Chapter 23
The message pinged into Tilly’s phone at a time she should have been sound asleep but she was, instead, following a now familiar pattern of staring at her ceiling for far too long, having woken up from dreaming about Angus McLeod.
Missing him with an ache that made getting back to sleep very unlikely.
Still clinging to the hope that she was going to be seeing him again because she was sure she knew Angus well enough to know he wouldn’t simply walk away without saying goodbye properly.
Even if he only returned for a farewell, Tilly would still want to see him. Because that would mean a friendship could be salvaged. That she wouldn’t have to try and wall off the memories of their time together due to a fear that they might bring more pain than joy.
Maybe that was why her first thought was that the text had come from him.
Because wishful thinking was like catching a tiny wisp of joy, and Tilly badly needed all the joy she could catch at the moment.
She grabbed her phone so swiftly from the bedside table that it slipped through her fingers to land with an ominous thud on the wooden floorboards.
‘Oh, merde…’
Had she really done it this time? Cracked the screen badly enough to make it impossible to use the device? What if, by some miracle, it was a text from Angus and she couldn’t even read it? She was holding her breath as she turned the phone over to see the notification on the screen.
An undamaged screen.
And the little preview box told her it was from Angus. She could see the first few words as well.
Can you meet me…
It took three swipes for her to open the message thanks to the sudden tremble in her fingers. She could see a map with a pinned location on it, but Tilly was only looking at the words.
Can you meet me here? At 5.30 a.m. Please?
Tilly couldn’t help herself. She opened the menu of reactions and chose the little red heart. She heard the whoosh of her phone sending it and then saw it come up attached to the top of Angus’s message.
It was an affirmation but she hadn’t even looked at where she was supposed to be.
Another text landed.
Wear something warm.
Tilly found the words blurring due to tears gathering. These messages were so Angus.
Direct. He hadn’t even used her name.
Practical. Caring. He didn’t want her to get cold.
Totally unromantic but she couldn’t have cared less.
He had to be back in France if he was wanting her to meet him within the hour.
And maybe it wasn’t so unromantic if she had to be there in time for dawn to break? This was like the very first day of their time travelling through Provence, when they’d driven in Alfie to get to the balloon ride.
Not that any balloons floated around this part of the country. And Tilly had never seen any flying pigs, either.
This time, she sent a thumbs-up reaction. It didn’t matter where that pin was, she would find a way to get there if Angus was going to be waiting for her.
The location, thankfully, turned out to be not far away – close to a bridge that went over the Var and less than a twenty-minute drive.
* * *
The last time Angus had been standing in a field before dawn had been to watch a hot-air balloon being inflated.
And that was exactly what he was doing now.
Roy had laughed when he heard that Angus wanted to organise a bespoke private charter of his balloon, to happen in a part of France that was several hours’ drive away for him and his team.
‘It’s not going to be cheap,’ he’d warned.
‘There are some things you can’t put a price on,’ Angus had told him.
‘I got the impression that another balloon ride would be the last thing you ever wanted to do.’
He was right but Angus still had the last word.
‘This isn’t about me.’
The balloon was upright by the time the little purple van drove in through the gate of the field and parked next to the car Angus had hired last night when he’d arrived in Nice.
Alfie.
He glanced over his shoulder as he began walking towards Tilly, to see what she was seeing.
And it was gorgeous. This enormous balloon, with its graceful, teardrop shape with the stripes that were narrow at the mouth gradually widening to accommodate the bulge then tapering as they vanished over the top.
The shades of every colour of the rainbow that came alive with every short burst of the burner while Roy kept it inflated but not straining at its tethers.
Behind Tilly, the mountains were an inky silhouette against the first pale wash of daylight.
Angus couldn’t see her well enough to be able to read her expression.
He couldn’t even tell if she was smiling yet but…
she was here and that was all that really mattered.
The sound of another muted roar from the burner behind him reminded Angus that there was no time to stand here and give Tilly an effusive greeting, or offer explanations.
Even a kiss had to wait. The route they were going to take, if the weather stayed as perfect as it was right now, had been planned down to the exact place where he wanted them to be when the first rays of the sun climbed above the horizon and gilded the cross on the top of the Baou des Blancs.
What he could do, was hold out his hand to Tilly.
And smile.
‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ he said. ‘Come…’
And then they were running, hand in hand, towards the balloon.
* * *
Ohh…
That smile…
Tilly would have taken his hand and gone anywhere on earth with Angus, but that he was taking her to a balloon was beyond astonishing.
So was finding that Roy was their pilot. And that they were the only people getting into the basket with him.
‘What are you doing in this part of Provence?’ Tilly asked. ‘Have you run away from home?’
‘This is a one-off,’ Roy said. ‘I’m looking forward to it as much as Angus is.’
Tilly’s jaw dropped. Angus looking forward to a balloon ride? She made a show of looking around them, shading her eyes even though there was no sunshine. ‘I don’t see any pigs,’ she said.
‘Pigs?’ Roy didn’t get it. He sounded horrified. ‘We not going anywhere near any pigs today.’
Angus got it. He was giving her that look. That intense, narrow-eyed focus that made her the only thing in the universe he was interested in. And he looked as if he was laughing. Inside.
‘Do you remember the rules?’ Roy asked. ‘Hang on to the handles as we take off and no leaning over the side of the basket.’
Angus had one hand on a handle. His other hand was holding Tilly’s again.
There was a longer blast on the burner and, with no more than an imperceptible shudder, the ground was falling away beneath them.
Tilly’s fingers tightened around Angus’s hand as they got swiftly higher and, in the light of the next flame above them, she turned her head so that she could catch and hold his gaze.
She didn’t try and say anything because she couldn’t find any words yet, but maybe her eyes – the mirror of her soul – were telling him what she wanted to say.
