like something off a film set. It belonged in the château, not the room above the garage. It was a bed for an eighteenth-century beauty with a roguish beauty spot and an abundant bosom. Not for a too-tall half-boy who dressed like a scarecrow even when she bought her first skirt.

  Jo snatched her hand from the little desk she was stroking and backed to the door, eyeing the bed as if it was a monster about to pounce and bite.

  The pillowcases were edged with lace. The bed had more cushions than the boudoir of a sultan’s favourite. What on earth was Patrick Burns thinking of? This was surely not appropriate décor for your standard car mechanic.

  Her heart pounded very hard. For a moment Jo stood very still, as if she were afraid. As if someone were watching her.

  The thought startled her. She looked round quickly. But, no, she was still alone in the room. Suddenly she did not want to be. She almost fled down the stairs and across to the main house.

  Mrs Morrison welcomed her with a beam.

  ‘Pleased with your new stuff?’

  ‘Speechless,’ said Jo truthfully.

  The housekeeper was pleased. ‘Patrick said we were to make you comfortable. Well, as soon as we knew you were a girl I thought the flat was a bit cheerless, too. George looked the stuff out yesterday and the Picards moved it in as soon as they’d finished.’

  Jo expelled a long breath. So it was George who had chosen the flat’s new furnishings. She did
not have to think of Patrick Burns choosing it every time she put her head on those lace-edged pillows. It was a relief. Of course it was a relief. So why did she feel as if someone had just let all the air out of her balloon?

  ‘Thank you,’ she said in a muted voice.

  She pushed her coffee around the kitchen table. Someone had brought in the post. A postcard in black schoolgirlish handwriting fluttered across the pine. Jo screwed her head round to read it shamelessly.

  Patrick, am in France for a couple of weeks. Will call. Love, Lisa.

  ‘Who’s Lisa?’ she asked with admirable detachment.

  Mrs Morrison read the thing quickly. ‘Oh, dear,’ she said with foreboding.

  Jo felt a funny little twist under her breastbone, as if she were jealous of the owner of that black writing. Nonsense, she told herself. Laughable.

  George sighed. ‘Here we go again.’

  Jo was curious. ‘Here we go where?’

  ‘Fans, I bet,’ said George. ‘Patrick won’t be pleased. He calls them bloody silly obsessive groupies. They hound him.’

  Jo flinched, as if he were accusing her of doing the same thing. All her fantasies about the curlicued bed with its lavish pillows mocked her.

  She banished the thought and fought back. ‘Aren’t you over-reacting? Maybe the woman just wants a cup of coffee and a tour of the house,’ she said sharply. ‘I bet she doesn’t know many people who live in a château.’

  Mrs Morrison sighed. ‘Let’s hope so, dear. But George is right. It’s usually these silly girls who see him on television and think they have a chance with him.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Jo hollowly.

  ‘In fact, Betty thought he might marry Madame Legrain, just to see them off,’ said George, laughing heartily.

  Jo felt as if she were drowning suddenly. ‘What’s wrong with Isabelle Legrain?’ she said in a muffled voice. ‘I mean, if they’re in love.…’

  ‘Love? Patrick?’ Mrs Morrison was scornful at the very idea.

  This was a nightmare. Jo struggled to sound normal. ‘Well, maybe she’s the one in love and he just wants to settle down.’

  Mrs Morrison gave a snort. ‘Oh, Madame Legrain is in love, right enough. With the house. My betting is she’d marry a chimpanzee if it owned the château.’