The Cinderella Factor Read online

  ‘He’s not lucky in his women, is he?’ said Jo painfully. ‘Stalked by a college girl or married to a woman who wants his house.’

  Mrs Morrison stared.

  Jo fled before she finally lost it.

  While Patrick was away, the days went slowly. There was not enough work to do on the cars. Jo did a bit of weeding in the kitchen garden for the occasional gardener. But after a couple of days of ferocious activity she ran out of work there, too.

  Encouraged by Mrs Morrison, Jo took books to the riverbank. But she could not concentrate on the page. Every time she began to relax she saw Patrick Burns again in her mind’s eye; heard his teasing; felt the incomprehensible increase in her pulse. And her whole skin shivered as if she were being caressed by an unseen hand.

  ‘Damn it, it’s not fair,’ yelled Jo, skimming The Lord of the Rings across the clearing with the full force of her arm.

  She stamped back to the château. ‘Can I do anything to help you?’ she asked Mrs Morrison, prowling round the kitchen.

  ‘You’re feeling ratty,’ Mrs Morrison diagnosed.

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  Mrs Morrison raised her eyebrows.

  Jo glowered. ‘Why should I feel ratty?’

  ‘How should I know? But I’ve been nanny to too many children not to recognise rattiness when I see it.’

  Jo gave a choke of reluctant laughter. ‘Oh, all right. I’m a bit—restless.’ She stuck a spoon in the great jar of caster sugar on the kitchen table and watched the white crystals cascade back into a pyramid. ‘I’m not used to having nothing to do,’ she said moodily.

  ‘Oh, is that what it is?’

  Jo straightened sharply. ‘What else?’

  Mrs Morrison did not answer that directly. ‘Why don’t you go and find yourself a book in the study? Or look at the television? There’s a load of videos in there. All the old movies that Mr Godfrey liked. They were here when Mr Patrick inherited. We never cleared them out.’

  ‘Why would I want to sit in the dark and watch videos on a glorious day like this?’ said Jo disagreeably.

  ‘Or there’s Patrick’s tapes of his work,’ said Mrs Morrison, unheeding. ‘He’s been all over the world. You ought to find something to interest you.’

  Jo snorted and went to search out some kindergarten weed that had slipped past her that morning.

  But that night found her in the study in front of the television, with the curtains closed and carefully labelled tapes spread out all over the rug.

  ‘He does a nice report,’ said Mrs Morrison, leaving her with a tray of English tea and some home-made scones.

  Jo sat on the rug and pulled her knees to her chin.

  Patrick Burns did indeed do a nice report. She took the tapes in order and watched him develop. In the course of one night she saw him age ten years. First jokey stuff in the backwoods, then careful analysis of international diplomacy, then the man of action, keeping up with other men of action, until finally he became the man who saw into the heart of conflict and told the pity of it.

  In the last of his dispatches from the cold mountains he was gaunt and driven.

  ‘And the truly terrible thing,’ he said, in a voice that seemed to summon her heart out of her breast with pity, ‘is that nobody knows how to stop it.’

  It was just after that report that he must have been shot, she thought. For the first time she thought, How? Had he been trying, in his own way, to stop it? No, that was out of his control, and a clever man like Patrick would know it. But he had been doing something to mitigate the effects of war. Jo knew it in her bones.

  He had told her—hadn’t he? ‘I got them over the border.’ She realised that she was watching him preparing to shoulder his burden and set out. And he had not had a bad leg on the tape. Presumably he had been wounded in his great enterprise.

  After the tape finished, Jo sat very still. She felt as if she had walked into a rural railway station and found that it was really a moon launch site. She felt humbled and proud and profoundly moved. Patrick Burns was not just a short-tempered man with a bad leg and a wicked line in teasing, she thought. Patrick Burns was a man who made a difference.

  She swallowed painfully. Those tapes had told her more than that Patrick was a man who made a difference to those suffering people in their mountain fastness. He made a difference to her, too. The tapes revealed a new and unwelcome truth.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ said Jo slowly. ‘I’m in love with him.’

  She was shivering as if she was in shock. She stood up and turned off the video automatically. She felt light-headed and a little sick.

