CHAPTER ONE
âAUNT BELLE! You look wonderful, positively glowingâ¦â
âShouldnât that be my line to you?â Isabelle smiled as she hugged her newly married niece, and then stepped back to admire her wedding dress.
âIâm sorry about the mix-up with the invitations,â Joy apologised. âBut Great-Aunt Alice insisted on helping Mum to write them, and you know what sheâs like.â She pulled a wry face. âShe completely forgot that you and Luscious Lucius got divorced simply ages ago, and sent you both joint invitations to his addressâ¦â
ââLuscious Lucius.â You still call him that, do you?â Isabelle teased her niece, smiling a warm look at Joyâs new husband.
âOh, Andy doesnât mind,â Joy laughed back. âAfter all, Luc is his cousin, and besidesââ she gave her new husband a mock stern look ââAndy has always thought that you are gorgeously sexyâfor an older womanâ¦â
As the groom went pink, and tugged at his cravat, Isabelle raised her eyebrows. She was thirty-four, almost thirty-five, to Joyâs twenty-threeânot yet in her dotage, surely?
At Joyâs age she and Luc had already been married for close on two years. They had married far too immatureâa 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, sheâd 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.
âLuc, I have hardly any time to myself,â she had pointed out to him during one of their arguments. âWhen I am at home, I have housework to do, food to buyâthis house doesnât clean itself, you know. Iâm the one who has to worry about paying the mortgage and keeping the cupboards filledâall you have to worry about is your precious studying. Sometimes I think that is all you do think aboutâcare about!â
Belle could still remember how his face had darkened, his eyes clouding as heâd turned away from her, his head seeming to hang a little. At over six foot he was much, much taller than her, but as heâd moved away from her then heâd 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 sheâd 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 Belleâs mind about her feelings, her love for Luc, and she had admired him intensely for his dedication and his idealism.
âI want to marry youâ¦â Luc had told her longingly a few months into their courtship. âI want us to be together for always. But I can barely afford to support myself, never mind a wifeâ¦â
âWe could live on my salary,â 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 sheâd been sure nothing could ever make them part.