Chapter 9
9
Finally…
Noah could see the real Laura Gilchrist and she was even more beautiful than he could have guessed.
She was vulnerable and sensitive. A dreamer. Someone who could totally understand and appreciate the simple things in life – like the scent of lavender or the softest touch on her skin. Someone who had so much love to give but had, somehow, been so badly hurt that she had built walls to make sure that didn’t happen.
She’d had her own share of grief, with the death of her sister’s baby, but whatever had made Laura the way she was had happened long before that. Noah didn’t need to know how.
He didn’t want to know.
The sense of connection between them was getting too real. They were getting too close to dangerous territory. Noah knew when it was time to back away. Politely, of course. With charm, in fact. He’d had plenty of practice, after all.
Fate stepped in as he was kissing Laura in the lavender field – a gentle nudge in the right direction. A tourist bus parked just behind his motorbike and dozens of people emerged with cries of delight to walk amongst the flowers. The women were dressed for the occasion in floaty white dresses and classic sunhats. One was even wearing a set of monarch butterfly wings attached to her back and arms. Their voices had already broken the silence, but a man who looked like a professional photographer was setting up to fly a drone and Laura’s eyes were widening in shock.
The bubble of her dream had been burst. Noah took hold of her hand.
‘Time to go,’ he said. ‘ C’est parti, mon kiki .’
He got her away from the tourist invasion before the echoes of the dream she’d experienced could evaporate completely. He took them down a side road, and when they found a field of sunflowers right beside another lavender field, separated by a city of beehives, Laura’s smile finally returned with enough strength to light up those gloriously soft brown eyes.
They stopped to watch a lavender field being harvested. A tractor pulling an enormous high-sided trailer was keeping pace with the harvester, and lavender was pouring through a chute to fill the trailer. The field to one side of the vehicles was still a purple haze but on the other side it was no more than green stubble.
Noah didn’t want the reminder that nothing lasted forever to be Laura’s final memory of her visit to the lavender fields.
‘What time do you need to be back to help Ellie?’
‘We didn’t make a particular time. I just said that it would be this afternoon.’
Noah nodded. ‘ C’est bien . We have enough time, then.’
‘For going over the photos? Choosing the ones we want for our brochure?’
‘We can do that, too. While we have lunch.’
‘Will we go back to Vence for lunch?’
‘Why would we do that, when we have one of the most beautiful villages in France only a few miles away?’
The way Laura’s eyes were widening this time was because of anticipation, not shock. It was so easy to bring joy into this woman’s life, he thought. He could imagine a very young Laura looking like this when she woke up on Christmas Day and it made him curiously proud to be the person who was creating such happiness.
‘Moustiers-Sainte-Marie,’ he said. ‘Famous for its chapelle on the cliff, its waterfall and its fa?ence .’
‘ Fa?ence? ’ Laura was pushing her arms into the sleeves of his old leather jacket and it gave Noah an odd sideways slip in time.
Was that why he’d always kept this the jacket he’d bought when he was sixteen, along with his first ever motorbike? Because he might have imagined his baby sister wearing it when she came for a ride on the back of his bike? Because it would have been a priority to keep someone he loved that much as safe as humanly possible?
He’d never let anyone borrow it before now. He doubted that he ever would again. He kicked his bike into life and revved it enough to drown any inclination to wonder why that might be.
‘It’s a kind of pottery.’
* * *
Moustiers was tucked into the base of two massive limestone cliffs and was divided by a small ravine with a river rushing along its base. There was a space to park the bike right beside the main entrance into the village – a bridge decorated with hanging baskets of brightly coloured flowers. The splash of the nearby waterfall was clearly audible and Laura could also hear the joyful tolling of church bells, but Noah wasn’t taking her directly into the centre of the village.
The first narrow, cobbled street they followed had attractive shops and galleries, and one they walked past had a window filled with the kind of pottery Noah had told her about: gorgeous plates and bowls that were painted with bright red poppies and delicate stalks and leaves.
‘I should get something there as a gift for Ellie.’
‘We’ll stop on the way back,’ Noah promised. ‘There’s something I want to show you before it gets too hot.’
