A Bride to Redeem Him

by Charlotte Hawkes

  Shock bounced around the trio and then the older lady spoke, her voice as dignified as ever.

  ‘Monsieur Étienne Morel is in the drawing room with his father Monsieur Alain Morel. They ask me to tell you that they have found a loophole. Something about there is no need for you and Mademoiselle Vardy to marry?’

  * * *

  ‘This proves nothing,’ Jean-Baptiste sneered as he raised his head from the papers Louis had set on his desk barely a day later. ‘I’m not signing a thing.’

  ‘As you wish.’ Louis dipped his head as though it didn’t matter to him one way or another. ‘Then the contract will go to the board instead.’

  For perhaps the first time he realised that it didn’t matter. He’d wasted so much time fire-fighting all the little blazes his father had always set in his path that he hadn’t realised they’d sapped all his energy and stopped him from battling the infernos that he really wanted to tackle.

  There were more important things than wasting time on Jean-Baptiste.

  Like Alex.

  Ever since last night he’d been replaying the argument in his head, wondering if he’d done the right thing, if he could have done things differently.

  ‘You can’t send it to the board. I won’t authorise it,’ his father ground out, desperately trying to appear in control.

  Louis turned as if to leave, pausing only at the door.

  ‘It isn’t a matter of authorisation. There’s a legal obligation for your board to see all documents that pertain to the Lefebvre Group. It will be dealt with by both teams of lawyers. I have no control over that.’

  ‘I am Chairman of the Delaroche Foundation and I won’t allow it,’ Jean-Baptiste growled. Rather like a child throwing a playground tantrum, Louis realised abruptly.

  He shrugged and reached for the door handle.

  ‘As I said, there is a legal obligation. Neither of us can interfere with that.’

  ‘You’re threatening me.’

  ‘No.’ Louis shook his head. ‘I’m telling you the facts. I’m even offering you the opportunity to emerge with your reputation, not to mention your dignity, intact. Which, frankly, is more than you deserve.’

  ‘You’re blackmailing me into signing the Lefebvre Group over to you. You? Chairman? It’s laughable.’

  ‘No more laughable that letting you get away with snatching control of the group before my mother’s body was even cold.’ Louis didn’t know how he restrained himself. ‘And, for sake of clarity, I’ll say again that I am not blackmailing you, I am presenting you with the facts.’

  ‘If I sign the Lefebvre Group over to you then my reputation will be safe?’ Jean-Baptiste’s eyes glittered malevolently. ‘You seem to forget that the Delaroche board is my board. I own them, every single one of them, and I’ll destroy the Lefebvre Group before you even get there.’

  ‘You can try, I suppose.’ Louis felt unbreakable, totally in command, and he intended to hold onto that feeling for as long as he could. ‘But I don’t think you can. The Lefebvre Group is my mother’s legacy, and you already tried to destroy it once before and failed. Now I owe it to her to keep it alive.’

  ‘You think you owe anything to the woman who abandoned you?’ Jean-Baptiste was almost incandescent. ‘Do you forget that she took her own life rather than watch her only son, her only child, grow up? Is that what your little whore has taught you? To be weak and pathetic, and so desperate you’ll pretend your mother didn’t know what her choice would do to her kid?’

  Not now. Not yet.

  The madness that ravaged its way through him was destructive. Louis recognised that, and it was all he could not to let it cripple him at the knees. He bit back any response that might alert his father to the fact that he knew the truth. He needed those papers signed first.

  ‘I’m claiming it, as she always wanted me to.’

  ‘You’re that desperate that you, of all people, are getting married. Do you think I didn’t realise what it was all about, you making such a public spectacle of asking your nobody girlfriend to marry you?’

  Something fired inside him. It was one thing for Jean-Baptiste to come after him, quite another to go after his sweet Alex. He wanted to lay his father out on the floor right now, but he couldn’t afford to let his fury show.