  Okay, her blood and her bones and her over-active imagination might have gone out to the man on that tape. But she was still a gargoyle with big feet. A six-foot gargoyle. Just another unimportant detail in Patrick Burns’ busy life—as he had already demonstrated. Patrick Burns, who already had more women chasing him than he could bear!

  Jo had never felt so unwanted in her life. She turned off the lights, closed up the château behind her and went back to her garage, quiet as a ghost.

  All night she tossed and turned in that curlicued bed. All night, a dream Patrick talked to a camera, not noticing that she was frozen in the snow behind him. Frozen, with her arms out, calling to him.

  Just once, at dawn, when the grey light was fingering its way along the ceiling beams, she came nearly awake. She knew she had been having nightmares. But for a few seconds she thought she was not alone. She thought Patrick was there in the room. The sensation was so vivid she could have sworn that she caught the elusive scent of his cologne. But when she turned to him murmurously it was only the pillow and the tangled sheets. She was alone. Like always.

  ‘Hell,’ said Jo, coming fully awake.

  Outside, birds chirped and twittered as the morning turned from grey to silver. She kicked away the tangled sheets and padded to the window. The formal lawns were frosted with brief diamond dew. The shadows of the house and trees had the hard edge of glass. Everything was drenched by a pale, brilliant sunlight. It was utterly still. Utterly beautiful.

  And she had to leave it.

  I can’t stay and become another woman eating her heart out for him, thought Jo, with the sadness of new-found maturity. I must go before he finds out what a fool I am.

  There, the decision was made! It felt as if her heart was being torn out by the roots. But it was almost a relief. At least now she knew why she felt so unlike anything she had ever felt before. And, knowing, she knew what she had to do about it.

  She went back to bed and pulled the pillow over her head. Her throat felt thick with tears she could not shed. She burrowed determinedly back into sleep. But as she did so, that whiff of cologne, faint as the winds of paradise, touched her again.

  Jo did not tell the Morrisons that she was looking for a new job. But she called Jacques Sauveterre from Patrick’s study.

  ‘I thought you had sorted yourself out nicely.’ Jacques was puzzled.

  ‘I did. But the job’s coming to an end,’ said Jo steadily, and nearly truthfully. ‘Will you keep your ears open for me? I’ll do waitressing—anything.’

  He promised. ‘And you must come over and see us this week. We have to make some decisions about Mark.’

  That sounded ominous. But Jo was too heartsick to care. She made a date for the only day they didn’t go to market, and rang off.

  Meanwhile, she flung herself into bringing the cars up to perfection, documenting everything she had done, every supplier she had found, every potential problem she could forecast.

  Whoever came in to take over from her, Jo vowed, would have the best bloody briefing ever.

  Gargoyle and scarecrow she might be. Negligible she undoubtedly was in Patrick’s life. But she could look after those vintage cars to Oscar-winning standard and he was damned well going to realise it once she had gone.

  She was polishing the Bugatti as if her life depended on it when the visitors arrived. She heard someone call out. She turned
, startled, pushing back her hair.

  There were two of them. They were blond, lithe, gorgeous, and they made Jo feel like an elephant. In contrast to her own light gold dust colour they were deeply tanned. In their cropped tops and brief shorts enough flesh showed to indicate that the tan was probably all over. They looked, thought Jo, young, chic, and very expensive.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she said in careful French.

  But they were not French. They were English.

  ‘Shouldn’t think so,’ said the taller one with disdain.

  The other was more polite. ‘Don’t worry. We’re on holiday. Isn’t this Patrick Burns’s place?’ she said casually.

  She had a voluptuous figure, a swathe of artfully streaked hair and restless eyes. Something about her made the hair on Jo’s neck bristle. Years of being homeless and alone had taught Jo to trust the hair on the back of her neck.

  But there was no point in denying it. Everyone in Lacombe knew this was Patrick Burns’s place.

  She said truthfully, ‘I suppose so. I don’t see much of him.’

  The two girls exchanged a complicated look. Complacent, conspiratorial. It said they were not surprised. Jo suddenly realised hotly that her tee shirt was thin and grey with too much washing and her hair was a joke.

