The Bridesmaid's Secret Read online

  There was a small sound behind her. She looked over her shoulder and went completely blank.

  It was Gil de la Court.

  CHAPTER SIX

  AFTER Bella had got over the simple shock, she found she was indignant. She had told him she did not want to see him tonight.

  But Lynda was smiling at him, jumping to her feet and making it perfectly plain that he was the most welcome guest in the world.

  ‘Cuff-links,’ she said. ‘I put them out as soon as Kosta called.’ She waved a hand at her vacated seat. ‘Keep Bella amused while I get them.’

  ‘That’s going to be an uphill struggle,’ murmured Gil.

  But he took Lynda’s seat and smiled blandly up at Bella, still perched on the arm.

  He must just have arrived. The cold of the March night seemed to curl off him like frost. The sleeve of his jacket touched Bella’s bare arm. It was like an electric shot to the heart. She flinched.

  And said the first thing that came into her head.

  ‘You’re freezing! Did you walk here?’

  ‘No. It just took some time to make anyone hear the bell. In the end I walked round to the kitchen.’

  She was deeply suspicious. ‘Why did you come?’

  His smile became positively smug. ‘Kosta broke his cuff-links for tomorrow. None of the rest of us wears them. So he called Tony to see if he could borrow. I’m just here collecting.’

  Bella looked at him with the deepest suspicion. He leaned towards her and spoke so softly that she had to bend to catch the words.

  ‘If I’d come to see you, I’d be standing outside your window, serenading right now.’

  She felt rather breathless.

  She did not let it show. Instead she looked down her nose at him and said in her most sarcastic tones, ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘I did think about it,’ he said coolly. ‘But I decided you’d probably want to get the wedding out of the way first.’

  Bella’s eyes narrowed. ‘First?’

  ‘Before we become lovers,’ he explained.

  She nearly fell off her perch.

  He steadied her kindly. ‘Careful.’

  He did not remove his arm. It was like a steel bar.

  She sent a quick look round the room. Tony’s brandy was working its usual magic. There was an air of slightly dishevelled relaxation. Buttons were unbuttoned. One of Annis’s godmothers had kicked off her shoes and had tucked her stockinged feet under her on the sofa as she explained her job to Annis’s first headmaster.

  Everyone was talking hard. No one was looking at Bella trapped in her corner. At least, not yet. They would all look pretty soon if she made a fuss about the hand at her waist.

  She said for his ears only, ‘We are not going to be lovers.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’ He sounded genuinely interested, damn him.

  Bella set her teeth. ‘I get a vote, don’t I?’

  That seemed to shock him. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well, then,’ she said triumphantly. ‘I vote no.’

  Gil smiled. She was so close, she could see the way the skin round his eyes crinkled with amusement.

  ‘But I haven’t started my campaign yet.’

  She stood up sharply. Briefly his arm tightened, almost as a reflex. Then his arm fell and he leaned back among Lynda’s stylish cushions and looked at her. Bella looked back, very steadily.

  ‘No campaign,’ she said.

  For a moment he did not say anything. He was smiling but she had an uncomfortable feeling that it was pure surface. Underneath, he was not smiling at all.

  As if to confirm her suspicion he said, quite gently, ‘I’m afraid that’s my decision.’

  She was startled and it showed.

  His smile grew. Real amusement this time. ‘They usually do what you tell them, do they? The boys you play with?’

  Bella did not know what to say.

  ‘I can see a grown-up man will be a new experience.’

  He did not touch her. He did not need to. She just stared at him, shaken.

  Lynda came back with a small box in her hands. Gil lunged to his feet as she held it out to him.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said pocketing it. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Mrs Carew. Bella.’ And with a nod he was gone.

  ‘Such a kind man,’ said Lynda, sighing.

  Bella pointedly refrained from agreeing. She went back to Annis in a considerable temper.

  But Annis was asleep. There was no one to explode to. Bella rescued the supper tray from its precarious position on the edge of the bed, restored a falling pillow and tiptoed out.