This is amazing.
You are amazing.
I love you.
Angus leaned down and Tilly lifted her chin to meet his kiss.
And she could taste it.
Love.
Who knew it had a taste all of its own? The most delicious, addictive taste you could be lucky enough to be given. It clearly went both ways because that kiss wasn’t broken until a new blast of the burner reminded them that they weren’t alone.
The silence that fell between the roars of the burner was one of the things Tilly remembered from their first flight over Gordes because, thanks to Roy’s ability to make himself almost a part of his balloon, it had made her feel as if she and Angus were alone in the sky, just the two of them.
The memory was even sharper because, again, they were over a forest heading towards a medieval village on a hilltop.
Tilly knew exactly where they were.
‘That’s Saint-Paul-de-Vence. Look – the cathedral is like a big fat candle on the top of a cake made of houses.’
A cake.
It was one of their words, wasn’t it? Part of a private language that lovers created.
She bit back a smile. ‘It’s picturesque, non?’
‘Non,’ Angus echoed. ‘It’s romantic.’
Tilly blinked. ‘You don’t have to be romantic,’ she told him. ‘I love you for exactly who you are, Angus McLeod.’
Oh, mon Dieu – she’d said it first, hadn’t she?
She’d broken the fairy tale.
Except it didn’t feel like that. It felt like Angus had been telling her that he loved her from the moment he’d come back to France and sent that text message.
Because he’d arranged a balloon ride even though he’d sworn he’d never do it again.
He’d cared enough to tell her to wear something warm.
He’d crinkled his eyes at her and he’d kissed her like she was the only woman on earth that he could ever want to be with.
And… she trusted him.
So she kept talking.
‘You are the most genuine, loving, funny, amazing man I have ever met,’ she told him into the silence. ‘I don’t need icing on a cake like that. I could never stop loving you.’
Angus was smiling. ‘But why have a naked cake when you can have the icing and make it even more delicious? Romance isn’t meaningless at all.
I was looking at it all wrong – as a means to an end.
But it’s not – it’s a way of enhancing what’s already there.
Like… singing a love song instead of just saying the words. ’
They were right over Saint-Paul-de-Vence now.
‘Look,’ he said, because Tilly was staring at him and missing what was right below them.
The sculpture. L’Envol.
They both looked down as they floated past the beautiful half-man, half-bird about to take flight.
‘I’m not going to sing to you,’ Angus said, firmly. ‘I’m tone deaf. But I am going to say the words. I love you, Mathilde Pascoe. I’m in love with you. Being away from you even for a short time has made me realise I want to be with you for the rest of my life.’
He kissed her again. Or maybe it was Tilly kissing him.
It didn’t matter and they didn’t break the kiss when the burner reminded them they weren’t alone.
By the time they did, they were over the centre of Vence.
Another cathedral, this time with the chestnut tree behind it that they’d been able to see from the summit of the Baou des Blancs.
Tilly looked up to find the cross – a dark metal shape against the milky sky behind it. But the sun was there and, as she watched, it got high enough over the horizon for the light to touch the cross and make it gold instead of black.
‘Oh.’ Tilly gasped. ‘It’s so beautiful.’ She looked up at Angus. ‘Did you know it was going to do that?’
His smile told her just how carefully he’d planned this and she loved him even more for it.
‘I wanted you to have the most breathtaking view I could think of,’ he said.
He stood behind Tilly, his arms around her, both of them watching the sunrise bathe the summit of the mountain, and he deliberately used words he remembered her saying to him.
‘Because I want to give you the world. This’ – he paused for a heartbeat – ‘is how much I love you.’
Tilly’s face turned up to his again. She could also remember exactly the words she’d spoken that day. ‘You are the person I want to be with,’ she whispered to finish them. ‘Only you. Now and forever.’
* * *
Angus reached into his pocket and took out the small suede envelope.
‘This doesn’t have to be anything more than you want it to be,’ he told Tilly.
‘It can be a friendship ring but I want to give it to you because you were right. I did choose this for what it symbolises and it wasn’t associated with a person.
Until now. You are the woman I’ve fallen in love with.
The person I want to spend the rest of my life with. ’
He slipped the ring onto the finger she’d put it on herself in what felt like forever ago.
‘You can wear it on this hand for as long as you need to be sure,’ he said. ‘But, one day, I hope you’ll be ready to wear it on your other hand and I promise I’ll try and dream up the most romantic proposal ever.’
Tilly had tears sparkling in her eyes. ‘I’m the woman who’s just as much in love with you,’ she told him.
So why was she pulling the ring off her finger, with almost as much determination as she had the first time she’d worn it?
Angus caught his breath. It felt like his heart might have stopped when she pushed the ring back into his hand.
But she was smiling. And holding out her left hand.
‘I’m more than ready,’ she said, her voice wobbling. ‘And you couldn’t possibly dream up a more romantic place to propose than this.’
Angus had a lump in his throat that made it impossible to get many words out at all.
It was just as well that he didn’t need very many.
‘Will you marry me,’ he managed. ‘Please?’
Tilly only seemed to need one word.
‘Yes.’
* * *
At the other end of the most romantic day of her life, Tilly and Angus were at La Maisonette. They lit every candle and turned on all the fairy lights. Tilly was wearing her beautiful red dress and they were drinking champagne. And dancing.
‘I said I didn’t dance,’ Angus said in response to Tilly’s astonished expression when he’d made the invitation. ‘Not that I didn’t know how to. I’ve just never really wanted to – until today.’
So here they were, dancing. On a very small terrace, but how much room did you need for slow dancing, cheek to cheek, like the lyrics in the song that was floating around them.
‘Lady in Red’.
It was their song, now.
Forever…