  ‘I asked Alex to marry me because I wanted to. Because I—’ Shock hit him. He took a deep breath, the realisation washing over him. ‘Because I love her.’

  ‘You?’ Jean-Baptise mocked. ‘You don’t know the first thing about love. You never had it, and, if your less than stellar history is anything to go by, you never gave it either.’

  Because he hadn’t thought he deserved it. Because he’d been ashamed that his mother hadn’t loved him enough for it to stop her taking her own life. Because that’s what his father had told him, and he’d stupidly believed everything Jean-Baptiste had said back then.

  ‘Your mother never loved you enough. How could she? Look at you. But if she did, then maybe it was your inability to love her back that made her commit suicide.’

  Louis steeled himself. But the pain never hit.

  Not the way it once had.

  Something inside him stood strong, true. Like a beacon of light. Something that Alex had put there.

  ‘I love Alex,’ Louis reiterated, barely recognising his own raw voice or the admission that he had tried to pretend wasn’t true for far too long.

  It was there, and it was real. He loved her. He wasn’t sure when it had happened. Perhaps it had started from that first meeting, but now there was no denying it. No hiding.

  ‘There is no wedding tomorrow, we called it off. We won’t marry for you, or for a contract, or for Rainbow House. But one day we will marry. And it will be for love.’

  ‘Beautiful sentiment.’ The acidulous words were matched only by the unpleasant sneer and slow handclap. ‘Though I’m not sure the press will buy it. Not when I tell them exactly what kind of sham your engagement has been.’

  Louis stood, his palms flat on the table, his body leaning over, and took in the vicious gleam in his father’s eyes as the old man waited for him to lose his temper.

  Well, not today.

  He could almost hear Alex’s soft voice in his head as he dredged up an icy smile, but a smile nonetheless. His voice was low and even.

  ‘Fine. Go ahead and tell the media whatever you want. You’re going to anyway. But don’t pretend it’s anything other than to destroy her reputation for your own revenge. And it won’t change anything. You’ve still lost. I will take control of the Lefebvre Group and Rainbow House, which my mother and my grandfather worked so tirelessly to support. I don’t need to marry Alex. I want to marry her.’

  ‘I won’t sign.’

  ‘Then you’ll end up losing the Delaroche Foundation, too,’ Louis warned. Though, perhaps surprisingly, he took no pleasure from it. It was simply a fact that his stubborn father needed pointing out to him. ‘If they see these papers—and they’ll have to, there’s no avoiding it—then you could lose everything.’

  ‘No,’ his father ground out, his composure beginning to crack. ‘Take the Delaroche Foundation from me? I’d like to see you try.’

  ‘I don’t want your foundation,’ Louis scorned. ‘I never did. But I want to honour the legacy my mother created. The first seven years of my life were the happiest I’ve ever had, until now. She taught me how to laugh, how to be kind, and how to feel. I recognise now what I’ve always known, and that is that the only reason she would have chosen to leave me behind is if she hadn’t been in her right mind. And that comes down to you. And you alone. We both know how cruelly you treated her.’

  ‘You think you can blame her death on me? You dare to threaten me? Pah, the press will never believe a playboy bastard like you.’

  He’d never seen his father’s hand shake like that before.

 
Somehow it only helped Louis feel all the calmer.

  ‘I wasn’t threatening you at all.’ He straightened up, making a show of taking a step back from the table. Away from his father. ‘I have no intention of going to the media. I can’t think of anything that’s less their business. However, it will come out. The truth always does.’

  ‘Then I’ll destroy you,’ Jean-Baptiste roared, his anger making him miss Louis’s warning.

  Wordlessly, Louis stood up straight and took a further step back from the desk. The moments ticked by as they remained motionless in their respective places. At an impasse. But Louis knew he held the key. He drew in a steadying breath, then another, and another. One image locked in his brain. Alex, in her wedding dress. And he knew with bone-deep certainty that he had to win her back. She was the one thing that made his life make sense. He could live without her if he had to, but he didn’t want to have to.

