“I’ve done a lot more for the right picture.” He flashed her another of his smiles.
“I remember. You nearly drowned in Wales.”
She watched as he searched among the bushes for a rock or a stone. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, was any picture worth dying for?”
He pulled at a rock. “When you see a potential picture, that’s all you see. It’s like a selective blindness.” The rock was half-buried in packed earth and wouldn’t budge. “Only later you realise you’ve trespassed into the neighbours garden or stood in the middle of a busy street with traffic coming at you both ways,” he said, brushing hair away from his forehead with the back of his hand.
“You don’t look like the reckless type.”
“Looks can be deceiving.”
If she could wish for anything, it would be to carry his smile in her heart forever.
At last, he managed to dislodge the rock and heave it to the side of the well. He rubbed his dusty hands on his trousers before offering her a hand to help her climb up on it. “See if you can reach the goddess now.”
She rose on her toes and managed to wrap her arms around the statue’s shoulders.
He stepped back and studied the tableau, eyes flicking between her and the statue.
“So, what other insane things have you done?” she asked him for something to say.
He came back and made her climb down so he could move the rock to the left for a different angle. This went on for several minutes with her climbing on and off until he had her in the perfect position.
He never answered her question about insane thing he’d done. Just as well because his answer would not be what she hoped: that asking a woman like Nicole to marry him had been insane.
A more likely answer would be that spending the day with Pierre, taking pictures of her, laughing with her, talking about a million things, touching her hair, all of it was an insane thing to do for a man about to marry another woman. A man who was supposedly in love with another woman.
“Okay, you’re on.”
He moved all the way back and lifted the camera to his eye.
She wrapped her arms around the goddess, wishing this were a real living woman who could hug her back. She missed Millie and Laura; both would have hugged her so tight and made her feel better. Instead, she hugged the stone and whispered on a wavering breath, “Let Lord M come home safe. Let me stay on La Canette. I love it here. I don’t want to leave.”
“I stand by what I said this morning,” he said after snapping what must have been sixteen hundred photos. “You are so much part of this landscape. Are you sure you’re not a reincarnation of some ancient La Canette goddess?”
He can’t have read her face; he couldn’t see it. Unless he could read the backs of heads and loose, untidy green hair.
“I think Lord M was right; you are Persephone.” He was still watching her, camera forgotten.
“I think it’s you who loves this landscape.” The word ‘love’ hung in the air. She really shouldn’t have said that.
“I do love it.” His face wore that same faraway expression. “But when you talk about it, you make me love it even more. You make me see it differently. You add magic to my vision.”
“Me?”
“It’s in the way you move and talk and make a place come alive.”
“I don’t think so.” Her voice wavered.
He nodded. “Even at home…” His face wore a strange expression, and he didn’t seem to notice that he’d called Du Montfort Hall, home. “As soon as you come into the kitchen, it becomes a more cheerful place. You have this way of just making everyone want to smile. Even yesterday…” He trailed off as if changing his mind. He opened his mouth again, then closed it and shook his head and turned away.
“We have all the images we need; I think. You can relax and climb down now.”
She didn’t.
Instead, she leaned closer to the goddess, pressing her cheek to the rough stone. “And please,” she whispered, “please either make him mine or give me the strength to resist him. If he is going to marry her, then keep him away from me.”
“What happens after the wishing?” he asked when at last she did climb off the rock. He was packing his lenses and camera into his bag again.