  In the morning, of course, there was no time to talk about Gil or anything else except the wedding.

  ‘I thought if we got married in the country, this wouldn’t happen,’ wailed Annis.

  She was sitting in the old nursery, her hair in a sophisticated twist. The Victorian lace veil and gold filigree coronet had been anchored into place by a hairdresser who had just departed for his next bride. Under the bridal finery she wore faded jeans and a woollen shirt with paint stains on it. She looked pale.

  ‘It always happens,’ Bella assured her. She was a veteran bridesmaid. ‘Two hundred guests or two thousand, it makes no difference. All it takes is one panicking bride, one fairy-tale dress and a woman about to become a mother-in-law.’

  Annis shook her head. ‘Lynda’s been wonderful.’

  ‘Sure, she has,’ said Bella cordially. ‘And she’s driven you crazy. Goes with the territory.’

  Annis gave a little choked laugh. ‘Cynic.’ But she looked more cheerful.

  ‘Have a coffee and think about the honeymoon,’ Bella advised.

  But at the mention of coffee, Annis recoiled.

  Bella was surprised. ‘Up to you but I’m having some. We aren’t allowed it once we climb into our finery.’

  But still Annis shook her head.

  Bella shrugged. ‘OK. I’ll check on Mother and be back.’

  Predictably Lynda detained her in the kitchen. Two local cooks were setting out the tools of their trade while Lynda circled them like a nervous sheepdog.

  ‘Sit, Mother,’ said Bella at last, exasperated. ‘They know what they’re doing. Go and count buttonholes or something.’

  She went back to Annis, muttering.

  ‘When I get married, I’m not going to let her anywhere near the wedding. I couldn’t take it.’ She paused. ‘Annis? Brain Box, are you there?’

  A horrible sound came from the bathroom. Bella was taken aback.

  ‘Annie?’

  A wan face appeared round the bathroom door. The coronet was tilted drunkenly and the Victorian lace was knotted like a rag over her shoulder.

  ‘Oh, boy, you do nerves in a big way,’ said Bella, with sympathy.

  She unscrewed a bottle of mineral water and poured a glass for Annis.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Annis palely. She sat down rather hard.

  Bella took charge.

  ‘OK. Countdown has started. I reckon you’ve got seventy-five minutes to sleep and still make it to the altar.’

  Annis looked as if she was going to cry. ‘But my hair—’

  ‘I saw how he did it. I’ll put your hair back up,’ said Bella confidently. ‘Just lose the crown for now, right? Go and lie down. I’ll keep everyone at bay.’

  She did. Eventually she also got herself into the glimmering blue robe that Annis had specified. Her hair was too sophisticated, she thought. She brushed it into a softer line and, with a slight grimace, fastened a spray of stephanotis above her ear with a diamond slide Tony had given her for her eighteenth birthday.

  ‘There you are,’ she told her reflection. ‘Pretty and innocent. Stay that way.’

  The trouble was, she didn’t feel pretty and innocent. Gil de la Court had unsettled her. She wished she had crushed him last night. Failure to do so had left her oddly restless. She was resigned to having unwelcome emotions stirred up by this wedding. But she had never expected to walk down the aisl
e behind Annis seething with the frustrated desire to poke Gil de la Court in the eye.

  ‘Pretty and innocent and sweet,’ she said between her teeth. ‘Got that? Sweet!’

  She retrieved their bouquets, extracted Lynda from the kitchen again and went back upstairs to wake Annis. In the next forty minutes she flew upstairs and down, out into the courtyard to check on the waiting cars, into the conservatory to report the bride’s progress to her father.

  Finally Annis was buttoned into her creamy silks and Bella gave her headdress a last proprietorial tweak.

  ‘Ready?’

  Annis’s eyes were very bright. ‘Ready.’

  Bella hugged her. ‘You look wonderful.’

  ‘Happiness is a great cosmetic,’ said Annis, hugging her back. ‘I’m so lucky.’

  As the only bridesmaid, Bella got to ride to the church in solitary state. She took the opportunity to blow her nose hard. She did not want to risk dissolving into sentimental tears in the church.

