They're Wed Again

She was proud of the way she was guiding her clients to combine sound investment and financial management with an awareness of the moral issues involved in making profits, an awareness of other people’s poverty, and, increasingly now, prospective clients were approaching her because they had heard of her humanitarian beliefs and record.

Three days after Luc had last rung her, he finally telephoned.

‘I don’t know if you’ve received a copy of the wedding present list or not yet,’ he began, ‘but it occurred to me that if we were to club together we could potentially remove one of the larger items from the list.’

‘We could, but—’

‘Why don’t we discuss it over dinner?’ Luc interrupted her.

‘I…’ Belle opened her mouth to refuse, but discovered instead that her voice seemed to have deserted her.

‘I’ve got to come down to London to see a colleague the day after tomorrow. If you’re free that evening I could call for you…’

‘I… Yes. Very well,’ Belle agreed weakly.

* * *

Luc took her to San Lorenzo which, in itself, surprised her. Not so much because of its reputation as one of the best and most expensive restaurants in London—after all, as a Fellow he was now hardly the struggling young academic he had been when she had first met him—but because she hadn’t really thought that such a high-profile society place would be to his taste. What surprised her even more, though, was the discovery that the staff knew him well enough to have remembered his name.

Sensing her surprise, Luc waited until the wine waiter had gone before explaining easily to her, ‘One of my students used to insist on bringing me here for her tutorials.’

‘Really?’ Belle gave him an icy little smile. ‘I though it was the tutor who dictated where a tutorial would take place, not the student.’

‘Mmm…but this student was rather special.’

‘Oh.’ Belle’s voice had grown even icier.

‘Mmm…’ Luc smiled reminiscently, apparently unaware of the frigid atmosphere Belle was generating. ‘She was a second or third cousin to the owners of the restaurant, and she was working here to help finance her way through university as a mature student—’

‘She was a mature student?’ Belle interrupted him sharply.

‘Well, yes…’

‘How mature?’ Belle demanded instantly.

‘Oh…pretty mature… Around fifty or so…’

Immediately Belle started to relax, unaware of the look of wry comprehension mixed with tenderness that Luc was giving her. She had always been very passionate and, whilst not possessive, certainly inclined to be very protective of their relationship. He, on the other hand, as he openly had to admit, had been rather immaturely jealous. He re-angled his chair so that the darkly handsome young waiter who was currently studying her with burning admiration was blocked out of her view.

It was late when they finally left the restaurant, and it was Luc who commented wryly as he hailed a taxi, ‘We still haven’t decided about the wedding present.’

‘No,’ Belle agreed.

They had been too busy talking about themselves to discuss anything so mundane as the rival attractions of a washing machine or a dishwasher, the two items they had narrowed their choice down to.

‘I must have made you so angry sometimes,’ Belle had commented at one point during the evening, when they had been discussing the breakdown of their marriage.

‘Not angry, no,’ Luc had countered quickly, shaking his head and reaching across the table to take hold of her hand in both of his.

‘Hurt, rejected, and even at times demeaned, yes. But angry, no! It hurt me that I couldn’t afford to provide you with the material things you wanted, that I wasn’t the one paying the mortgage, that I couldn’t go out and order that bed you wanted…’

‘You were a proud man, and I should have realised how much what I was doing was hurting you,’ Belle had groaned remorsefully, but once again Luc had shaken his head.

‘No. If I was proud then it was a false pride. My pride should have been in you, in what you were doing for both of us, in what we were achieving by working together.

‘I made a lot of mistakes, Belle, but so far as I am concerned the biggest mistake of all was the one I made when I let you go.’

‘I made mistakes as well,’ was all Belle had been able to whisper in response.

Now, on the way home in the taxi, she was mentally examining what he had said. Uncertainly she darted a glance at him. His face was turned towards the window, so that she could only see his profile. To say he regretted their divorce was one thing; to say that he still loved her was something else again.

‘Have you got time to come in for a cup of coffee? ’ Belle asked him uncertainly as the taxi drew up outside her home. ‘We ought to make a decision about the present’

‘Yes, of course,’ Luc agreed immediately.

The flowers he had given her when he’d picked her up were in water in the kitchen. As she waited for the coffee Belle breathed in their scent, touching the petals with gentle fingers.

Luc was standing in the sitting room removing his jacket as she walked in. He glanced at his watch and then cursed.

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ Belle asked him.

‘I’ve just realised that it’s half past twelve, and not half past eleven as I thought,’ he told her. ‘That means I’ve missed the last train. Never mind. I’ll book myself into a hotel.’

‘You can’t do that,’ Belle protested. ‘Not at this time of night. I…you could stay here…the sofa converts into a bed and…’ Uncertainly her voice trailed away. Staying here with her was probably the last thing Luc wanted to do.

But just as she was wishing that she had not spoken so impetuously, she heard him saying warmly, ‘Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind, I would be very grateful.

‘This reminds me of the first time you stayed over with me,’ Luc told her five minutes later, when they were drinking their coffee.

‘You mean the night you’d taken me to a college ball and your car wouldn’t start so we had to spend the night together in your rooms?’

‘Mmm…that’s the one,’ Luc agreed reminiscently.

As she looked hurriedly away from him Belle hoped he hadn’t noticed the way she had to wrap her hands tightly around her coffee mug to stop her fingers from trembling.

That had been the first night they had actually been lovers. She had known how she felt about Luc then, of course, and she had been pretty sure that he shared her feelings, but that night had been the first night she had allowed herself to give way to those feelings.

She could still vividly remember how nervous she had felt when she had walked with Luc to his rooms. There had been no question of him deliberately contriving to have his car break down—they had discovered later that the part in question had been slowly wearing away for some time—but there had been something about the way he had held her earlier when they had been dancing, the way he had kissed her, the passion with which he had whispered to her that she was the most beautiful girl at the ball, the most beautiful girl in the whole world, that had warned her how potentially dangerous it would be for them to be alone together.

He hadn’t touched her at first, explaining almost formally that since there was only one bed he would sleep on the floor, but then she had started to shiver, as much with nerves as cold, and he had come over to her, slipping off his dinner jacket to place it on her shoulders. The moment she had felt the warmth of his fingertips against her skin she had been lost.

The sexual tension between them even in the short time they had known one another had become increasingly hard to ignore each time they touched, kissed…breathed… It had been there, that night, and as her body shuddered helplessly and visibly at his touch, Belle had known that the moment had come to succumb to it.

As she’d turned towards him his jacket had slid disregarded to the floor. She’d raised her face towards him, her eyes misting

with emotional tears as he’d reached out and cupped it with hands that trembled just as much as her body had done. He had started to kiss her, softly, gently, and then, abruptly, he had stopped, withdrawing his mouth from hers.

Deprived of its warm, sensuous contact, Belle had opened her eyes to stare with uncertain questioning into his.

‘I can’t…’ he’d begun hoarsely, and then stopped. ‘I don’t…’

He had closed his eyes and leaned away from her, the moonlight picking out the arch of his throat and the tensing of his jaw. His eyes had closed in some kind of male anguish. Opening his eyes, he’d looked directly at her and told her thickly, ‘Belle, if I touch you now…kiss you now…it won’t…I can’t…it won’t be gentle,’ he had finally told her rawly. ‘I want you too much to be able to…’

Instinctively Belle had known what he meant, what he was trying to tell her. Boldly she’d stepped towards him, and away from her virginal girlhood.

‘Show me,’ she’d commanded him softly. And then she had simply stood waiting, watching him.