Читать книгу They're Wed Again - Пенни Джордан, PENNY JORDAN - Страница 4

CHAPTER ONE

‘AUNT BELLE! You look wonderful, positively glowing…’

‘Shouldn’t that be my line to you?’ Isabelle smiled as she hugged her newly married niece, and then stepped back to admire her wedding dress.

‘I’m sorry about the mix-up with the invitations,’ Joy apologised. ‘But Great-Aunt Alice insisted on helping Mum to write them, and you know what she’s like.’ She pulled a wry face. ‘She completely forgot that you and Luscious Lucius got divorced simply ages ago, and sent you both joint invitations to his address…’

‘“Luscious Lucius.” You still call him that, do you?’ Isabelle teased her niece, smiling a warm look at Joy’s new husband.

‘Oh, Andy doesn’t mind,’ Joy laughed back. ‘After all, Luc is his cousin, and besides—’ she gave her new husband a mock stern look ‘—Andy has always thought that you are gorgeously sexy—for an older woman…’

As the groom went pink, and tugged at his cravat, Isabelle raised her eyebrows. She was thirty-four, almost thirty-five, to Joy’s twenty-three—not yet in her dotage, surely?

At Joy’s age she and Luc had already been married for close on two years. They had married far too immature—a girl whom marriage had hot-housed into a woman. And while Luc might have loved the girl he had married, he had certainly ceased to love the woman that girl had become.

As she had told Luc at the time, she’d thought it grossly unfair that he had refused to acknowledge and appreciate the stresses that her career had placed on her, the anxiety that being the main breadwinner in their household had caused her. And then, on top of that anxiety, to have Luc complain that she was never at home, that she valued her job more than she did him, had been just too much for her to endure, and had ultimately caused the series of destructive rows which had eventually led to their divorce.

‘Luc, I have hardly any time to myself,’ she had pointed out to him during one of their arguments. ‘When I am at home, I have housework to do, food to buy—this house doesn’t clean itself, you know. I’m the one who has to worry about paying the mortgage and keeping the cupboards filled—all you have to worry about is your precious studying. Sometimes I think that is all you do think about—care about!’

Belle could still remember how his face had darkened, his eyes clouding as he’d turned away from her, his head seeming to hang a little. At over six foot he was much, much taller than her, but as he’d moved away from her then he’d looked oddly shrunken and defeated, humiliated and humbled somehow, and along with her anger she had felt a sense of anguish and pain, a sharp flash of panic which she’d quickly pushed to one side.

If she had thought about the subject at all before they had married, she had assumed naively that their marriage would be an idyll, a continuation of the hours, and days, and the very occasional stolen weekends they had managed to snatch since their first meeting earlier in the year when she, newly graduated and working for the high-powered city firm of financial analysts where she had been lucky to get a job, had been introduced by a friend to the brilliant young mathematician who had turned his back on the profitable world of commerce and finance and who, idealistically, had opted instead to devote himself to further study and ultimately a career as a university lecturer.

It had been a private joke between them in those early days that she was the one with the large salary and the company car, whilst he was the one still eking out a meagre living on a grant. But there had been no doubt in Belle’s mind about her feelings, her love for Luc, and she had admired him intensely for his dedication and his idealism.

‘I want to marry you…’ Luc had told her longingly a few months into their courtship. ‘I want us to be together for always. But I can barely afford to support myself, never mind a wife…’

‘We could live on my salary,’ Belle had told him sunnily, far too deeply in love with him to care how they financed their lives, just as long as they shared them.

If anyone had warned her then that her job, her earnings, which had made it possible for them to be together, would one day be the cause of them breaking up, she would have laughed in immediate denial. Her love for Luc and his love for her had been so strong, so meant by fate, that she’d been sure nothing could ever make them part.

