Bluebell's Christmas Magic: A perfect and heart-warming cosy Christmas romance for 2019

by Marie Laval

  ‘I sure can.’ There was the sound of paper ripping, and Lynette spoke again. ‘There are several pages of notes and photos of old paintings and illustrations with felt-tip marks all over. Wait a minute. There’s a letter too.’

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘“Chère Aurora,”’ Lynette started. ‘“I found these notes today, which I believe are related to a project of Arsène’s you have taken over since his accident. I thought you might find them useful. I will let you know if I find any more papers, but our apartment was broken into when I was visiting Arsène in hospital, and I haven’t had time to put everything back in order yet. Sincères amitiés.” And it is signed Patricia.’

  ‘It’s from Arsène Lebrun’s wife. Poor woman, how awful for her to have to deal with a break-in on top of her husband’s accident.’

  ‘You know them well, don’t you?’

  ‘Professor Lebrun was my PhD thesis supervisor. He is the most eminent palaeographer I ever met, and the kindest of men. Both he and Patricia always made me feel welcome when I visited Bruges.’

  Her heart ached to think of the elderly professor now so desperately ill in hospital after being injured in a hit-and-run accident. It hurt too to know that it was because of his accident that she had been hired to assess Maupas’s manuscript in Paris.

  ‘What do you want me to do with the papers?’ Lynette asked.

  ‘Post them to my hotel. In the meantime, it would be great if you could scan and email them to me tonight.’

  ‘That may be beyond my capabilities, but I shall give it my best shot. I will text you if I can’t do it.’

  ‘Thank you, Lynette.’

  ‘You’re welcome, sweetie. And one more thing… Try to loosen up. You’re in one of the most romantic cities in the world, surrounded by sexy Frenchmen. Grab hold of one and enjoy yourself. It will be too late when you’re my age. Books and paintbrushes won’t keep you warm at night.’

  It was far easier to agree than start another argument, or even object that no sexy Frenchman would ever look at her twice, so Aurora made a vague promise to have fun and bid Lynette goodnight.

  She turned to the garden and sighed. Filled with shadows, and with trees and bushes dripping with rain, it was the only place she wanted to be right now. Soon she would have to slip her shoes on again, go back inside and confess her faux pas to Florent Maupas.

  Footsteps at the other end of the terrace signalled that she was no longer alone, and Cédric Castel’s tall silhouette stood out against the glow of the garden lights. Immediately anger quickened her pulse. What did he want now? Had he not caused enough trouble already? She gripped the balustrade and forced a deep breath in, kicked her shoes behind her and hoped he wouldn’t notice she was barefoot.

  ‘Still here?’ She tried to sound blasé but was grateful for the shadows hiding her heated face.

  He nodded. ‘I’ve been playing cat and mouse with the security staff, and so far I’m winning. I wanted to apologise. I’m sorry if I offended you earlier. It wasn’t my intention.’

  ‘Somehow I find that hard to believe.’

  She thought she saw him smile.

  ‘Listen, doc, I think we need to start again. How about we have a chat and you tell me about your job at the Institute and the museums you’ve worked for?’

  ‘You mean the museums I helped Sasha Nenachko plunder?’

  ‘You can always prove me wrong.’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t care what you think, Monsieur Castel, and I have no intention of wasting any more time talking to you.’

  He came closer and her skin prickled with awareness at the scent of his aftershave mingling with the smell of the rain – the warmth of bitter orange and cinnamon, and the fresh, earthy scent of vegetation.

  ‘You may change your mind when I tell you that I’m working on a feature on auction houses. Your take on things would be invaluable, not to mention good advertising for both Maupas and yourself.’

  She blinked. ‘I don’t understand. Are you in marketing or PR?’

  ‘I’m a reporter. Radio mainly, and broadsheets too.’

  Her heart sank. ‘You’re a journalist?’

  He nodded, and she almost moaned aloud. Things were going from bad to worse. Castel was a reporter, and because of her he now knew that a rare manuscript was to be auctioned at Maison Maupas. The market for ancient manuscripts was incredibly sensitive, that’s why Florent Maupas had requested total secrecy. One word from Castel could ruin everything.

  ‘Hey you, over there!’ a voice shouted from the other side of the terrace. There were sounds of hurried footsteps as a man charged towards them.

