Escape to the French Chateau

Chapter 19

Chapter 19

Penny was doing her best to rise to Harry’s challenge of making pancakes. When they first met, she’d told him just what an appalling mess she made every time she attempted to cook, but somehow, he’d always presumed she was teasing him – that she could at least manage the basic skills.

From the look on his face, he was beginning to realise that, while she might joke about a lot of things, her inability to cook wasn’t one of them.

‘Do you believe me now?’ she said, grinning at the mess she’d made on the stainless steel of the kitchen worktop. Flour had gone everywhere when she’d sieved it, and she’d managed to spill the milk, too. She raised the whisk like a weapon. ‘OK, I’m going in. Wish me luck.’

Harry grinned at her, sliding his toque from his head, and squashing it into a pocket. ‘I don’t think it’s you who needs the luck – the kitchen will be lucky to survive.’

Whisking the gloopy mixture was more difficult than she’d been expecting, and within seconds she’d managed to flick a sizeable blob onto the floor.

‘God help us,’ Harry said, moving behind her and steadying the bowl in one hand, then placing the other over the top of her hand on the whisk.

Was Harry pressing her against the countertop on purpose, or was he genuinely focused on the batter? It was fair to say Penny had lost all interest in pancakes, allowing herself to move with the motions of his hand, and making the most of the pressure from his body. If he wasn’t doing this to turn her on, if he didn’t realise what he was doing to her, if she didn’t do something to make him understand – Penny couldn’t take this any longer.

Slipping her hand out from under his, she swivelled until she was facing him, the bowl of batter behind her and forgotten as she looped an arm around his neck.

‘Kiss me, Harry,’ she breathed. ‘Please.’

It was as though she’d slapped him. Harry backed away, shaking his head.

‘Why not? What’s wrong with me?’ A bolt of anger lit Penny up, heat supercharging her movements, and an overly large sweep of her arm had her knocking the bowl of batter flying. She scrabbled around for a cloth with which to clear up the mess, but all she seemed to manage was to spread the glutinous mixture further.

Harry sighed. ‘There’s nothing wrong with you, Penny.’

‘There must be.’ She mopped haphazardly, then gave up and threw down the towel. ‘I don’t know how else to express the way I feel. About you. How to make it any clearer. Surely you get it by now, don’t you?’

The way Harry rubbed a hand across his eyes, the deliberate calmness to his movement, it all made Penny feel acutely aware of the creeping sense of desperation which had been circling her ankles for a while.

‘Don’t do this, Penny.’

‘I can’t take it any longer. Why don’t you like me?’

‘I do. I like you so, so much, Penny. I love spending time with you. It’s not you.’

‘What is it, then? You don’t fancy me, is that it?’ Her statement was purposefully aggressive. Penny knew she was attractive, knew men found her interesting. It was more of a challenge, than an actual question.

‘It’s not that at all. You’re amazing, Penny. As well you know. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about you and me … It’s not that I’m not attracted to you …’ A tortured expression flashed across his face.

‘So, what’s the problem? You like me, I like you. It’s not as though I’m expecting you to propose to me, Harry.’

His expression became even more complicated, his brow furrowed while his cheeks bloomed with colour. Harry’s breath hitched, then rushed from his lips as though the air couldn’t work out where it should be. Penny must be missing something. If the attraction was mutual and neither of them had other commitments, then where was the issue?

‘The problem is there’s someone waiting for me, in England, Penny. Someone I have proposed to.’

Harry’s reply took the wind out of her sails. He sounded serious, grown-up. Like he had a plan.

‘Oh. I see. Who is she?’

‘Does it matter?’

Penny shrugged, then wrapped her arms around herself. He was right, it didn’t really matter who his fiancée was. The only thing that mattered was that whoever she was, she’d beaten Penny to the prize, had already claimed Harry for herself. She sank back against the workstation, her bubble well and truly burst.

‘So, why are you out here, then, if she’s in the UK?’

‘It’s complicated,’ he said.

‘Why?’ In Penny’s mind, if she ever decided she was committed enough to someone to want to marry them, the last thing she’d do would be to abandon them and go off travelling. Because anyone could try and get their claws into them while she was gone. Maybe it had been a test of their virtue. A test which Harry had passed with flying colours.

