Chapter thirty
The cottage was peaceful and quiet once more. After a hectic morning rush-hour of getting everyone to school and work on time Darcy sat at her computer, recovering in the aftermath of the manic activity.
Somehow they’d all managed to get to their day’s activities washed, dressed and breakfasted but she wasn’t sure how. She had walked Rosie over the road to her school before driving Connor, Halley and Alicia to their respective destinations, promising herself that she would pick up groceries later as she didn’t have the energy to run errands on her way home.
Darcy was sure things would get easier once they had established a new routine but a weekend with guests and the frantic morning had taken its toll and she was feeling a little jaded starting the week. Napoleon had taken the opportunity to jump up on her lap and finding no protests at his occupation, had started to wash his paws with his usual single-minded attentiveness.
A cup of cooling coffee at her elbow, Darcy’s unfocused eyes were staring in the general direction of her computer screen but her mind was off elsewhere. She was in a world of her own, half re-living the busy weekend she’d just had and half day-dreaming about the future and thinking about what she would say to Gabriel when she next saw him.
“Talk about ‘The train is running, but the engineer is asleep at the wheel’,” the soft voice belonged to Gabriel, but how it had got to within an inch of her ear without her noticing was something Darcy would never know. She had jumped and sworn, yes, partly from fright and partly she suspected, from a sense of guilt that although she had known he was back she had not gone in search of him.
Before leaving for work, Halley had extracted a promise from Darcy that she would speak to her boss as soon as possible this morning about the gardener’s cottage, but despite knowing that the black SUV had driven down the lane earlier she had stayed indoors, telling herself that she would go shortly. That had been an hour and a half and two cups of coffee ago and she knew it had more to do with nerves than it did with her sense of lethargy.
Darcy waited, either for the heart attack that she was sure was imminent or for her pulse to return to its more regular rate. Feeling the blood pounding in her ears she gripped the arms of her office chair, drawing in calming breaths.
Gabriel, meanwhile had plucked the kitten from her lap and was sitting on the sofa, fondling the feline’s ears and watching her with a hawk-like gaze.
“Hard weekend?” he inquired politely, noting the dark shadows under her tired eyes.
“You could say,” she replied cryptically, “or, you might say beginning of a hard week.”
He leant forward with a look that said ‘do tell’.
Darcy knew that now was the time to divulge what she had so rashly promised to Halley. She started to speak but had some difficulty getting to the point, going around in circles with a windily detailed rendition of the weekends’ events, including Halley’s obsessive delight at seeing the chateau and Peppermint cottage, her interview, job offer and the Chocolatier’s condition that Halley not return to London but stay and start work immediately. Eventually, she ran out of story and breath, still not having asked the one question that she needed to in regard to the cottage.
“Why do I get the feeling that there is a pointy end to this very long tale?” Gabriel steepled his forefingers together to form the apex of triangle, tapping them together several times for emphasis as he spoke. He smiled in a way that suggested to Darcy that he knew exactly where she had been heading with her narrative.
Darcy steeled herself, “I might have, sort of, intimated…”
“...intimated?” he was enjoying this, it was patently obvious.
“Okay ...maybe I promised,”
“Yes,” he sat there on her sofa, pretty feather-patterned cushions to either side, looking like a maharajah among the peacocks. Darcy sent a thought-bolt to napoleon, wishing she had the power of telepathy, that she could silently instruct the small feline to dig his claws in somewhere that would hurt the most. Napoleon, it seemed, was too busy licking his paws and washing his ears to receive the message.
The moment had arrived. As the dam broke, it all came out in a torrent of words, the syllables tripping over one another in her haste to get them said, “Okay, I promised my best friend that she could rent your gardener’s cottage even though I hadn’t asked you about it and I completely understand if you say no but it will break Halley’s heart and she might hate me forever if you don’t and you didn’t say that you had anyone lined up to rent the place.” She took in a deep breath to replace all the air she had just used up.
“There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” he grinned evilly, she thought. “It’s like pulling teeth, hurts for a moment then all better.”
Her only reply was a frosty stare as she awaited his decision.
“No,” he replied, the single word slicing through the air like an executioner’s axe.
Her heart sank, rapidly followed by her expression.
So much for her ‘completely understanding’ if he said no, he thought. “You really do show every single thing you’re thinking on your face,” he commented, making her wonder if he’d been discussing her with his mother. She still didn’t reply so he continued, “This is the friend, is it not, that you told me was top-notch hotel manager in London? Right?”
“Hmm-mm.” The mumbled reply was all she could muster.
“Well, the chateau will require a manager.”
“Where’re you going with this?” She saw a faint glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.
“The chateau needs a manager, the manager needs a home –seems to me like they’re made for each other.”
“It isn’t quite that straight forward,” she interrupted. “As I said, Halley has found a job with the chocolatier and she wants a break from managing for a while. She says she wants to ‘skip stones’.”
“Quoi? Excuse me?” he raised both eyebrows quizzically.