  ‘It looks like he found me after all.’ Cédric Castel didn’t sound in the least worried. Sighing, he turned to face the security guard. ‘Are you talking to me?’

  ‘Don’t play the fool, Castel.’

  Aurora cast him a surprised glance. ‘He knows you?’

  Cédric smiled. ‘Jérôme and I are old friends.’

  The other man’s face hardened. ‘You’re no friend of mine. You upset a guest again, and Monsieur Maupas wants you out.’

  Cédric Castel shrugged. ‘There’s no need to behave like a big ape, Jérôme. You’re scaring the lady.’ He leaned forward, almost touching her. ‘If you want to talk, I will be at Papa Louis until late tonight. It’s a jazz club in Saint-Germain-des-Prés.’

  Before she could reply that she had no intention of meeting him anywhere, let alone in a club, he stepped back and walked towards Jérôme.

  ‘I’m going, don’t worry. I didn’t like the champagne, anyway. Your boss is cutting corners and buying cheap fizz. If I were you, I’d look for another job.’

  ‘Shut it, Castel,’ Jérôme growled.

  ‘Bye, doc. I hope we meet again. You should put your shoes back on, by the way, or you’ll catch a cold,’ he said, before digging his hands into the pockets of his jacket and walking to the garden gates.

  So he had noticed. Her cheeks aflame, she quickly slipped her heels back on and went back inside where Florent Maupas immediately handed her a flute of champagne. ‘I’m so sorry that you had to witness the unpleasantness between Sasha and Castel earlier, ma chère. Castel seems to have a bone to pick with my Russian friend and the two always end up bickering. I suppose that’s what happens when you put together two opinionated and strong-minded individuals.’

  Bickering? Somehow, the hostility between Castel and the Russian sounded a lot more serious than a bit of posturing between two alpha males.

  ‘Castel is a damned good journalist. We could do with having him on our side,’ Florent Maupas added.

  ‘He said he wanted to do a feature on my work here,’ Aurora said without thinking.

  Maupas’s face lit up. ‘Did he? What a splendid idea!’

  Aurora bit her lip. That wasn’t the reaction she had been expecting. ‘But he’s a journalist and you said you wanted secrecy.’

  ‘I could make confidentiality a condition for granting him exclusive access to your work on the manuscript. Think what a scoop it would be for him if the manuscript turned out to be what its owner claims it is, not to mention the extra publicity for me and you.’

  Dread made Aurora’s heart race. She couldn’t think of anything worse than the journalist following her around and scrutinising her every move, waiting for her to trip up.

  ‘And if the manuscript isn’t what Chavigny thinks it is?’ she asked.

  ‘Then he’ll have wasted his time but his article will bring us extra publicity, not to mention keep him too busy to cause mischief elsewhere. No, this is a win-win situation for us. I was right to listen to Nenachko and hire you.’

  She frowned. ‘It was Monsieur Nenachko who recommended me?’

  Maupas nodded. ‘As soon as we heard of Lebrun’s accident, Sasha said you would be perfect for the job. How could we go wrong with Augustus Black’s granddaughter?’

  So Castel was right after all. She had been kidding herself thinking her reputation
was enough to recommend her.

  She racked her brains for more arguments against Castel.

  ‘What about Monsieur Nenachko? Won’t he be angry to see Castel around at the auction house since he dislikes him so much?’

  ‘He will understand my reasons. Besides, Sasha and I are leaving on a two week business trip in a couple of days, so he won’t be around.’

  He smiled and rubbed his hands together. ‘I’ll get my secretary to ring Castel tomorrow and make arrangements. It’s all turning out for the best, thanks to you, ma chère.’

  She bit her lip and took a deep breath. ‘Actually, there’s something I need to tell you,’ she started. Now was the time to tell Maupas about her blunder. He wouldn’t like her quite so much once he knew that she had already told Castel about the manuscript.

  Her phone beeped, signalling the arrival of a message. She pulled it out of her bag and checked the screen. ‘I’m sorry. I need to look at this. It’s from my grandmother’s nurse.’

  Lynette had sent a text to say she couldn’t scan Madame Lebrun’s documents but promised to post them first thing the following morning.

