Birthright by Patricia Dixon

Author:Patricia Dixon [Dixon, Patricia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloodhound Books

15

Veronique

One week. One more week of purgatory before it was set to happen, and Veronique wasn’t sure if she could bear the wait or the toll it was taking. Ever since his call, brief and to the point, she’d retreated to the bedroom. Hugo had retreated to his club. He was irritated by her; she knew that because her husband wasn’t a man in touch with his feelings or those of anyone else. It was how he was, and it had suited her, being married to someone who understood the rule of give and take, the balancing act of a mutually beneficial relationship.

Turning on her side, Veronique curled into a ball and listened to the sounds of an empty apartment that in her addled brain she’d hoped to fill with friends – his not hers – and some laughter too. She had seen a new role for herself as the hostess, le Duc’s vibrant new wife who would give grand dinner parties, slowly make some acquaintances, be accepted. It was fine at first, bearable, easy to fake being happily married especially when you’d landed on your feet and ended up in such beautiful, if shabby chic, surroundings. And then she realised the money had run out, and her fanciful notions were just that, and she was trapped.

Looking over to Hugo’s side of the bed, unslept in for days, she wished that the photo of the couple on their wedding day was true, not as fake as the smile she had worn for the camera. She’d tried so hard to fall in love with him though, rewind the clock, skip past the stuff that had tainted her. She threw herself into being the best wife she could while deep down knowing she would never be good enough. She was not from the right stock and ‘a girl like her’ would never really fit into his world. She would never be Paloma.

He’d always been elusive, emotionally bankrupt even when they were younger yet as much as she tried not to, she’d wanted him so badly, and not only his lifestyle. She’d harboured a ridiculous naïve notion that maybe she was different. That she was beautiful enough, even more beautiful than his wife, and had something special that would crack his code.

Oh Hugo, why couldn’t you see? Why couldn’t you be the one to save me?

Veronique looked at her wedding ring, the first she had ever worn and on the day she made her vows, apart from the ones that alluded to love, she really had meant them. They were binding her to something she’d longed for, craved. And in return for respectability and stability, financial security and freedom even though she didn’t love him she would have stood by Hugo forever.

Veronique’s hips ached from lying on the bed for hours on end so she flipped onto her back. The pain in her bones reminded her of aching feet, that day six years before when she’d walked through the streets of Montparnasse, looking for a cheap place to stay.

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