  But then they shrugged and the look disappeared. They began to chat confidingly. They had walked up from Lacombe, they said. But their glowing energy, to say nothing of their perfect make-up, did not look as if they had just completed a dusty, eight-kilometre walk.

  ‘I’m a great fan,’ said the tall one. ‘I’ll just go up to the château and tell him how much I admire his work.’

  Jo was alarmed. The Morrisons had taken George’s specially adapted vehicle into Bordeaux. They would not be back until supper time. She was on her own to deal with these uninvited guests.

  ‘He’s not here,’ she said firmly.

  They looked at each other again. This time the look was sceptical.

  ‘That’s okay. We’ll wait,’ said the voluptuous blonde, equally firmly. This time she looked at Jo. Hard.

  Jo realised with a little shock that the blonde was not as young as she was dressed. Those eyes were nearer thirty than twenty.

  ‘I’m afraid you can’t. He’s in London. I don’t know when he’s expected back. And I’m not allowed to let strangers hang around the cars,’ said Jo, inventing hard. ‘Insurance—you know,’ she added vaguely.

  The blonde stared even harder. Under the make-up the pretty mouth was as tight as a rat trap. ‘You’re not allowed to? Who are you?’

  Jo gave a little shiver, as if she had just met an enemy. Nonsense, she told herself.

  ‘I just help out,’ she said, even more vaguely. ‘And it’s the housekeeper’s day off. Now, why don’t I drive you back to Lacombe?’

  They didn’t like it. But when they had been up to the château and seen for themselves the tower of post that was lying on the hall table they accepted that Patrick was not there. Jo, not quite hopping from foot to foot, barred their way into the main body of the château.

  So in the end they shrugged and agreed to the offer of a lift.

  Jo did not like to take any of the antique cars. Patrick’s Mercedes was still in the garage. So she took that. Her passengers, she saw with amusement, were completely unimpressed.

  She had been right about that, then: they were very expensive, utterly bored by luxury cars. They were interested in the automatic gates, though. And the security system that switched on at sunset.

  ‘I suppose you get electrocuted if you try to climb over?’ the voluptuous one said casually.

  Jo shrugged. ‘I haven’t tried.’

  ‘Have you got a key, then? Or don’t you go out at night?’

  ‘The dating scene must be rubbish round here,’ agreed the tall one with a snigger.

  Did that mean she was too much of a gargoyle to date? Jo was outraged. Okay, it was true. But that didn’t mean they had the right to say so.

  She bared her teeth, and without thinking about it told a lie. ‘I date all the time. No problem with getting back. There’s a path from the farm over there.’ She indicated with a wave. ‘It takes you onto the back drive. Those gates are kept locked, too, but there’s a stile for walkers.’

  That shut them up, at least.

  She left them at Lacombe’s only hotel. Now they were convinced Patrick was away, what they really wanted to do was leave the village. The English girl even tried to bully Jo into driving them back to Bordeaux, where they had come from that morning. But Jo dug her heels in.

  ‘The Picard brothers run a taxi,’ she said. ‘The hotel will have their number.’

  ‘That’s no use—’

  The tall one interrupted. ‘It’s okay, Lisa. I’ve still got the number of that limousine place in Bordeaux. I’ll call them.’

  No doubt that was how they had arrived today, thought Jo. So much for the healthy walk they had claimed. She did not think they had come upon the château by chance at all.

  But she did not think they were burglars. They had shown no interest in the beautiful cars or the no less beautiful antique table in the château. No, their motive was transparent: Patrick. For all their pretty tans and designer labels, they were as predatory as sharks. Maybe George hadn’t overreacted to that groupie’s postcard after all.

  I’ll have to tell Patrick, she thought worriedly. As long as I see him before I go.

  But when she got back to the château she found that seeing him again was not in doubt. He was on his way back from the airport.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  JO BOLTED for the garage. Yes, she would tell Patrick. But—not yet. She needed to get her head together before she saw him.