  ‘Sign the papers. It will return the group to me as my mother’s will had always intended, and the fact that you manipulated the documents will never have to come out. Once the tie is severed between the Delaroche Foundation and the Lefebvre Group, all documents pertaining to the latter, including these, are no longer valid. As the new chairman of the Lefebvre Group, I can file them away wherever I see fit and neither your board, nor anyone else, need ever see them. It’s your choice.’

  ‘And yet it isn’t really a choice at all, is it?’ sneered the older man. Still, Louis found himself holding his breath as his father, with no other choice, lifted his pen and began to sign.

  Personally, he would have liked nothing better than to let the whole world know what Jean-Baptiste had done, let him get his comeuppance. But that would destroy the Delaroche Foundation and there were too many good people, too many truly charitable projects that would be irreparably damaged by such an action. It would destroy far more than it would achieve.

  And that wasn’t something he could imagine Alex approving of. It was strange how much she factored into his thoughts. How, over their time together, he had begun to weigh things against what she might approve of or not.

  He’d thought cutting her free was the right thing to do. The only thing to do. But now he wasn’t so sure. She’d once told him she loved him. Had that been true? Could she love him again?

  ‘There, you have your pound of flesh.’ The resentful tone pulled Louis back to the moment.

  He leaned over to take the papers but his father gripped them all the more tightly, one final insult at the ready.

  ‘What would your mother think of you now?’

  The insidiousness scratched at Louis, scraping away until a rage was rushing in to fill the vacuum. He twisted around and the sardonic smile on Jean-Baptiste’s face revealed the old man thought he had won.

  At any other time, he might have. But Louis had a weapon now, one he’d never had before—Alex’s belief in him. He knew it was pointless but he couldn’t stop the glimmer of possibility that maybe, just maybe he could one day win her love for real.

  He had to be the kind of man she deserved.

  ‘I don’t think you have the right to talk to me about my mother. Not now. Not ever.’ He sounded as close to the edge as he felt. But that couldn’t be helped.

  The cruel twist of his father’s mouth was sharp enough to draw blood. Like a scalpel slicing him from within.

  Now.

  ‘No wonder you weren’t enough to make her want to live.’

  It was all Louis could do to swallow the bitter, acid taste in his mouth.

  ‘Except that she did want to live, didn’t she? She never committed suicide, she never even considered it. The day she died she was trying to save a life, not take one. But you told me otherwise simply to keep me in line. To exact some kind of revenge.’

  He’d never seen that expression on his father’s face before. So hateful, so ugly.

  ‘So you finally know the truth. How does it feel, Louis, to know that you believed so badly of her so easily?’

  ‘You’re really trying to turn this onto me?’

  ‘How much guilt do you feel, knowing that she believed in you so much that she bought a house a few streets away from Rainbow House, where she thought you and she could live, and yet you didn’t believe in her enough to trust that she hadn’t taken her own life?’

  ‘She bought a house?’ Louis echoed dully, as Jean-Baptiste’s face contorted all the more.

  ‘You must feel sick to the stomach to realise how pathetically easy it was to convince you that she had left you. You didn’t have enough faith in her to question what I told you for even a moment.’

  ‘You’re sick.’

  ‘I’m a winner. I do whatever it takes. And you’re just like me. As this...’ he waved his hand over the papers he’d just signed ‘...proves.’

  He had a choice. He could let his father get to him, as he had always done. Or he could be the man Alex would want him to be, the man his mother would have wanted him to be, but, more importantly, the man he wanted to be.

  And suddenly it was so clear. He was finally free. Free from guilt and responsibility for things over which he actually had no control. Alex had freed him. Maybe she’d started to from the moment they had first met on that balcony, and now it was time he did the same for her.

