Chapter seventeen
“Okay, here we are. Garden number three …which I happen to know has a café, so we are stopping for lunch before Frodo and I expire from thirst and hunger,” Gabriel announced as he pulled the SUV to a stop in the lee of a mounded berm topped with trees that separated the car park from the road. They alighted, Gabriel clipping a leash on Frodo after the dog had made use of one of the tree-trunks before they walked together across the lane that separated the car park area from the garden entrance.
“Oh no,” wailed Darcy as she read the garden’s opening hours on a sign attached to the outer wall, “it’s just after twelve and they’re closed for the next two hours.”
“I figured you weren’t planning your day around French opening hours so that’s why I phoned ahead after we departed Miromesnil and arranged for us to tour privately,” Gabriel sounded smug. Darcy had been aware, as she dozed lightly in the sun-warmed car, of him speaking in rapid-fire French on the hands-free mobile as he drove but had not even attempted to follow any of the conversation and, as he had not offered an explanation of what he’d been speaking about, she had not asked.
“It’s a common mistake that foreigners make when they visit France. There may have been changes in the cities but lunch-hour is still considered sacrosanct in smaller villages like this,” as he spoke he pushed open a white-painted door set in the stucco wall next to the sign, waving Darcy ahead into the garden. The courtly gesture was somewhat lost when Frodo, mistaking the wave-forward as being meant for him made a bound for the doorway at the same moment as Darcy. They collided, with Darcy tripping over the big shaggy animal. She would have fallen if Gabriel’s arm had not shot out and grabbed her around the waist. Once again she found herself plastered against the man in an all-too-familiar position, chest to chest, thigh to thigh.
Darcy looked up, outwardly calm and determined to remain unaffected, “You could let go me now. Anytime you’re ready,” she was trying for a light tone to counteract the alarmingly increased speed of her pulse.
“Are you sure milady?” he cocked an eyebrow in query, “you wouldn’t prefer the relative safety of my arms to the large furry trip-hazard that is my dog?” Privately, Gabriel vowed to reward Frodo with an extra-large marrowbone when they got home for his efforts.
“I bet you put him up to that,” she narrowed her eyes in suspicion.
“You give me far too much credit,” he demurred, his arm still wrapped firmly around her, “When you get to know him better you will realise that Frodo is not that trainable.”
Darcy could see his point. She turned slightly to eye the large black dog, now sitting calmly on the gravel drive just inside the gate and panting in the warm sun as if he’d just run a marathon.
“We’d better get him out of the heat before he melts,” she advised breathlessly, wanting to divert attention away from herself while she got her traitorous heart-rate under control.
His dog was not the only one feeling the heat, thought Gabriel. He was loath to release her but did so anyway, thinking it wise to put a little space between them before parts of his anatomy responded more than was generally acceptable in a public place. He stepped back, once again waving Darcy to step through the gate and followed her into the garden. “The café is this way,” he pointed to wide dove-blue painted barn doors to their immediate left.
“You’ve been here before?” Darcy questioned, curious how he could know that.
“Yes,” he concurred, “The house has been on the market for several years and I looked through it when I briefly considered buying it -before de Belagnac was put on the market.”
“Wow,” gobsmacked by the prospect of someone just up and buying an Arts and Crafts treasure like this, the one word was all Darcy could think of in reply. “You certainly wouldn’t have needed me if you’d bought this place. The park and gardens are supposed to be quite beautiful.” She might not have had Gabriel’s advantage of having already seen the garden but she had researched it thoroughly via the internet. “I can’t imagine how much something like this would cost.”
“You’re right,” he agreed to both points but chose not to mention the asking price. “It is certainly quite lovely but it’s also something of a national monument and would not have suited my purpose nearly so well as the chateau I bought. I was told that the house was designed by Edwin Lutyens and the garden by Gertrude Jekyll –I did some research myself and found that they were both icons of early twentieth century English design. Can you imagine the furore, on both sides of the channel, if I changed anything? And, granted, the house would have been large enough for my purposes, but it is also full of irreplaceable features and is practically a museum so what good is that to me when I want to be able to open a house to families? I want somewhere that children can run around the place and not be too concerned if something gets broken.” He called the dog, keen to end a conversation that alluded to his wealth, as he had an idea that it was not a great selling point in his favour where this woman was concerned. “I believe they are waiting lunch for us so we shouldn’t hang around here, and Frodo is still out in the heat,” he reminded. That the dog in question was now lying prone on his back with all four legs in the air with an air of utter contentment was a moot point. Like her, he was not above using his dog as an excuse to change the subject to get them moving along. He called. Frodo reluctantly stood and shook, causing a minor dust-storm, reminding Darcy of a rug being shaken outdoors.
