Kitabı oku: «For Better For Worse»
For Better for Worse
Penny Jordan
www.millsandboon.co.uk
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
EPILOGUE
Copyright
PROLOGUE
AS FERN saw Nick walk into the kitchen, her stomach muscles tensed.
She had heard him arrive from upstairs, had witnessed the impatience with which he had slewed the car to a halt and climbed out, slamming the door, and then glancing up at the house.
She had stepped back from the window then, an automatic and very betraying gesture, pausing as she caught sight of herself in her dressing-table mirror. She looked strained and tired, her eyes empty and lifeless… as empty and lifeless as her marriage to Nick?
Abruptly she had turned away from the mirror and hurried downstairs.
It was her own fault that Nick was in a bad mood, of course. She should not have raised the subject of how much time he was spending working last night. He had always hated her ‘interfering in his life’, as he called it. She had learned early on in her marriage that Nick loathed any form of restraint, even the mildest hint of criticism.
What was wrong with her? he had demanded to know last night. Didn’t she realise how fortunate she was, how many women would gladly change places with her?
‘You’re my wife,’ he had told her. ‘Nothing can change that.’
A promise, or a threat?
She tensed now, guiltily trying to suppress her rebellious thoughts. Nick was right. She was lucky to be married to him, especially after…
As he came towards her, her tension increased, her muscles locking. Automatically she looked away from him, pain a hard-edged lump in her throat. Nick was a very handsome man, and yet these days she found that sometimes she could hardly bear to look at him.
‘I love you… I need you, and I’m never, ever going to let you go,’ he had told her when he’d proposed to her, and she, swept off her feet, totally overwhelmed by his intensity, his insistence, dizzy and bemused by the speed with which he had taken over her life, had been unable to resist the pressure he had put on her.
Then she had been flattered; reassured; filled with gratitude and joy by his words.
Then…
Now, even with the width of the kitchen between them, she could smell the scent of another woman’s sex on him.
Fastidiously she increased the distance between them.
Was Nick having another affair? Last night he had denied it. And she had wanted him to deny it.
She had invested so much in this marriage, given so much to it. Too much?
How could she stay with him if he was having another affair, and yet how could she leave? Marriage was a lifetime commitment, and when problems arose within it they had to be worked at… or ignored? Her heart lurched. Was she really such a coward?
‘What’s wrong with you?’ Nick demanded sourly. ‘Not still sulking, are you?’
Protectively Fern turned to one side, reaching for the kettle, letting the straight swath of her hair swing across her face, obscuring her expression.
‘I’ve got a bit of news for you,’ Nick told her.
The surliness had gone from his voice now. It was lighter, triumphant… gloating almost. Her tension increased, but Fern suppressed it, concealing her reaction from him as instinctively as she had concealed her face. Inwardly her soul ached at what she was doing; for what their relationship had become.
‘It seems my saintly stepbrother is planning to buy Broughton House.’
Fern’s fingers tensed on the kettle-handle. She was glad she had her back to Nick.
‘Now I wonder what he wants with a place that size. All those bedrooms. A real family place…’
Fern could hear the ugly note of triumph quite clearly in his voice now. ‘Pity he hasn’t got a real family to put in it, isn’t it? Or maybe he’s thinking of acquiring one.
‘What is it, Fern? I haven’t said something to upset you, have I? Oh, I forgot—you’ve always been pretty keen on Broughton House yourself, haven’t you? You were always up there at one time… or so you claimed…’
‘I visited old Mrs Broughton occasionally, that’s all,’ Fern told him quietly.
Why did he insist on doing this to her? He knew as well as she did that there was no need… no point… He knew how bitterly she regretted what she had done.
‘Did you go to bed with him, Fern?’ he had asked her. ‘Did you?’ And she had wept silent tears which she knew had betrayed her.
‘He doesn’t want you, you know,’ he had told her, softly, gently almost, kinder to her now when he had the least reason to be than he had ever been. If he had shown her that kindness before, that compassion… would things have been any different?
How many men would still have wanted to remain married to her after that? Not many. A husband’s infidelity was one thing; a wife’s was something very different.
‘You’re my wife,’ he had told her when she had broken down and asked him why he wanted her to stay. ‘Marriage is forever, Fern. Isn’t that what your parents have always told you?’
She was his wife. He wanted their marriage… wanted her… needed her, so why was there this emptiness between them, this lack of harmony… this ugliness which eroded her pride and her self-respect?
‘I’m going up to have a shower,’ Nick told her.
To wash another woman’s scent off his body? Didn’t he realise that it was too late?
The kettle boiled and switched itself off.
So Adam was thinking of buying Broughton House… and of getting married.
Even though she was prepared for it—her body tensed against it—the pain was still sharp enough to make her catch her breath.
Adam was her brother-in-law; that was all, she reminded herself fiercely. Her stepbrother-in-law. Nothing more. Not now, not once… not ever.
Eleanor saw the advertisement while she was sitting in her dentist’s waiting-room flicking through a surprisingly current copy of Country Life.
It was the photograph that first caught her eye; the front of the house faced south and it had been photographed on a sunny day so that the stone walls were washed to a soft warm gold, the light glinting on the uneven leaded panes of the dormer attic windows.
The house looked settled, solid, permanent, safe and reassuring, offering a refuge from life’s turbulence… offering comfort.
She stared at the photograph for so long that at first she didn’t hear the receptionist call out her name.
Later, when she got home and discovered that in her haste to respond to the girl’s second clipped summons she had stuffed the magazine into her bag, she stifled her feelings of guilt and put the magazine down on her desk, intending to throw it away. But for some reason she didn’t… For some reason, later on in the day, taking a break from a particularly difficult translation of some Spanish documents for one of her clients, as she drank her cup of tea she found herself flicking through the magazine again, stopping when she reached the half-page ad featuring the house, reading the written details below the photograph briefly, her real attention focused on the photograph itself, on the warmth the house seemed to give off, the security… the sanctuary…
Sanctuary… The word dug into her conscience like a sharp thorn. What need did she have of any sanctuary? A happy second marriage, a successful career… two well-adjusted sons. She was one of the luckiest people she knew; everyone said so…
Everyone…
‘They want us… they want us… They want us!’ Zoe exulted, breaking free of Ben’s arm to perform a brief pirouette of triumph, laughing up at him as he caught hold of her, restraining her and shaking his head.