* * *

She might have been in the vanguard of a movement that had women taking on a much more prominent role in financing their own and their partner’s lives, but striking a blow for equality had been the last thing on Belle’s mind when, a few years into their marriage, she had persuaded Luc that it made more sense for them to buy a house now that they were married than for her to go on sharing his cramped rented accommodation. They could afford the mortgage after all. She had just been promoted and had received a good rise.

‘You mean you can afford it,’ Luc had corrected her gently, but Belle hadn’t really heard him. She had been far too busy excitedly studying the house details she had brought home with her, dreaming already of how she would decorate their new home.

And in the end Luc had gone along with her wishes, and they had bought the pretty village property they had both fallen for in the small, and in those days undeveloped village within reasonably easy commuting distance of London and close to Cambridge, where Luc eventually hoped to get a university post.

‘I won’t be able to use my bike to get to college any more,’ Luc had protested when they had first gone to see the house.

‘You can travel by train, like I do,’ Belle had pointed out. ‘We can travel to the station together in my car.’

‘What about the days when you leave at six and don’t get back until nine or ten?’ Luc had reminded her, but Belle had been so desperately in love with the house, so sure it was perfect for them, that eventually he had given way—as she had known he would.

They had celebrated their first night of owning the house in the big double bedroom in front of the fireplace, lying on their duvet on the bare floorboards.

Luc, always romantic, had insisted on lighting a fire in the hearth, and the room had smelled of woodsmoke and candles. There had been a problem getting the electricity turned on, Belle remembered, and she had gone to try to sort it out. In her absence Luc had been out and bought candles—hundreds of them, or so it had seemed. They had lit her way up the stairs where Luc had carefully and formally ushered her into their bedroom.

In their soft glow Luc’s face had taken on a sternness, a maturity which had both startled her a little and thrilled her. She’d become so used to his gentle, easygoing acceptance of whatever plans she made, that to see him looking so purposeful and determined had touched a little feminine nerve inside her that had made her ache with longing for him.

‘This house is our home,’ Luc told her as he started to undress her. ‘Our home, Belle. We’ll work on it, shape it, share in it together… I know it’s your salary that’s made it possible for us to buy it, but it takes more than money to make a home, and I want our home to be something we’ve both worked for…’

There was a warning there for her to heed, but she neglected to do so, shivering a little in the cool evening air, despite the warmth of Luc’s smoky fire, snuggling up close to him as he removed the last of their clothing, opening her mouth eagerly to the hungry passion of his as he started to kiss her.

The physical attraction between them had been immediate and intense right from the start; Luc, three, nearly four years her senior, had technically at least been the more experienced of the two of them, but, as he had freely and adoringly admitted to Belle, she had brought to their relationship and to him a sexual intensity and an emotional openness that made him feel that everything he had experienced before, everything he had thought he knew, had been merely a pale shadow of their shared reality.

Now, with their kisses growing deeper and deeper, and the warm, silk-rough glide of Luc’s hands over her eager body, Belle forgot how cold it was, how cheerless the empty, unfurnished room; she forgot, too, the hassle she had had over their unconnected electricity supply, the irritation she had experienced with Luc because he had been so engrossed in his studies that he had forgotten to notify the authorities in time to have the supply reconnected before they moved in. What did that kind of electricity matter when the variety they created between them was so intense that it could fuel a whole universe?

The duvet was soft and inviting, even if at the back of Belle’s mind lay the knowledge that it would have to be washed before it could go anywhere near the new bed she intended to persuade Luc to agree to her buying; the glow from the candles was doing wonderful things to the soft curves of her body and Luc’s, and the glow in Luc’s eyes was making her burn so hotly for him that her tremulous, almost panting breath was threatening to blow those candles closest to them out.

‘Luc…’

Wantonly she reached for him, pressing her open mouth to each hollow and curve of his candlelight-shadowed body, feeling him tense and shudder in wild reaction to her sensuous caresses.