“She wants to take a break from everything that she was doing while she figures out what she wants to do next,” Darcy explained. “She’s a solo mum with a little girl and she wants to slow down –so she says she wants to skip stones on a pond,” she swivelled on her revolving chair as she mimed the action.
“Ah, yes. Now I know what you mean,” he nodded sagely. “No better place to do that than here, I’d say.”
“But you said ‘no’,” she shook her head and turned her palms upwards to indicate his refusal of her request.
“If you’d given me a chance, I’d have expanded on that,” he replied tersely. “I was merely saying ‘no’ to her needing to rent the cottage if she took on the job of managing the day to day life of the chateau. Accommodation would come with the job. As you know, Bertrand is responsible for all things outside the chateau walls but we need someone to handle bookings, organising counselling sessions, ordering food and supplies, possibly some cooking –all that sort of stuff. My guess is that she would have been ideal for the job, but, if she wants to continue working with Mademoiselle Petit, that’s okay too. She can rent the cottage once it’s ready.” He stared at her thoughtfully, “But we can’t have you fading away in the meantime by running yourself ragged with so many living in this tiny cottage.”
She was not sure she liked that he thought she looked ‘ragged’.
He ignored her frown and pursed lips, continuing, “…Not when there is a huge empty chateau sitting a few hundred metres away. The children’s space and the top floor apartments have been completed while I was away and are ready now. I’m moving out of the dragon’s den this evening and your friend may have the other apartment until the garden cottage is ready for her.”
“Besides, you will need the space,” he added enigmatically.
She wasn’t the only one who had agreed to something on the weekend without first consulting the other party. He had a small detail he needed to tell her also and was hoping she might be as understanding as he had been; not so much attempting to grease the wheel
s but more hoping he wouldn’t soon get shot down for what he’d accepted on her behalf.
“Awesome,” Darcy could hide neither her relief nor her euphoria at the double whammy of Halley getting the cottage and her having her own space back. Much as she loved her friend and would have done anything for her, the old adage that ‘fish and guests go off after three days’ was all too true –the stable cottage was just too small for five and she could foresee problems with Halley and Alicia sharing the sofa pull-out for much longer. She had been on the point of suggesting that they change places, with mother and daughter moving into her bedroom but knew that wasn’t an ideal solution either. The tiny bathroom and kitchen spaces just weren’t designed with a large ‘family’ in mind and they had all tripped over one another incessantly that morning in the rush to get out the door on time.
“She won’t mind, will she that there will still be workmen downstairs?”
“Not at all. Besides, they’ll be gone each day by the time she’s home from work,” Darcy said reasonably. “The builders have made great progress with Peppermint Cottage while you were gone. The bathroom foundations are almost done, and once that’s built there’s just the kitchen refit and decorating to be completed. Should be ready within a few weeks,” she predicted.
Gabriel nodded his agreement. He had already been over to the walled garden area and spoken at length with Len that morning. “I’m sure she’ll make an ideal tenant for your Peppermint Cottage. I had no one lined up for it though I do have a probable occupant for the dovecote once it’s renovated. Will your Halley be okay with having a neighbour nearby?”
“I’m sure it won’t be a problem. Halley is quite sociable -she gets on with everybody- and she’s totally infatuated with the place. It would take a herd of rampaging elephants before she’d even notice anything else.” Darcy spoke candidly. “Besides, she’ll have an eight foot high wall and gates between her and the dovecote by the time the works are complete.”
“Speaking of which, the person I’ve in mind for the tenancy is going to be building the final section of garden wall. He’s an old friend of mine from New York and a stonemason by trade. He’ll build the ha-ha you’ve designed for the south frontage as well and any other stonework that needs building or repairing.
“That’s wonderful! While you were gone I’ve finished drawings for a stone folly as a focal point for the north allée.” An on-site stonemason –woo hoo! Darcy thought delightedly.
“Great. I’ll have a look at the drawings later. But right now, I do have a couple of minor conditions for your BFF getting the cottage,” Gabriel was good at thinking quickly on his feet and immediately decided that he might as well use whatever ammunition was at hand to further his own interests this morning.
“And they would be?” Darcy spoke warily.
“Condition number one is that you put down that mouse and come with me to the market in Pont-Audemer. You look as if you are in no state to be in charge of a computer today and you need some time off,” he proclaimed. His conversation with his site foreman had given him a clear picture of how many hours she’d worked while he had been away.
“Oh, those kinds of ‘conditions’,” she grimaced. She was about to say she couldn’t possibly, that she had too much work to take time off, when she yawned massively. Unable to control it, she held both hands over her gaping mouth.
“I rest my case,” he calmly rose and before she realised what he was doing he had reached over to the keyboard, and with a few sure strokes had saved and exited the drawing she had been staring at, shutting down her computer. “Bertrand can do all of the pick-ups or get one of my men to help. He is more than capable and Chantelle Petit is his niece so it will give him a nice chance to say ‘hello’ when he collects your friend and her daughter.