‘Don’t get too excited,’ he warned her. ‘This is only the first step. Now we’ve got to keep our fingers crossed that they can find the right place.’
He was frowning now with the seriousness which had initially attracted her to him and which sometimes she found heartachingly hard to fathom.
Why did he always seem to fear that life was waiting to deliver a blow? Why couldn’t he simply share her exultation? But she was being unfair; she knew that in his own way he did, and that, although he would die rather than admit it, this first step down the road they had plotted out for themselves was intensely important to him.
‘Benedict Fraser, Restaurateur of the Year,’ Zoe crowed, refusing to allow him to suppress her exhilaration. ‘I can see it now. “Benedict Fraser, ably aided by his ravishingly attractive and capable business manager, Ms Zoe Clinton, at their country house restaurant… quite definitely the success story of the year…"’
‘Hang on. We still have to find our country house,’ Benedict warned her. ‘Or at least our backer has to…’
‘Our backer… I still can’t believe it’s all happening. And all through you stepping in at the last minute and doing the catering for the Hargreaveses’ wedding.’
‘I’d never have done it if you hadn’t pushed me into it. Wedding breakfasts aren’t really my thing, and having to step in at the last minute like that… It’s all down to you.’
‘It’s not down to either of us,’ Zoe corrected him firmly. ‘We did it together. Both of us. We make a good team, Ben.’ She darted him a brief look and added softly, ‘In bed and out of it…’
As she had known it would, her reference to the sexual aspect of their relationship made him slightly embarrassed. For a man who was such a skilled and sensitive lover, he was oddly shy and uneasy about discussing sex. His upbringing, perhaps?
She shook her head, pushing the thought aside, not wanting it to spoil her own pleasure in their day.
‘How long do you think it will take Clive Hargreaves to find a suitable property?’
‘I don’t know. But he’s obviously already looking. I saw a pile of brochures on his desk when we were signing the contract.’
Zoe gave an ecstatic sigh. ‘We’re finally on our way. Nothing can stop us now… nothing. It’s all there waiting for us… everything we’ve wanted. Our own restaurant and the option of developing it into a small country hotel. You as the chef—the chef—and me managing the administration side of things. Just the way we dreamed.’
‘The way you dreamed. I would never have let myself imagine…’ He broke off, shaking his head. ‘I still can’t believe it’s all actually happening. This chance means so much to me, Zoe.’ He stopped walking and looked at her. ‘I don’t think you realise…’
‘Yes, I do,’ she interrupted him softly. ‘I know just what it means to you to have your own place, Ben. I know how important it is to you.’
‘Providing nothing goes wrong…’
‘Nothing will go wrong. What could go wrong? The contracts are signed, and we’re on our way. Stop worrying… Nothing will go wrong—I promise you.’
CHAPTER ONE
ELEANOR suppressed a small exclamation of impatience, glancing at her watch as the traffic came to another halt. London was impossible at this time in the morning. Especially when the streets were still grey and wet, the sky sullenly threatening and what blossom there was beginning to show on the trees battered by the sharp east wind.
The traffic moved—inches rather than yards, and she counted slowly to ten, trying to relax her tense muscles. She was going to be late arriving at her office, and she had an appointment at nine-thirty. A potential new client. She gnawed anxiously at her bottom lip, recalling the interview she had had recently with her accountant.
They were still making a profit, he had told her, but their costs were rising; the rent on their offices had doubled in the last eighteen months and was set to rise again. All over the city, peripheral businesses such as theirs were beginning to suffer from the cutbacks made by the conglomerates and multinationals which used them.
The tidal flood of extra and extremely profitable business she and Louise had seen in the last years of the Eighties was now ebbing away very fast and the anticipated upsurge in business they had expected from the new ties with Europe had been a trickle rather than a flood.
The office, which had been so convenient when she still lived in the flat, before she and Marcus had married and she and the boys had moved into his elegant Chelsea house, was now an increasingly tension-inducing drive across London.
Why was it that wet weather always made the traffic slower? she wondered irritably, frowning. She had intended to make an early start this morning, but then Tom had overslept and come down late to breakfast and Gavin had ‘lost’ his football kit, so that by the time she had actually managed to chivvy them plus their belongings into the car she had already been running behind schedule.
Marcus had already had his breakfast and started work in his study. He had frowned up at her as she opened the door, putting down the brief he had been working on. Even now, after three years of being together plus almost a year of marriage, her heart still turned over when she saw him. A ridiculous reaction in a woman of thirty-eight going on thirty-nine, surely? And to think that until she had met him she had been a woman who prided herself on her common-sense approach to life, on her awareness of the errors of judgements and the misplaced romantic ideals which had led to the break-up of her first marriage.
Until she had seen the brief in Marcus’s hand, she had almost been tempted to ask him if he could run the boys to school; the school was closer to his chambers in Lincoln’s Inn than it was to her office. But, despite the intensity of their love, a part of her remained brittly conscious that Tom and Gavin were her responsibility, just as Vanessa was his.
Vanessa… She could feel her stomach muscles tensing as she thought about Marcus’s daughter.
It troubled her that she was finding it so difficult to establish a good relationship with her. She was after all Marcus’s child… his daughter. Vanessa’s parents had been divorced for several years before she, Eleanor, had become involved in Marcus’s life. But whenever Vanessa came to stay with them Eleanor felt uncomfortable and on edge. She had even begun to feel ill-at-ease when she and Marcus made love when Vanessa was there.
