Belle - Lesley Pearse [240]
He knew everything about her, but she was still finding things out about him. He certainly wasn’t just the devoted puppy dog trailing after her that she’d first thought when she came back to England.
Annie nudged her, and Belle came to with a start, suddenly aware that while she had been daydreaming, Mog and Garth had completed their vows, and everyone was getting down on their knees for prayers.
She quickly followed suit, but peeped though her eyelashes at Noah and Lisette and little six-year-old Jean-Pierre across the aisle. Jean-Pierre wore a white sailor suit and looked adorable. He had the same dark hair and big dark eyes as his mother. Lisette looked beautiful in a silver-grey dress and the matching feathery hat which Belle had made for her. She loved her new life in London and had taken a job as a nurse in a small nursing home in Camden Town. She was most definitely as much in love with Noah as he was with her, and Belle thought it was only a matter of days before he would announce when they were going to be married.
Noah had become a very successful journalist. He’d made his name this year with his hard-hitting articles about human trafficking. Thanks to his dogged persistence and motivating others, three of the girls he’d had on his list of those abducted by Kent and his cronies had been found in Belgium and were now reunited with their families. Now he was writing a series of articles about survivors of the Titanic. He’d told Jimmy recently that he was also writing a novel, but couldn’t be drawn as to what it was about.
The other twenty or so people here today were Mog and Garth’s more respectable friends from Seven Dials, shopkeepers, other publicans, a lawyer and a doctor and their wives, but Garth and Jimmy had thrown a riotous leaving party a week ago back at the Ram’s Head so that the rest of their old customers wouldn’t feel left out by not being invited today.
Two days ago a carter had brought all their furniture and belongings over to the Railway Inn, and Mog and Belle had arranged it in their new home. Tonight and for the next four days Jimmy would stay there alone, while Mog and Garth had a honeymoon in Folkestone. Belle would stay in Lee Park until then too. She smiled to herself at Mog’s insistence that she and Jimmy should not be alone under the same roof. Considering Belle’s former career that seemed ludicrous, but since they moved to Blackheath, Mog had become a stickler for her having a chaperone. She said it was to safeguard her reputation.
The final hymn, ‘Love Divine All Love Excelling’, was sung, and Mog, Garth, John Spratt and Jimmy went off to the vestry to sign the register. The organist was playing something gentle and there was a low buzz of conversation.
‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ Annie said. ‘I’ll say it now before all the hoo-ha of people kissing one another and photographs being taken. I want you to go into the solicitors Bailey and Macdonald in Montpelier Row on Monday or Tuesday, to sign the lease for that shop.’
Belle frowned. ‘I told you they wouldn’t let me have it as I was single.’
She had seen the empty shop in Tranquil Vale, the main street in Blackheath Village, a few weeks ago and got the agent to show it to her. It was perfect, a small shop complete with a pretty bow-fronted window, and a room behind big enough for a workroom, plus a lavatory outside in the back yard. The rent was reasonable too. But Belle had been turned down flat as a tenant.
Annie smiled. ‘They will now, I persuaded them to let me guarantee the rent. As I own a property and they think I’m a widow, they couldn’t really refuse.’
If it hadn’t been for the bride and groom coming down the aisle with the widest of smiles on their faces, Belle