The Cinderella Factor Page 11

  Jo opened her mouth to explain about the barn. She encountered a steely look from Patrick. She shut her mouth again.

  ‘I like having my staff on the premises,’ he said. He sent Jo a look of wicked complicity which was not lost on either of his companions. ‘It means they have no excuse for being late for work.’ His eyes met Jo’s indignant ones and his mouth tilted wickedly. ‘They’re even early. When they can’t sleep.’

  The private joke was pure mischief. And irresistible. Jo could not help herself. She chuckled.

  Monsieur Lamartine’s eyebrows hit his hairline. Isabelle frowned.

  Isabelle said positively, ‘I shall follow you. I would never forgive you if something went wrong.’

  Patrick’s smile glittered. It was not a very kind expression, Jo thought.

  ‘Offering to change a tyre if it we get a flat, Isabelle?’

  Jo did not chuckle again, although she could have done. The lovely lady’s expression was eloquent. She planted herself firmly in front of Patrick.

  ‘Darling—’

  He kissed each scented cheek briskly.

  ‘Very sweet of you to come. Quite unnecessary, of course. But sweet.’

  Ouch, thought Jo. She was almost sorry for Isabelle, who didn’t seem to recognise a put-down when it landed on her.

  Isabelle put a hand on the lapel of his casual jacket. ‘I will come out to the château,’ she promised, gazing lingeringly into his eyes.

  Patrick detached her hand and gave it back to her. ‘Better ring first, to make sure somebody’s home.’

  If she were Isabelle, Jo thought, watching them dispassionately, she would take that for a definite brush-off. It would have crippled her with embarrassment.

  Not Isabelle. She even blew him a kiss as he limped out to the car, leaning heavily on Jo’s arm.

  Jo was surprised. He had never leaned on her before. Was this for Isabelle’s benefit? She helped him into the car and drove off.

  As they swept round the front of the mansion, Isabelle was on the steps, watching for them. She fluttered her fingers in a playful farewell. Jo changed gear viciously.

  ‘Don’t say it,’ Patrick advised.

  Jo sniffed. ‘You mean that you’re a prat? Fine.’

  It disconcerted him totally. ‘What?’

  ‘But I’m not supposed to say it. You can’t take the truth, can you?’ She was so annoyed with him she could have screamed.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Only idiots have expensive physiotherapy and then don’t do the exercises.’ Jo kept her eyes on the road, her hands steady and her voice level. Even so, the repressed fury spilled out.

  It sobered him. ‘Oh, that. You may be right. I thought you were going to take me to task over Isabelle.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I heard the intake of breath,’ he said dryly. ‘You say a lot by not saying anything. All right. I could have been kinder.’ Now they were on their own he had lost the insouciance. He sounded tense and tired. ‘But nobody asked her to come to the clinic. I don’t like people fussing over me.’

  ‘I’d never have guessed.’

  He gave a crack of laughter. Some of the tension evaporated. ‘Trouble is, Isabelle doesn’t tune in when people are telling her things she doesn’t want to hear.’

  ‘What doesn’t she want to hear?’

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his mouth thin.

  ‘She fancies herself as the loyal sweetheart of the returning hero,’ he said brutally. ‘Specifically, me. She doesn’t want to hear that it’s not going to happen.’

  Jo was shocked.

  She did not say so. But it must have shown because he said, in a harsh voice, ‘Yes, that’s not the sort of thing a gentleman would say. Well, you might as well know. I’m many things. Gentleman isn’t one of them.’

  He tipped his head back against the cushioned headrest. She thought he closed his eyes.

  He said, almost to himself, ‘And I don’t pretend to be. Ever.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  PATRICK looked at Jo sideways. God, she was pretty. That skin—

  Her chestnut hair was riffled gently by the breeze. Suddenly the smooth sophisticated cut was gone and her head was covered with soft feathers like a newly hatched chick. His fingers itched to reach out and tuck a feathery frond behind her ear. She had beautiful ears, too, now he thought about it. He found himself thinking of Botticelli seashells. He wanted to touch the marvel of her ear, the soft vulnerable line of her jaw, the pugnacious chin.