Part of the trouble was that the Chelsea house had never been designed for two adults and three children. Marcus had bought it after his first marriage broke down; for a single or even a married couple without children it was the ideal London home, small but elegant with its downstairs kitchen-cum-living-room and Marcus’s study plus the dining-room, its first-floor drawing-room, which was spacious enough for the kind of parties a highly successful barrister might need to give. There was nothing wrong either with the two good-sized bedrooms, each with its own private bathroom, unless of course you happened to have three children to squash into that one spare double bedroom.
The bedroom which, Vanessa had told Eleanor coolly but very challengingly, had always been hers when she visited her father.
Which meant that her sons had to share the double room next to theirs and then be squashed up together in the small stuffy attic bedroom, which had never ever been intended to be anything other than a temporary emergency bedroom, whenever Vanessa came to stay.
She loved Marcus so much and she knew he loved her, but he had lived on his own for almost seven years before they met; he had been used to a quiet, well-ordered way of life, without the kind of tensions which now seemed to be disrupting their lives.
The obvious answer was to move, to find a larger house which would accommodate them all comfortably, give them all room to breathe… give all three children their all-important personal space.
The trouble was that, in London, the size of house they needed would be so exorbitantly expensive that it was pointless even thinking about moving.
Her business made a reasonable profit, and as a leading litigation barrister, a Q.C., Marcus earned good fees, but living in London was expensive. Her ex-husband had remarried almost immediately after their divorce and had a second young family, and was simply not in a position to continue to contribute to Gavin and Tom’s education—at eleven and thirteen respectively both of them still had several years of education ahead of them, especially if, as she hoped, they both went on to university.
Her tension eased as the traffic suddenly started to move.
It was just the miserable weather that was making her feel so on edge, she reassured herself. At this time of the year, everyone had had enough of cold and damp and was looking forward to some sun.
She and Marcus had hoped to spend a week with friends in Italy in May, but one of Marcus’s court cases had been brought forward and now it looked as though their week in Tuscany would have to be cancelled.
As she turned into the underground car park beneath the block that housed her office, the sleet started.
It was just gone half-past nine, she noted as she locked the car and headed quickly for the lift.
The office block was a modern one, centrally situated in the heart of the city and a good catchment area for their business. Eleanor and Louise had agonised for weeks on whether or not to take the lease. It had been expensive even then, and in those days neither of them had been sure of what volume of work they could expect.
That they had met at all had been pure chance. They had literally bumped into each other when Eleanor had been delivering some translations she had just completed for a large firm of importers.
Louise had been there on a similar errand and, once they had discovered that their language skills complemented rather than competed with one another, it hadn’t taken long for them to decide to pool those skills and set up business as a formal partnership.
It had been a decision which had paid off well; their reputation had spread by word of mouth and within four years of becoming partners they were successful and well known enough to feature in a rash of magazine and newspaper articles about the emergence of the successful businesswoman of the Eighties.
In those days both of them had been single, Eleanor with a bad marriage and an even worse divorce behind her and only too thankful to fling herself head-first into the demands of establishing a new career, not just because she needed the money, but because it also offered her a much needed solace for her wounded pride and battered self-esteem; and Louise, eight years her junior, just emerging from the trauma of ending an intense and destructive relationship with a married man.
Physically so very opposite—she tall and fair, quiet and restrained in both her thoughts and her actions, Louise small, brunette and impulsively vivacious—they had shared a common need to heal the wounds life had inflicted on them, which had bonded them together in their determination to make their partnership work.
And it had worked… Had worked? Eleanor frowned as the lift reached her floor, and then shrugged as the doors opened. Had worked and was still working, she assured herself firmly.
The office block had originally appealed to both of them because of the brightness of its new design. Built around an atrium, it had a spacious, open feel to it which was emphasised by the atrium itself.
Today, though, the marble and chrome seemed to give off a chilly air that made Eleanor shiver slightly.
They had probably turned down the heating again, she reflected as she headed for her office. All the tenants had been complaining about the rapid escalation not just in their rent but in their overheads as well. As she glanced down into the atrium itself she noticed that some of the plants looked over-green and slightly shiny, more as though they were artificial than real, she reflected with distaste, her attention caught by the sterile perfection of a white lily.
Such plants did not belong under London’s sleet-laden grey skies, or imprisoned here, forced into life beneath their covering of glass and heat.
Claire, their receptionist, looked up with a relieved smile as Eleanor walked into the foyer.
She and Louise had chosen the décor for their offices with great care, calling on an interior designer friend of Eleanor’s for confirmation of their choice, but what had seemed energetic and appropriate in the Eighties now looked brash and slightly harsh, as inappropriate for the grey skies of recession as the plants in the atrium were for the grey skies of London perhaps.
‘Monsieur Colbert has arrived,’ Claire told her. ‘I offered him coffee but he refused.’
Thanking her, Eleanor went through into her own office, removing her coat and checking her appearance quickly before hurrying through into the room she and Louise used for negotiating with clients.
Pierre Colbert was French, with business connections which brought him regularly to London and which took him just as regularly to all the other major European cities. He acted as an agent for several large clothing designers and wholesalers, the type who were two steps down from the ‘named’ designers and two up from the general run of high street suppliers.
His business, if they could secure it, would prove an extremely valuable addition to their portfolio. Eleanor had heard via another client that he was unhappy with his existing translators, and she had made a tentative approach to him suggesting that it might be worthwhile their getting together.
She had been warned that as well as liking to get his pound of flesh he was also rather difficult to deal with, and, as she walked into the office and saw the impatience with which he was regarding her, her heart sank a little.
She didn’t show her feelings, though, giving him a calm smile and extending her hand.
‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ she apologised. ‘The traffic…’
‘The English do not know how to drive,’ he interrupted her brusquely. ‘In Paris we have traffic; here in London you have chaos…’
‘Perhaps you would like a cup of coffee,’ Eleanor offered, side-stepping his aggression.
