Summer Seaside Wedding

She was in the water when he got there, swimming effortlessly quite a way out, and he groaned. He could murder a coffee and some toast, followed by a leisurely read of the morning paper, but first he was going to have to swim out to her, explain the dangers, and suggest that she swim nearer to the shore as Ronnie, the lifeguard, didn’t appear on the beach until eight o’clock. The treacherous tides only surfaced rarely but strangers and locals alike needed to be aware of them.

When he bobbed up beside her in the water he gestured for her to swim back to the beach with him, and when they were on the sand she exclaimed, ‘Dr Fenchurch! Do you also like to swim at this time of day?’

‘Not unless I have to,’ he told her dryly. ‘I saw you walking past my place and came to warn you that there are dangerous tides on rare occasions that you need to be aware of. I should have mentioned it last night, but wasn’t expecting you to be out and about so early after your exhaustion of yesterday.’

‘Yes, I know,’ she said apologetically, ‘but my room was full of sunlight and I could hear the gulls. I just had to explore down here.’

She wasn’t going to tell him that today she didn’t want time to think, that she needed to be occupied every moment so that her thoughts wouldn’t be of a wedding dress taken back to the shop, a bridal cake that had to be cancelled, and on a larger scale a honeymoon that hadn’t materialised.

‘So can I expect you to be watchful?’ he asked, about to depart.

‘Yes, of course. I will take note of everything that you say.’

‘Good, and now I’m going back for some breakfast. Enjoy your weekend, Amelie.’ And off he went with the thought going round in his mind that there was a solitariness about her that was worrying.

As he settled down to a belated breakfast and the morning paper, Leo was hoping the new addition to the practice would find her own niche socially and workwise, and that his part in the proceedings would now be completed.

He could understand her eagerness to go down to the beach and having seen her swim understood why. She moved like a dream in the water, and now he supposed she would be exploring the rest of Bluebell Cove if she hadn’t gone back to bed. He hoped that Harry and Phoebe would take up where he’d left off and make her feel welcome.

For his own day he’d arranged to spend time on the tennis courts later in the morning with Naomi, an aspiring fashion model. On Saturday afternoons he always drove into town, and tonight was joining Georgina, the attractive owner of the local boutique, and her friends for a meal. So his day was planned.

Amelie hadn’t gone back to bed. She’d considered it, but knew that alone in the stillness of the bedroom the thoughts she was trying to keep in check would come sweeping over her and she would be lost.

Instead, she was going to explore the shops in the main street of the village, then walk as far as she could see on the road that ran along the top of the cliffs. And somewhere in the midst of her exploring she would eat.

The ‘Angel Gabriel’ hadn’t seemed too cheerful when he’d found her already in the sea at just gone six o’clock in the morning, but she was afraid he would have to get used to that because she loved to swim; and if life at the village practice was as demanding as the job she’d just left, it might be her only chance at that early hour.

So far she hadn’t met the senior partner but there was plenty of time for that. She’d met Leo, that was enough to be going on with, and for the rest of the weekend she wasn’t going to butt into his life again.

The shops were to her liking. They reminded her of those in the French village where she’d lived as a child. Amongst them was a grocer’s selling butter straight from the tub, a fishmonger’s with the morning’s fresh catch on display, and a combined village store and post office where people were good-humouredly passing the time of day without seeming to be in any hurry.

There was the feeling of life lived at a slower pace, she thought as she set off in the direction of the cliffs and the road that ran along the top of them. As she breathed in the fresh sea air and felt the sun on her face Amelie knew she’d done the right thing in accepting Ethan’s suggestion that she come to Bluebell Cove and she was here today of all days.

She could see the sea in the distance as she walked along. The tide had gone out and there were more people down on the sand now than there had been earlier. She was in love with the place already, she thought wonderingly. What must it be like to live here all the time?

When she looked over her shoulder she was surprised to see how far she’d walked. The village was almost out of sight and having no wish to make her arrival in Bluebell Cove brought to the notice of others by getting lost, she began to retrace her steps.