Still a little nonplussed that Gabriel had even been able to consider buying such an obviously expensive house, Darcy shook her own head in wonder and followed the pair inside.
The sunlight was fading to a soft glow as Gabriel drove through the main gates of Chateau de Belagnac, as if some heavenly hand was turning down the celestial dimmer switch. Both tired and excited in equal measure by the day’s touring Darcy looked around the park as they drove into the chateau park, comparing it to the places she’d seen. The view in front of her had little in common with their final stop, Bois des Moutiers, or even the two previous stops. No politely refined garden rooms here, full of well-tended planting and thoughtfully placed seating bounded by walls, neatly clipped hedges and topiary, or anything that remotely resembled a finished garden of the ilk of Bois des Moutiers and no tidy row-upon-row of weed-free vegetables as she’d seen in the walled potagers of Chateaux de Miromesnil and Bosmelet, but still, Darcy was more pleased to see the unpolished vistas through the trees than she could say. The trees bordering the main driveway looked absolutely splendid in the last rays of sunlight with long shadows creeping across the rough ground.
“Just let me out here. I’ll walk to the cottage,” Darcy suggested, as they approached the stable-lane turn on the drive.
“Bertrand won’t be bringing the children back before seven. There’s no rush,” Gabriel ignored her request as he drove the SUV past the turn-off and into the shadow cast by the bulk of the chateau. He had called Bertrand earlier in the afternoon to arrange for Connor and his sister to be collected from their respective schools and given le goûter, a substantial afternoon snack beloved by French children that would sustain them until dinner-time. Since Bertrand and his wife lived near-by in the village the children could be returned at any time, but Gabriel thought to use every minute that he had available to spend time with their mother.
He switched off the motor and stretched his long arms out in front, easing tired shoulders. Darcy did her best not to ogle the muscles outlined in his upper arms by the thin knitwear. “Why don’t you come in and relax for five minutes. I’ll open a bottle of wine, or cider maybe, and we can have a drink, since I’ve been designated driver and haven’t been able to have one all day” he commented plaintively. He hadn’t mentioned his early start from Paris but it had added up to a long day’s driving and he was looking forward to a glass of something cold. At Darcy’s askance look across he added, “I promise, I won’t bite. I’m just offering you a drink at the end of a long day.” After a leisurely lunch, they had
stayed until nearly five o’clock at Bois des Moutiers, wandering the formal gardens, the park and then, at the invitation of the owners, touring inside the house. Gabriel was sure that Darcy’s camera must have been on the brink of running out of storage capacity with the vast numbers of photos she had taken.
Darcy had noted and been thankful that Gabriel had stuck to water and coffee with lunch. She’d been a passenger in a car too many times with Patrick more than a little inebriated at the wheel to want to ever repeat that experience. She dithered, thinking ‘should I, shouldn’t I?’ smoothing her dress over her thighs while mentally pulling the petals off one of the daisies that adorned the fabric. But before she could get to the last determining petal she undid her seatbelt, decision made …she was thirsty after the drive home and one quick drink couldn’t hurt, “Okay, you’ve twisted my arm,” she pulled her own arm up behind her back in a self-simulated twisting motion.
“If only it were that easy,” Gabriel spoke cryptically as he laughed at her performance, shaking his head while he got out to free Frodo from his confining safety harness. He picked up a stick from the ground and sent it spinning in a long high arc across the grass. “Go get it boy.” Frodo was out of the SUV and off in an instant, bounding away through the long grass. “The new mower will be delivered next Wednesday,” he commented casually across the SUV to Darcy, who had alighted from the opposite side of the vehicle, as he watched the dog returning with the stick clamped firmly between his jaws, only the top portion of his black head and back visible among the grass stems. “In the meantime Bertrand has organised a local farmer to come in and harvest this for hay,” he indicated the wide grass-rich allée, “It won’t transform us into a show-place overnight, but it will make it easier for Frodo to run around, that’s for sure.”
“Perhaps it’ll turn us into a Monet haystack-painting,” Darcy said happily, visualising the landscape as a richly-painted Monet masterpiece with mounds of haystacks dotted around the field, full of the nuances of light and harmonic colour so typical of the master’s work.
“And perhaps not. I hate to burst your bubble but methinks you haven’t seen modern hay bales. They’re not the stuff of romance,” he cautioned. Frodo emerged from the grass to drop the stick at his feet before it was duly thrown again. The dog shot away in pursuit.
“Oh well,” she shrugged, “it was a nice picture while it lasted.” The shrug-thing, she noted, was becoming a bit of a habit these days.
“Fine, let’s go get that drink,” Gabriel whistled for the dog as he turned towards the turret doorway.