‘Coffee?’ He smiled sourly. ‘I think not.’
Was he deliberately trying to goad her into a response, Eleanor wondered, or did he simply not realise how rude he was being? She had met other men like him, men who were plainly uncomfortable with and antagonistic towards women in business, and she had developed her own method of dealing with them.
Once, in the aftermath of a long, lazy afternoon of lovemaking, Marcus had told her with sleepy pleasure as he ran his hand lingeringly over her warm, relaxed flesh, pausing to cup her breast and slowly caress the still erect peak of her nipple, ‘I love this peace you always carry with you, Nell. It’s such a pleasure to be with a woman who is so calm and secure. It makes it so easy to love you.’
It had been shortly after that that he had proposed to her.
‘No, we don’t seem to have developed the skill of making really good coffee, do we?’ she agreed with a smile. Another woman might have balked at using such placatory tactics, Eleanor admitted, but for her they were almost a way of life… peace and calm, good relationships, concord and harmony were important to her. Too important?
‘Your coffee, like your bread, is uniquely irreplaceable,’ she added, ‘although I understand that Marks and Spencer are doing their best. Apparently they are actually importing the flour now from France for their croissants and French bread.’
‘They are among your clients?’ Pierre Colbert asked her with shrewd interest, dropping his earlier aggression.
Eleanor allowed herself a small surge of relief.
‘Some of their suppliers are,’ she told him, opening the file she had brought in with her. ‘I see from your own client list that you have dealings with design houses in several major European cities, and that they in turn deal with manufacturers in the Far East. The clothes from the design houses you represent will sell best in our small exclusive country-town boutiques.’
‘You have done your research well.’
Was that a hint of respect she could see overtaking his earlier churlishness? She hoped so!
Eleanor smiled gently at him, too wise in the ways of business to show her relief.
‘I understand that at the moment you use translators domiciled in France, Germany, Italy and Spain. We, of course, could supply all your translation needs here under one roof.’
‘As can the other companies I deal with,’ he pointed out, watching her.
‘True,’ Eleanor agreed with another smile. It was going to be hard work persuading him to give them his business, she recognised as she quietly and calmly started to point out to him the advantages of using them.
‘Additionally Louise, my partner, specialises in Middle Eastern languages. And Russian.’
‘Ah, but remember,’ he told her quickly, ‘with the break-up of the Soviet Union into various independent states, each will want to revert to its own language.’
‘A fact that we have taken into consideration,’ Eleanor assured him.
It was true. She and Louise were actively recruiting on to their freelance books experienced translators who were able to work in these newly re-emerging languages.
Quite how she was going to continue to fit this additional commitment to interview and test their freelancers into her existing busy life, Eleanor wasn’t sure, but somehow she would have to find a way.
She had tried to make a start on all the application forms this weekend, but it hadn’t been easy. For one thing, the only place she had to work was the bedroom she shared with Marcus, and with Vanessa next door, her radio playing at full volume, it had been impossible for her to summon the necessary concentration, even knowing that it was vitally important to the continued success of the business that she and Louise secure an all-important head-start on their rivals in what promised to be the only genuinely expanding field open to them.
They needed that business if they were to continue to generate good profits, and yet with the ever-increasing demands on her time that marriage to Marcus had brought, never mind her own desire to have more time to spend personally with him, the actual hours she had left for expanding the company were alarmingly small.
She had already given up her two evening gym sessions and the once-a-month, long, leisurely Sunday lunch she used to share with her oldest woman friend, Jade Fensham; that had had to go because it conflicted with the weekend when Marcus had access to his daughter.
His daughter. She could understand why it was difficult for Vanessa to accept her, but surely it should not be so hard for her to accept Vanessa; she was after all a part of Marcus, and she loved him.
Jade told her she was too idealistic, and she had countered by telling Jade that she was too cynical.
Jade had shrugged those elegant shoulders and narrowed her long green cat’s eyes.
‘After two marriages and two divorces what do you expect? Take my advice: never, ever expect anything but trouble from a man’s children, especially if they’re teenage girls.’
The weekend before last, white-faced with a tension-induced migraine, she had asked herself what it was she was doing wrong and why it was that Vanessa was so antagonistic towards her. After all, it wasn’t as though she was responsible for the break-up of her parents’ marriage.
Perhaps Marcus was right. Perhaps she ought to try to arrange things so that Tom and Gavin stayed with their father when Vanessa came to stay. At least it would stop the interminable quarrels that seemed to break out when they were all together. Was she being unfair in suspecting that it was Vanessa who deliberately provoked them? It was true that Tom, over-sensitive and too vulnerable, tended to over-react—a legacy of her divorce from his father? But Gavin had a far calmer temperament; phlegmatic and easygoing, he had been a placid baby and was now a placid, sturdily resilient child.
Yes, it would make life easier if they kept them apart, but it wasn’t what she had hoped for, what she had planned when she and Marcus had married. She had never assumed that merging their two families would be easy, but neither had she anticipated that her relationship with Vanessa would become so destructive. Her relationship? What relationship?
The last thing that Vanessa wanted was any kind of relationship with either Eleanor or her sons, but most especially with Eleanor. Sometimes she felt as though she and Vanessa were two rivals locked in a silent and deadly battle for Marcus. And yet the last thing she wanted was for Vanessa to feel that her marriage to Marcus in any way threatened his daughter’s position in his life.
In fact she had been the one who had suggested to Marcus that he see more of his daughter. It had disturbed her a little, when she and Marcus had first become lovers, to discover how little he saw of his child.
CHAPTER TWO
TENSELY Fern checked her appearance in the bedroom mirror, already anticipating Nick’s criticism. She smoothed the matt black fabric of her evening dress over her hips, anxiously aware of how much weight she had lost since she had last worn it for the round of Christmas parties.
Her mother’s death had been partly responsible for that. It had been a strain taking care of her for those last weeks of her life, especially with Nick being so resentful of her absence.