Her tongue-tip teased the dark arrowing of hair that spread with delicious invitation down the length of his torso, a rich, fertile valley all excitingly male, yielding a harvest that Belle already knew full well more than lived up to its promise. There was an idealistic intensity about Luc that he brought to everything he did, but most especially to his love for her.

She was his first real true love. He had once told her in the early days of their relationship that she would always be his one true love.

Belle loved him just as intensely, but there was a practicality about her nature which made her sometimes feel just a little impatient of Luc’s idealism and his total lack of interest in anything material.

Of course, like him, she agreed that no amount of money or material possessions could make up for a lack of love; that what they had, what they shared, was worth more than a king’s ransom, a hundred kings’ ransoms, but… But just think how wonderful it would have been tonight if they had been making love in their new bed, the handsome king-sized one she had seen in the small exclusive handmade furniture shop just outside Cambridge, a bed with a wonderful hand-carved headboard. They could have their initials carved into it, and some special symbol to represent their love…

And then, as Luc’s tenderly roving hands touched those most secret, sacred places of her body, she forgot all about the new bed and the mess the dusty floor would be making of their duvet, as a small moan of blissful pleasure escaped her lips.

She remembered about it the following day, though, as she complained to Luc about the dust-marks on the duvet and the candle wax that had fallen on it.

‘It’s a duvet—a piece of fabric. It will wash,’ Luc had defended.

‘Oh, yes, it will wash,’ Belle agreed, tightlipped. ‘But not here and not by me. For one thing we don’t possess a washing machine, and for another, even if we did, we don’t have any electricity supply to run it.’

‘Look, I’m sorry about that. I’ve already explained, Professor Lind wanted to ask my opinion about…’

Professor Lind was something of an idol to Luc, who desperately wanted to emulate the older man’s academic achievements. Belle had met him several times but sensed that, like Luc, he was rather contemptuous of her much more materially based world. She also rather suspected that the professor felt Luc had made a mistake in marrying her, and when she had taxed Luc with this he had looked a little embarrassed and finally admitted that the professor had counselled him against getting married.

‘He doesn’t think any man should get married until he’s over thirty,’ he had told Belle ruefully, adding huskily, ‘But then he’s obviously never met a woman like you…never been in love…’

Discussing the duvet reminded Belle of the bed she had seen but, predictably, Luc objected the moment she had told him where she had seen it.

‘It will be far too expensive for us,’ he told her, his voice suddenly unusually curt and hard.

‘Oh, Luc…I want us to have something special, passed on not from either of our parents, something that’s ours…’ she told him softly, moving towards him, intending to snuggle into his arms.

But to her chagrin he turned away from her, his face unexpectedly grim as he told her sharply, ‘I thought we already had something special.’

‘The house…’ Belle agreed. ‘Oh, yes, but I want it to be furnished as specially as it deserves, and—’

‘No, Belle, not the house,’ Luc told her distantly. ‘I was referring to our love itself…’

* * *

They made up the quarrel on that occasion, but the issue of the new bed remained unresolved—until Belle thought she had found an ideal way of circumventing it.

Christmas was less than six weeks away, and the bed she coveted was tantalisingly on display in the small Cambridgeshire store where she had first viewed it.

One night, after they had made love and then were lying sensually entwined in the cramped space of the old three-quarter bed Luc’s parents had given them, Belle tentatively raised the subject of a new bed again.

‘I really loved that one I told you about,’ she told Luc softly. ‘And it would look wonderful here in this house…this room…’

Their house was old, eighteenth century and cottagey, and it cried out for sturdy, hand-made proper furniture, but of course such furniture was expensive.

‘It would make a wonderful Christmas present to ourselves,’ she wheedled softly in Luc’s ear. He had proved increasingly stubborn of late about her contribution to their household, refusing to allow her to spend her unexpectedly high bonus on furniture, telling her that it was her money—not theirs.

