‘I’m very glad to hear it was me you were thinking of,’ she said, kissing his scars.
‘They said that all the other men who had been on the ward when I was taken there died of it. I don’t know why I survived; there didn’t seem to be any reason for it.’
‘Because you had to come and find me,’ she said.
It rained later, but the rattling on the roof and the wind in the trees only made it feel cosier inside. The stove made it beautifully warm, Belle lit an oil lamp, and together they made an impromptu supper of bread and cheese and a tin of soup.
Etienne wore only his trousers, Belle just her camisole, and as he opened a bottle of wine he’d bought he made a toast.
‘To our long and happy future together,’ he said, clinking her glass with his. He took a sip of the wine and winced. ‘I may have to start a vineyard myself if this is the best wine you can buy here.’
‘Could you?’ she asked.
‘Maybe, with the right land. The climate is right for it.’
‘What about your farm in France? What have you done with that?’
‘Noah bought it,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t got around to telling you, but he came down to Marseille to find me.’
‘He did that? What a wonderful man he is,’ Belle said. ‘And not a word to me!’
Etienne smiled. ‘Yes, a true friend. You see, by then he’d discovered that I’d been sent home just before the war ended. But when he got no reply to a letter he wrote to the farm he decided to come and search for me. He tracked me down to the friends I was staying with, and then we went out to the farm together.’
‘And he said he’d buy it?’
‘He fell in love with it right away, I tried to talk him out of it, but he said Lisette wanted their children to have holidays in France and for Rose to speak fluent French like Jean-Philippe does. He argued that if I was coming out to find you it would just become more overgrown. He said he could afford to build a better house on the land. But I’d always be welcome there with you or without you.’
‘So what now?’ Belle asked. ‘What will you do here?’
‘For now I will make love to you until you beg for mercy,’ he grinned. ‘Then we must get married to save your reputation.’
‘Isn’t it customary to propose first?’ she laughed.
‘Will you marry me, my beautiful Belle?’ he asked, reaching out for her hand.
‘As soon as it can be arranged,’ she said. ‘I love you, Etienne, there’s nothing I want more.’
He got up from the table and came round and pulled her up into his arms. ‘We have both come a long way from that day in Brest when I had to take you on the ship to America. Did you know I began to love you when you took care of me while I was seasick?’
‘No, surely not!’
‘Not in a physical way! You were too young and vulnerable, yet you had so much spirit. Leaving you in New Orleans made me so ashamed; you were always on my mind afterwards.’
‘You had to take me there, I knew that, I used to think about you all the time too. But you had a happy marriage?’
‘Yes, I did love Elena, but I think our marriage was much like yours. We grew up together, and I thought what we had was all that could be expected. But it was never the way it is with you.’
‘Tell me truthfully, did you have feelings for me after you rescued me in Paris? I know we talked about this a little at the hospital, but I need to know more.’
He put his hands on both sides of her face and looked into her eyes. ‘Yes, I knew I loved you, and I sensed you felt the same, but it was the wrong time to speak out. You had been hurt by men so badly, I thought you needed time to heal. But it was more than that. I had done so many bad things, I thought I was bad for you.’
‘How can you think that? You saved my life!’ Tears were welling up in her eyes because of his low opinion of himself. ‘If you’d only told me how you felt! Just a hint might have made all the difference.’
‘I did, but like a coward I said it in French at the station and hoped you understood enough. But what was I to do? You were going home to Jimmy, I knew from Noah how he felt about you. Even if I had been good at writing my true thoughts in a letter, I would have been afraid Jimmy might read it. So I wrote as a friend would and hoped you could read my true feelings between the lines.’
Belle sighed, remembering how her heart sang when she saw a letter from him in the post, only to be disappointed that it was stilted and cool.