She had tried to explain to him how she felt: that it was a mixture of love as well as duty and responsibility which made her feel that she had to be the one to nurse her mother; but Nick had demanded to know how he was supposed to manage in her absence. He had a business to run, he reminded her; she was his wife, and since she did not work, did not bring in any money herself, he felt he was not being unreasonable in expecting her to be there at home for him when he needed her.
She had tried to ignore the feelings of panic and misery his attitude caused her, smothering it beneath a thick blanket of anxious self-control, afraid of challenging him because she was afraid of where such a confrontation would lead.
With her mother so close to death, she had not been able to afford to provoke Nick because she had known she simply would not have either the physical or mental energy to cope with his reaction.
Her mother was dying and needed her, she had told Nick quietly.
‘I need you too,’ Nick had retaliated, and in the end she had compromised as best she could, spending the majority of her time with her mother, dashing home when she could, to ensure that Nick had clean shirts, a fridge and freezer full of food, and doing her best to placate him.
In the end her mother’s death had come almost as a relief to her. She still felt guilty about that. About that and about so many other things as well, but most especially about…
She glanced back towards the mirror, grimacing as she studied her reflection. She looked far too tired and drained for a woman of only twenty-seven; the heavy, rippling mass of her hair, tawny brown with rich gold natural highlights in its thick waves, was almost too great a burden for the taut slenderness of her neck. In fact her hair with its rich tumbling mass of curls presented an almost grotesque contrast to her face and body, she acknowledged wearily. She really ought to have it cut short. She was too old now for its careless abundance, a legacy from a childhood governed by the views of much older parents, a mother who believed that all little girls should have long, neatly plaited hair.
She had toyed with the idea of having it cut years ago when she was at university. She remembered mentioning it to Adam.
‘Don’t,’ he had told her in that strong but gently soft voice of his. And as he’d spoken, he had lifted his hand and slowly touched her, brushing the heaviness of her hair back from her face.
Trembling, she looked away from the mirror, her face flushing with guilty heat. What on earth was she doing? She had made a pact with herself years ago that she would never allow herself to give in to that kind of temptation. To do so was surely to break her marriage vows just as much as though she had…
The last thing she felt like doing tonight was going to a dinner party, especially this one.
For a start she barely knew Venice Dunstant. She was one of Nick’s clients, the widow of an extremely wealthy local entrepreneur who had been much older than she was.
There had been a lot of gossip locally about her when she had originally married Bill.
Venice. Was that really her name, or had she simply appropriated it in the same way she had appropriated Bill Dunstant?
They had met on holiday. Bill, a widower of just over sixty, had gone away on his doctor’s advice to recuperate after a heart attack. He had met Venice and married her within weeks of knowing her. They had been married just over two years when he had suffered his second and fatal heart attack, leaving Venice an extremely wealthy widow.
It had only been since his death that Nick had become involved with her. She had consulted him in his capacity as an insurance broker.
Prior to her husband’s death, she had not been seen very much locally, apparently preferring to spend most of her time in London, but she was now becoming much more active in local affairs.
It had been she who had persuaded Nick to join the exclusive and very expensive new leisure complex which had recently opened.
‘You ought to try exercising a bit more yourself,’ he had commented critically to Fern only the other evening, eyeing her too slender body with obvious disapproval. ‘Venice goes to classes almost every day, and she plays tennis as well.’
Fern had refrained from pointing out that, unlike Venice, she was not in a position to afford the kind of fees demanded by the leisure club, and that, even if she had been able to do so, her mother’s illness and Nick’s own insistence that in view of the fact that he supported her financially it was her duty to ensure that she put his wishes first meant that she wasn’t free to enjoy the luxury of so many hours of personal freedom and self-indulgence.
Nick talked a lot about Venice. Too much? She frowned, her stomach muscles tensing. Was she guilty of being overly suspicious… too untrusting, imagining things which didn’t exist… like another woman’s scent on his skin?
Physically Nick was a very attractive man; a man, moreover, who knew how to make himself appealing to women, as she well knew.
The soft thickness of his blond hair, the boyish charm of his smile, the deep blue of his eyes, all added to his air of masculine appeal. Of just slightly above average height rather than tall, his body lean and slim, unlike Adam who was both tall and broad, and who looked what he was—a maturely male man—Nick looked slightly younger than his age. A fact of which he was secretly proud and tended to subtly emphasise.
Her husband could be described as a vain man, Fern acknowledged, who at thirty still cultivated the same aura of boyish appeal he had had when she first met him.
Nick could be very persuasive when he chose, as she well knew.
She had lost count of the number of times she had given way beneath the weight of his coaxing, dreading the sullen accusations which would follow if she did not.
When had she first realised that she didn’t love him any longer; that she had in fact probably never really loved him, but had simply allowed him to persuade her that she did, flattered by his attention, aware of how anxious her parents were to see her happily and safely married, convinced by both Nick and them that marriage to him was the right thing for her?
She had genuinely believed she did love him then, she told herself miserably. Had genuinely believed that he needed and loved her. Why should she not have done? He had told her often enough how much he wanted her in his life…
And if, after their hurried courtship, she had bewilderedly discovered that his interpretation of loving and needing did not match hers, well, she had kept her thoughts to herself, reminding herself of the vows she had made, telling herself that she was expecting too much, hampered by the restrictions imposed on her by her upbringing from confiding in anyone else, much less seeking their help or advice.
The fact that she was not very sexually responsive to Nick she knew must be her fault, and she had struggled guiltily to overcome her lack of enthusiasm, miserably conscious of how much she must be disappointing Nick, of how he, as much as she, must dread the silent sexual intimacy they shared, which invariably resulted in her being left feeling tense and on edge, glad that it was over and yet guiltily unhappy at the same time as she lay there sleepless and dry-eyed, staring at the rejecting silence of Nick’s back.
No wonder he turned away from her the moment it was over, no wonder he complained that she didn’t know how to behave like a real woman. No wonder that eighteen months into their marriage he had had an affair with someone else.
