A French Darcy

A FRENCH DARCY

KAY DIXON

Semiologic Ltd

Copyright Kay Dixon 2014

First published by Semiologic Ltd at Smashwords

Kay Dixon has asserted the right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved

ISBN: 9781310570186

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph, photocopy, or any other means, electronic or physical, without express written permission of the author.

Any resemblance to anyone living or dead is purely coincidental.

For information, contact: kdixon7244@aol.com

Set in Palatino Linotype

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

ALL AIRPORTS ARE alike, thought Rebecca, but Limoges is definitely different.

It was like the original one-horse town—one plane in, one plane out. As she trod carefully down the Airbus steps into the blasting heat of the concrete runway, she could see a small crowd of other people’s friends and relatives by a wire fence, waving madly, while through the high glass window of the boarding gate an already exhausted flock of passengers waited to be ushered on board for the next flight out.

I wanted rural, I got rural, she told herself. I’m not going to complain.

She followed the other passengers across the concrete, into the terminal and up a flight of steps into the border control hall and baggage carousel room. For passenger convenience, both functions were housed in the same place. As a stony-faced border guard examined her passport, the carousel behind her whirled into action and the first bags came jostling up from below and started their stately procession in a long oval around the hall.

Not long afterwards her two large suitcases popped up and she wrestled them to the floor, gripped their handles and wheeled them towards the exit door, which slid open as she approached. She was already too hot—being used to London weather—and she hoped she wasn’t going to get bothered, too. Hot weather brought out a short temper that never showed itself at any other time, like a rash that came and went with a passing breeze.

Luckily Jan’s was the first face she saw as she entered the Arrivals hall. She rushed towards Rebecca, beaming.

‘There you are!’ Jan said, enveloping Rebecca, her cabin bag and both arms in a massive embrace while she kissed her on both cheeks. ‘And you look ready to die already.’

‘Is it always this warm? I’d have dressed for the beach if I’d known.’

‘Summer, darling, summer. And you’ve hit a good spell. Are all these your bags? Or are you carrying for a troupe of circus folk as well?’

‘You said I could come for a few weeks. That means more than a skimpy cabin bag. A girl’s got to look good on vacation.’

‘You and your Americanisms. Holiday. You’re on holiday.’

Jan was probably the most ‘English’ person Rebecca knew, and she was always correcting Rebecca’s American usage or teasing her about her language. Although Rebecca had spent eight years in London she was still an American girl at heart.

Jan took a step back and held Rebecca by the arms, looking her up and down.

‘Are you getting skinnier and taller? You look good, girl.’

Rebecca felt herself blushing. Though she had a vague idea that she was attractive, she didn’t like admitting it in public and always denied it.

‘It’s stress,’ she said. ‘Losing your job is a great way to slim. I can recommend it.’

Jan’s face fell. ‘Oh my god, I forgot. I’m so sorry. You can tell me all about it on the way home—so long as you don’t hurl yourself from the car with depression.’

‘No chance of that, unless you’re as boring now as you were when we worked together.’

Jan made a face, then grabbed the handles of one of Rebecca’s bags.

‘Let’s go - we’ve got an hour’s journey ahead of us.’

They started across the tiled hall, pushing through recently-arrived travelers and the people who had come to welcome them to France.

Then Jan stopped abruptly as she came face to face with a middle-aged woman who had just entered through the doors.

‘Betsy!’

‘Jan!’

They exchanged the cheek-kiss and fell immediately into gossip. Rebecca smiled but felt awkward and after a moment Jan seemed to realize this. She turned towards Rebecca, handing over a small ticket.

‘I’ll just be a second—I haven’t seen Betsy in ages.’ She pointed through the glass doors across a narrow road towards two ticket machines. ‘Stick that in the slot and get it stamped, would you? I’m sure I’ve been less than twenty minutes so it should be free.’

Seeing this as a test of her traveler’s maturity, Rebecca said, ‘Sure,’ and left them in the hall. As the automatic doors slid back and she stepped outside, she was hit again by a blast of hot air and felt her skin begin to prickle with sweat.

She crossed the road, hauling the second of her two suitcases, the first still being in Jan’s grasp, and stood in front of one of the ticket machines. She put the ticket in the slot and waited—she supposed—for it to be spat back at her.

Nothing happened.

Oh, great—first screw-up of the day.

Squinting at the screen she saw that it was demanding payment, 2.5 Euros—So much for it being free.

She let go of her suitcase and swung her cabin-bag around from her back so that she could unzip it and get at her purse. She had some Euros in change from a trip to Spain a couple of years before. She found the appropriate coins, then looked for the slot to put them in.

There was no slot.

What the hell?

She found herself staring transfixed at the machine as though it would suddenly grow a coin-slot the longer she looked at it.