‘Don’t you understand…? Can’t you see…? I’ve seen the look on the faces of your friends, your family, when they come round here. They know there’s no way we could afford to live somewhere like this, to buy a house like this, whilst I’m still virtually having to live on a grant…’

‘You earn extra from the private tuition you give,’ Belle protested.

Luc gave a harsh laugh.

‘Extra! A pittance…peanuts compared to what you’re earning. Look, I know what you’re saying about the bed, and I do understand… But Belle, please, just this once, please indulge me. There’s something… Trust me, Belle.’

‘Well, if you insist,’ Belle agreed, but secretly she was already planning to surprise him on Christmas Eve with the delivery of the new bed and the headboard. She would tell him that it was a present to both of them—which it was, of course. And he would understand. She knew he would.

When she went in to order the bed a week later, she soothed her conscience by telling herself that it was just silly male pride that was making Luc so difficult over it, and that he would soon forget all about his veto once he had seen how beautifully it suited the house.

At work the run-up to Christmas was hectic, a frenetic mixture of deadlines and glittery, no-expenses-spared client parties.

In Cambridge Luc’s college was empty of students for the Christmas break, enabling Luc to take full advantage of the college library and its other facilities for his own studies. But in order to help out with the mortgage he had taken on more and more private tuition, leaving him less and less time for his own work.

‘Pure maths at Luc’s level requires a devotion and commitment which is almost on a par with that once required by the priesthood,’ Luc’s mentor told Belle severely when she gave in to Luc’s quiet insistence and accompanied him to Professor Lind’s pre-Christmas drinks party—a sedate affair, held in the chilly monastic starkness of his college rooms, the only food and drink on offer his housekeeper’s home-made and deeply unpleasant mince pies and a sherry which made Belle grit her teeth.

‘You know I only drink champagne,’ she told Luc plaintively. After the luxury of vintage champagne and the delicious nibbles provided by her wealthy clients, Mrs Oakes’ mince pies and the professor’s sherry, like the high-minded academic conversation, were not to Belle’s taste at all.

She did notice, though, how one of the professor’s other students, a quiet, demure young woman with unexpectedly critically cool blue eyes, reacted in a way that was a good ten degrees less frosty when it was Luc who was addressing her and not Belle herself.

Not that Belle felt remotely threatened by or jealous of Harriet’s obvious attraction to her husband. Why should she? Luc loved her, and would love her even more when they were cosily tucked up together in their lovely new bed with its wonderful headboard, she promised herself, and she happily contemplated writing a cheque to pay for it.

It had taken bribery and cajolery on a heroic scale to get her boss to agree that she could skip the firm’s Christmas Eve get-together so that she could be at home with Luc when the bed was delivered. She had hardly seen anything of him over the previous month, or so it seemed, and she was looking forward to spending her few precious days off with him.

They were going to his parents for dinner on Christmas Day, and hers on Boxing Day, but they would have at least one night together in their new bed.

When she woke up on Christmas Eve morning Belle was so excited that she couldn’t eat her breakfast. The house they had bought, their home, was everything that she wanted. It had the potential to make a wonderful home, and there was even the prospect of converting the loft above the garage into a self-contained bedsit, should the day arrive when they needed the services of a nanny.

Certainly, they both wanted children, but they had agreed that they were too young for them as yet. Luc wanted to wait until he had finished his studies, and from the tone of his conversation Belle had guessed that he would want her to give up her own job once they did have a family. She was not so sure that was something she would want to do, but there was plenty of time for her to talk Luc round to her point of view.

It was a pity that the bed had been so expensive, otherwise she might have been able to treat them to a visit to the January sales…

They desperately needed a decent sofa, and Belle rather liked the idea of them having two instead of the traditional one and a couple of armchairs. The cottage had a good-sized sitting room-cum-family room, as well as its large kitchen-cum-dining room, and on the other side of the entrance hall there was, much to her delight, a very respectably sized and pretty drawing room which ran the full length of the house. Plenty of scope for her home-making talents there. And the fact that the previous owners had been elderly meant that none of the attractive original features had been removed.

