Page 11 of The Magic of Provence (A Year in France #3)

When tension was enough to make it feel like you could cut the air with the proverbial knife, Fi had long ago learned that the best place to be was outside.

Preferably with horses.

Or, perhaps even better, she had now decided, with donkeys.

Having a reason to spend quite a lot of time with them was a bonus, which was why Fi was carrying her leather tool bag and farrier’s apron as she headed for the olive grove in La Maisonette’s garden.

If she had gone to simply sit near Marguerite and Coquelicot – as she’d done when she’d first arrived here – she would undoubtedly have felt a lot better for bathing in the peaceful vibes the donkeys exuded, but she didn’t have the cushion of exhaustion as a buffer against disturbing thoughts or emotions today.

It would be too easy to go over everything that had happened in the last couple of days and get sucked deeper into an evolving family drama.

Fi couldn’t afford to do that. It already felt like she was walking through a minefield of potential triggers for flashbacks she desperately needed to avoid.

Had she jumped from a frying pan into the fire by coming to France?

Was she, in some way, responsible for what was happening?

She’d stayed away from her family for so long to avoid causing unhappiness for herself and for them, but within days of them all being together there was a rift developing that was threatening to tear the Gilchrist women apart.

‘Hey, hinny…’ Fi left her tools near the trough and went to Marguerite first, offering her hand to be whiffled and then stepping close to stroke her neck and rub the base of her ears. Coquelicot waited patiently for her turn.

‘I might give you both a brush before I do your toenails,’ Fi told them. ‘Would you like that?’

Marguerite’s eyes were half-closed. If they both stayed this relaxed she might not even need to tie them up at the fence to trim their hooves.

The rubber hairy pony brush she’d found in the back of her car was ideal for shaggy coats, and the donkeys clearly enjoyed the effort she put into the grooming.

They helped occasionally by shaking out some loose hair and small clouds of dust. Fi stepped back after a more vigorous shake, rubbed her nose and then sneezed.

The sound had the effect of jolting her out of the pleasant distraction of her task and Fi found herself glancing over her shoulder.

Towards the far side of the olive grove and the silent, solid shape of Julien and Ellie’s house.

She knew her mother was in there, having moved from Laura’s house yesterday after a family meeting that had ended in tears.

She knew plans were being made for Julien to take Jeannie to visit the village where the painting had been found because he was due to take his grandmother, who lived not far away, to a hospital appointment.

Jeannie could go with them on the return trip and Julien could act as interpreter for her when they went to Saint-Martin-Vésubie on their way home.

Ellie wasn’t going to go. She said there wasn’t room for her and Bonnie in the car, which was true but Fi suspected she was trying not to antagonise Laura any further by supporting their mother’s quest.

Echoes of things that had been said were fighting for room in her head but Fi tried harder to push them away.

The donkeys had been perfectly happy for her to handle their legs and lift their feet while being groomed, so she fastened her leather farrier’s apron around her waist and tightened the straps around her legs to hold the padded chaps in place.

She put her hoof knife and nippers in the pockets and picked up a rasp.

Marguerite obligingly lifted her foot when Fi ran her hand down her leg.

For some time she was able to focus completely on cleaning out and then carefully trimming both the frog and sole of what felt like a toy hoof after the width and weight of the horses’ feet she was more used to.

It wasn’t the first time she’d looked after a donkey’s feet, however, and she remembered what Gavin had taught her about making sure the interior shape was concave enough to keep any pressure on the wall of the hoof and not the sole.

She used her nippers to clip off the excess horn and then the rasp to smooth any rough edges.

By the time she’d finished Marguerite’s feet and stretched her back before starting Coquelicot’s, the level of focus needed was slipping and snatches of what had become a confrontation yesterday were sneaking into the gaps.

Ellie had started the defence of Jeannie’s desire to investigate the connection she was so sure of.

‘ Why are you so against this, Laura? Was he really so awful? I remember the way he’d tuck me under his arm and read me things from the newspaper. ’

‘ He was never a monster .’ Jeannie had been adamant.