  What would she do if he did just that?

  Probably drive them straight off the road into a row of vines!

  Patrick had to admit it. His famous, irresistible sex appeal was simply not pulling this time. The ladies cloakroom would never believe it.

  Good for me, he thought wryly.

  But it didn’t feel good for him. It felt—wrong.

  Oh, boy, vanity has well and truly taken hold of you, Patrick Burns. You can’t expect to attract every woman in the world, you know.

  I don’t want to attract every woman in the world. I just want to touch Jo Almond.

  Touch?

  Caress. Stroke. Kiss. Surprise. Make laugh.

  Make love to.

  He drew a sharp breath and shifted in his seat.

  Jo took her eyes off the country road for the briefest moment. ‘Going too fast?’

  He mocked himself silently. ‘Not at all.’

  ‘But you winced.’

  He crossed one leg hastily over the other. ‘Brief twinge. Nothing serious. You’re very confident in a car, aren’t you?’

  ‘I told you I could drive anything,’ she said, so proudly that he wanted to stop the car and kiss the life out of her right then.

  ‘So you did,’ he said on a ghost of a laugh. ‘Where did you learn to drive?’

  She smiled at the road ahead. ‘School car park. Three lessons from the car maintenance teacher. Then hot-wiring teachers’ cars on a Wednesday evening.’

  He gave a crack of laughter. ‘A tomboy with criminal tendencies?’

  Her face shadowed. ‘Suppose so.’

  The trees met over the open top of the car. It brought a welcome breath of coolness. But she did not smile again.

  He had hurt her feelings, Patrick thought, annoyed. How? Shouldn’t he have said criminal tendencies? But he had already accused her of infiltrating his house to steal the cars, and it hadn’t made her look like that.

  Then he thought, I shouldn’t have called her a tomboy! She had been pretending to be a boy for weeks. Maybe she was sensitive about it.

  Probing, he said, ‘Did you always love cars?’

  Jo folded her lips together. ‘No.’

  He dug again. ‘But you do now?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘So where did you learn about them?’

  Not taking her eyes off the road, she said, ‘At school. My aunt decided I had better learn a skill. She said I wasn’t pretty enough to be a hairdresser.’

  Her voice was very level. But Patrick was a journalist. He was a skilled listener. And when he listened to Jo Almond he engaged brain and gut and heart. He heard the repressed emotion churning as clearly as if there was a kettle drum on the soundtrack.

  ‘What nonsense is this? Not pretty enough to be a hairdresser?’

  Jo’s hands tightened on the wheel. She was perfectly in control. Their speed did not flicker by a kilometre. But he saw her knuckles whiten. She did not answer.

  Patrick wanted to hit someone. Instead, he said in a neutral voice, ‘Did you want to be a hairdresser?’

  The taut hands on the wheel relaxed. Jo’s laugh was a pure shout of joy. ‘Me?’ She touched a hand to her newly gleaming cap, as if it were still the draggled mop he had seen in the river. ‘You’re joking, right?’

  He did not answer that directly. ‘What did you want to be, then?’

  She glanced at him sideways. ‘You’ll laugh.’

  ‘Try me,’ he invited.


  ‘I wanted to learn Latin,’ she said curtly.

  That really startled him. ‘Latin?’

  ‘And history and foreign languages and drama and…Oh, lots of things. I always wanted to know stuff. Carol said there was no point in educating me above my station.’ Her narrowed eyes did not augur well for Carol if their paths crossed again.

  Aha, thought Patrick. ‘Carol is your aunt?’

  ‘That’s what she liked us to call her,’ Jo said coldly. ‘She got paid.’

  His eyebrows rose. ‘She doesn’t sound like a woman who should have had charge of children.’

  Jo snorted. ‘Too right. Not that she looked on herself as a carer, exactly. She said people paid her to take away their garbage,’ Jo reported dispassionately. ‘That was us. Rubbish our parents didn’t want.’

  Shocked, Patrick sat bolt upright.

