The French Gardener(128)

“Miranda, you’re not in love with me. You’re confused.”

“I’m not. I think I fell in love with you the day Storm brought you home.”

He took a moment to find the right words to avoid hurting her. “You know I cannot love you back. Not in the way you want me to,” he said at last.

Miranda felt the sudden rise of tears and tried to blink them away. “You can’t?”

“I love you as a dear friend. But I will always love another. No one can ever take her place in my heart. She has it for always.”

“Who is she?”

“Someone I knew a long time ago. She was married with children. We suffered an impossible love.”

“She stayed with her husband?”

“She wouldn’t leave her children for me. Her love for them was deeper. It was the right thing to do. It was a long time ago. Another life. I was young. Now I am old.” He chuckled at his own foolishness. “I have given her every year of my life since the day we parted almost thirty years ago.”

“You never tried to move on?” Miranda was astonished by such devotion. “I didn’t think people loved like that in this day and age.”

“When you love like that, you cannot move on. No one could compare to her. She spoiled me for anyone else. I had lived a great love affair, nothing less would do.”

Miranda felt she had heard this story somewhere before. Suddenly she grew dizzy with the realization that the secret scrapbook that had so captured her imagination had possibly been meant for him. Had Ava Lightly loved Jean-Paul? “How long did your affair last?” she asked carefully.

“A year,” he replied. Now she was certain. But what did M. F. stand for? She would have to read through the book again to find the answer.

“What was she like?”

“She was unique, eccentric, funny and sweet. A talented gardener. Someone who appreciated nature. She taught me all I know.”



Miranda hurried into the house. The scrapbook was so fat, with so many pages. If Jean-Paul was indeed M. F. then it was no coincidence that he had come to work in her gardens. It was no coincidence that he had resurrected the gardens the way Ava Lightly had planted them. He had known every inch of the estate because he had worked in it with her. He had painted the picture of the cottage garden. He had come back to find Ava, but found Miranda and her family instead. That’s why he had looked so sad. Ava hadn’t waited for him as she had promised. Then why had she left the scrapbook in the cottage? Why hadn’t she simply sent it to him in France?

She flicked through the pages searching for descriptions of M. F. Now she had made the connection it all began to fit into place like a blurred vision moving into focus. At last she found the sentence that gave him away:

Oh, Mr. Frenchman, you took a large slice of my heart with you when you left. The wound will never heal but bleed and bleed until there is nothing left of me. My children are my consolation, without them my heart would be devoid of love.





XXXV



The comforting silence of midnight. I always knew heaven was up there beyond the darkness.




That night Miranda refrained from writing her own novel and settled into bed with a cup of soup. She wanted to finish the scrapbook. She wanted to know what happened in the end. She turned the pages until she reached the place where she had left off and impatiently resumed.

Jean-Paul sat in his sitting room contemplating the empty château with a sinking heart. He couldn’t stay at Hartington forever. He had done what he had set out to do: revive the gardens as Ava would have wanted. He had no idea where she was and a part of him was too afraid to find out. She had left without a word, that was all there was to it. Almost three decades had passed without a murmur of reassurance from her. She had moved on with her life and he had returned to France to take over the vineyard as he had had no choice but to do.

He had gone home to lick his wounds and throw himself into his new life. His mother had dedicated herself to introducing him to all the respectable, beautiful French women she could find, but none impressed him. His heart was numb and there was no one who could rouse it. Antoinette longed for grandchildren, but Jean-Paul was firm in his determination to remain true to Ava, even though Ava was unable to remain true to him. His mother begged and implored him to marry for convenience, in order to leave the château to a child of his blood, but he refused. If he married it would be a betrayal. Ava remained married because she had no choice. He did and he chose not to. He did not remain celibate. He was a man with needs, but they meant nothing; soulless encounters that came and went like shadows in the night.

It was his mother’s death that propelled him to return to Hartington. He had looked after her as a devoted son, but once free he did what he had waited twenty-six years to do: find Ava and bring her back. But life is not a storybook with a happy ending. If he expected her to be waiting for him in the cottage, he was disappointed. What good would it do to search the country for her? That chapter was closed.