‘I don’t know,’ Pippa confided unevenly, and it was the truth.
She had had such an unhappy childhood and she had only to picture some poor child suffering in a similar way for her heart to sink. Of course, she knew that she would never punish a child for poor academic performance. She would not comment on her child’s lack of good looks either. Nor would she ever tell her son or her daughter as her mother had once told her that she was only staying in a bad, destructive relationship for their sake.
‘Talk it over with Andreo…he is…I mean…the baby is his?’ Tabby gave her friend an apologetic look.
Pippa nodded in rueful confirmation.
‘He’s fabulous with kids,’ Tabby informed her eagerly. ‘Jake and Jolie climbed all over him this morning and he was very good-natured about it. You’ve just been taken by surprise, Pippa. You’ll get used to the idea.’
‘I’m sure I will…’ The very concept of accepting that new life was growing inside her shook Pippa deeply. It seemed so extraordinary, almost a miracle, something worthy of celebration rather than fear and anxiety.
‘I adore babies,’ Tabby admitted, bringing her car to a halt outside her huge imposing home and switching off the engine. ‘Christien thought we should wait until Jolie was older but I didn’t want to. I prefer not to have big age gaps between our children.’
Christien and Andreo strode out through the front entrance to greet them.
One glimpse of Andreo’s riveting dark features and Pippa’s heart skipped a beat. Casually clad in an aqua short-sleeved shirt and beige chinos, he looked heart-stoppingly handsome She thought of how she had planned to tell him that she was already booked on a train to the Dordogne and abandoned the idea. Now that she knew about the baby, Andreo would have to be told as well. And perhaps, she thought unhappily, it was time she stopped trying to tell herself that she would be able to walk away from him without pain, for that was an outright lie.
‘You didn’t say you were going out, ma belle,’ Christien said to his wife, lean strong face reproving.
‘You didn’t say you were taking Andreo out for a spin round the estate in the McLaren…or did I miss that announcement?’ his wife fielded cheekily.
Andreo decided to take advantage of their audience and Pippa’s unusually timid aspect, for her bright blue eyes had yet to meet his. ‘Your luggage is already on board the helicopter.’
Involuntarily, Pippa experienced a moment of amusement. He had not been able to kidnap her but he had kidnapped her luggage and her diary. Little more than ten minutes later, their farewells exchanged, they were walking towards the helipad.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Great…this morning was just one of those things,’ she dismissed hurriedly. ‘Where’s this property of yours in the Dordogne?’
‘Near Bourdeilles. The countryside around there reminded me of Tuscany,’ he volunteered. ‘Unspoilt farmland and woods. You’ll like my house. It’s very relaxing.’
‘I’m sure it is, but I’ll be taking a room in Brantome…my mother is buried near there,’ she responded brittly. ‘This is my first trip back to France since I was seventeen and something of a pilgrimage. There was a car crash that summer and my mother and several of my parents’ friends died. If I stayed with you, you wouldn’t find me good company.’
Andreo had read about the accident in the investigation report. Having spoken to his pilot, he watched her struggle to do up her seat belt and intervened to do it for her. Her pale, delicate profile was taut, the tension in her slender body as pronounced as that etched in the unusual clumsiness of her hands.
They landed at a private airfield and continued their journey in the Mercedes four-wheel drive that awaited them. The landscape was becoming familiar to her and she was silent. Haunted by painful memories of that fatal summer, she finally closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.
‘We’re here…’
When Andreo wakened Pippa, she could not recall ever having slept more heavily. She clambered out of the car in as much of a daze as a sleepwalker. Having simply assumed that Andreo was planning to drop her off in the centre of Brantome, she was disconcerted to find herself standing instead outside a small rural church.
‘I remembered the details from the investigation report.’ Andreo reached into the car boot and lifted out a beautiful bouquet of fresh flowers. ‘I stopped off in a village on the way for these but I should have woken you up so that you could choose—’
‘No, they’re lovely.’ Her voice wobbled, for she was touched by his kindness and suddenly very grateful indeed not to be alone.
Andreo curved a strong arm to her spine because even in the warmth of the sunshine she was trembling. It did not take them long to find what they sought in the beautifully kept graveyard. She knelt down and gently laid the flowers on the springy turf and struggled to maintain control over her unsettled emotions.
‘That summer we were staying in a village only a stone’s throw from here. It was a disastrous, horrible holiday,’ she confided, the words tumbling from her in an enervated torrent. ‘Tabby was all tied up with Christien and her ghastly stepmother, Lisa, was flirting like mad with my dad. He loved all the attention. I had a fight with Mum on the day of the accident. I told her we should go home and leave Dad free to flirt with Lisa and Mum was mad with me…and I said I was ashamed of her because she let Dad treat her like dirt!’ A sob was wrenched from Pippa. ‘We made up but I should never have spoken to her like that.’
Andreo rested level dark golden eyes on her distraught face. ‘She was your mother. She would have understood, cara mia.’
But Pip
pa could not stop the tears falling, for she had never come to terms with the terrible costs of that crash or the frightening emotional turmoil into which she had been cast in its aftermath. How could she ever have forgiven herself for wishing even momentarily that it had been her mother and not her father who had survived? For hating her father for insisting that she could not be spared from his bedside to travel to her own mother’s funeral? Andreo just held her close and let her cry.
‘OK…’ Recognising when the storm was over, Andreo assisted her back into the Mercedes.
Pippa felt drained and yet curiously at peace as well. For the first time she noticed that it was a seriously beautiful day, and while Andreo was driving through the town she told him about her infatuation with Pete and subsequent disillusionment. ‘Men always did go for Tabby in a big way,’ she completed with an accepting shrug of her shoulders.