  She left Mrs Morrison excitedly baking a coffee and walnut cake for someone called Simon Hatfield, whom he was bringing with him. Mrs Morrison had known Simon ever since he and Patrick had been at university together, and she couldn’t wait to cook for him again.

  On the whole, Jo was glad that someone else was coming to stay in the château. It would be easier to avoid Patrick if he had a friend to distract him.

  She’d miscalculated. She was just outside the garage, polishing the Rolls-Royce as if her life depended on it, when she heard a quick, brisk step on the gravel behind her.

  ‘Hi,’ said Patrick, as if he had never been away, as if he had not disappeared from her life without so much as a goodbye. ‘Missed me?’

  Jo whipped round. He was standing with his hands on his hips, laughing. She could not help it. Her heart leaped to see him. She found she was smiling back. More than smiling; beaming like an idiot.

  His eyes were so warm she hardly recognised him. ‘How was the hangover?’ he said softly.

  ‘An experience. It was my first. Hangover, I mean. I am,’said Jo, dazzled by the warmth in his eyes, ‘having a lot of firsts these days.’

  ‘Sorry I couldn’t be here to help you through it. Did you drink the rest of the water I left you?’

  He must have sat on the edge of her bed and put the mug to her lips…

  Jo put down her chamois leather very carefully. ‘Yes. Thank you. Very thoughtful. I wouldn’t have known what to do.’

  ‘Sometimes you’re a quaint old-fashioned thing,’ mused Patrick. ‘There can’t be many nineteen-year-olds who haven’t learned how to treat a hangover.’

  He wandered round the Roller and into the garage. He was, she saw, hardly limping at all. He sniffed the air.

  Jo pattered after him. ‘New paint,’ she explained.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were going to have it painted. And—the amazing new furniture. Thank you.’

  His turned, his eyes caressing. ‘I wanted to give you something. That was all I could think of on the spur of the moment.’

  It would have been nicer if he’d chosen it himself, Jo thought perversely. ‘Thank you,’ she said again.

  ‘There are clothes, of course,’ he said, adding mischievously, �
�But I think they’d better wait until I can come too, don’t you?’

  Her eyes flashed. ‘I am perfectly capable of choosing my own clothes.’

  ‘But I will have so much more fun out of it.’ He wandered round the Bugatti. ‘Do you like the rotating book table? I’ve had that in mind for you for some time.’

  ‘You chose my new stuff?’ Jo could not believe her ears. Surely Mrs Morrison had said that George had looked everything out for the garage apartment?

  ‘Left Nanny Morrison a list,’ he said blithely. ‘Down to the books from the library. How many have you read?’

  And the lace-edged pillows? thought Jo involuntarily. She blushed and looked away. But he chose the furniture himself.

  ‘None yet. I’ll get down to it tonight.’ Inside, she was almost dancing with delight. He chose it himself.

  He looked disappointed. ‘I hoped you’d have dinner with Simon and me. I want you to meet Simon. You’ll like him. And he certainly approves of you.’

  She was bewildered. ‘Approves of me? He doesn’t know me.’

  ‘No, but he knows your advice. He thinks it’s sound. And so are you.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  His eyes danced wickedly. ‘Come to dinner and all shall be revealed.’

  She was not proof against that naughty look. ‘Yes.’

  But it was not to be. Almost at once his mobile phone rang. He looked at the caller’s number and snapped it open. ‘Sorry.’

  He listened for some time, his expression slowly darkening.

  ‘Why is it that you clever lawyers can pull out the stops for a silly harassment charge but can’t deliver on something really important?’ he asked his interlocutor acidly.

  Jo felt sorry for the person on the other end of the line.

  Patrick listened for another, longer space of time. ‘That is really inconvenient,’ he said grimly. ‘But if he’s flying out tomorrow I suppose there’s no choice. Okay. We’ll be there.’ He cut the call.

  Jo said it for him. ‘Dinner’s off?’

  ‘Postponed,’ Patrick corrected swiftly. He touched her cheek briefly, as if he could not help himself. ‘I think you’ll be pleased when you know why, though.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Damn! I’ll have to go and prise Simon away from his love fest with Nanny Morrison’s cooking. See you tomorrow, sweetheart.’