  Jo glanced at him again. ‘I’m going too fast. That definitely jolted your leg.’

  Patrick said impatiently, ‘Considering what I paid for these springs you ought to be able to hit Mach One before my leg is jolted. How do you know your parents didn’t want you?’

  Jo shrugged. ‘Why else would they unload me?’

  ‘There could have been all sorts of reasons,’ said Patrick the journalist, fascinated in spite of himself. ‘Illness. Poverty. Some terrible personal problem. Have you ever spoken to them? Asked?’

  She made a small negative movement. ‘I don’t know a thing about them.’

  He digested that. ‘Have you tried to trace them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m no expert, but I’m sure it could be done. You weren’t adopted, right?’

  Jo shuddered. ‘No.’

  ‘So you kept your original name?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  They had turned off the main highway onto a little up and down road, with hedges close to both sides of the car. Jo took her eyes off the road long enough to cast him a pitying glance.

  ‘You mean have I got a birthmark and a ring with a mysterious crest on it? Nope. I’ve got a birth certificate, father unknown, and a children’s book.’

  ‘Well, that’s a start. I could probably help, if you wanted. I know researchers who would know where to go for advice.’

  Jo said coolly, ‘My mother got rid of me. When someone does that, I stay got rid of.’

  Patrick studied her. Her skin was soft as apple blossom. But her expression was like iron.

  He said gently, ‘There’s no need to look like that. No one can make you do anything you don’t want to.’

  She did not soften. ‘I know.’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘Wow. That’s some confidence you’ve got there.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, not sounding it.

  ‘Don’t be. I like it.’

  That disconcerted her at last. She sent him a doubtful look. ‘You like confident people?’

  Patrick said carefully, ‘I like people who know their own minds.’

  He watched her think about that.

  ‘I’d say that sounds as if you have bullied a lot of people into changing their minds in your time,’ she observed.

  He sat upright, disconcerted.

  ‘Bullied? Ouch!’ He looked at her. ‘You really don’t think much of me, do you?’

  ‘I don’t think it would be easy to resist you once you’d made your mind up,’ she said honestly.

  ‘You managed it,’ Patrick said in an idle voice.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Think about it.’

  ‘I thought I’d rolled over and done everything you told me to,’ Jo said, trying hard to keep the resentment out of her voice.

  ‘Not from where I’m standing,’ he said ruefully.

  She frowned, not understanding.

  ‘The first time we met?’

  ‘The first time we met you told me to apologise to the Morrisons and I jumped to and did it.’

  ‘Not the first,’ he reminded her softly. ‘By the river.’

  Even then, it took her a few seconds to realise what he was talking about. When she did, she went crimson. For the first time the big car swerved.

  He put out a hand and steadied the steering wheel. The long brown fingers were warm over her suddenly nerveless grip.

  ‘That’s—not fair,’ she said breathlessly.

  ‘No, I suppose not.’ He sounded amused.

  And he tightened his hand strongly over hers before he took it away.

  She said in a high voice, ‘You’re right. You’re not a gentleman.’

  ‘I’m glad you remember that,’ Patrick drawled.

  But he wasn’t. He was furious.

  He didn’t want to fence with Jo Almond. He didn’t want her to try to play sophisticated games, throwing his own words back at him, keeping him at arm’s length. He wanted to say, Stop the car. Talk to me. Tell me you feel it, too.

  That was when she astounded him. She swallowed. Fascinated, he watched her throat move.

  She said with difficulty, ‘By the river—it was—you shocked me. I wasn’t prepared.’

  The honesty of it staggered him. For a moment he was utterly silenced.

  Then he gave a soft laugh and said, ‘What would you say if I told you that the shock was mutual?’

  At once he thought, I shouldn’t have laughed. Why did I laugh? She’ll think I’m laughing at her.

  This time Jo had herself and the car well under control. It did not deviate by a millimetre from its course along the straight stretch of leafy road.

  She said carefully, ‘I’d say it was very unlikely.’

  Still castigating himself, he said almost at random, ‘How do you make that out?’

