‘Luc, what does that matter?’ Belle protested. ‘And besides, that’s only temporary. When you get your fellowship…
‘Oh, Luc, I love you so very much, and I love the headboard as well,’ Belle told him tenderly—and she meant it.
* * *
Luc’s gift to her, his bed, was installed in their bedroom whilst the one she had bought was relegated to one of the guest bedrooms. They made up their quarrel, and the ones that followed it, but with each one the fabric of their marriage grew a little thinner, until eventually the day came when neither of them could be bothered to repair the worn patches any longer.
The crux came one weekend, when Belle arrived home early from an overseas conference to find that Luc, who had attended a dinner party in Cambridge the night before, had stayed over in Harriet Parish’s rooms.
Luc protested in vain that it was all completely innocent, that he had simply had too much to drink to want to risk driving, that he loved her and that Harriet was simply a fellow student…a friend…
In the row that followed they said so many ugly and hurtful things to one another that Belle knew there was no going back. Not this time…
‘You’re so damn materialistic, you wouldn’t know real value if it hit you on the head,’ Luc accused her at one point during their argument. ‘Money, money—that’s all that matters to you.’
‘Perhaps it would matter more to you if you were the one who earned it,’ Belle retaliated. ‘It’s all very well for you, sitting up there above the rest of us in your ivory tower, Luc, but you seem to forget that without my earnings there would be no ivory tower for you to live in…’
And so it went on, the pair of them tearing at the precious fabric of their vulnerable marriage, rending it, ripping it, destroying it, in a frenzy of bitterness and petty resentments.
Belle moved out of the house that weekend and she never moved back.
Six weeks later she filed for divorce, refusing to even discuss with Luc any possibility of them getting back together. Ironically, the only thing she took from their marital home was the bed and headboard—not the one she had bought, that she had left behind, and for all she knew it was still there in the house with Luc, who had bought out her share of their marital home.
No, the headboard, the one that still graced the head of the bed in her small London home, was the one that Luc had made for her. Not that she had intended that to happen. The men she had sent to collect the other headboard and bed from the spare room had made a mistake, and somehow or other she had never bothered to correct it.
CHAPTER TWO
‘I MUST admit that Mum was stunned when you said that Luc had come round to deliver the invitation to you himself,’ Joy, the happy bride, was saying now. ‘I mean, we realised soon enough about the mistake. What on earth did he say? You must have been so surprised to open the door to see him there…’
‘Mmm…’
‘Luc, I was just saying to Belle that she must have been really surprised to open her front door and find you there,’ Joy repeated breezily as her new husband’s cousin suddenly materialised at Belle’s side, apparently oblivious to the interest the fact that the two of them were standing amicably together was causing amongst their fellow wedding guests.
Luc’s dark river-green eyes met Belle’s honey-gold ones, exchanging a silent message.
‘What on earth did you say to her? I mean, you hadn’t spoken to one another for years…’
‘Joy…’ Andy cautioned his new bride, explaining to Belle and Luc, ‘I think it must be the champagne on top of an empty stomach. She told me when we walked back down the aisle that she’d had three glasses whilst she was getting ready this morning…’
‘No, four…’ Joy corrected him, and then giggled.
‘Darling, the photographer wants you,’ her mother announced, coming up to the newly married pair and urging them to follow her.
‘Oh, no more photographs,’ Joy was complaining as her mother led her away.
‘Saved by the flashbulb,’ Luc commented humorously to Belle after they had gone.
‘Mmm… You could hardly have told her what really happened, could you?’
‘What? That you took one look at me, went white and practically fainted into my arms,’ Luc commented.
‘I’d been in bed with flu. I hadn’t eaten anything for three days…’ Belle defended herself. ‘Besides,’ she added slyly, ‘I don’t think you’d have wanted me telling Andy that you carried me upstairs to bed and started to undress me…’
‘I did no such thing…’
‘Yes, you did. My robe—’
‘Your robe came off when I trod on the belt you had left undone as I picked you up. And I had to take you upstairs. All you have downstairs is your garage and an entry hall… And besides, if you will go completely naked under your robe… It was a freezing cold February day. I just wanted to get you somewhere warm. You frightened me to death, passing out like that. Mind you, I wasn’t surprised. You were far too thin and frail…’
‘I told you, I’d been ill. Which is why—’
‘Goodness me, you two look very cosy. How long have you been married now? It must be over ten years, and still no children! Well, they say, don’t they, that if you’ve none to make you laugh then you’ve none to make you cry?’
Great-Aunt Alice…
Belle gave Luc a speaking look above the elderly lady’s head. There was no point in trying to explain her error, especially not when….
‘Aunt Alice…there you are…’ Carol, Belle’s sister and the mother of the bride, came hurrying back, looking harassed as she put her arm around their elderly relative.
‘Darling, I’m so sorry about all of this. You’ll never guess what she’s done now,’ she hissed in a whisper to Belle, but before she could elucidate, David, her husband, was hurrying up to her telling her that the caterers wanted to speak urgently to her.
‘Shame,’ Luc commented, giving Belle a small smile as
he watched his ex-sister-in-law’s departing back. ‘Now we’ll never know just what it is that Great-Aunt Alice has done…’
‘You mean what else she’s done,’ Belle corrected him drolly, returning his smile with a look in her eyes that caused a passing waitress, who was not aware of their divorced status, to reflect rather ruefully on the enviable ability of some couples to keep a passionate intensity in their relationship which was now only an increasingly blurred memory in her own. Mind you, she had to acknowledge fairly, it would be a very odd woman indeed who did not feel a twinge of sensual female excitement at the sight of a man as attractive as Luc. Her own husband, kind man though he was, was not exactly charismatic.
‘Mmm… I must say I was rather taken aback when I received the wedding invitation addressed to both of us.’
‘It was very thoughtful of you to take the trouble to deliver it by hand,’ Belle responded mock demurely, her honey-gold eyes dancing with laughter—and something else, something deeper and warmer that made Luc’s breath catch slightly in his throat. Belle had always had that special something about her, a warmth and energy, a vibrancy. He had noticed it about her the very first time they had met
‘I was in London anyway,’ Luc reminded her, attempting to make light of the incident, but, like hers, his eyes glowed hot with remembered emotion, giving him away.
‘It’s rather warm in here. What do you say to us taking the opportunity to get a little fresh air before we go in for the wedding breakfast?’ Luc suggested.
‘People will talk,’ Belle pointed out to him. ‘They’ll wonder what’s going on…’
‘Mmm…’ Luc agreed, placing his hand on the back of her waist and gently guiding her towards the exit to the hotel’s gardens.
‘I’m glad to see that you’ve put some weight back on.’
‘I’d been ill,’ Belle reminded him.