Eventually she came to tennis courts that had been empty when she’d passed earlier but were now occupied by an attractive blonde with long legs. Partnering her, resplendent in tennis shorts and a short-sleeved white shirt, was the man she’d been hoping to avoid for the rest of the weekend.

Fortunately he was serving with his back to her and with a few fast steps she was past before he’d had the chance to see her.

She was smiling as she neared the edge of the village. It made sense that a man like him would want someone as attractive as himself to have around him, she was thinking when suddenly the church bells began to ring out and as she drew nearer the reason was revealed.

A June bride, resplendent in a beautiful white dress and train, was being helped out of a wedding car that had stopped at the lychgate of the church, and Amelie felt as if a cloud had covered the sun.

So much for upbeat thinking and keeping occupied on this particular day. Who was she kidding? The hurt hadn’t gone away. She’d learned to live with it, but it was still there.

Turning away blindly, she hurried past the shops until she came to a café and seated herself at a table farthest from the window.

CHAPTER TWO

THE tennis had been good, his companion pleasant to be with, and as the two of them walked along the main street of the village, seeking refreshment after the exercise, Leo was aware that the bells were ringing at the church and a wedding was taking place.

Not an unusual event on a Saturday in June, by any means, but it was attracting a lot of attention, as weddings always did, and when his tennis partner wanted to linger outside the church they separated, him to the café farther along the street and her to join those who were waiting for the bride and her groom to appear.

The place was almost empty when he got there, even cream teas were being overshadowed by what was happening at the church, but there was one customer sitting at a table at the back, staring into space, and he forced a smile.

Hot and sticky, he just wanted to relax but she was here again, the young French doctor looking so forlorn he just had to go across and say hello.

‘So how’s it going?’ he asked easily, towering above her with racket in hand.

‘Fine,’ she said with a pale smile.

‘You must be the only one not watching what is going on at the church. I thought that most women love a wedding.’

He was making conversation and knew it, out of his depth because she looked so glum, and he was dumbstruck when she said tonelessly, ‘Not those who have been betrayed. Today should have been my wedding day too. I should have been a bride, but as you can see it has not happened.’

‘Oh!’ he exclaimed, and lowered himself onto the chair beside her. ‘I am so sorry. I would never have brought up the subject of marriage if I’d known. It is not surprising that you aren’t amongst the observers and well-wishers. Do you want to talk about it?’

She shook her head. ‘No, I don’t, Dr Fenchurch. I was managing to get through the day reasonably well until I saw the wedding and came in here to get away from it.’ The pale smile was back. ‘But I’m all right now.’ Steering the conversation into less upsetting channels, she said, ‘What has happened to your tennis partner?’

‘Naomi? She’s outside the church with everyone else, but we were about to separate in any case. We only meet once weekly for tennis. So why don’t you let me take you back to the house before the bridal couple appear?’

‘But you came in here for some refreshment,’ she protested.

‘I’ll have a bite when I’ve seen you safely away from all of this,’ he replied. ‘If we take the long way round we’ll miss the church. But, Amelie, I have to warn you there will be other weddings. June is the most popular month in the year so…’

‘I’m not going to have a panic attack every time I see one,’ she told him.

‘It was because it was today of all days that it upset me so much, and I’m butting into your weekend again, aren’t I? I am so sorry.’

‘Don’t be. You are alone in a strange place and I am happy to help in any way I can,’ he assured her, and was surprised how much he meant it. ‘So let’s go, shall we?’ And with a smile for the girl behind the counter as Amelie paid for what she’d had, he shepherded her outside and they set off in the opposite direction from the wedding.

Harry had rung him after breakfast, wanting to know if the previous night’s arrangements had gone smoothly, and he’d been able to tell him that they had.

‘So what’s she like?’ he’d wanted to know, and Leo had described her briefly.

‘Something in your tone tells me that Amelie is not another chic Francine Lomax,’ the senior partner had said laughingly.