What was a wonder was that she had been so shocked, so disbelieving when she had first found out. Nick was her husband… they were married… had exchanged vows! Other people’s marriages might involve a breaking of those vows, but not hers… And on top of her shock, underlining and heightening it, had been her awareness of how upset her parents would be if her marriage broke up… or how she had somehow let them down, broken faith with the standards they had set her.
It was over two years ago now and yet she could remember the events of that day as clearly as though it had only just happened. The arrival of the woman after Nick had gone to work, her own unsuspecting surprise at seeing her… the woman’s tension slowly communicating itself to her as she refused the cup of coffee Fern had offered, wheeling round to confront her, nervously smoking the cigarette she had just lit.
Fern remembered how afterwards she had been surprised at Nick’s choice, knowing how much he loathed people smoking—an odd, disconnected, sharply clear thought which had somehow lodged itself in her brain while other, far more important ones had been held tensely at bay.
She and Nick were lovers, the woman had told her, angrily claiming that she knew that Fern must be aware of the situation; that she, Fern, was deliberately holding on to Nick when she knew he no longer wanted her.
Shock and pride had prevented Fern from telling her the truth: that she had had no idea of what was going on.
Eventually the woman had left. Fern had watched her drive away, her body, her emotions, her mind almost completely numbed. She remembered walking upstairs and opening her wardrobe doors, removing a suitcase and starting to pack her things.
Then the phone had started to ring. She had gone downstairs intending to answer it, but instead she had walked right past it, through the back door which she had left unlocked and open, and out into the street.
She had no recollection of doing any of this… nor of how she had walked right into town… nor of what her purpose might have been in doing so.
It had been Adam who had found her, who had saved her from public humiliation, only to cause her to suffer later the most profound and intense personal humiliation—but that was something she could still not bear to think about, not now… not ever… He had taken her home—his home, not hers. She had started to cry, bewildered and shocked by the trauma which had overwhelmed her. She had started to tell him about Nick’s affair… her shock… things she would never normally have dreamed of confiding to him.
Her days of confiding in Adam had ended with her marriage to his stepbrother, no matter that once it had been Adam who she had thought was her friend. Adam… Adam she had known first, not Nick.
But, as she had discovered when she met Nick, the Adam she had thought she knew must have been a figment of her own imagination.
‘You didn’t really think Adam was interested in you sexually, did you?’ Nick had asked her incredulously. ‘Oh, Fern.’ He had laughed gently as he gave her a little shake. ‘Did you really think…? Adam already has a girlfriend… or rather a woman friend. It’s a very discreet relationship. Adam prefers it that way… it leaves his options open, if you know what I mean. I suppose I shouldn’t criticise. After all, a man in his position, reasonably well off and with the kind of reputation Adam’s built up for himself as a local do-gooder… he has to be seen to toe the moral line, even if what he does in private… He’s something of a secret stud, my stepbrother. But you’re quite safe from him, Fern. He likes his sexual partners to be women, not little girls… Little virgins…’
She could remember now how humiliated she had felt… how humiliated and self-conscious she had been from then on whenever she saw Adam. Had he actually discussed her with Nick… told Nick…? In fact, she had felt so uncomfortable, so betrayed almost, that she had deliberately started to avoid seeing him. And yet he had never given her any indication… done or said anything…
It had hurt her to know, though, as she now did know because of Nick’s revelations, that Adam had probably been quite aware of the silly crush she had had on him. Aware of it and no doubt amused by it, discussing it probably with the unknown woman who shared his bed, the woman who Nick had implied was a world away from her own silly immaturity.
In the trauma of her shock, though, she had not had the strength to erect her normal defences against Adam. She had simply let him take her home with him, sit her down and gently coax from her what had happened.
She had started to cry, she remembered. And that was when it had happened… when she had broken faith with all that her parents had taught her to respect and revere, when she had done something that was far, far worse than Nick’s merely sexual betrayal of her.
Even now she could not bear to think about it, pushing the memory fiercely out of sight, willing herself not to allow even a chink of light into that seething darkness of spirit and emotion into which she had locked the memories away.
She had known afterwards, of course, that there was no going back, that her marriage to Nick was over, but she hadn’t said anything to Adam.
How could she, when she knew that he had simply acted out of pity, had just reacted as any man would have done to what she had said… what she had done?
She had insisted on returning home, even though Adam had tried to dissuade her. ‘At least let me drive you,’ he had said, but she had shaken her head, unable to bear to look at him, backing away from him in her panic in case he reached out and touched her, so shocked and ashamed by her own behaviour, her own wantonness, that all she had wanted to do was to escape from him and from it, taking advantage of the quirk of fate that decreed that his phone should start to ring just as he reached out towards her, distracting him long enough for her to turn and run.
He had come after her, calling out her name, but it was too late, she was already outside in the street, knowing that with others to see them, others who knew who both of them were and what their relationship to one another was, Adam could hardly run after her and force her physically back into the house.
And besides, why should he really want to? Despite the concern he seemed to feel for her, secretly he must surely have been only too relieved that she was leaving, saving him the necessity of pointing out to her that she had misunderstood… that he had never intended…
The phone had been ringing as she got home, but she had ignored it, knowing that it would be Adam. Instead she had gone straight upstairs to where her suitcase still lay open on the bed.
Methodically she had started to remove her clothes from the wardrobe and pack them into it, rehearsing what she was going to say to Nick, how she was going to tell him that she knew about his affair, knew he loved someone else; knew that their marriage had to end.
He had arrived home ten minutes later, returning much earlier than usual, and she had seen immediately from his expression that he knew his lover had been to see her.
She had opened her mouth to tell him that she was leaving but he’d forestalled her, bursting into an impassioned speech, reaching out to take hold of her, scarcely seeming to notice the way she tensed and flinched back from his touch.
‘Fern… Fern… I’m so sorry. I never meant you to find out. She never meant anything to me, you must believe that,’ he told her huskily.