“Alright, I suppose I could do with a few hours off,” she conceded. “I warn you though, my boss is a tyrant and if he catches us playing hooky there’ll be hell to pay. I could lose my job.”
“We’ll take our chances,” was his dry rejoinder. “And I know you’ve been doing a lot of overtime so I’ll put in a good word for you if we get caught.” Even before his departure and despite having employed a night-time security guard to make regular patrols he and Frodo had still been taking their late-night and early-morning walks past her front door so he knew of her late-night work habits.
“And condition number two is?” she asked.
“This one is a little more, um, tricky,” was it her imagination or did his face look shifty, like some kid caught with his hand dipped in the cookie jar?”
“Define ‘tricky’ please’,” she drummed the fingers of her right hand on the desktop as she waited for the explanation, sounding, he thought, a lot like his mother.
“I can do better than define, I can show you,” he walked towards the door, “un moment, s’il te plait.” With this cryptic comment he strode outside to the SUV, parked right outside her door. Darcy crossed to the window, curious to see what was up but he was making sure that his broad back hid whatever he was collecting from the vehicle. He turned, holding something tucked under the opposite flap of his leather jacket as he closed the car door and it wasn’t until he re-entered the room that she saw a head peeking out from under the jacket, swiftly accompanied by excited barking.
“Oh no,” Darcy held out her hands in mock horror as the wriggling bundle of a Cavalier King Charles spaniel puppy struggled to jump the gap between Gabriel and her. When he scrambled from Gabriel’s arms towards her own, she had little choice but to instinctively catch him as he leapt. The puppy squirmed in pleasure even more in her arms, his entire body mobile as he clambered up her chest to liberally cover her face in wet slurps and doggie kisses.
“Condition number two,” Gabriel repeated over the yapping pup, “is that you accept Fifi’s baby with my concierge’s blessings and as few complaints as possible.”
Darcy stared open-mouthed, like a landed fish gasping for air. Now, she ‘got’ the earlier comment about them needing their space back. She placed the pup on the floor where it immediately ran circles around her feet, before grabbing at her shoelaces and tugging them, quickly pulling them undone to start a mini tug-of-war.
“Madame Moreau decided that you had such nice children that she wanted you to have one of the pups from Fifi’s litter,” Gabriel explained. “You’ve met her so you should know by now that she is a lady of very firm ideas. It was beyond my control –there is no saying ‘no’ to Madame M when she has made up her mind, so please don’t shoot the messenger.” He raised both palms in a ‘hands-up’ gesture of surrender.
“Since you brought this little chap all the way from Paris with you, I’d say you’re a bit more than the messenger.” Darcy was beginning to wonder if she had a ‘foist pets here’ sign painted on her forehead. They’d just got Napoleon house-trained and able to venture outside and now she’d have to start all over again.
“Oh great –puddles of puppy pee and piles of poop everywhere.” He was very cute though, she thought, with rust-coloured splotches over both his eyes, floppy ears the same tone and big puppy feet tripping over each other. He’d already tumbled over once and was having trouble co-ordinating all four limbs as he pranced around the room exploring in the corners and under furniture.
“That’s a lot of ‘p’s’ in one sentence ma Cherie. Non, ma petite rousse,” he spoke encouragingly, “he shouldn’t take long to house-train. Madame already had the whole litter going outside to do their business,” Gabriel watched as the puppy tried to push his head under the sofa. The pups’ ears reminded him a little of Darcy’s curls –what did they say about dogs and their owner’s growing to look like one another? It appeared that these two were already half way there. They’d look sweet together.
Thinking of Napoleon’s possible reaction to a new house mate, Darcy watched for signs of trouble as the puppy saw that the sofa had an occupant. The kitten stood up on the cushions with an ambivalent look on his face, staring down at the pup and
when the little dog put his front paws up and tried to jump up Napoleon took a step backwards. But soon his natural curiosity had him stretching his neck down to check out the newcomer. He got a swift lick from puppy for his efforts, took one more disdainful look at the small canine and retreated to crouch in the far corner of the settee.
“I’m sure they’re going to be firm friends soon,” Gabriel spoke optimistically.
“Hmpf, and what gives you that idea?”
Gabriel wisely decided not to pursue the topic. The package had been delivered safely and he was off the hook, so to speak.
“Frodo is staying with Bertrand here at the chateau today –we’ll drop the pup off to Bertrand as well before we leave and it will give Frodo and your new puppy a chance to get to know one another. I’m sure they’ll be fine. Frodo is big but he’s a very gentle soul -so long as you’re not a squirrel. Bertrand will collect the children from their schools and they can play with the dogs ‘til we arrive back.”
It seemed that he had it all mapped out. Darcy shrugged. Today, it seemed easier to go along with the stream than fight the current, she decided, so within minutes she found herself unceremoniously hustled into the passenger seat of the black SUV and they were off on the road to Pont-Audemer.