Scarred Beginnings (9 page)

She followed him out after turning off the heater.

“Did you even look at the other cabins?”

He looked slightly shame faced.

“A brief glimpse. Everything appears to work. You’ve done wonders with it all Ellen. I can’t believe how much you have accomplished since I was last here. Joe’s going to love working here. You know what he’s like for the outdoors and he’s going to love the cabins too. I bet he won’t stay up at the château for long.”

Ellen looked back at the
wooden cabins as she took David’s legs back from him.

“I’m not sure they’ll be big enough
or warm enough to live in permanently. None of them are more than two rooms and a shower room. I didn’t think we’d need anything larger.”

David nodded in agreement as he lifted himself from the wheelchair to the car.

“No, we probably don’t and six cabins are plenty but I can see Joe loving them. He doesn’t really go for fancy. I bet you he’ll change the two single beds for a double and be living down here by spring.”

Ellen stowed his wheelchair in the back of the car before she climbed into the driver’s seat. She raised her eyebrows as David’
s stomach growled audibly.

“Hungry?”

David laughed.

“Ha! When aren’t I hungry? All the exercise has given me an appetite. I feel like I could eat a horse.”

It was Ellen’s turn to laugh.

“Well this is France
, David. If you really feel you could manage one, I’m sure I can arrange a delivery. Fricassee or Godfather style? ” She chuckled as David turned a delicate shade of green. Despite all of Geraldine’s tempting treats in the summer, he still wasn’t really sure about all French cuisine.

He coughed slightly and then turned to her.

“Talking of food, though not horse thanks very much, I think I’ll stick to cow, did you find a chef yet?”

Ellen’s smile faded slightly and she
shook her head.

“They’re like gold dust and paid extremely well. I haven’t had a single response to the advertisement
yet. I’ve increased the salary, offered accomodation and extended the reach of the advert but still nothing. Geraldine has been helping me brush up my skills and has suggested a few things for variety. Her mother is a brilliant cook. She has a cake and pastry stall in the market and she makes everything herself so I’ve become a lot better with pies and general cooking. I’m not bothering making cakes anyway when you can buy the most delicious ones from the market. Geraldine’s mother says that she’ll do us a discount if we buy in bulk and knowing all your chums they are going to be scoffing anything she produces.”

David nodded.

“Yes, I remember Paul rather enjoying her honey cake. He hasn’t stopped going on about it since we went home. He’s asked me to send him a wedge over every month.” He paused for a moment and then asked lightly, “So you know Geraldine’s family well then? You seem to have made good friends with her.”

Ellen rolled her eyes
but spoke patiently.

“Yes, David. She’s become a very good friend
. I really like her. I’m sure all our guests are going to like her too and not just in a professional capacity.”

David
felt his heart thump hard again. He wasn’t going to let any of their single guests near the woman in anything but a professional capacity if he could help it. He knew what army guys could be like and even if he was a little fearful of rejection himself he was sure that a lot of his comrades wouldn’t be. He steeled himself to make his feelings known as soon as possible. If Ellen and Geraldine were already friends then it boded well that he would be friends with her also. He just hoped that it was going to end up far more than just a working relationship.

“Does she know I arrived today? Did you explain that I
was coming over for good?”

Ellen nodded and spoke as if she were talking to a child.

“Yes, David. I explained quite specifically that you were arriving today and that you would be staying on permanently.”

David looked at his sister keenly
, his blue eyes searching her face for any hint of revelation.

“What did she say?
Did she sound pleased?”

Ellen shrugged
as she negotiated a tight bend in the track.

“She didn’t say anything much. She just nodded and told me about her grandmother
’s hips.”

David ground his teeth in frustration and looked out of the window as they
drove back up the winding route to the château. The dense forest suddenly opened out in front of them and they arrived at the back of the huge building. Ellen parked the car, climbed out and then took the wheelchair from the boot. She brought it to David’s side of the car and he quickly manoeuvred into the seat before he wheeled himself up the ramp into the château.

He
sniffed at his own shirt and spoke to her over his shoulder as they reached the hall.

“I’m going to take a quick shower.
The river water is starting to smell. Don’t start dinner yet. As it’s just the two of us I want to help.”

Ellen shook her head
as she headed for the under stair doorway.

“I bought everything down at the market already. I only have to shove it in the oven to heat. All this rubbish about the French being fabulous cooks is a load of old baloney. It’s all really just posh ready meals that just happen to be a lot more delicious than ours back in England. I’ll pop it in the oven and it will be ready for when you come down.”

David nodded, took his legs from Ellen’s hands and made his way to the lift.

“Okay, I’ll be half an hour and then I just need to get some oil in these things to make sure they don’t seize up. I’ll use the chair tonight. It’ll be a good opportunity to see how m
anageable everything is. If I find there are any problems we can take a look and perhaps make alterations.”