Ellie wanted to agree with her. ‘ I missed him so much .’

Fi had missed him too. So much. Was that why she’d been irresistibly drawn to a man easily old enough to be her father? A man she’d desperately wanted to notice her.

To love her.

‘ He was never a violent man ,’ Jeannie had added.

‘ So why couldn’t he control his temper, then?

’ Laura had been struggling to keep her voice calm.

‘ He couldn’t control a lot of things, could he?

I remember the day he wet his pants and I cried and cried.

I knew nothing was going to be the same ever again.

People pointed at him when he was too drunk to walk a straight line or speak a coherent sentence . ’

‘ There was something wrong .’ Jeannie’s statement was more like a plea. ‘ But he wouldn’t listen to me and go to the doctor and then it was too late to help him because he’d disappeared… ’

‘ Aye… because he’d lost his job and then he tried to kill someone in the pub .’

‘ That might have been an accident .’ It had been Fi’s only contribution to the tense discussion.

The thought had come from the same place as that of feeling a bond with an unknown artist who lived in a stable.

That people could behave in an unacceptable manner, like hitting someone over the head with a shovel, because of something they had no control over, so it wasn’t fair to blame them, was it?

‘ So why did he run away? ’ Laura had shaken her head sharply. ‘ He was as ashamed as we were. You and Ellie were too young to know how bad it was, but it broke Mam’s heart and that’s why we never, ever talked about it. The only way to make it go away was to pretend it never happened .’

Fi had been too stunned to say anything more.

It was so clear suddenly, but she’d never put two and two together.

She’d been brought up to believe that the solution to dealing with something so traumatic was to pretend it had never happened?

No wonder she hadn’t gone home to her family when she’d most needed them.

And now Laura wanted to reinstate the unspoken pact?

How many times did history have to repeat itself before it was blindingly obvious that something wasn’t going to work?

Her mother had lived with unanswered questions about why her life had fallen apart.

Why she’d lost the father of her children and the man she must have loved so much because, even now, she was defending him.

Protecting him, even? Surely she deserved whatever peace she might find by searching for those answers?

She let the thought go with a sigh and turned to Coquelicot. ‘Let’s have a wee look at your tootsies, Poppy.’

Half an hour later, she straightened again and rubbed at the ache in the small of her back, but she took a moment to admire the neat shape of both the donkeys’ pedicures.

‘ Bravo! ’

Fi’s head snapped around at the sound of the male voice but, surprisingly, what she felt was curiosity rather than fear.

Because she’d recognised the voice?

‘ Christophe! What on earth are you doing here?’

‘I was with Julien and I saw you from the window so I came to say bonjour .’ He waved his hand in the direction of the house and Fi followed the movement. She could see Heidi sitting on the other side of the fence, watching Christophe’s every movement.

She looked back to find him smiling. There were crinkles at the corners of his eyes but Fi could feel the focus of his gaze right down to her bones.

Oh, help… The last time she’d seen him, she’d been confident she looked perfectly presentable.

The best she could look, in fact. The pendulum had swung a long way to the other end of that spectrum right now, however.

She’d tied her wild hair up with a scrunchy to keep it out of her face while she was working, and she knew it would look like an exploding firework.

She was wearing dungarees and a workman’s apron that could only be described as masculine and she was streaked with dirt and dust and probably smelled like a donkey.

Not that it seemed to make any difference for Christophe.

He walked closer, bypassed Fi and went to pet Marguerite.

He clearly knew exactly the right place to scratch her because she flattened her ears and let her eyes drift half shut with the pleasure of it.

Then Christophe ran his hand down the donkey’s neck, over her shoulder and then right down her leg. She obligingly lifted her foot.

Christophe made an approving sound and sent another smile in Fi’s direction. ‘You are very good at what you do. I am impressed.’

Fi had to drop her gaze so that he couldn’t detect the level of pleasure the compliment had bestowed.