Leo hadn’t taken him up on that comment. Instead, he’d told him, ‘She was down in the cove swimming at some godless hour this morning after seeming to be completely exhausted last night.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I saw her go past with a towel over her arm and realised I hadn’t told her about the rip tides, so went after her to be on the safe side.’

‘And where is she now?’

‘I don’t know, but if her rapture on seeing Bluebell Cove is anything to go by, she’ll be out seeing the sights.’

‘We’ll be calling round soon,’ Harry had informed him, ‘and if she isn’t there we can stop by again later.’

It would seem that she hadn’t been there because she was here with him, Leo was thinking when the surgery and the house opposite came into view. When she opened the door there was a note behind it.

He was observing her hesitantly as she bent to pick it up, undecided whether he should go and leave her to her private thoughts or offer to stay and keep her company for a while until he was sure she was all right to be left on her own.

Unaware of what was going through his mind, Amelie read the note and exclaimed, ‘Oh, dear! Dr Balfour and his family have been while I was out.’

‘Don’t concern yourself,’ he advised. ‘I spoke to him this morning and he said he’ll call again if he misses you, but for now, Amelie, would you like me to stay for a while or would you prefer me to leave?’

For the first time he saw the sparkle of tears in the blue eyes looking into his, but her voice was steady enough as she replied, ‘I will be all right, thank you. You helped me through a bad moment and I am grateful, but I am sure that you have other things to do.’

As relief washed over him at being let off the hook he said, ‘All right, if that is what you would prefer, but I’ll leave you my mobile number just in case.’

‘There is no need,’ she protested. ‘I will be fine once this day is over,’ and wished she hadn’t been so quick to tell him the reason for her distress. She’d kept the hurt under wraps ever since the break-up with Antoine and would still have been doing so if she hadn’t come across a village wedding.

Leo’s relief at her insistence that she would be all right was short-lived. While he was out dining with Georgina from the boutique and other friends that evening he was on edge, knowing that he shouldn’t have been so quick to latch onto Amelie’s reassurances.

The day she’d been dreading wasn’t over yet and the hurts that life was prone to hand out always seemed to multiply with the coming of the night.

It was as he’d said. She was alone in a foreign land and although he hardly knew her, he did have some degree of responsibility towards her because she was joining the practice on Monday morning and they would be meeting again. On a different level.

The folks he was with were aware of his wandering thoughts and Georgina asked, ‘What’s the matter, Leo? Aren’t we entertaining enough for you tonight?’

He smiled and there wasn’t a woman there who didn’t wish he belonged to her, including Georgina, but she was aware that Leo was not the marrying kind, not where she was concerned anyway.

‘I have got something on my mind,’ he confessed. ‘I’m sorry if I’m poor company.’ He sent an apologetic glance in Georgina’s direction. ‘I need to pop out for a while. If I’m not back when you’re ready to order, you know what I like to eat, Georgina.’ And before anyone could comment he’d gone, striding out of the restaurant with a haste that didn’t go unnoticed.

Ten minutes and once again he was outside the house where Amelie was staying, and when he saw that it was in darkness he was about to turn away when her voice came from behind him.

‘Dr Fenchurch!’ she exclaimed. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you again today.’

‘I just came to check that you’re all right,’ he said smoothly, as if he hadn’t been fidgeting on her behalf for the last hour. ‘I’m dining with friends in a restaurant not far from here so thought I’d call to make sure.’

‘That is very kind of you and makes me even more sorry that I unloaded my troubles on to you,’ she told him. ‘But concern yourself no longer. I am fine. I beg you go back to your friends and remember you did give me your mobile number.’ Which I am not going to use, no matter what.

‘I shall have an early night to make up for my exhaustion of yesterday,’ and as he made no move to take the hint, she said, ‘Goodnight to you, Dr Fenchurch.’

He nodded. ‘Goodnight to you too, Amelie.’ At which she opened the door and disappeared from sight and he drove back to where Georgina and the others were waiting.

‘So who was the woman?’ someone asked jok ingly.