He pressed the button for the lift and frowned when it seemed to take an inordinate amount of time to rise to the first floor giving him more time than he wanted to get used to the smell of the river water that rose from his shirt and his skin.

At least Geraldine hadn’t been there to see him sitting in the wheelchair looking like a complete invalid. He thanked the Gods for small mercies as the lift eventually stopped and the doors slid slowly open.

Chapter Nine

David looked around at the sumptuous bathroom suite. He ignored the sunken bath and wheeled himself into the shower area. There was a
moveable seat on a hinge fashioned within the tiles and he slid from his chair onto it. He swung himself round into the cubicle, adjusted the faucet and then sat under the hot spray for a few minutes before he began soaping up.

He rubbed bubbles over his shoulder
s and massaged the joints. He really had slammed into the water on the first run down the wire. He could feel the tension in his tendons and he wished that it could have been Geraldine massaging the tightness from his body.

He could still feel the wrenching in his lower back too. He leaned forwards and rubbed as well as he could. It wasn’t the same; he needed to lie down and let someone with a bit of knowledge
, someone with tender hands and deep green eyes, give him a really good massage. He snorted at himself. He hadn’t realized how much he had assumed. In his mind he had never considered that Geraldine wouldn’t be at the château waiting for him when he arrived. He bit back a grim laugh at his own stupidity. She obviously had a life outside of him and the château. He’d just been being so self centred that he had forgotten it.

He leaned his head back against the tiles and soaked up the heat from the water. The spray was heavenly and he let it beat down onto his chest
, relaxing him as the warmth spread through his body.

He shampooed
his hair and rinsed, turned the shower off and towelled down while still sitting on the seat. He leaned out of the shower and lay another towel on the seat of the chair then manoeuvred himself back into it.

By the time he was dry and dressed again he had been far longer than the half an hour he had told his sister. He sighed deeply. Ever
ything took so much more effort. All the extra drying and attention to his legs took up major time but couldn’t be rushed. If the skin failed over the bottoms of his amputations he would be in serious trouble. It was bad enough having his legs removed to above his knees, any higher and he’d need a different fitting on his prosthetics, one that straddled his hips. He couldn’t face the thought of going through all the practice and physiotherapy again. Every day had been like climbing an extremely high mountain made of very fine sand.

For a moment his mind swept back to the day the boy had blown up in front of his very eyes. The
bomb around the youngster’s waist had probably been set off by remote control giving him no choice whatsoever.
Poor kid!
  It was a vile thing to do to a child. The cowards who had wrapped that belt around the boy’s waist should be rotting in hell. The lad had been terrified, forced into doing it. David would remember the look on the teenager’s face in the seconds before he vaporized as long as he lived. He couldn’t imagine that kind of fear. At least he had known what he was getting into when he signed up for the army and although he hadn’t reckoned on losing any limbs he’d never really regretted a day of it.

He sometimes wondered what he would have done if faced with the same situation as Steve
had been that day. He looked down at what was left of his legs.
Could he have gone back into that burning car and calmly amputated a friend’s legs with nothing more than a hard fist as anaesthetic and a jungle knife to hand?
He shuddered at the thought. It was a braver man than he who had wrapped his own and James’s belts around David’s thighs and then sawn through his knee joints, freeing him from the burning car.

Steve had already gone back to active service and was on another tour of Afghanistan when David had eventually plucked up the courage to Skype him and thank the man for saving his life.
Steve had just laughed and said that Dave would have done the same but he wasn’t sure that he could have done. He didn’t own a bloody great, well-honed jungle knife for a start and he couldn’t imagine being able to cut someone’s legs off with the little blade he normally carried.

He snorted at the thought. S
teve’s lethally sharp knife and steady hands had been what had saved him that day. The guy had been a complete hero, cutting him off at the knees and then hauling him from the car that blew up seconds later, to the helicopter that arrived through a hail of bullets. They were damned lucky no one on the enemy’s side had a rocket launcher or they would have all been done for.

David
hadn’t remembered a thing about it of course. Steve’s huge punch had fortunately knocked him into the middle of the next week. James had given him all the gory details when he arrived looking pained and thin on a pair of crutches a few weeks later. Steve had saved him too but his legs had been crushed, broken in so many places that it had been a toss up whether they should be amputated. James’s father had insisted that they remain in place until James himself could decide on anything so drastic but by the time he had woken up the surgeons had put enough metal in the man to hold up the Eiffel tower.

