The Bride's Baby

‘How could I go there after you and I…?’ And he was the one lost for words. ‘I hurt you, Sylvie. Made you cry. I’ve only made two women cry in my entire life.’

‘Your mother…’

“I’ll be all right. I have to go…”

His mother had said that. And so had she…

‘I was crying because you’d given me something so unbelievable, Tom. I’d been frozen, held in an emotional Ice Age. Too much had happened at once. I’d lost everything and then been betrayed…’ She looked up at him, wanting him to know that this was the truth. ‘I spent my life making perfect weddings for other people when I was unable to even share a kiss…’

‘Sylvie…’

‘I came straight back, as soon as I could, but you’d gone.’

‘I was in bits. I thought you couldn’t wait to leave…Never wanted to set eyes on me again and who could blame you?’

She reached up, placed her fingers over his lips. ‘You are my sun, Tom. You looked at me and it was instant meltdown. You held me and your heat warmed me.’

‘But…’

‘The tears were pure joy, Tom. And the baby…’ She took his hand and placed it over the baby growing beneath her heart. ‘Our baby is pure joy too.’

‘She’s mine…’ His face, pale in the rising moon, glowed with something like reverence. ‘My little girl.’

She’d cried then and she was crying now. Silent tears that were falling down her cheeks as she said, ‘You have a family, Tom.’

For a moment they just stood there and then he said, ‘It’s not enough. I want you, Sylvie. I tried to get you out of my mind, tried to forget you, but it was no good. I…’ He stopped.

‘You what, Tom?’ She reached up, her palms on his cheeks, making him look at her when he would have turned away. ‘Say the words.’

‘I…I love you.’ Then, ‘I love you, but I’ve made a complete mess of it. It’s too late…’

‘Because of the wedding tomorrow? Is that the only thing standing between us?’

‘Sylvie…’ And this time her name was a tortured cry that rent her to the heart.

‘It’s a fantasy wedding, Tom. Not real. Just the “Sylvie Duchamp Smith” fantasy of what her wedding would be. If…when…she ever found a man she could spend the rest of her life with.’

She saw him wrestle with that.

‘But Jeremy…’

‘Is not that man. We met at a charity do. We were polite, we smiled at each other. Celebrity did the rest. I suspect they were hoping to provoke me into naming the real father of my child.’

‘But you’ve been ordering cakes. Food. Flowers. You’ve got an updated version of the dress you were going to wear the first time…’

‘The dress is nothing like the one that my great-grandma wore,’ she assured him. ‘I have an entirely different fantasy these days.’ Then, ‘I can’t believe you’d think I’d sell my own wedding to the media.’

‘I had the impression that you’d do anything for your mother’s charity.’

‘Some things are not for sale, Tom.’

Then, catching a flicker of light, the twitch of a curtain from the Kennedys’ cottage, she said, ‘They knew, didn’t they? They knew you were coming back.’

‘If you’d turned on your cellphone any time in the last two hours, so would you.’

‘My battery is flat. What did you say?’

‘“There will be no wedding…”’

‘None?’

‘Not tomorrow,’ he said, reaching out and touching her cheek. ‘But soon, I hope. Very soon. Because if you think you can have my baby without any expectation of commitment to her father, you’ve got another think coming.’

‘Is that right?’

‘And it’s my fantasy too, remember? I want the whole works.’

‘All of it?’

‘All of it. Everything, everyone. Except Celebrity. They can have their fantasy tomorrow, but the reality will be for us alone. Not just for a day, but for always.’ Then, as if realising that something was missing, he went down on one knee and, under a bright canopy of stars, he said, ‘If I promise to wear a purple waistcoat to match your shoes, will you marry me, Sylvie Smith?’

Four weeks after the Pink Ribbon Club Wedding Fayre featuring Sylvie Duchamp Smith’s fantasy wedding was a sell-out for Celebrity, Tom and Sylvie did it for real.

Sylvie arrived at the church on a traction engine that was all gleaming paintwork and brass. Geena had made her another dress-since, obviously, the groom had seen the first one. It wasn’t quite the same since she never repeated her designer gowns, but it was close. And Sylvie wore the purple shoes.

Josie had added a dusting of green glitter to her purple hair and, having been bribed with an appliqued dress with a tiny little matching jacket and a pair of pale green silk-embroidered shoes, had surrendered her boots.

The god-daughters were adorable in lavender and violet. The page scowled, but that was only to be expected. Even a five-year-old knew that purple velvet breeches were an outrage. And, as she walked up the aisle on the arm of her father, the sunlight caught the diamonds in the tiara Tom had commissioned from a local jeweller for his bride.

The fair was a riot, the food was pronounced perfect, the children were sick on candyfloss-well, nothing was ever quite perfect-and Josie, now the partner in charge of weddings and parties, was overwhelmed with people demanding exactly the same for their own special day.

But, as Tom had told Sylvie, this was a one-off. For them alone.

Liz Fielding

Liz Fielding was born with itchy feet. She made it to Zambia before her twenty-first birthday and, gathering her own special hero and a couple of children on the way, lived in Botswana, Kenya and Bahrain-with pauses for sightseeing pretty much everywhere in between. She finally came to a full stop in a tiny Welsh village cradled by misty hills, and these days mostly leaves her pen to do the traveling. When she’s not sorting out the lives and loves of her characters, she potters in the garden, reads her favorite authors and spends a lot of time wondering “What if…?” For news of upcoming books-and to sign up for her occasional newsletter-visit Liz’s Web site at www.lizfielding.com.

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