He sighed and surprised them by saying, ‘Her name is Amelie Benoir. She’s the French doctor who is joining the practice for a few months. I only met her yesterday and I’m concerned that she is on her own in a strange place where she knows no one except me because Harry asked me to go to the airport to meet her last night. Does that satisfy your curiosity?’ he questioned mildly.

‘Yes,’ the joker said laughingly, ‘and we’ll all be sure to ask for Dr Benoir when we’re sick.’

As he listened to the friendly banter Amelie’s face came to mind, framed by a glossy black bob, with a snub nose and wide mouth. So anyone who wanted glamour and the trappings that went with it would need to look in Georgina’s direction.

It was hard to imagine anyone not being keen to marry the boutique owner except himself, and if anyone should ever ask him why, the answer would be that he couldn’t see her as the mother of any children he might have.

In what seemed like another life he’d wanted Delphine, sweet and bubbly, to give him young ones when the time came, but it hadn’t worked out that way.

They’d met at college, where so many romances began, and had known from the start they’d wanted to be together for always, but his love for her had been rent with an anguish that had ended in despair when she’d been rushed into hospital with a serious undetected heart problem and it had been too late to save her.

The pain he’d felt then had set the pattern for the years to come. It had been something that he never wanted to have to go through again. He was pursued all the time by women and laughed and joked with them, sometimes had the odd fling, but that was it. None of them could bring the kind of joy to his life that Delphine had.

When Amelie had told him that she was all right, it had been partly to reassure him and also because his kindness and concern on her behalf had helped to turn what could have been a ghastly day into a bearable one, and now she was determined that she wasn’t going to lie sleepless and fretting about what might have been.

Antoine Lamont had been a junior doctor at the same hospital as herself. When he’d started paying attention to her she’d thought that the quiet, low-key guy, who had often been on the same shift as herself, had seen her as the right kind for him because she was as average as he was.

Gradually they’d drifted into an engagement with the promise of a white wedding on the very day she’d arrived in Devon with her heart set on a new life far away from the hurts of the previous one.

Her surmise that Antoine had chosen her because she had been the least demanding and overpowering of some of the women he’d known had been shattered when she’d called at his apartment unexpectedly one night in the hospital grounds and found him in bed with one of the nurses, a brassy, auburn-haired creature who was anything but average when it came to looks and curves.

It had been the end of her dream of contentment with a man she could love and trust and the beginning of pain and loneliness because of the deceit of it.

He’d tried to make amends, pleading that it had just been a one-off with the nurse, but she hadn’t wanted to hear his pleas and subsequently Antoine and the girl he’d been in bed with had left the hospital together, leaving her to face the pitying looks of others as best she could.

Yet deep down Amelie thought she might have had a lucky escape and accepted that maybe she’d been more in love with the idea of getting married than with the man in question. But as she lay beneath the covers in the master bedroom of the big house that she was going to be rattling around in, she knew that the hurt of rejection had still been there when she’d seen the bride arriving at the church for her wedding that day, and it had been the same man who had met her at the airport who’d helped her to cope with it.

So far Leo had only seen her at her worst. On Monday morning she intended that he was going to see her at her best, with the ups and downs of her arrival in Bluebell cove blotted out.

If there was one thing that she never wanted to appear as, it was needy. With her parents always at the other side of the world, she’d had to fend for herself since her early teens and maybe that was why Antoine had seemed like a calm oasis in her often chaotic life, but he’d turned out to be just the opposite, and with that thought in mind she turned her head into the pillow and slept.

Sunday was uneventful except for a visit from the Balfours, Harry and Phoebe, with their toddler, Marcus. The senior partner asked if she was happy with her living arrangements and said to let him know if she had any problems with regard to that or anything else.

‘I’m aware that you’ve already met Leo,’ he said, ‘and the rest of the staff will be looking forward to meeting you on Monday morning, Amelie.’

‘Yes, I’ve met Dr Fenchurch,’ she replied. ‘I feel I may have interrupted his weekend as I seemed to be everywhere he was.’ She wondered if the man in question had told his partner at the practice about her unsuccessful attempt at matrimony.