  Florent Maupas looked at her. ‘It’s not bad news, I hope?’

  She shook her head. ‘Patricia Lebrun sent some of her husband’s papers to my grandmother’s house in Manchester. I think it may be his preliminary findings about the manuscript. Unfortunately, Lynette – that’s my grandmother’s nurse – doesn’t know how to scan and email them to me. She’s going to post them to me in the morning.’

  ‘That’s interesting.’ Maupas looked thoughtful. ‘I must tell you that Professor Lebrun wasn’t impressed by Chavigny’s manuscript.’

  ‘Oh? In what way?’

  ‘He believed it was a fake, but he left Paris in a hurry on Monday before submitting his findings, and of course he had that terrible accident…’

  He looked at her and his lips stretched into a smile. ‘However, every cloud has a silver lining, as they say, since I now have the pleasure of working with you. We are going to make a great team, ma chère.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘I’ll be fine here, Jérôme. Merci et bonsoir.’ Aurora shut the passenger door and watched the black Lexus speed away. The tyres splashed into puddles, and the tail lights soon disappeared in the line of traffic on Boulevard Saint-Germain, still busy despite the late hour.

  The rain had stopped, and the wet pavements glistened and reflected kaleidoscopes of neon lights of the district’s many bars and restaurants. In fact, Papa Louis, the jazz club Cédric Castel had mentioned earlier, was only a few streets away – at least that’s what Jérôme had said as he drove her back from Neuilly.

  Why was she even thinking about Castel? The man was smug and obnoxious – the archetype of the pushy journalist, and it seemed that she was stuck with him. What could Florent Maupas be thinking of, allowing him to shadow her as she worked on the manuscript? It would be impossible to concentrate with him at her side, watching, assessing, judging – waiting no doubt for her to make a mistake, and confirm what he already believed: that she had only been offered the job because she was Augustus Black’s granddaughter.

  She pushed back a feeling of unease. The thing was, he may well be right. Once again, Augustus’s formidable shadow stretched over Aurora.

  Trying to ignore the pain in her foot, she turned into a side street and hobbled across the tiny Furstemberg Square where trees created pools of shadows around an old-fashioned cast iron lamp post.

  This was one of her favourite places in Paris. Centuries before, the artists and craftsmen and women she so admired had walked along the same streets on their way to purchase paints or pigments from the apothecary shops in the Ile de la Cité, or sheets of vellum from the tanners in nearby rue de la Parchimenerie, or to visit the libraires who commissioned their work. Perhaps they still haunted these narrow streets, and watched over her right now…

  The thought of walking among ghosts made her smile as she strode into the narrow Impasse Fleury leading to the apart-hotel Florent Maupas’s secretary had booked for her.

  As she reached out to push open the side panel of the porte cochère, a gust of wind rustled through the branches of the square’s Paulownia trees. The light from the old-fashioned lamp post flickered and the darkness filling the alleyway grew thicker. Uneasy, Aurora glanced over her shoulder. A large shadow appeared to detach itself from the wall and move towards her.

  Her blood ran cold and her heart jumped to her throat. Thoughts of ghosts and revenants weren’t so romantic any longer… and neither was the more likely prospect of being mugged by a thug lying in wait for an easy prey.

  She gave the door a hard shove with her shoulder and stumbled into the cobblestoned courtyard. Her breath short, she hurried towards the hotel reception, the uneven clicking of her heels echoing between the buildings, before tapping in the security code on the keypad. The glass door buzzed open. She slipped inside and pulled it shut behind her.

  A nightlight bathed the reception area, unmanned at this late hour, in a dim, blue light. Ignoring the old-fashioned lift and its complicated grillage door, she climbed up the stairs to the third floor as fast as she could, and almost ran down the corridor to her tiny studio flat. Once inside her room, she kicked her shoes off and tiptoed to the window to glance at the street below. It was empty.

  Of course it was empty! There had been no ghostly shadow, and no thug trying to snatch her bag. Her imagination and the three glasses of champagne she had drunk at Maupas’s reception had played tricks on her.

  Nevertheless, it took a hot shower and two cups of tea to settle her nerves. Twenty minutes later, she sat on the bed, cross-legged in her flannelette pyjamas, her glasses perched on the tip of her nose, and printouts of Florent Maupas’s emails, together with notes she had already made about the manuscript, positioned in neat piles around her. As she went through them once again, she forgot all about Castel and her misadventure in the Impasse.