‘Don’t let me forget. She’s got a thing for poppies now. And daisies. Because of the donkeys.’
‘Oh?’ Noah seemed to be heading away from the village. There were more houses than shops, their pale green, blue and grey shutters already protecting them from the increasing heat of the summer sun.
‘That’s what they’re called. The names of the flowers. Marguerite and… oh, what’s the French word for poppies?’
‘ Coquelicots .’
‘That’s it. The other one is called Coquelicot.’ Laura pulled in a new breath as the street became steeper.
‘I saw the coquelicots in London on a visit. The ones that were put into the moat at the Tower of London?’ Noah didn’t sound out of breath at all. ‘To represent all the soldiers who died in the war? It was… magnifique .’
‘It’s the flower of remembrance. And it’s the colour of blood, which makes it perfect to remember fallen heroes.’
‘Not in France. We use the bleuet .’
‘I don’t know what that is.’ Laura was shading her eyes, looking at the steps that lay ahead of them, leading up the side of the cliff. Hundreds of steps. Well above them she could see the turret of what had to be the famous chapel, the colour of its stone blending with the walls of the cliff around it.
‘A little blue flower. I don’t know the name in English. It grows wild in the fields. Like poppies.’
‘A cornflower?’
‘ Peut-être .’ But Noah’s sideways look suggested he wasn’t thinking about the names of flowers any longer. ‘It’s not as steep as it looks,’ he said. ‘And the view is worth it.’
He held out his hand and Laura smiled as she took it. She didn’t care how steep this path was. The way Noah was looking at her right now, she would have followed him to the ends of the earth, even if it killed her.
It was worth the climb. The small chapel was guarded by elegant, pointy cypress trees. The final steps took them through an ornately carved wooden door and into the coolness of the interior with its vaulted ceiling, beautiful stained-glass windows and a gilded altar that featured the statues of the Madonna and child. Still holding hands, they stood in silence at the railing that protected the sanctuary, taking it all in, but then Noah let go of Laura’s hand.
He took some coins from his pocket and put them into a collection box beside the stand where dozens of small candles were burning in layers of glass holders. He picked up two candles and offered one to Laura. Still in silence, they each placed a candle into an empty holder. Noah picked up a match, lit it from an already burning candle and held it out for Laura. She waited for a moment so that he could light another match and then they both lit their candles at the same time. The spent matches went into a small bowl and, for another long moment, they both stood there, watching the flicker of the flames. It felt right that their hands found each other’s as they honoured the people they’d lost in their lives.
It also felt like Laura had never been this close to another person – not even her mother or her sisters.
They stopped to take in the gorgeous view across the Valensole plateau, and by the time they were retracing their steps down the cliffside and could hear the church bells ringing again in the village, any sombreness from that moment in the chapel had dissipated.
‘Look… that’s why the bells keep ringing. There’s a wedding happening in the village.’
They could see a small patch of the square beside the bell tower of the church and the froth of a gorgeous white dress as the bride and her groom were showered with flower petals or confetti by the waiting guests. Even from this distance, Laura could see the joy on the bride’s face as she looked up at her new husband.
The sound Noah made suggested he might not share Laura’s appreciation of the spectacle. She glanced up at him.
‘You don’t like weddings?’
‘I adore weddings,’ he said. His face was absolutely still, until an eyebrow quirked. ‘As long as they’re not mine.’
‘Have you ever been married?’
‘ Non .’ The word could not have been any more definite. ‘And I never will be. The happiness people believe it brings is nothing more than a fantasy. It’s not something I want, any more than having a child.’ His glance was enough to tell Laura that she already knew why that was a given.
And she did. Of course she did. She’d felt the pain of his loss every second they’d been standing in front of those tiny candles together. The pain of losing his sister had been unbearable. The potential pain of losing a child would be unthinkable.
Was it also a plea not to talk about it again?
Fair enough. Laura didn’t particularly want to discuss her own status as a single woman of her age. Why she’d preferred not to marry because she knew, too well, the disaster a bad marriage could become to everyone involved, including innocent children.
She was well aware, however, that many people assumed it was because no one had wanted to marry her .