He went on to beg her not to leave him, to tell her how much he still loved and needed her, to plead and cajole, making her head ache with the voluble force of his arguments and insistence.
‘Think what this will do to your parents,’ he said as he looked at her half-packed suitcase. ‘You know how much it would hurt and upset them. Do you really want to do that to them, Fern, and all over a silly little fling that never meant anything important?
‘You’re so naïve… you see everything in black and white. How many marriages do you think would survive if every woman who learned that her husband had made a small mistake actually left him? I never intended it to happen, but, well, let’s be honest—sexually…’ He gave a small shrug. ‘She made me feel wanted,’ he told her, giving her his little-boy-lost smile. ‘She made me feel that I was important to her. She wanted me, Fern. Oh, I know it isn’t your fault that you aren’t very responsive sexually, and believe me I do understand, but I am a man with all the normal male urges, and she…’
She felt sick then, sick and too filled with loathing and disgust to say anything, to do anything other than merely stand there and listen to him, knowing that he was right, knowing how upset her parents would be, how shocked, how devastated… how difficult they would find it to understand.
‘I still need you,’ Nick insisted. ‘We can put things right… try again. Please, Fern. You must give me a second chance.’
In the end she gave in. What other option did she have? she asked herself bewilderedly. Nick loved her; he needed her; her parents would neither understand nor approve if she left him, and she herself was bitterly aware of her own guilt, her own betrayal of the vows she had made and had fully intended to keep.
Nick was right, she did owe it to him to give their marriage a second chance. But even as she was giving in, agreeing, aware of the huge weight of reasons why she ought to be pleased that he wanted to stay with her, she still felt an unfamiliar dangerous flare of panic and anger, a sense almost of being trapped and imprisoned.
She suppressed it, of course, quickly smothering it with the tight blanket of her parents’ teachings and her own awareness of what she owed it to them and to Nick to do.
But that night in bed, after he had made love to her and she had lain dry-eyed and tense beside him, she knew she had to tell him about Adam.
The next morning she tried to do so.
‘What do you mean, you can’t stay with me?’ he demanded angrily. ‘Look, Fern, I’ve already told you, it… she meant nothing. It was just sex, that’s all, just sex.’
‘It isn’t that,’ she whispered miserably. ‘It’s me. I…’
Something in her expression must have given her away, because she heard him curse and then demand aggressively, ‘It’s Adam, isn’t it? Well, if you think I’m going to let you leave me for him…’
‘It isn’t like that,’ she protested, horrified by what he was saying. ‘Adam isn’t… doesn’t…’
She wasn’t able to continue, her voice breaking under the strain of what she was feeling, but Nick grabbed hold of her arm, insisting fiercely, ‘Oh, no, you aren’t stopping there. Adam isn’t… doesn’t what, Fern? Adam doesn’t want to fuck you? Don’t lie to me, Fern. I know how much he…’
He stopped then, releasing her so roughly that she half fell against the kitchen table.
‘I’m not letting you go,’ he repeated flatly. ‘You’ve made a commitment to me, to our marriage, and if you think…’
He paused, watching her as she crouched against the table, her body shaking with shock and tension, tears slowly filling her eyes as her self-control started to splinter.
Suddenly his voice softened and became almost cajoling.
‘Think, Fern. Think of how your parents would feel if we broke up… if I had to tell them that you’ve been unfaithful to me with Adam. How long have you been seeing him? How often?’
She stopped him immediately, the words falling over one another as she tried to explain what had happened, how upset she had been, how Adam had found her. How…
‘You mean you did it just to pay me back… because of my affair,’ Nick interrupted her before she could finish what she was saying. For some reason he had started to smile, his voice and body relaxing. ‘Did you tell Adam that?’ he asked her softly. ‘Did he know you were coming back here to me?’
‘I didn’t tell him anything. Just that… just about her coming here…’
He was still smiling at her, almost crooning at her as he reached out to her, apparently unable to sense the tension and resistance in her body as he pulled her into his arms.
‘Fern, Fern, don’t you see? The only reason you went to Adam was because you wanted to get back at me. Of course I’m upset… jealous… hurt—what man wouldn’t be? But I do understand. You love me… and because of that you wanted to hurt me… to pay me back for hurting you. But it’s all over now and we’re still together. And we’re going to stay together. Let’s both put the past behind us and make a fresh start… give our marriage a second chance. I want to. Don’t you?’
What could she say? How could she refuse to accept the olive branch he was offering her? How many other husbands would be as generous… as forgiving? She owed it to him… to her parents… to the way they had brought her up and the standards they had inculcated in her, to do what he was suggesting.
‘Yes,’ she agreed listlessly. ‘Yes, I do.’ And yet somehow saying the words had hurt her throat, straining the muscles, making them ache with the same weary despair that had also invaded her body…
‘Fern, what the hell are you doing? Aren’t you ready yet?’
Guiltily Fern hurried towards the bedroom door, stepping back from it just in time as Nick thrust it open and walked in.
Formal clothes suited him, she acknowledged, as she studied the effect of his well-cut fair hair, and the healthy tan he had acquired since visiting the leisure centre, against the expensive fabric of his dinner suit and the crisp whiteness of his dress shirt.
Nick liked his dress shirts to be hand-laundered by her, and starched. It was a laborious job and one which she felt the local laundry could have performed far more efficiently, but she also knew that if she tried to point this out to Nick he would demand to know if she thought he was made of money, and what she did with her time. After all, she did not work.
Because Nick would not let her. Because every time she raised the subject of getting herself some sort of part-time paid work he told her furiously that he was not going to be humiliated in their local community by having his wife pretending that he kept her so short of money that she needed to earn the pathetically few pounds she would earn.
‘And besides, what would you do?’ he had taunted her. ‘You’ve never held down a proper job.’