The moment hung impossibly heavy in the air until he said, ‘I ran away.’

‘From her?’ Now Penny was confused.

‘Not exactly. More from the whole situation.’ Harry paused, his head tilting as his focus disappeared from the room in which they stood, his eyes fixed in the middle distance. Eventually, he focused his gaze back on Penny. ‘Her name is Sophie and I’ve known her since we were babies. Her family and mine have always been close, and I suppose it was inevitable.’

‘Inevitable? Sounds like the perfect reason to ask someone to marry you. Inevitability.’ Sarcasm was beginning to fight for the upper hand, but Penny couldn’t help it. Incomprehension was coming in a close second.

‘Maybe. Sophie and me – we’ve always been fond of each other, our families were stationed together more often than not, so it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I asked her at her eighteenth birthday party, and she said yes. Our families were thrilled.’

‘How long ago was that?’

Penny clung on to the way Harry’s eyebrow hitched, but he ignored her question. ‘But then I told them I’d decided I wanted to take some time and explore cheffing instead of what was expected of me, and it all went a bit wrong.’

‘How?’

‘My father doesn’t approve of my decision. Nobody does.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s not what Greenfield men do, apparently.’

‘And what are Greenfield men supposed to do?’ Penny asked, wondering why Harry had chosen to keep all of this to himself for so long.

‘Army. Sandhurst for entry at officer level, no messing about. Major by the time I’m thirty. Working towards half-colonel by my mid-thirties. My father has a plan. A schedule.’

‘He has your whole life mapped out?’ she asked. Somehow Penny couldn’t think of anything which would suit Harry less than being in the army.

‘Pretty much. He’s not one for sitting around. He’s a major general himself and has his eye on another star for his epaulets.’

‘I don’t even know what that means,’ Penny said, and Harry laughed.

‘You get so used to army talk that you forget that it’s not as widely known. It just means he’s after a promotion, is determined to take another step up the ladder.’

‘Oh. OK. And what does Sophie think about the life your father had planned for you?’

‘I don’t think she sees it in quite the same negative light as me.’ Harry’s brows furrowed. ‘And I get what she means – it’s a life we both understand, but …’

‘But it’s not what you want?’

‘I don’t think so.’ The furrowing intensified. ‘She suggested I take some time out, have a bit of fun, come back to the army thing once I’ve got the cooking bug out of my system. So, here I am, trying to de-bug myself.’

‘Is it working?’ Penny asked, desperately clinging to the hope that Harry would confirm the opposite, that the longer he spent away from that life, away from Sophie, the less he wanted to return to it.

Instead, he shrugged. ‘Maybe she’s right,’ he said. ‘Truth is, I just don’t know. I have some big decisions to make.’

The way his comment cut through her was as brutal as if he’d taken a filleting knife to her heart. The thought that he was just working through something, having a bit of frivolous fun before heading back to his life in the UK was more than Penny could tolerate. Had he just been playing along with her when they’d discussed working on a yacht together? Did he not see her as someone he could build a future with?

‘Good job I’m thinking of moving on soon, then,’ she said. ‘That way you’ll have one less bug to worry about.’ She jumped to her feet and headed for the door. ‘I need some fresh air.’

She nearly saluted, but the sadness in Harry’s expression stilled her arm, his absolute quietness made her pause, a glimmer of hope bursting through her heart that Harry might choose her. But she discarded this thought almost immediately. Instead, she sighed and left the room.

Fran told Johnny she’d think about his offer. It sounded spectacularly lame, and she covered her confusion by checking her watch, pretending she had to rush off to complete some random housekeeping task.

Johnny accepted her withdrawal without complaint. She supposed he had enough on his mind. Would he speak to his brother today, or steer clear while he allowed the weight of what he’d discovered to continue to percolate into his brain? Maybe he would call his wife, have it out with her.

Fran inched out a breath – she didn’t envy him any of those choices. If she were in his shoes, she’d probably lock the door and stay in that turret suite all day.

Maybe he’d decide the whole idea of Chateau des Rêves was far too complicated. That including Fran in his plans was too problematic. That he already had too many plates spinning to be able to add any more, already had far too much to deal with.

