The Bannister Girls (50 page)

The taxi-cab was jostled alarmingly every time it crawled to a stop. People shouting for transport rapped on the windows, shouting at her to stop being a toff and share it with them. Angel became quite frightened, and recognising a street very near to the hotel, she told the taxi driver she would get out there and walk the rest of the way.

‘Are yer sure, Miss? Yer might get squashed –'

‘I didn't get squashed in France, so I'm not too worried about a crowd of merrymakers,' she said with some spirit.

Once outside in the cool November air, the drizzle still falling, she wasn't so sure. There were people everywhere, some the worse for drink, and she began to wonder frantically if she had survived the years of war only to be crushed to death in the first days of peace. She was finding it hard to breathe…

She had turned the corner of the street, and the lights of the Hotel Portland were ahead of her. Only a little farther. She stepped into the road to avoid a crowd of drunken revellers, and was almost immediately snatched back to the pavement again.

‘Are you trying to get yourself killed?'

The familiar voice sent waves of nostalgia rushing through her. The same words, the same voice, that she had heard a lifetime ago … she twisted round, and was clasped tightly in Jacques' arms, the crowd pushing them even closer together. She tasted his mouth for a sweet wild moment, and then he was protecting her from harm with his embrace.

‘I've been watching out for you from the entrance. Let's get inside quickly, Angel.'

They raced across the road, and entered the small hotel. It might have been cheap and none too savoury, but to the two of them it seemed as though they had just reached heaven. The tired receptionist gave them their key without bothering to look up. They moved upwards in the clanking lift, hands held as if afraid to let one another go.

‘She probably thinks we're here on a clandestine night out,' Angel murmured, fighting the urge to weep all over this man who was her husband, because the joy of their being together at last was almost too much…

‘Like the last time?' Jacques said softly and deliberately. He tipped up her chin until her eyes met his. She ached at the love she saw there.

‘Last time was a promise for the future,
chérie
. Tonight is forever.'

She kept that thought in her mind as they reached their room. For one blissful moment, they leaned against the closed door and kissed and clung, and then Jacques moved towards the window, his arms still around her, and pushed the curtains aside.

They stood with arms entwined in the darkness of the hotel room, but outside, the city was bathed in triumphant light. A tree dismally flapped its branches against the window, but not even the sadness of falling leaves could dim the revitalised splendour that was London.

Jacques spoke with restrained emotion. ‘I promised that we'd come back here and see the city as it should be, Angel. This is for you,
chérie
. This, and all the love in the world.'

She turned into his arms. Pressed close to him, she could feel the beat of his heart that was also her heart.

‘I need none of it but your love, Jacques,' she whispered. ‘All I want is you. All I ever wanted was you.'

He held her tight, love blazing between them as brightly as a flame. When he would have closed the curtains again, she stopped him, her voice tremulous, hoping he wouldn't think her words over-dramatic. But she couldn't quite forget all those others … not yet…

‘No, don't close the curtains, Jacques. I want to see the lights shining in on us, giving us their blessing. We deserve it, don't we?'

‘We all do … the survivors, and all the others who gave everything they had,' Jacques agreed quietly, and she knew instantly that he understood everything she couldn't find the words to say.

Jacques lifted his wife in his arms, and lay her on the coverlet, gazing down at her for long moments before her arms reached out to him. Somewhere in the night, the joyful muted sounds of celebratory singing went on. Life went on…

The momentary sadness drifted away from them. Thoughts of countless lovers who would never again know the ecstasy of moments like these, flitted briefly through their minds and out again, with a gentle, loving grace.

Tonight was theirs, and surely no silent ghosts could begrudge them all their tomorrows.

Jean Saunders (1932–2011)
, née Jean Innes was born in London, but lived in the West Country for almost all of her life. She was married to Geoff Saunders, her childhood sweetheart, with whom she had three children.

After the publication of her first novel, Jean began a career as a magazine writer and published around 600 short stories. She started to publish gothic romance novels under her married and maiden name in the 1970s. In the 1980s, she wrote historical romances under what would become her two most popular pseudonyms, Rowena Summers and Sally James. In 2004, she began to use the penname Rachel Moore.

In 1991 Saunders's novel,
The Bannister Girls
, was shortlisted for the Romantic Novel of the Year award. She was elected the seventeenth Chairman (1993–1995) of the Romantic Novelists' Association, and she was Vice-Chairman of the Writers' Summer School of Swanwick. She was also a member of Romance Writers of America, the Crime Writers' Association and the West Country Writers' Association.

Discover books by Jean Saunders published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/JeanSaunders

A Different Kind of Love
The Bannister Girls
Velvet Dawn
With This Ring

For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been
removed from this book. The text has not been changed, and may still contain
references to missing images.

This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Reader

Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square,
London WC1B 3DP

First published in Great Britain 1990 by W. H. Allen

Copyright © 1990 Jean Saunders

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eISBN: 9781448210497

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