So why would she want to even broach the subject with Noah, when she’d been able to believe that, for this blink of time in their lives, he thought she was perfect?
Instead, she gave him a look she could only hope he understood. One that said he knew all he needed to know about her. Why spoil it?
‘Can we go back to the shop with the poppies? And then have lunch? Breakfast feels like forever ago.’
Noah laughed, and any threat of heavy conversations evaporated.
‘ Tu a une faim de loup ,’ he suggested. ‘You are as hungry as a wolf?’
‘ Oui .’ Laura smiled back at him. ‘ C’est ca .’
‘ Moi, aussi. ’
She watched as he turned away to continue their descent into the village. Yes… she could see him as a wolf.
A lone wolf.
Which fitted perfectly with everything that was so attractive about Noah Dufour.
He was alone but not lonely.
It was simply the way he preferred to be.
* * *
They ate lunch on the terrace of a restaurant built onto the side of the ravine right beside the waterfall, and the audible tumble of the water was as delightful as every course of their meal.
The food was on a different part of the spectrum of French cuisine to the gourmet dinner at the Chèvre d’Or last night or, indeed, the still-warm-from-the-oven pain au chocolat this morning, but the rich French onion soup with its Gruyère-encrusted croutons, the light soufflé with blue cheese, figs and honey and the crème br?lée for dessert were perfect.
They looked through all the photos on Noah’s camera and chose their favourites for the brochure. There were probably too many but each one of them was enough to catch the eye and spark a dream of being here that could make someone consider buying a little stone cottage in the South of France.
There was one of the lavender field this morning, with the ruined dwelling and the blurred outline of the distant mountains. One of the red bicycle propped against the wall of La Maisonette, between the shutters of a window and the rose-covered archway of the front door. One of the little red car parked on the road, and one that Laura especially loved of the flowers Ellie had painted all around the walls of the child’s bedroom.
She had to swallow the lump in her throat.
‘This photo means so much,’ she told Noah. ‘The person Ellie was when she came here to France could never have done this. It shows just how far she’s come in healing and… I think I understand why, now.’
‘Why?’ Noah was watching her intently as he listened.
Laura bit her lip, a little shy to share her thoughts. ‘You probably don’t notice because you’ve always lived here, but there’s something about this part of the world that makes you feel different. I don’t know what it is, exactly – maybe it’s got something to do with the pretty villages, or the sunshine, or the people and the way of life here. I feel like a different person and I’ve only been here for a couple of days.’
Noah’s smile made her think of a fond parent responding to something a child had said. It should have been embarrassing. It could have been belittling. But it was neither of those things. Because of the warmth in his eyes that almost made it look as if he was proud of her.
‘You’re not different, Laura,’ he said softly. ‘You’ve just found the person you’ve always been. Maybe because you’ve let yourself relax enough to forget who you’ve always thought you should be. Or because you feel safe here.’
He was right, Laura thought. She did feel safe. And she had discovered things about herself that could only have happened because she was inside a fantasy, but it wasn’t just because of where she was. It was because of who she was with. She wouldn’t tell Noah that, of course. She didn’t say anything at all, in fact, because listening to that rich voice with its gorgeous accent was as musical and compelling as the waterfall beside them.
He was still watching her as he spoke again. ‘The South of France is like a sigh, n’est-ce pas ?’ he asked. ‘Like breathing out slowly because you’ve found what you’ve been looking for all along, even if you didn’t know what it was that you were looking for.’ The corners of his eyes crinkled. ‘You have lived a little, mon amour . It feels good, yes?’
‘ So good,’ Laura whispered. ‘I will never forget any of it.’
Noah smiled again but glanced up to signal to the waiter that he was ready for the bill. ‘I need to get you back,’ he said. ‘You and Ellie have things you need to do.’
Laura stood up at the same time Noah did and found herself so close to him that she caught her breath. And then he reached out and gently touched her with the tips of his fingers, just inside the open neck of her shirt. Over her heart.
‘Look after her,’ he said very quietly. ‘The real Laura. The one that’s been hiding in here.’ He leaned even closer, brushing her lips with his before they moved to her ear. ‘She knows what she wants. What she needs.’ His breath was tickling her ear. ‘Listen to her…’