She hoped not, though she hadn’t asked him to keep it to himself, but if he had respected her privacy it would be a stick to measure him by and she was already intrigued by him.

The Balfours didn’t stay long, but it was time enough for her to discover a couple of things about them: one, that they were deeply in love and both adored the child; and, two, that she liked them and hoped that Dr Balfour would be as pleasant to work for at the practice as he was outside it.

Monday morning saw Amelie poised and ready for action, dressed in a smart white blouse, short black skirt, and with her smooth ebony hair straight and shining around a face that was alight with anticipation.

She’d made up carefully, paying special attention to her eyes, which she felt were the best feature of a nondescript face, and when she stood in front of the mirror in the bedroom she felt that she’d done her best with what nature had given her because there was nothing wrong with her bone structure and the flesh on it, yet when she thought about a certain brassy red-headed nurse with breasts like balloons she did have her doubts.

Leo was emerging out of the private entrance to the apartments as she appeared on the practice forecourt and strode purposefully towards him, carrying a leather briefcase. She looked different again, dressed smartly as she was, from the dishevelled woman at the airport and the bikini-clad swimmer on the beach.

‘Good morning, Dr Fenchurch,’ she said as he fell into step beside her. ‘It has come. The day I am to be part of your medical centre.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ he replied as he held open the main door of the surgery for her to go through. ‘I hope you won’t be disappointed in us.’

She smiled up at him. ‘It is more that it should be me who does not disappoint you and Dr Balfour. When you met me at the airport it was what I saw in your expression…disappointment.’

Surely it hadn’t been so obvious? he thought. It had been because he’d picked out the wrong woman to be her that the difference had seemed so great.

He didn’t deny it. Instead, he said, ‘It was very rude of me if that was how I appeared, and you are certainly proving me wrong so far. I hope that your first day is a good one, Amelie. Harry is already here and waiting to see you in his consulting room.’

‘They came to see me yesterday. Dr Balfour and his family were most kind. I wondered if perhaps you had told them about my cancelled wedding.’

For the first time since she’d met him she saw Leo’s pleasant manner chill as he told her, ‘Certainly not! If Harry and Phoebe were kind, it’s only because that is what they’re like. I wouldn’t dream of discussing what you told me on Saturday with anyone. Your private life is yours alone.’ And with the coolness still there he pointed to the door nearest to them, said, ‘That’s Harry’s room,’ and disappeared down the corridor in front of them where all the activity seemed to be taking place.

She’d unintentionally insulted him, Amelie thought as she tapped on the door of the senior partner’s room. Suddenly the morning wasn’t so exciting and challenging. She was just a temp from across the Channel, a bride-to-be who’d ended up on the outside of things.

Somehow she managed to put on a good face for the head of the practice and smiled her pleasure when he told her that she was being provided with a hire car that would be available the next day.

‘You’ll be in the room next to Leo at the other end of the passage,’ he told her, ‘and for a time will do the home visits with him until you are familiar with the area.’ He shook her hand. ‘Welcome aboard, Dr Benoir. I hope you enjoy your time with us.’ And that was that.

His phone was ringing so she left him to it and went to introduce herself to the receptionist at the desk opposite, who in turn took her to meet the rest of the staff, who were gathered in the kitchen for what she was to discover was a daily ritual—a mug of tea before surgery commenced.

The first thing she saw was that Leo wasn’t there and wondered if he was still smarting from what she’d said earlier. On her part it had just been innocent curiosity, yet she could understand his annoyance at the inference that he might have repeated what she’d told him to others.

But there was no more time to dwell on that. There were hands to shake, names to remember, and by the time the introductions were over she was feeling more comfortable.

Amongst those present were the two practice nurses, Lucy the elderly one, and Maria, young, pretty and the daughter of the beach lifeguard.

The district nurse, Bethany, only recently appointed, was there too, as well as the cleaner, a pleasant woman who came early and finished early in time to get her children off to school.