‘Wow! Who are you out to impress?’ Kathy asked when Julianne took off her coat on entering The Mallard and the dress beneath it was revealed.
It was bright scarlet, low cut, with an uneven hemline of long and short tails, and it fitted as if she’d been poured into it. Black patent-leather shoes with incredible heels and a matching bag made up the rest of her outfit.
From the moment of arriving at the noisy gathering Julianne had put Aaron Somerton’s presence in the village out of her mind for a few hours and was back to her usual self of the attractive party animal concentrating on enjoying herself with tomorrow hidden in mist.
Aaron had accepted Nathan and Libby’s invitation to dine with them that evening and as he’d walked the short distance to where they’d had two cottages made into one across the way from the surgery, he’d heard loud music coming from the pub that was a favourite haunt for the young and trendy amongst the locals and the many visitors who came to Swallowbrook.
He smiled a grim smile. The last time he’d been to anywhere like that had been with the woman he’d been going to marry and they’d danced non-stop.
A couple of weeks later Nadine had changed her mind and left him standing dumbstruck at the altar as she’d run down the aisle with the flowers of her bouquet scattering behind her, broken like the promises she’d decided she didn’t want to make.
He’d gone after her and had been just in time to see her clutching the folds of her dress and with her veil streaming out behind her, jump into a red sports car that was parked at the church gates with engine running.
The rest of it had been a blur—wedding guests commiserating awkwardly and then drifting off, the vicar offering gentle condolences and assuring him that he would be available for support at any time that he might need him. And he’d seen the young bridesmaid with eyes large in her face though not exactly dismayed, and wondered if she’d known anything about the sports-car guy and had been expecting his own public humiliation.
He’d never seen the sly young minx from that day to this after he’d taken her on one side and waltzed her into the church vestry, where he’d discovered on questioning that she’d tried to persuade her sister endlessly not to marry him; and must have eventually succeeded.
He hadn’t waited to hear any more. It had been clear that she was just as devious as Nadine. Whatever he’d done to either of them to deserve that treatment he didn’t know, and had declared that he never wanted to set eyes on the pair of them again as long as he lived.
But now, out of choice, he was back in Lakeland and ready to put his self-imposed absence behind him like a bad dream. He imagined that the bridesmaid would have found a husband of her own by now and moved on somewhere else, like Nadine had done, and if she had he hoped that she would treat him better than his treacherous bride had treated him.
With the position in Africa coming up, he’d packed his bags and gone, and had never laid his hands on another woman since, neither was likely to do so in the future. Money and glamour had been a better choice than love, he’d discovered where Nadine had been concerned, and he was never likely to tread that path again.
Nathan had offered to drive him back to The Falls Cottage after a very pleasant evening, but Aaron had assured him that he would enjoy the walk in the mellow darkness of a late autumn evening.
As he strolled back the way he had come he had to pass The Mallard again and this time it didn’t bring back memories of times when he hadn’t known his happiness was in the balance. It was just a rather noisy place where people were enjoying themselves, and why not?
It was late and he had to sidestep to avoid a group that had just left the place and were chatting on the pavement. His glance rested for a second on a girl in a red dress, slim, dark haired, dark eyed, who had turned away as he’d approached, and he wondered why.
He didn’t sleep well that first night. The noise of the waterfall was something he was going to have to get used to, he thought as he went to stand beside it as it hurtled down in the moonlight.
The memory of the folks coming out of the pub happy and carefree was still there. He had almost forgotten how to enjoy himself since the body blow he’d received from his faithless fiancée had destroyed any inclination he might have had towards that sort of thing, and the work he had gone to do amongst the heat and endless health problems of a far country, though rewarding and challenging, had not helped to make him feel any less joyless.
Yet as he turned to go back inside he found he was smiling, his spirits lifting. He had done the right thing in coming back to this beautiful Lakeland, he told himself. The past was done with. He was not going to allow it to intrude into the future. He had survived what Nadine had done to him and from now on intended to be happy and carefree in his new surroundings.
He could see the shops on the main street in the distance and saw that late as it was there was a light on in the rooms above the bakery, so he wasn’t the only one still up.
Back in her flat, Julianne was staring into space. The last thing she’d wanted had been to come face-to-face with Aaron outside The Mallard amongst the noise and laughter of its patrons at the end of an evening of dancing and drinking, and after the first moment of unexpected recognition she’d turned away, wishing that she was dressed in a colour less memorable than red.
If he had recognised her he would no doubt have seen scarlet as the right colour for any woman associated with Nadine. But he hadn’t, and if she could escape any scrutiny that brought recognition when they came face-to-face at the surgery, she would be relieved beyond telling. If she didn’t, then what? Leave and look for a position somewhere else?
Yet she would hate to have to do that as the only people in her life were the few casual friends she’d made since joining the practice. Her parents were divorced—her mother married for a second time and living in Australia, and her father spent his days as steward and general factotum on a luxury yacht that its owners spent their time sailing around the world in, so he only appeared rarely in her life.
As for her Nadine, she hadn’t seen her since the day she’d left Aaron devastated at the altar and she had no wish to do so in the future. If he’d given her the chance during those moments when they’d been alone in the vestry she would have explained that her only reason for not being horrified at what her sister had done to him had been because she’d had a youthful crush on him and wished she could have been his bride instead.
She would have squirmed in the telling of it because compared to Nadine she’d been like an ugly duckling next to a beautiful swan in her teenage years and gauche with it.
But Aaron hadn’t given her the chance and in a sick sort of way she’d been relieved to be saved the embarrassment of admitting such a thing to a man who barely knew she existed.
The only time they’d had any conversation before that had been once when he’d been waiting for Nadine to get ready to go partying. It had been at the flat that she and her sister had shared in the town centre as Nadine was no lover of the countryside, and she’d been forced to listen to how fortunate he felt he was to have someone so beautiful wanting to marry him.
At the time she’d been reminded of men who had tried to chat her up as a means of getting to know her golden-haired sister and how she’d sent them packing, but tongue-tied in his presence she’d refrained from offering a word of warning because she’d known that the envy of other men would only make Nadine more desirable in his eyes.
It had been a rich man who had used his wealth to tempt Nadine away from the altar that day. The thought of him waiting out there with all that he could give her had made her choose possessions before love.
Julianne had known that she was seeing someone else, and had begged her not to marry Aaron if she didn’t love him, but Nadine’s reply to that had been that she did love