‘I could train,’ she had retorted. ‘Some of the local shops…’
Nick had gone from contempt to fury, accusing her of deliberately trying to undermine him, his position.
Didn’t she at least owe it to him to at least try to behave as a loyal wife? he had demanded bitterly.
A loyal wife… Her eyes bleak with despair, she turned to look at him, watching the irritation and contempt hardening his face as he studied her.
‘Why the hell don’t you find something decent to wear?’ he demanded.
She could have retorted that she could not afford the luxury of anything other than the most basic of chain-store clothes, but to do so would reignite his grievance against her late parents, for using their modest wealth to purchase annuities which had died with them rather than investing their capital elsewhere so that it could have been passed on to her.
They must present a bizarre contrast, she admitted tiredly, Nick in his obviously expensive dinner suit, she in her shabby, well-worn, dull dress.
‘My God, you love playing the martyr, don’t you?’ Nick accused her as he glared at her. ‘Hurry up or we’re going to be late. I don’t know what the hell you’re doing up here anyway.’ He gave her another disparaging glance.
Comparing her with Venice, Fern wondered unhappily, or was she simply imagining things… looking for them, because…?
As she followed him downstairs, she wondered what Nick would say if she told him that she would rather stay at home.
Get even more angry with her than he already was, she imagined.
There had been a time when she had actually enjoyed going to dinner parties, had looked forward to the stimulation of conversation with other people, but that had been before Nick had pointed out to her on their way home one evening that she was boring people with her silly mundane conversation.
He had apologised to her later, but when she had refused to respond he had accused her of sulking and she had tried to tell him that she wasn’t; that she just felt so weighed down by the burden of realising what people had privately been thinking of her that she simply couldn’t raise the energy to respond to him.
‘Don’t he to me, Fern,’ he had told her bitterly. ‘You’re trying to punish me for telling you the truth. Just as you tried to punish me for having an affair by…’
She had run out of the room then, unable to bear to listen to him any more, knowing that she was behaving childishly and yet unable to trust herself to stay and hear him out.
It had been shortly after that that her father had died, and then her mother, who had suffered ill health for several years, had gradually started to grow worse, and she had had no energy left to do anything other than cope with her mother’s decline.
‘Fern, for heaven’s sake come on,’ Nick demanded irritably. Quietly she picked her bag up off the bed and walked towards the bedroom door.
Well, at least there was one thing she could be sure of about this evening’s dinner party, Fern reflected, trying to resurrect her sense of humour, and that was that Venice would not be dressed in an out-of-date, dowdy black dress.
She was wrong, on one point at least. Venice was wearing black, but that was the only thing her own dress had in common with the outfit Venice had on, Fern remarked wryly as Venice opened her front door to them.
At closer to thirty-five than thirty Venice was older than Fern; older than Nick too, a tiny, vivacious, fragile-boned creature with a small oval face and enormous eyes. Where another woman might have self-consciously tried to conceal her lack of height, seeing it as a fault rather than an asset, Venice seemed to take pleasure in deliberately underlining the fact that she couldn’t be much more than five feet tall, and Fern, who had in the past suffered several slighting comments from Nick about her own small frame and the fact that short women invariably lacked the elegant grace of their taller sisters, stifled a small pang of envy at Venice’s abundant self-confidence.
The black dress she was wearing might almost have been painted on to her body. For someone so small-boned she had disconcertingly voluptuous breasts. Fern had overheard a couple of other women discussing Venice and her figure, one of them wondering out loud if her breasts might possibly owe more to man than nature.
Whatever the case, they were certainly catching Nick’s eye, Fern recognised.
Had Venice deliberately chosen that trimming of black feathers for her dress, knowing that they not only provided an eye-catching contrast to her skin, but also that the sheen on the feathers reflected the pearly translucence of her bare skin?
The single pear-shaped diamond that nestled between her breasts was so large that it only just escaped being vulgar. When she moved, it blazed cold fire like the matching diamonds in her ears.
Tonight the almost white-blonde hair, which she normally wore in a perfectly shaped shoulder-length bob, was drawn up and back in a contemporary version of a Bardot-type beehive hairstyle, all careless, artful fronds of ‘escaping’ hair and tousled curls, half as though she had just come from her bed and the arms of her lover, piling her hair up carelessly on top of her head, more concerned with the pleasure of their lovemaking than her public appearance.
Only of course that particular type of artless sensuality could only be achieved with the aid of a very expensive hairdresser.
But even without the embellishments provided by her late husband’s wealth Venice would have been a very beautiful woman, Fern admitted.
That she was also a very sensual and provocative one as well and that she enjoyed being so Fern also had little doubt.
Venice was obviously very much a man’s woman and made no attempt to hide it, something that was reinforced by the cursory way she welcomed Fern, turning immediately and far more enthusiastically towards Nick, moving between Fern and her husband, her back almost but not quite turned towards Fern, almost deliberately excluding her from her welcome to Nick.
A welcome which was surely far more effusive than was warranted by the business relationship Nick claimed to have with her. Or was she being unfairly suspicious? Fern wondered, as she stood quietly to one side, politely waiting for Venice to finish her conversation with Nick.
‘That’s a beautiful diamond,’ Fern heard Nick saying softly to her.
‘Yes, isn’t it?’ Venice agreed.
As she smiled up at him, her index finger stroked over the hollow between her breasts just above where the diamond lay, almost deliberately drawing Nick’s attention to her body.
Not that she needed to do so, Fern acknowledged. He had hardly taken his eyes off her since she opened the door to them.
The last time Nick had become involved with another woman, he had claimed that she, Fern, had driven him to it with her sexual coldness. If she, his wife, had been more responsive to him, if she had not forced him to find sexual solace in the arms of another woman, he would never have dreamed of being unfaithful to her.
It was her fault that he had had an affair.
And deep down inside herself Fern had believed him. After all, hadn’t her parents brought her up to be aware that it was her female role in life to please and appease, to be gently and femininely aware of the needs of others, and to minister to them before her own?
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