D
avid took a deep breath and a quick look in the mirror before heading back towards the lift. At least the scars on his face were healing. They still looked bad but most of the redness had gone leaving a patchwork of pale skin. His left eye looked a bit grim being half closed but he’d spoken to a surgeon about that and they thought it might be worth another operation. David wasn’t so sure and was thinking hard before going under the knife again. Anything they did had its own consequences and complications. He was never going to look normal again so he wasn’t sure it was worth the bother of going through the upheaval of it all. His nose was a mess too but he had a decent looking prosthetic for that if he wanted to wear it.

He pulled his hair across his forehead to cover the
web of scars there. He still looked like he’d been through a very coarse cheese grater but unless he was going to begin using a ton of the make up the rehab centre had given him there wasn’t a hell of a lot he could do about it. He was of the opinion that it was best everyone saw him at his worst right from the word go. They would then be under no illusion as to how he actually looked should it become necessary for him to go anywhere ‘unmasked.’

He lifted his hand to press the button to open the lift doors but there was a sudden ‘
bing’ and they slid apart in front of him. A mountain of towels on slim legs began moving towards him and he yelped in surprise.

“Watch out Ellen! I’m
right in front of you.” He wheeled backwards rapidly but then stopped as the towels suddenly teetered forwards. There was no stopping them and they drifted down over his head in a breath of warm air as Ellen squealed in dismay.

“Mon Dieu!
You gave me a surprise. Pardon David. Ellen said that you ‘ad been messing about on that zip wire and you were nearly drowned. She told me that you were in the shower trying to warm up. I didn’t know if you ‘ad enough hot towels and thought to bring you some more warm ones.”

Gera
ldine’s beautiful French accent hit David with the force of a speeding rocket. All the air flew out of his lungs and his chest constricted violently. The towels fell from his face and shoulders and slithered into his lap. This was not how he wanted her to see him. He cursed inwardly at his position several inches below her as he sat in the wheelchair and wished desperately that he’d stayed in the shower for just a few minutes longer. He took a deep breath. There was nothing for it. He had to face her like a man.

He gazed up into the most gorgeous pair of
emerald green eyes he had ever seen and drank in her beauty as his heart staggered back to life in his chest.

“Hello Geraldine,” he
eventually managed to speak while controlling his emotions. “How is your grandmother?”

She
seemed totally oblivious to the fact that he was in a wheelchair and smiled down at him as she fussed to gather the fallen towels.

“She didn’t need my ‘
elp at all. Can you imagine that? Only four days after ‘aving both ‘ips replaced. I was wasting my time. I ‘oped to get back ‘ere in time for lunch but I had a flat tyre. I had to wait for Jules to come and fix it for me. He left some friends early to ‘elp me. He is such a sweetheart.”

David frowned deeply.

Who the hell was Jules?
He bit back that question and spoke airily.

“Oh, that was handy. Did he have to come far?”

Geraldine shook her head as she picked up the last towel from David’s lap and folded it back onto the pile.

“Oh no, only from town.
He was seeing some friends after arriving from Paris. I was stuck out at Belle Isle en Terre but he came ‘ere for the weekend. He couldn’t leave before four though and I had to wait. I haven’t seen him for over a week so after he mended my car we decided to go and have dinner together. The restaurant was lovely and the dinner delicious. We stayed for coffee too so I didn’t arrive ‘ere until late. I would ‘ave loved for you to meet ‘im but ‘e ‘as to go back to Paris tonight. I won’t see ‘im for nearly another week.” She sighed deeply and then smiled at David again.

David’s heart had dropped to his stomach and he suddenly felt sick.

She was seeing someone else!
It had never crossed his mind that she would find anyone else.
My god! It was worse than discovering his legs were gone! 
Bitterness flooded his throat, a green haze clouded his vision. The world seemed to tip on its axis and his head began to spin.

He
forced himself to remain upright in the wheelchair. He took control of himself and backed up further.

“I’m sorry Geraldine. I suddenly don’t feel quite the ticket. Nothing to worry about I’m sure. Just the after effects of travelling. Would you mind telling Ellen that I won’t be down to dinner
after all. I’ll eat whatever she’s cooked tomorrow so it won’t go to waste.” He knew his voice sounded all wrong but he couldn’t do a thing about it. His whole world had suddenly crumbled to dust and he had no idea how he was ever going to put it back together.

He began wheeling himself back to his room but Geraldine called to him.

“Are you sure that there is nothing I can do? I’ll look in on you later if you like, just to check up on you.”

David stopped for a second, his heart pounding in his c
hest as he felt it begin to rip down the middle.

“No, don’t bother. I’ll be fine,” he bit out through gritted teeth. “
Don’t let me hold you up. I’ll see you around sometime.”

Geraldine stared after him. Then she
raised her eyebrows and covered her bewilderment as he disappeared back through his bedroom doorway and closed it behind him with more force than necessary.