  This was the chance to make her name in the specialist field of palaeography… or it would spell the end of her short career. There was no room for mistakes in the market for ancient manuscripts. They had become such popular investments their market value had shot up, with many now going for hundreds of thousands of pounds at auction. If Maupas’s manuscript was what the owner claimed, it would reach even higher bids.

  She pushed her papers back and balanced her laptop on her legs to check her emails. There was one from Jeremy that made her smile.

  ‘Hello, my favourite girl,’ she read. ‘How is Paris? I’m sure you’ll do a great job with the manuscript. Enjoy and try to bring us back lots of contracts. You know how badly we need them.’

  ‘I shall do my best, dear Jeremy,’ she whispered as she typed her reply.

  ‘Things are looking good. I already had an offer of work from a wealthy Russian collector,’ she chewed on her lip and added, ‘and we will have extra publicity thanks to a journalist who is going to run a feature on my work.’ That was called putting a positive spin on things… There was no need to tell Jeremy that Castel was odious and she hated the idea of him hovering over her as she worked. No need to tell him either that she hated Nenachko’s mercenary attitude towards ancient manuscripts.

  For the Institute’s sake, she may have to take up the Russian’s offer to work on his private collection. However, one thing worried and angered her in equal measure. How had he been able to buy the priceless treasure that was the Fra Angelico? She wasn’t naïve enough to think that corruption didn’t exist, but she had worked on that same manuscript only two months before in Modena, and the museum’s curator had been adamant that it belonged to the Italian museum. So why sell it to a private collector?

  However, for the Institute and Jeremy’s sake, she would put her misgivings to one side. Jeremy had enough on his plate since stepping up from his post as Finance Manager after her grandfather’s death and taking over the day-to-day running of the Institute. No one understood better what a juggling act i
t was to preserve the Institute’s reputation for excellence whilst dragging it into the twenty-first century, and to safeguard its integrity with the need to make money.

  Jeremy was much more than the Institute’s financial manager. He was a trusted family friend, the only father figure Aurora had ever had, and she loved him dearly.

  She carried on typing and told him about the party at Florent Maupas’s and Lynette’s news about Patricia Lebrun’s letter. He didn’t need to know about her faux pas with Castel, so she ended on a cheerful note. ‘I can’t wait to start work on the manuscript tomorrow. Guess what? It’s raining! You know how much I love the rain, and what could be better than a rainy Paris?’

  The jazzy tune she was humming earlier came back to her, but she still couldn’t remember the words.

  Papa Louis, 4:30 a.m.

  Cédric waited until closing time, even though he had known all along that Aurora Black wouldn’t show up. He checked his emails, browsed through the newsfeed on his phone, and drained his third espresso.

  Earlier on he had been sure that the young woman was in league with Maupas and Nenachko. Hadn’t she helped the Russian bypass Italian red tape to acquire a rare manuscript, no doubt by facilitating the payment of huge bribes to Italian officials?

  Yet she didn’t look like the kind of woman Nenachko could draw into his shady business dealings. Perhaps it was because her clever, ice blue eyes radiated honesty, or because she had looked genuinely hurt when he had accused her of benefitting from her grandfather’s notoriety to advance her career. He couldn’t forget how upset she had been when she’d realised he had trapped her into admitting the reason for her stay in Paris.

  These weren’t the reactions of a corrupt and overambitious woman.

  Guilty or not, Aurora Black was the key which would unlock his investigation, he was sure of it. She was the weak link that would make Nenachko’s chain of crime and corruption finally snap. All he had to do was find a way to win her trust. After years of chasing after the Russian and his thugs, travelling across Europe, North Africa, and criss-crossing the Mediterranean, he was closing in on the man. The end was near, and he was a staunch believer in the motto that the end justified the means. In any case, getting close to Aurora Black might prove interesting. Something about her appealed to him. Perhaps it was her eyes, her pink rosebud lips, or pale, creamy skin. Or the fact she had taken her heels off and stood barefoot on the terrace of Maupas’s posh house. Or perhaps it was something else entirely – the challenge of shattering her icy reserve…