Belle - Lesley Pearse [244]
A vivid image came into his mind, of saying goodbye to her over two years earlier at Gard du Nord in Paris. Her train to Calais was about to leave, doors were slamming, people were rushing frantically to get aboard and smoke was belching from the engine. Belle looked up at him, dark curls escaping from a little pink hat, her lovely eyes brimming with tears. She had pleaded with him to say something to her in French.
He couldn’t remember his exact words now, only that they came straight from his heart. He said something like he would face any perils, walk through fire and floods just to be with her.
He should have simply said that he loved her, for her French wasn’t good enough for her to understand much more than that simple phrase. She tried to smile as the guard blew his whistle, and then ran to get on the train.
He remembered that she waved from the window until he could no longer see her.
Why had he been such a fool? They had shared so much and he knew women well enough to know that she had felt the same for him. He should have followed her to London within a day or two and told her, in English, what she meant to him. But he didn’t because he’d believed he was doing the right thing for her by staying away.
Weeks passed before he even wrote to her. He found it difficult to write in English and he guessed his letter was stilted and lacking in warmth. She replied, but her writing too was very formal, without any hint that she had hoped for more from him.
Turning, Etienne looked at his reflection in the shop window behind him. Old friends back in France claimed he’d changed in the last two years, but he couldn’t see any difference in himself. He was still lean and fit – hard work on his small farm kept him that way – and his shoulders were broader and more muscular than before. But perhaps his friends meant that his angular features had softened and made him look less dangerous.
There was a time when he had delighted in being told his blue eyes were icy, and that just a look from him was enough to strike fear into people. But back then he’d needed to be tough and ruthless, for that was all part of his work. While he knew he was still capable of violence if threatened or provoked, he wasn’t part of that world any longer.
He’d come to England on business and, on a whim that he was almost regretting now, he’d gone to the address where Belle had lived when she got back from France, a public house in London’s Seven Dials. But the public house had changed hands, and he was told the old landlord and his nephew had moved to Blackheath in south London.
So he took the train out here, asked the ticket collector if he knew Garth Franklin, and was directed to the Railway Inn. As it was closed until five-thirty he’d taken a walk up the hill towards the Heath, and here he was, looking across the street, hungry to know more about Belle.
A plump, rosy-faced matron, struggling with an umbrella which had blown inside out, joined him under the awning to shelter from the rain. ‘If it don’t stop soon we’ll all get webbed feet!’ she remarked jovially as she tried to turn her umbrella back the right way. ‘I don’t know what possessed me to come out in it.’
‘I was thinking the same myself,’ he replied, and took the umbrella from her to straighten out the spokes. ‘There you are.’ As he handed it back to her, he added, ‘But I expect it will do the same again in the next gust of wind.’
She looked at him curiously. ‘You’re French, aren’t you? But your English is very good.’
Etienne smiled. He liked the way English women of her age didn’t hold back from questioning complete strangers. French women were much more reserved.
‘Yes, I’m French, but I spent some time in England when I was young.’
‘Are you here on holiday?’ she asked.
‘Yes, visiting old friends,’ he said, for that was partially true. ‘I was told Blackheath was a very pretty place, but I didn’t pick a good day to explore it.’
She laughed and agreed that no one would want to walk on the Heath in such heavy rain.
‘You must live in the south of France,