‘Then you wrote to say you were marrying Jimmy and I knew my chance was lost. I told myself you’d be happier with him,’ he said sadly. ‘Even that didn’t stop me thinking about you. That was why I came to your shop, I needed to see for myself that you were happy. I never expected to ever hear from you or see you again, but then came the chance meeting with Jimmy in France.’
‘That was very strange,’ she said.
‘I think now it was fate colliding. I saw he was a good man, strong and principled. I really liked him and the way he spoke about you.’
‘What did he say?’ Jimmy had told her his version and she wanted to know if it matched with Etienne’s.
‘He told me about you being attacked in your shop and that you’d lost your baby. He said too that he regretted enlisting when he should have been home with you. I was both jealous of him and yet glad that you were with such a decent, caring man.’
‘But you still came to the hospital to see me?’
‘Yes. I couldn’t help myself when I heard of your friend’s death. It was just to see you, I had no hope of anything more. But once I saw you and kissed you, it was like being caught in a whirlwind.’
‘Yes, it was for me too,’ she agreed. ‘A kind of madness that drove out all reason or even sense of duty and morality.’
Etienne sat down and pulled her on to his lap and wiped away a tear on her cheek. ‘Would you have left him for me if he hadn’t been wounded?’ he asked.
‘I really don’t know. Maybe eventually the guilt, and wanting you so much, would have driven me to it, though back then I felt I couldn’t. But what made you save him, Etienne? Tell me the truth.’
He sighed deeply. ‘I have to admit that for a second I was tempted to leave him. But although letting him die would have meant the way would have been clear to have you, deep down I knew I would never be able to live with it. Of course I didn’t have time to really think why I was doing it at the time. But afterwards I was glad, because for once I had done the right thing.
‘But it didn’t end there, Belle. When you wrote and told me how bad he was, and that was the end for us, I really wished I had left him there. Not just because I could have had you, but because of what your life would be like taking care of him. I’ve seen so many wives and mothers dealing with their wounded men, the poverty and hardships, and all too often their men take out their frustrations on them. Did this happen to you?’
Out of loyalty to Jimmy she wanted to deny it, but realized Noah might have already told him. ‘Sometimes. Let’s just say he wasn’t the man I married any more.’
They were both silent for a little while.
Etienne broke the silence. ‘I think it is time we talked about us and our future,’ he said, sliding his hand up her bare leg seductively.
‘That isn’t talking,’ she reproved him. ‘What are you going to do for a living here? The choice is rather limited.’
‘It is only a limited choice to a man with no imagination,’ he grinned. ‘Fishing, farming, building, I can do most things, and I have a bit of money too. What I meant was about getting married and where we’ll live. But let’s get into bed and talk about that in comfort.’
Belle woke as dawn was breaking. Etienne was sound asleep, curled against her back, his arm around her. They had made love for hours, and remembering some of the erotic things he did to her made her blush. She had always thought she knew more about men and sex than other women, but she’d found that she was wrong. Love lifted it away from the mechanical tricks she’d learn
ed in her past life and turned sex into something beautiful and fantastic. Serge, the accomplished lover who had been hired in New Orleans to initiate her in the arts of love, had awakened her sexually with his skill. Yet even though it was a satisfying and thrilling experience, without love it was empty. Jimmy had all the love to give her, he had been an enthusiastic lover before the war, but he was somewhat inhibited despite her encouragement to be otherwise.
Etienne had no such inhibitions. He was red-blooded and understood women, being rough at the right time and gentle when it was not. He had taken her on a magic carpet ride of thrills, lust and passion, yet it was the tender, sweet moments when he sought only to please her that touched something deep inside her and made her cry. Despite all her experience she’d never felt that way before.
She was sore from lovemaking now, just as she had been after the night with him in France, but it was a good feeling. Sliding from under his arm without waking him, she reached for her camisole lying on the floor and slipped it on, then stole out of the bedroom.