‘You’re looking very pleased with yourself,’ Luc commented as he bent to kiss the top of her head and reach past her for the coffee pot.

‘Mmm…’ she agreed lazily, arching her neck and inviting him without a word to nuzzle the soft warm skin there.

‘What have you got me for Christmas? I hope it’s something very special,’ she teased him, knowing full well that the only thing she really wanted from him, the gift she valued above everything else, was the one she already had: the gift of his love for her, his commitment to her.

‘Well, I might just…’ he began, and then stopped theatrically, his eyes sparkling with love and happiness as he teased her back. ‘No guessing, though. You’re just going to have to wait until tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow.’ Belle pouted. ‘But I thought we’d… I’m going to give you my present today. Tomorrow we’re going to your parents…’

‘Not until lunchtime,’ Luc reminded her.

‘It’s going to be a very busy time,’ Belle sighed. ‘First dinner with your family, and then we’re going to my parents on Boxing Day.’

The two families, who had not known one another before Luc and Belle had met, had become firm friends, and they lived close enough to make visiting one another quite easy, often sharing their homes with each other’s families at special times like Christmas. On Christmas Day night Belle’s parents, her elder sister and her husband and their two young children were joining Luc’s parents and other members of his family. As a country vicar, Luc’s father lived in a vicarage more than large enough to house everyone overnight, even if his small stipend meant that he could never afford to comfortably heat the vast Victorian church property.

Belle liked Luc’s family, even if she sometimes found them a trifle unworldly compared with the people she mixed with in her working life. Certainly their values and beliefs were very much in tune with those of her own parents, and she particularly liked Luc’s uncle and his wife, and their thirteen-year-old son who shared so much of a family resemblance with Luc that Belle had not been surprised when Luc’s mother had told her that Andy looked just the same as Luc had done at his age.

Luc’s father had studied theology at Cambridge, and there was a tradition in the family of its male members being Cambridge men.

Because they were spending so much time away from home over Christmas, Luc and Belle had agreed that it would be a waste to have a real Christmas tree, and one of Belle’s clients had presented her with an artistic and very expensive Christmas arrangement from one of London’s top florists, made up of bare twigs and glass baubles, which had caused Luc to raise his eyebrows a little.

‘Don’t you like it?’ Belle had asked him.

‘It’s…it’s very artistic,’ Luc had replied cautiously, and then had added a rueful admission, ‘At home we always have a huge tree loaded with masses of stuff. Not very arty, I suppose, but it always seems…right. Vicars’ wives always have to recycle everything, and Ma used to encourage me to make my own decorations when I was small… Not very aesthetic, I know, but for me the real spirit of Christmas is the thought behind the gift, not its material value.’

He was right, of course, and Belle knew it, shared his sentiments, but somehow he had made her feel that her values were glossy and worthless and even, in some belittling way, that she was glossy and worthless too.

Today, though, was Christmas Eve, and very soon their own special Christmas present was going to arrive. And every Christmas from now on, when they woke up in their special bed, when they made love in it, they would remember this, their first Christmas in their new home. Belle couldn’t wait to see the bed with its special headboard in situ, to polish and admire it.

It was almost lunchtime when the van finally arrived in the narrow country lane outside their house.

‘What’s this?’ Luc frowned as the driver got out. ‘They must be looking for somewhere else. We haven’t ordered anything…’

‘Yes, we have,’ Belle corrected him excitedly, craning her neck so that she could see out of the window as the men went to the rear of the van. ‘Well, I have. It’s our Christmas present…well, mine to you…to us…to the house. It’s the bed, Luc, the one I told you about…with the wonderful headboard,’ she hurried on.

‘The one we agreed we wouldn’t have because it was too expensive?’ Luc asked her quietly.