  ‘Shock,’ Jo said levelly, ‘means you’ve lost control. You don’t.’

  Yes, laughing had certainly been a big mistake. She was no fool, this odd, awkward, gorgeous girl. And she wasn’t going to let him off the hook with the clever half truths that usually served him for flirtation.

  ‘You told me that experience speeded up the clock,’ he said at last, rueful. ‘I should have remembered that. You’re the strangest nineteen-year-old I’ve ever come across.’

  She was watching the road and did not answer.

  They were approaching a fork. She slowed the car. Patrick jerked himself out of his dark reverie.

  ‘Left,’ he said. ‘Down the hill, bear right. Shortcut. With an added bonus.’

  Jo nodded and set the great car easily down the narrow lane. In some places the track was so narrow that the bushes touched the edge of the car.

  ‘Under the arch where the trees meet over the road, sharp left, and up a steep hill. Then draw in to the side of the road.’

  ‘Why?’ she said suspiciously.

  Patrick bit back a smile. ‘You’ll see.’

  He could feel her withdrawal. Oh, yes, she was no fool. She saw trouble on the horizon and braced herself. Suddenly he did not want her bracing herself against him.

  He said roughly, ‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to make a move on you. It’s just the perfect view of the château.’

  She followed his instructions, taking the car at a crawl through the overgrown lane. They were climbing up and up. The road spiralled. Fronded branches of chestnut trees met over their heads. It was like climbing the tower of a cool green church.

  And then suddenly they were at the top. There was a small parking place under the trees. Jo brought the Mercedes to rest and turned off the engine. The hillside fell away to the left of them, down to a small river valley. And on the hillside opposite was the château, walled and turreted in the evening sun. She had seen pictures like that, in books at school. But the pictures had all shown knights in armour and prancing horses, with ladies in tall conical hats and flowing gowns looking on.

  ‘Oh,’ said Jo on a long breath. ‘Only there should be pennants flying.’

  Patrick sat back, well pleased. ‘We’ll raise a standard the moment we get back this evening,’ he promised.
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  ‘We—’ She did a double take, looking at the exquisite scene again. ‘You mean you’re serious? That’s our château? I mean your château?’

  ‘That’s our château,’ he agreed softly. ‘You shall fly your pennant over it just as soon as I can get you one.’

  Jo didn’t know how to respond to that. She cleared her throat noisily. ‘I didn’t realise there was a river on this side,’ she said, in an unnaturally high voice.

  Patrick stretched lazily. ‘Same old river you were swimming in. It curves round the place, just further downstream. When we leave, we will go down the hill and over a seriously rustic bridge to reach the original entrance. The last time I visited it was overgrown with stinging nettles. But at least that will prove to you that it is our château.’

  They sat for some time in silence, watching the towers turn to gold as the sun got lower in the sky.

  At last he stirred, and Jo set the car in motion again. As he’d said, the bridge over the small river was wooden. It creaked ominously as she whispered the Mercedes across it.

  The gates on the other side were made of the same wrought-iron as those to the main drive, but they were smaller and not electronically programmed. She stopped the car and made to get out. Patrick forestalled her.

  ‘I’ll open them.’

  He unlocked the gates with a small modern key from his keyring. Then he swung a big oval catch and pushed. The gates opened soundlessly.

  Jo engaged gear and drove through. She stopped and looked back. The wooded hillside and the wooden bridge lay basking in the afternoon sun. Upstream, meadows lay like a rich brocade coverlet, shot with silver. Nothing moved in the humming heat.

  Patrick closed the gates behind them and limped back to the car.

  The sun was hot on her shoulders and bare arms. Jo could feel him looking at them. She swallowed.

  ‘Come and sit in the shade,’ he said softly.

  Her breathing quickened. ‘Surely—we—I mean—Mrs Morrison will want to know…they’ll be expecting you…’

  She wanted to go and sit in the shade of the willows with him. And she did not want to. She was afraid of it. She wanted to defy the fear. It seemed to be inviting her to take a step into a dimension she had never entered before. Where she might end up not knowing herself.