There were still glowing embers in the stove, so she put some more wood in it, then went out on to the veranda. The sun was rising on the horizon, casting beams of gold through still grey cloud. A lump came up in her throat at the beauty of the bay with its silvery-blue water streaked with the gold from the sun, and the dark green of the trees all around it.
The huge emptiness of the scene before her seemed to be telling her that this was where she and Etienne belonged. She had felt as soon as she got to New Zealand that it was a country that welcomed those with strength, determination, courage and imagination. Now, with Etienne beside her, she felt that nothing was impossible, even bearing his child.
She turned to see him behind her, just a towel around his waist. His hair was tousled and a faint shadow of beard was coming through on his face. The scar on his shoulder and the one on his thigh would remain a permanent reminder of the horrors of war, just as the faint scar on his cheek would also remind her of his less honourable past.
Belle had her scars too, though invisible ones. Two flawed people who together could accomplish anything they set their minds to.
He came up to the rail of the veranda, putting his arm around her, looking at the view. The sun had risen higher and a long, low wisp of white cloud now lay right across the bay.
‘I love early mornings,’ he said. ‘Even at Verdun there were some beauties; they gave us hope that the day ahead would be better than the one before. But looking at this glorious one with you, I know God is on our side.’
Belle smiled. His words seemed to echo what she’d been thinking. ‘So what will we do today?’
‘Walk, explore, think of how we’ll make our fortune here. Look and see if there’s land fit for grapevines. Buy some fish for dinner.’
‘You told me we’d be together one day, and you were right. So perhaps with you all things are possible.’
‘Having fish for dinner is an absolute certainty,’ he said, pointing to a fishing boat out on the bay. ‘But the vineyard and the fortune might take a little longer.’
Lesley Pearse
About Lesley
Lesley Pearse is one of the UK’s best-loved novelists, with fans across the globe and book sales of nearly four million copies to date.
A true storyteller and a master of gripping plots that keep the reader hooked from beginning to end, Lesley introduces readers to unforgettable characters about whom it is impossible not to care. There is no easily defined genre or formula to her books: some, like Rosie and Secrets, are family sagas, Till We Meet Again, A Lesser Evil and Faith are crime novels, and others such as Never Look Back, Gypsy and Hope are historical adventures.
Remember Me is based on an astounding true story about Mary Broad who was convicted of highway robbery and transported on the first fleet to Australia, where a penal colony was to be founded. The story of the appalling hardships that faced the prisoners there, and how courageously determined Mary was to gain a better life for her children is one you are unlikely to forget.
Passionately emotive Trust Me is also set in Australia, and deals with the true-life scandal of the thousands of British children who were sent there in the post-war period to be systematically neglected, and in many cases, abused.
Stolen is a thriller – the first of her books with a contemporary setting – and was a Number One bestseller in 2010.
Painstaking research is one of Lesley’s hallmarks; first, Lesley reads widely on the subject matter, and then she goes to the place she has chosen as a setting. Once there, digging up local history, the story begins, whether it is about the convicts in Australia, the condition for soldiers in the Crimean war, the hardships facing gold miners in the Klondike or the sheer jaw-dropping courage of the pioneers who forged their way across America in covered wagons.
‘Lesley introduces readers to unforgettable characters about whom it is impossible not to care’
History is one of Lesley’s passions, and mixed with her vivid imagination and her keen insight into how people might behave in dangerous, tragic and unusual situations, she is soon able to weave a plot with many dramatic twists and turns.
‘It wasn’t until I was working on my sixth or seventh book that I became aware that my heroines had all had to overcome and rise above emotional damage inflicted upon them as children,’ Lesley points out. ‘I have had to do this myself; my childhood certainly wasn’t a bed of roses, but the more people I get to know, the more I find that most have some kind of trauma in their past. Perhaps this is why so many of us like to read about triumph over adversity.’
