Читать книгу The Five-Year Baby Secret - Liz Fielding - Страница 7

FLEUR GILBERT hesitated on the registry office steps. This was not how her wedding day was meant to be.

She should have spent the morning being fussed over by her mother, laughing and crying, remembering all the stupid things she’d ever done. Her friends should have been there, the girls she’d known all her life. She wanted Sarah, a posy of little bridesmaids in frilly frocks.

Bells should be ringing in the village church where her parents had been married, as had countless generations of Gilberts before them.

She should be dressed in white with her father at her side, squeezing her hand to give her courage, to tell her that she was the most beautiful bride ever; proud and happy and hiding a tear as he gave away his little girl to some man who couldn’t possibly be good enough for her.

But she was marrying Matthew Hanover and their wedding could never be like that. She knew Matt was right. This was the only way, but, locked inside their private world, insulated by a love so intense, so perfect that nothing and no one else had seemed to matter, she had overlooked the reality of what today would be like.

‘Not having second thoughts, are you?’ She looked up at the man she loved, for one blissful moment believing that he was seeing this from her point of view. Had, at the last minute, recognised how far from her dreams this day must be.

But he was smiling. Joking to cover his own nerves.

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, of course not.’

His smile faltered. ‘I’d be happier if you sounded a little more confident.’

She shook her head, smiled and leaned against him.

Her first thought on meeting Matthew Hanover face to face, seeing beyond his name, had been that this was it. That he was the one. Nothing had changed that.

‘I’m not having second thoughts about you, Matt. I’m just not looking forward to telling either of our families what we’ve done.’

‘What can they do? A month from now we’ll be working far away from Longbourne.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Whatever happens we’ll be together, Fleur, man and wife.’ His hand closed protectively over hers. ‘Nothing our families do will ever be able to change that.’