  She need not have worried. She was kept much too busy. They had not rehearsed the wedding and she was constantly on the alert, straightening Annis’s skirt at one point, receiving her flowers at another. Eventually she was juggling two orders of service, two bouquets and a small girl who broke out of one of the guest pews to join the procession. She had no time to get weepy.

  But there was a moment—

  They had signed the register and turned to go down the aisle together. Annis looked up at her new husband. That was all. She just looked.

  Of course, Kosta was one of the few men that tall Annis had ever had to tilt her head to look up to. Today, he looked stunningly handsome, with his midnight-black hair glinting in the rainbow light from the stained-glass windows. There was something gypsyish about him. Something not quite civilised. But then Bella saw the way the strange slanted eyes looked at his wife, as if she was treasure he could not quite believe. She saw what drew and held conservative Annis, thought Bella, shaken.

  Kosta took Annis’s hand and the organ burst into a blaze of gleeful chords. But for a moment it was as if the flowerfilled church, the delighted friends and the pretty bridesmaid did not exist. They smiled straight into each other’s eyes. It was an exchange of perfect understanding.

  Bella felt a cold hand close round her heart. She had been pretending bravely but there was no pretence left now. She had never felt so lonely in her life. Kosta looked so proud.

  Bella swallowed hard and followed them down the aisle with a smile that felt as if it had been welded in place.

  From that moment on she flung herself into being the life and soul of the party.

  She laughed when the March wind at the church door whipped her hair about her face, tipping the stephanotis over her eye at a drunken angle. She laughed harder when she slipped on the rain-washed flagstones and she had to grab the best man’s arm to right herself. When a particularly vicious gust lifted Annis’s veil into a balloon with a life of its own, it was Bella who wrestled with it, clowning for the cameras.

  Oh, yes, she gave a brilliant performance. No one would have guessed that inside she was cold; and shivering; and frighteningly lonely. Flirting outrageously with the delighted best man, she looked in her element. A party girl and revelling in it.

  ‘She gets better and better looking, doesn’t she?’ she overheard one of the godmothers say back at the house, as the champagne circulated before lunch. ‘I never thought Annis would be the first to get married.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Bella likes variety,’ said someone else tolerantly.

  ‘Should think so, gorgeous girl like that,’ said the godmother’s husband with enthusiasm. ‘Plenty of time for her to settle down when she knows what she wants.’

  Ouch, thought Bella.

  She felt someone watching her and looked up. It was Gil de la Court. For a moment she was so relieved that it was not someone who had known her since she was a child, that she smiled brilliantly at him. He blinked.

  Instantly she regretted it. She had told him not to mount a campaign in pursuit of her, after all. It was crazy to feel that he was her only ally in this gathering of friends and relations.

  She turned away

  Careful, she told herself. Careful!

  She was standing next to a man she vaguely recognised. She smiled. Registered interest, eagerness. She smiled harder and, batting her eyelashes at him, leaned forward to listen with completely spurious attention. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Gil navigating his way round the godmothers towards her.

  It was not a direct path. Lots of people wanted to talk to him. Their expressions varied between respect and downright wariness. He was courteous to all of them. But he did not stay long enough for more than a couple of sentences with any of them. And he did not deviate from his course.

  ‘One thing at a time.’ She remembered him saying that. Was she the one thing he was concentrating on today?

  Longer than today, she reminded herself, thinking of the furnace of flowers he had sent her. Thinking, though she wished she could stop herself, of that hot kiss in the icy morning street. Much longer than today.

  She turned her back so that, even out of the corner of her eye, she could no longer see him.

  Even so, she knew when he reached her. He did not touch her. But she could feel him. What was more, she was almost certain he knew it.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, his voice unconvincingly solemn. ‘Am I allowed to say you make a beautiful bridesmaid?’