But Belle was oblivious to the cold undertone to his voice, too busy watching what was going on outside the window to be aware of the hurt look in his eyes as she agreed flippantly, ‘That’s the one.’

‘You went ahead and bought it without telling me, despite what we’d agreed…’

Now Belle did look at him, alerted to his feelings by the ominous tone of his voice.

‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ she told him. ‘It’s a present…a surprise. Luc…what is it? Where are you going?’ she demanded frantically as he turned his back on her and started to walk towards the back door.

‘Luc, come back,’ she pleaded, but it was too late, and she couldn’t run after him because the delivery men were already coming up the path with their new bed.

Luc would come round when he saw how wonderful their bedroom looked with the bed and its headboard proudly adorning it, Belle decided two hours later, when the men had gone and she was standing in the doorway of their bedroom admiring her new acquisition. They would need to get some different bedding now, she acknowledged, frowning a little as she studied the pretty floral set they had been given as a wedding present. Somehow it just didn’t do the new bed justice.

Luc had sanded and polished the old floorboards shortly after they had moved in, and they certainly set the bed off perfectly. It was, she knew, the kind of bed that demanded heavy Irish linen sheets scented with lavender, old-fashioned bed linen, all the traditional touches.

Luc would love that, waking up smelling of lavender… Luc…where was he? He had been gone a long time. She hoped he’d…

It was almost half an hour later when another van pulled up outside the house, a much shabbier, older one than the one which had delivered their new bed and its accoutrements, and, to her astonishment, she saw Luc climbing out of the driver’s door.

‘Luc.’ She went to the front door and opened it, calling out anxiously to him. ‘Where have you been?’

‘To get your Christmas present,’ he told her grimly.

Her Christmas present. In that old van… What on earth…? Warily she walked to the front gate and opened it, staring into the back of the van as Luc unlocked and raised the shutter door.

‘What is it? What have you got in there?’ she asked him uncertainly.

‘I’ve already told you. Your Christmas present.’

As the last of the fading daylight filled the van and she saw inside it Belle’s heart gave a shocked bound. There, in pieces, inside the van, was an old-fashioned bedframe, an obviously newly bought mattress and, tucked along one side of it, covered in a piece of old sheeting was the unmistakable shape of a wooden headboard.

‘Luc…what have you done—’ she began, and then stopped as he turned round and she saw his face.

She had never seen him look so bleak…so distant…so alien from her and to her.

‘Very much the same as you’ve done. I’ve bought us a Christmas present. A new bed. For us…for you…’ he told her in a voice that was icily polite and icily distant.

‘That isn’t new…the frame’s old…’ Belle began defensively. ‘It looks…’

‘It looks what?’ Luc challenged her. ‘It looks as though your colleagues…and your clients…would laugh at it, turn their materialistic designer noses up at it. Well, for your information, this bed belonged to my grandparents. They slept in it…cherished it…cared for it and valued it, just as my parents have done.’

‘It’s… It’s…’ Belle just didn’t know what to say, and then, as Luc climbed into the van, the sheeting slipped off the headboard and the colour left her face completely. Unlike the frame itself, the headboard was quite plainly new. She could tell that because of the pretty carving on it, entwining their initials and the date of their marriage.

‘Luc… You bought…’ she began, but Luc was already shaking his head.

‘I bought nothing apart from the mattress,’ he told her grimly. ‘The wood, good solid English oak, belonged to the father of one of my pupils. He gave it to me in exchange for his son’s tuition. I did the carving myself. It isn’t as fancy nor, I dare say, as desirable as the one you’ve bought, but…’

‘You carved it…’ Belle stopped him. ‘You carved it…’

‘Yes.’ Luc told her curtly, pushing the cloth back over it. ‘But of course I realise that it won’t come anywhere near to matching the one you’ve bought. The one I couldn’t afford to buy you. It doesn’t matter what I do or what I say, what I give you…how much I love you. The fact remains that you’re the one who’s supporting us both, financing us both…’

‘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.