Then a deep voice from behind her said something in French. She wasn’t tuned in yet so she didn’t catch it all except the word ‘carte’.

She resisted the temptation to turn around and ask for instructions, not even sure that her French was up to it.

Again the voice spoke, again the word ‘carte’ was used.

Again she did nothing but stare at the screen, a sense of embarrassment creeping up her neck and into her face. It didn’t really take cards, did it? For just two and a half Euros? That was crazy …

Before she could take out a credit card, the person behind stepped closer, reached around and put his own card in the slot that she now saw was the only place in which you could pay.

Irritated by the man’s impatience, she said, ‘Well excuse me a minute,’ and turned towards him, ready to let her hostility show.

But as she turned she realized she had to look upwards, too, because he must have been six feet three or four inches tall. And with his arm outstretched to take back his card from the slot, she saw next to her face the broad expanse of his chest, clad in a crisp white shirt and sharp-edged tie under an expensive suit jacket, and that in turn covered by a thin but classy raincoat. As her gaze went upwards she saw the underside of a firm, clear jaw, faintly stubbled, and above that a straight nose and wide-spaced, deep brown eyes. His hair was long enough to touch the top of his ears but wasn’t so long as to be unruly.

She felt her mouth go dry as she smelled the mixture of deodorant and masculine musk rising from his body in the heat.

Her mind—that moments ago had been full of outrage because her competence had been questioned—was now as empty as a cloudless sky. Her parking ticket poked out of the slot and she took it without thinking or even saying thank you.

The gorgeous man glanced down at her again, a small frown knitting together his straight eyebrows. He said something that might as well have been in Swahili as French, then put his own parking ticket into the slot and paid again with his card.

Rebecca stood to one side and hoped that her mouth wasn’t open.

The man said ‘Merci’ without looking at her and walked away, a briefcase in his hand, and she tore her eyes from his back as she sensed Jan coming up behind her.

‘Ah, you’ve met Marc,’ she said. ‘Bit of a cutie, isn’t he?’

Rebecca snapped back to herself.

‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But he didn’t have to be so rude.’

Jan gave her an odd look as she led Rebecca towards her waiting car.

The journey to Jan’s house passed in a moment, it seemed. Jan’s car was the same model Citroen she’d had in the UK, but of course left-hand drive here. She liked it because she understood it. There was a bigger van at home.

As the car rattled down the empty country roads, they caught up quickly on what each had been doing in the year since they’d last met. Jan had left the bank when she’d been passed over yet again for promotion. She’d spent a month figuring out what she wanted to do and eleven months ago had let her house in London so she could afford to rent a place herself deep in rural France. She’d been fortunate enough to get out on her own terms—unlike Rebecca, who’d been let go as a result of the continuing downsizing that the bank had been forced to go through.

‘It’s awful,’ she said. ‘Two hundred people from our section went in two weeks. I thought I’d made it but I was one of the last to be called in to the Office of Death. There were tears and some drunkenness that night, I tell you.’

‘What about Rob?’ Jan asked.

Rob had been Rebecca’s long-standing boyfriend until six months before, when a final spat had separated them irretrievably.

‘He’s still there,’ Rebecca said. ‘I honestly think he’d slit his wrists if he didn’t have that job.’

‘Especially with you two … you know … ’

‘Separated? Blown apart? Whatever you want to call it, I wasn’t that important to him in the end.’

‘Nonsense. He worshipped the ground you hovered above.’

‘He had a strange way of showing it. Working late. Spending a lot of time with his friends. Drinking. I was like an ornament that he liked to have around but didn’t know what to do with.’

‘Well, you are some ornament. You could hardly blame him.’

Rebecca blew out her cheeks. One of the arguments she had with Rob was about his apparent lack of respect for her. He liked her to be around but he didn’t really treat her well. Although she was strong-willed and independent, she would have liked a little pampering from time to time.

‘What I want,’ she said, ‘is something I’m not likely to get.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I’ve been watching period dramas on TV. I like the way the men are reserved and stand-offish—but you know they really want the woman. I like the … gentility, the kindness. Rob was stand-offish all right, but I never knew that he really wanted me.’

‘So you’re looking for a Regency man in rural France? Tough call.’

Rebecca shook her head.

‘Actually I’m not looking for a man at all. Who said I was? I’m looking for a rest, with a good time thrown in occasionally.’

‘So if you met a French Mr Darcy you wouldn’t go weak at the knees?’

‘They don’t exist, Jan, so let’s not even think about it. Where are we, by the way?’

Jan explained that they’d just gone through Le Dorat and were on their way to Saint-Bonheur, the village where she lived. Rebecca liked the lush fields and the flat pastures that stretched towards the horizon, dotted here and there with bored-looking brown cows. The France that she knew was the bank’s branch in Paris and a few days spent in Cannes with Rob a couple of years ago. Her school French was still passable but she hoped to improve in the next few weeks.