  He sounded heavily gallant and about ninety. For a moment, Bella was almost disappointed. But then she saw how she could turn it to her advantage. She could pretend that she did not know he was teasing her. She could take the laboured compliment at face value. She could use her party manners to play the game. And then maybe, just maybe, she would forget that surge of simple lust which he had so inexplicably un-corked when she was not looking.

  So she turned and gave him her blandest smile. ‘Thank you. How sweet of you.’

  Her companion did not relish the interruption. Gil saw it. He held out his hand, smiling.

  ‘Gilbert de la Court. Friend of the bride. And the bride’s sister.’

  How did he manage to make it sound as if owned her, thought Bella, fuming. Or did he? Was it just her own over-sensitivity to him at work again?

  Her companion was impressed. His resistance to the interruption evaporated.

  ‘De la Court. Of course. Saw you on the news last night. I hear that your launch has set a new record.’

  ‘The markets have been kind to Watifdotcom,’ said Gil.

  Bella looked at him narrowly. It sounded like a piece of learned dialogue. As soon as they got rid of her admirer, she accused him of it.

  ‘Of course,’ he said coolly.

  ‘You have a scriptwriter for your party conversation?’ She was outraged.

  His eyes narrowed. ‘Why not?’

  ‘How much of what you said to me came from your resident joke writer?’

  ‘Ah,’ he said enlightened. ‘You like your men spontaneous.’

  ‘Of course I—’ She stopped dead, realising too late the trap she had fallen into. ‘You are not one of my men.’

  ‘So I should hope.’

  That disconcerted her. ‘What?’

  ‘I just hate to be one of a crowd.’

  He was teasing again. His eyes laughed down at her. But there was something in their expression that was not teasing at all.

  ‘You—’ But she looked into his eyes and felt what she was going to say slip away from her. ‘I—I mean—’

  Hopeless! Bella felt hot and confused. Her eyes fell.

  It was crazy. She was as off balance as a teenager with her first love. Yet she was a woman, a sophisticated, popular women. What was more, she knew how to play the delicate game of flirtation. She had an instinct for it, always had had. Her mother said she had been born with it.

  So what was happening to her? She had had more boyfriends than she could remember. Some of them had been ma
jor heartthrobs, too. None of them had ever made her look away and stammer like a schoolgirl.

  It was not even as if she was really interested in him. She could not be.

  All right, there had been that sizzling kiss. But it was easy enough to account for, if she thought about it. She had been lonely in New York. Then Annis’s unexpected arrival had thrown her off balance. It had reminded her, heaven help her, of everything from which she had been running so hard to escape. The kiss had been fuelled by a lot that had nothing to do with Gil de la Court—the heady excitement of those Latin rhythms, the strange unreality of the city night, savage loneliness, exile…

  And lust, thought Bella, with lacerating truth. Don’t forget lust.

  She remembered the moment when she had almost let him come up to her apartment. She felt as if she was suffocating.

  She said, in pure reflex, ‘Don’t do this.’

  It was not much above a whisper. But there was no doubting her passionate sincerity.

  Gil’s eyes flickered. ‘What’s wrong?’ he said, not teasing any more.

  She was shocked into complete honesty.

  ‘I’m already in love,’ she said in a harsh undertone. ‘I wish I wasn’t but there’s no point in pretending.’

  His face stilled. He said nothing. Bella wondered if he had understood.

  ‘Don’t waste your time,’ she said painfully. ‘There’s only room for one.’

  Still he said nothing. For some reason, quite suddenly, she wanted to cry.

  ‘Weddings!’ she said furiously. ‘Turn everyone into a fountain. Excuse me—’

  She fled.

  From then on she whirled through the party like a butterfly on speed. Even when Lynda eventually managed to get her guests seated in the marquee that had been attached to the conservatory, Bella hardly sat still for a minute. She was continually jumping up: to kiss an old friend here; to fetch a clean glass there; to play pat-a-cake games with a grizzling four-year-old so that the exhausted parents could eat one course in peace; to laugh and joke—and never, ever, look in Gil de la Court’s direction. By the time the cake was brought in for its ceremonial dismemberment, she felt ready to collapse with sheer exhaustion.