Maybe he’d head back to the UK to begin the painful process of separating himself from everything he thought he understood and trusted and realise it was all too challenging. Perhaps he’d leave, and she’d never see him again.

Biting back the way that thought made her feel, she shoved the housekeeping trolley against a wall and headed outside. She needed fresh air, time to think. She needed to breathe.

Red was waiting for her where the gravel gave way to the long, dry grass. It was as though he knew something had changed and that Fran wasn’t here to make a fuss of him and feed him. That this time the comfort needed to flow in the opposite direction.

With a sigh, she sank to the ground, settling with her back against the rough stone of the chateau wall and a cat nestling almost immediately in her lap. His mere presence made Fran smile, although he didn’t allow her to have it all her own way, sharp claws needling into the fabric of her skirt and pricking at her thigh his way of reminding her he needed to be stroked.

‘I know, I know. Way too slow.’ Fran wound her fingers through Red’s fur, rewarded by the now-familiar rattle as he began to purr. Time spent with Red had a way of quietening the noise, it was almost as though Fran’s heartrate slowed when she was with the animal. Red didn’t care about the bigger picture, all that mattered to him was the here and now. Not a bad way to be, she supposed.

But there was a lot more than the here and now buzzing around in Fran’s head.

‘Can I tell you something?’

Taking the silence punctuated only by Red’s rattly purr as acquiescence, Fran drew in a deep breath.

‘OK. So, you need to keep what I’m about to tell you under your hat. Or maybe under your fur. You’ll be the only living being at Chateau les Champs d’Or to know who I really am.’

Johnny felt marginally better after a cold shower. More in control. Talking to Fran had steadied him, had given him an opportunity to be more objective than he’d managed in the night, his mental turmoil heading into some shadowy places in the depths of those dark hours. Gave him the chance to be more objective, actually, than he’d been in a very long time.

The conversation with Fran had given him the chance to start deciding what was right for him. It was possible he’d lost himself at some point over the last fifteen years, possible he hadn’t ever really known who he was, or what he wanted.

Life had seemed to flow, one decision or action leading to the next, then the next. Nothing had been planned, it just happened. Johnny supposed that while everything was going well, with the success of the business and his life with Natalie, the arrival of Estelle – all the positives had buried the niggling doubts, had gagged them and shoved them into a dark corner.

It had been Noel’s idea to set up Taylor Made Wine, and the idea was as good as anything else Johnny had planned to do with his life back then. Growing a business made sense, of course it did, which was why Johnny hadn’t questioned his brother’s ideas or countered any of it. Bigger equalled better equalled more income, more kudos, more … well, more everything. But there had been a cost, one Johnny hadn’t seen at the time, or perhaps had chosen to ignore.

Somehow, the situation had become far harder once Natalie was on the scene. He’d fallen hard for her, had kept her to himself until he’d been sure about his feelings. But something had changed in his relationship with Noel once Natalie was around. But by that point, the business was doing far too well to consider breaking away. And by the time Natalie was pregnant, Johnny was up to his neck in Taylor Made Wine, determined to make it as successful as possible for the family Natalie was in the process of creating.

By then, Johnny was so far in, he’d lost sight of anything other than what was right in front of him, the grind of work, the exhaustion of a new baby, the constantly abrasive and yet symbiotic relationship with the brother who’d always been there for him, and vice versa.

He supposed nothing would have changed if he’d done a better job of keeping Natalie happy. Life would have continued to trundle along the tracks they’d all made, and she would never have needed to look to Noel. Noel wouldn’t have had the opportunity to …

Anger prickled along Johnny’s spine. An explosion of swear words broke the silent majesty of the turret room as Johnny expressed in no uncertain terms what he’d like to do to Noel.

Then another thought took its place. What would have happened if Natalie’s affair remained a secret? Johnny would have kept the life he had, the life he thought he wanted. But would he have spent his whole life cuckolded by his own brother?

‘Fuck’s sake.’ Johnny ran a frustrated hand through his hair. Whichever way he looked at this, the shite was knee-deep.

Then an even worse thought occurred to him. A thought that propelled Johnny from the bombsite of a suite, pausing only to grab his keycard as he headed for Noel’s room.