They're Wed Again. PENNY JORDAN

      

      Penny Jordan has been writing for more than twenty years and has an outstanding record: over one hundred and thirty novels published, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour & Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play which hit The Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Penny Jordan was born in Preston, Lancashire, and now lives in rural Cheshire.

      One of Mills & Boon’s best-loved writers, Penny writes for the Modern™ series and contributes to M&B™. Look out for the continuation of her Arabian Nights series in Modern in June and the return of the Creightons in M&B in May and June!

      They’re Wed Again

      by

      Penny Jordan

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      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