She realized that she’d been living inside her own head since she’d arrived in France, which wasn’t very generous towards her friend. She turned sideways in her seat, giving her full attention. Jan hadn’t aged in the last year, but her skin had taken on a healthy glow and she’d let her blonde hair grow so that it reached her shoulders. She had also lost some weight and her jawline was firm and her figure more defined than it used to be. France had obviously been good for her.

‘So never mind my love life,’ Rebecca said. ‘What’s happening with you? Here for twelve months and you’re not shacked up yet with a hunky farmer?’

Jan laughed. ‘Too busy, sweetheart. You’ve no idea how long it takes to get a business up and running, even when it’s one man and his dog, like me.’

‘You’ve probably told me twice, but tell me again.’

Jan sighed and glanced sidelong at her passenger.

‘You have the attention span of a gnat. I buy up linen and other cloth material second-hand, then sew it into cushions, covers, curtains, throws … anything I can think of, actually. The area around here—right over to the coast—was well-known for the quality of its flax, so the old linen is really good quality. Then I sell my stuff at markets and hopefully—in time—from a shop.’

‘Sounds idyllic. And completely unlike anything you did in the bank. All that math.’

‘Maths, you mean. You know I hated the bank. And not in a good way. This is tough—but it’s me. It’s mine.’ She paused and looked at Rebecca again, this time holding the look for a while as if in thought. ‘I hope you don’t think you’re going to laze around for a few weeks. Drinking red wine and eating cheese and bonking any passing Frenchman.’

Rebecca grinned. ‘It did cross my mind. Apart from the last bit, of course. Why?’

‘I’ve got an idea—something you could help me with. Use your marketing expertise now the bank has no call for it. It could be great timing.’

Rebecca was about to argue that she was here to rest, not work, when Jan swung the car through a gap in a high stone wall and her house came into view on the far side of the courtyard. She pulled up in front of a wooden door in what looked like an old farmhouse and Rebecca climbed out of the car, looking around at the barn, the vegetable garden, an old well sited in the middle of the courtyard and, beyond, the fields stretching away into pale purple hills.

‘Oh my god,’ she said. ‘It’s gorgeous.’

Jan was silent as she climbed out of the other side of the car.

‘Yes it is,’ she said. ‘The question is, why is my front door open?’

CHAPTER TWO

JAN SLAMMED HER car door and walked over the crunchy pebbles of the courtyard towards her front entrance. Rebecca stood to one side, unsure what to do. It was late afternoon now but the sun was still beating down relentlessly and she could almost feel the energy draining out of her bones.

Stand your ground, she told herself. Your friend needs you.

By now Jan had reached the open door and pushed it open further, calling out ‘Hello!’ as she did so. She stepped through and from outside, Rebecca immediately heard a man’s voice speaking rapidly in French. She tensed herself and walked through the door, into the cool relief of a shaded kitchen.

On the far side was a large stone fireplace and in front of it, smiling broadly if not a little mischievously was a solid-looking man who she thought was probably in his late thirties. He had a large moustache and twinkling blue eyes, and glancing at Jan, Rebecca saw that she knew him and was relieved if slightly irritated to find him there.

Jan said, ‘Rebecca, this is Jacques, my neighbor’s son. They’re in the farm the other side of the garden. He’s brought some stuff.’

She lifted up a plastic bag full of colorful vegetables. Then she turned to Jacques and explained in confident French who Rebecca was. His eyes lit up even further, if that were possible, and he came around the kitchen table and seized Rebecca by both arms, then kissed her on each cheek.

‘It’s traditional,’ Jan said. ‘You’ll get that from practically everyone. You’ll definitely get it from the men. An American girl with long red hair? They’ll go wild for you.’

She turned back to Jacques and said something stern to him, wagging a finger, and Rebecca assumed she was telling him off for entering her house without invitation. He didn’t seem to take it seriously and gave a shrug, saying something to Rebecca as if trying to bring her on to his side of the argument. Rebecca got the gist of what he was saying but felt it was best not to get involved. So she smiled and raised her own shoulders.

Ten minutes later Jan had managed to hustle him out of the door and turned towards her with a sly smile on her face.

‘Welcome to my world,’ she said. ‘Sexy little bugger, isn’t he? I’ve got plans for him. Now come upstairs so I can show you the workshop.’

As Jan led her through the house and up a flight of stone stairs, Rebecca found her mind wandering. She watched as Jan unfolded linen sheets, pointing out the stitching and the patterns; she listened as she described where she got them from and what she did with them; she paid attention as Jan explained her daily work routine … but she found her thoughts