Lesley’s colourful past has been a very useful point of reference in her writing. Whether she is writing about a grim post-war orphanage, about a child that doesn’t quite fit in at school, about adoption, about a girl who leaves home too young and too ill-equipped to cope adequately, about poverty or about the pain of first love, she knows how it feels first hand. For as Lesley laughingly puts it, ‘my life has had more ups and downs than a well bucket.’
But the sadness and difficulties in Lesley’s life are in the past now. With three grown up daughters, and two much loved grandsons, the latest one, Harley, born in March 2010, Lesley feels her life is wonderful.
‘Painstaking research is one of Lesley’s hallmarks’
‘I live in a pretty cottage in Somerset, with my two dogs, Maisie and Lotte, and my garden there is an all consuming passion,’ she says. ‘I feel I am truly blessed to wake up each morning with such lovely choices: writing or gardening. They fit so well together; if I’m stuck for an idea in the latest book, I go out and dead head the flowers, mow the lawn or weed. Often I’m writing until two or three in the morning as there is complete silence then and no distractions like the phone to disturb my concentration. I have to confess to wasting a lot of time on Twitter though. It’s like having a whole bunch of invisible friends, many of whom are writers too; we comment on things, tell each other what we are up to, and sometimes we get into conversations that are so funny I’m sitting there howling with laughter.’
Friends are very important to Lesley; some of them go right back to ones she met at school and as a teenager. They are her life blood and she likes nothing better than a girl’s day out with shopping and lunch with a group of them.
‘I love it too when I’m invited to give a talk; sometimes these are in libraries, where I get to meet my readers; sometimes as a guest speaker at lunches or dinner for a charity function. A writer needs to have direct contact with people – without it they would be working in a vacuum. The feedback you get is so valuable, which book they liked best, or least, and why. It’s also a great opportunity to get out of my wellies and old gardening clothes, dress up in something glamorous and visit a part of the country I haven’t been to before.’
Lesley’s storytelling abilities are even more evident when she is speaking to a group of people, for she can trawl through her past and tell hilarious anecdotes that have her audiences in fits of laughter. One susp
ects she might have made a good actress if she hadn’t drifted from job to job as a young girl. As it was, she was a nanny, a Bunny girl, a dressmaker, and spent many years in promotion work, along with more mundane temping office work. ‘The companies I was sent to as a temp were usually glad to see the back of me,’ she laughs. ‘I was a distraction because I talked to everyone and I was an appalling typist. Funny that I now type fast and accurately. But back then I was always tempted to put my own words into letters I was asked to write, just to pep up the dullness of them.’
Lesley is also the president of the Bath and West Wiltshire branch of the NSPCC – a charity very close to her heart because of physical and mental abuse meted out to her as a child.
‘Lesley’s colourful past has been a very useful reference point in her writing’
‘In my ideal world all children would be wanted, valued, loved and cared for,’ Lesley says. ‘I know from research that child abuse is an evil as old as time, and the only way to stamp it out is through education. I wish every school would put parenting on the curriculum and drum into teenagers the importance of taking care to ensure that they are in stable loving relationships before embarking on having a baby.’
About The Promise
Congratulations, Lesley, The Promise is your twentieth novel – how do you feel about reaching this momentous stage in your career as an author?
Astounded! That’s an awful lot of words. Sometimes I get a bit scared that I won’t get an idea for the next book, but so far the ideas have turned up. I couldn’t keep going without my loyal readers; they are always dying for the next book to come out and I don’t ever want to disappoint them.
What inspired you to write a sequel to Belle?
I loved Belle so much I really couldn’t forget her and move on to another character. This was a first for me, usually I feel sad to part with my heroines, but I know I’ve told their story and it’s over. But Belle was different, she was so full of energy and fire, I couldn’t let her go. I felt too that my readers would want to know whether she got her hat shop, what role she’d play in the First World War, and whether she succeeded in staying out of trouble! And there are the men in her life. Would she settle down with Jimmy, would she meet Etienne again? And, of course, how would they fare in the war?