‘It’s been a while since I worked with donkeys but perhaps it’s easier.

Simpler, anyway, when you don’t have to put any shoes on.

’ Fi busied herself with taking off her apron and putting her tools back in the bag.

She pulled the scrunchy from her hair and the curls fell around her face and neck to give her the comfort of feeling slightly less exposed.

‘ En fait …’ Christophe cleared his throat. ‘I wasn’t being completely truthful.’

Fi’s eyebrows rose sharply. Was he actually un impressed with her farrier skills?

‘I did not come to simply say bonjour ,’ he said. ‘I came to ask for your help.’

Fi stared at him. From the corner of her eye she could see that Coquelicot had moved closer. It was automatic to seek the reassurance of reaching to touch the warmth of another living creature but she didn’t break the eye contact with Christophe.

His gaze was steady.

Warm.

But he wasn’t smiling now. He was looking very serious.

‘I told you about my friend Didier, who helps me with the forest donkeys.’

Fi nodded. ‘You did. He’s a farrier, like me.’

‘Like you,’ Christophe agreed. ‘But he’s had an accident. Yesterday, he was putting shoes on a horse who was not impressed with his work. He kicked Didier on his knee and broke his leg. Rather badly. He needs surgery and he will not be able to work for some time.’

‘Oh, no… I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘We are supposed to be working with the donkeys in La Sine this week. It’s a big forest, very close to here.

I can look after any problems with their health but I cannot do their hooves, so…

’ His lips curved into a meltingly persuasive smile.

‘I am hoping you might like to help me? Just for a day or two?’

Oh, my… what woman could resist a plea that came with a smile like that?

‘It’s a very beautiful forest,’ Christophe added. His smile held a hint of mischief now. ‘Do you like trees, Fiona?’

The way he said her name was unlike anything she’d ever heard before, as if one syllable had been absorbed by the others but somehow elongated at the same time. It sounded… Italian, that’s what it was.

Musical. Dramatic, even. She could imagine him throwing his hands into the air as he said it.

It was different.

She liked that.

She liked that he was impressed with her work too. It made her visible in a way that wasn’t the least bit threatening because it was about something that wasn’t personal. Or physical.

Okay… there was a warning bell sounding in the back of her mind that this feeling of being visible, being noticed, could be the first phase of developing a crush.

But recognising that was a good thing. She could control it.

She could walk away from it if she needed to.

Or she could even get closer to it, if she was brave enough.

Going close enough to a fire to warm yourself was a very different thing to going close enough to get burned.

‘Yes,’ she said, slowly. ‘I do like trees. But…’

But could she go into a forest with a man who was virtually a stranger. Alone? Without the safety net of having a single member of her family nearby?

Away from the current tension that was giving her that emotional minefield to step through so carefully and into the peaceful environment of an ancient forest?

Into a place where she didn’t have to get dragged back into the past or take sides or watch all shades of distress wash over the faces of the people she loved?

Fi wanted to support her family. She would support whatever decisions were made and, if necessary, she would do whatever she could to make sure any rift was healed.

But she wasn’t sure if she was quite strong enough to take on that role just yet.

She was still recovering from her own recent trauma. She needed…

…a little time out? Just for a day or two?

This was a new beginning. Maybe it was time to make herself a little more important?

Fi took a deep breath. She shifted her gaze and saw that Heidi hadn’t moved a muscle. She was still sitting in exactly the same spot. On guard.

‘Does Heidi go into the forest with you?’

‘ Bien s?r ,’ Christophe said. ‘She is the love of my life. She goes everywhere with me.’

A dog, a forest, a man who was easy to talk to, who thought she was good at what she did and could say her name as if it was something beautiful but would never, in a million years, be attracted to her. And there were donkeys.

What more could a woman ask for?

She let her breath out and it almost sounded like a sigh of relief. She was deliberately stepping out of the minefield, albeit temporarily.

‘Aye… I’d be happy to come and help you.’