My Husband Called Me Barren, Now a Billionaire Begs for Me novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Desk
A hospital nurse tells Margaux her husband has already registered with another woman; she follows them to a club, hears the truth, and the town hall confirms her marriage never existed.
"I'm sorry, Madame, we cannot open a pregnancy file for you."
The nurse at the registration desk said it loudly enough for the whole waiting room to hear.
Margaux Villard stood there with her appointment card in one hand and her first ultrasound request in the other.
"That's impossible," she said. "I booked this visit three weeks ago."
"Your husband already has a file with us."
The nurse looked at her screen, then at the women on the chairs behind Margaux, and lowered her voice.
"He registered fifteen days ago with the woman named on his marriage record. Please check that your certificate and his ID number are correct."
Margaux laughed, because it was the only sound she could make.
"We've been married five years. Thibault Marceau. Look again."
"I did. His ID is in our system. He came in with a young woman, and they had their first scan together."
Margaux held the edge of the desk.
Three years of injections had finally worked, and she had come here to surprise him.
Thibault had been away on business for fifteen days.
Every night he had called her on video and told her how much he missed her.
It was a mistake, she told herself. The hospital had mixed up two files, and the town hall would fix it.
She took the lift down, and when the doors opened she saw them.
Thibault stood in the lobby holding a girl's coat over his arm, and she leaned against him with a hand on her stomach.
The girl was Manon Duret.
She was twenty, the daughter of his late father's old partner, and she had slept in Margaux's guest room more than once.
Last spring Margaux had baked her a birthday cake.
Margaux stepped behind a pillar.
Manon hung on Thibault's neck. "Darling, do you think our baby will look like you?"
"I hope he looks like you," Thibault said, and his voice was soft. "Then he'll be as pretty as his mother."
They walked past without seeing her.
Margaux's nails cut into her palms, and she did not feel it.
She followed them out and took a taxi after their car.
It stopped at a private club on the river, and they went into a room on the second floor.
Margaux stood outside the half-open door.
Inside, men were laughing.
"You two never come apart," one of them said. "It's disgusting."
"You have the best of both," said another. "A quiet wife at home, a fun girl out here. And the barren one never complains."
Margaux heard Manon giggle and Thibault clink a glass.
"Enough," Thibault said. "Manon is shy."
Then the friends started a game, and Manon lost.
"Forfeit!" one of them shouted. "A long kiss for a man in this room!"
Manon looked at Thibault.
Thibault pulled her in and kissed her in front of everyone.
Margaux stood in the corridor and watched her husband do it.
He had told her a thousand times that he would never touch another woman.
She stayed, because the men kept talking.
A year ago, drunk after a dinner, Thibault had slept with Manon.
Manon had refused to go away, and the affair had dragged on until two weeks ago, when she found out she was pregnant.
Thibault had married her the next week, so the child would not be born outside marriage.
"And Margaux?" someone asked.
"Margaux was never my wife on paper," Thibault said. "My mother would not accept a woman who can't have children. The board wouldn't either. Her tests before the wedding were bad, under one percent."
Margaux remembered that call.
Hortense, his mother, had read her the numbers over the phone the week before the wedding.
Margaux had never seen the page.
"So I had a certificate made," Thibault said. "She never checked. Five years, and she believed every word."
His friends whistled.
"You're a genius."
Margaux walked out of the club without a sound.
She told the taxi driver to take her to the town hall.
The clerk was a thin man with a lanyard, and he typed for a long time.
"I'm sorry, Madame," he said. "There is no marriage on record between Thibault Marceau and Margaux Villard."
"We were married by proxy five years ago. His lawyer filed everything."
"The only marriage on file for Monsieur Marceau was registered fifteen days ago, to a Manon Duret."
Margaux remembered it clearly.
Thibault had said he was too busy to go to the town hall, so he would send a lawyer, and she had signed a blank page and kissed him for it.
She remembered the avalanche in Verbier, six years ago: the cold, the white weight, a voice telling her to breathe, and then Thibault in intensive care for a month.
She had loved him from that day.
She had quit her job for him.
She had put needles in her own stomach for him.
Five years, and every day of it was a lie.
Her hand went to her belly.
She had nine weeks of a child inside her, and a man who thought she could not have one.
She did not cry in the corridor of the town hall.
Margaux decided that she would not go back to that house as a wife, and she would not leave it with nothing.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket.
*Landing Saturday, my love. I can't wait to hold you.*
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