  And he knew just what he needed to do to win her back. If she’d let him, as he knew he’d really hurt her. But he had to try. Starting with resurrecting the plans for the stable block. Taking the papers from his father’s hands and striding across to the door, Louis felt lighter and less weighed down than he had in years. Possibly ever.

  ‘No,’ he cast over his shoulder with a genuine smile that wasn’t aimed at his father in the least. He felt jubilant, untethered, victorious. ‘I’m nothing like you. I never have been.’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE NEWS THAT Louis was back at Silveroaks reached Alex’s ears at the end of a long afternoon of surgeries, her legs wobbling perilously as she checked on her last patient in the recovery unit. It had been three weeks, two days, seven hours and a handful of minutes since that awful row back at the chateau.

  She knew the timings by heart. How could she not? The moment he’d walked out of that door it had been as though her life had been stripped of every last drop of colour. And now he was back.

  But was it for work? Or for her?

  She knew what was most likely, and yet hope still gurgled inside her like a trickling brook. The past few weeks had been like nothing she could describe—a deep, hollow emptiness that tumbled around her chest.

  And as much as her heart ached for herself, it also ached for Louis. For what the two of them had almost shared. For how far he’d almost come. For the way she’d hurt him without intending to. He’d hurt her too, she knew that, but it didn’t stop her caring for him. She should have told him that he was becoming more important to her than Rainbow House, than her father. She knew what it was like, playing second best. Why had she made him feel as though he was?

  It may not have changed anything, but at least she would have been brave enough to have been honest. For once. Because nothing eased the dull pain that still ached inside her every time she read a news story about a possible sighting of the uncharacteristically low-profile Louis, who still appeared to be working from the relatively secure confines of the chateau. Nothing, that was, until the news had filtered down that he was back.

  And despite all attempts by her brain to caution her, it was as though that very fact in itself caused the colour to flow back into her lonely black and white world. And the voice in her head, which she’d been trying to silence for almost a month, finally broke free of its cage.

  If you want him, go and find him.

  * * *

  She had no recollection of moving through the hospital, its maze of corridors which she knew so well, but one minute she was leaving the recovery unit and the n
ext she was outside Louis’s door. She lifted her hand to knock, then decided against it and simply stepped right in. This time her legs really did give way.

  The room seemed to shrink around him, as though he overpowered it without doing a thing. Sitting behind the desk as he was, his shirtsleeves rolled up to reveal his tanned forearms, his tie loose and a stack of paperwork in front of him, how could he have grown more powerful, more handsome, more... Louis in a matter of weeks?

  Stumbling back, she felt the door swing with her, heard it slam shut with such force the room shook.

  Not exactly the entrance she’d been intending but at least he wouldn’t know just how weak at the knees he made her.

  He narrowed his eyes.

  ‘Alex? What are you doing here?’

  Her mouth had never felt so parched. She still couldn’t find the strength to push off the door and so she stayed there, leaning against the cheap wood veneer, effectively trapping him.

  ‘I came to see you.’

  ‘Evidently.’

  There was no trace of sarcasm in his tone and yet she could feel the heat rising from her toes.

  ‘I came to apologise,’ she said calmly. As if she wasn’t shaking inside.

  Even the frown that drew his features together was handsome. How had she forgotten quite how striking he was?

  ‘I believe I should be the one apologising. I came here to tell you as much. I said things to you that were unforgivable.’

  He’d been intending to see her? To talk to her? Something tiptoed through her but she didn’t dare to examine it too closely. Not yet.

  ‘You said things to me that were true.’ Alex forced herself to maintain eye contact, but that familiar heat burned low in her. ‘What’s more, I needed to hear them. I know I’ve said this before, but you were right, I was just as tethered to my past as you. I was using you, our marriage, to try to convince my father that I would do anything for him. To try to make him love me the way he loved my brother.’

  Was that sadness that skittered across his expression before he shut it down? She couldn’t quite tell. He leaned back in his chair, his eyes raking over her even though his voice was gentle.