Claiming His Wedding Night (11 page)

‘When my mother was seven months pregnant, my father, who absolutely adored her, took her on a long-promised visit to New York.

‘The evening before they were due to fly back to California, she went into premature labour and had to be rushed into Rodanth Hospital.

‘There were complications and, while I was put in the premature baby unit, they struggled to save her life. It was touch and go and for twenty-four hours Dad never left her side.

‘When she finally regained consciousness fully and asked to see her baby, I couldn’t be found and she and Dad were warned that I might have died.

‘But, the following morning, when they were both in despair, I was discovered at Tidewell, a subsidiary of Rodanth where, due to a mix-up of names, I’d been sent by mistake.

‘The error came to light when a Mrs Boyt, who had been transferred to Tidewell after giving birth to a little boy, was presented with a daughter. Apparently the poor woman had hysterics, but things were soon put right and she got her son back safely, while I was returned to my parents.’

‘Hence the name, Perdita,’ Jared finished for her. Then, gently, ‘What happened to your mother?’

‘They hadn’t succeeded in stopping the internal bleeding, and she died the next day while Dad held her in his arms…

‘Elmer once told me that Dad never got over her death, that it was as if part of him died with her.

‘He took me back to California and hired a nanny to help take care of me. But he’d only stayed in the States because of my mother, and he couldn’t settle without her. So he sold the house and everything in it and returned to England to run the British side of the company…’

‘Are you very like your mother?’

‘The image of her, apparently.’

‘And you were all he had left,’ Jared said thoughtfully. ‘That explains a great deal.’

She seized the opportunity to say out loud one of the things that had been nagging at her. ‘The fact that Dad
does
think so much of me makes it almost impossible to tell him…’ She hesitated.

‘That you’ve been coerced into coming back to me?’ Jared asked a shade bitterly.

‘Yes,’ she admitted.

‘So what
are
you going to tell him?’

‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘Certainly not the whole truth. And I’m scared stiff that either he or Martin might ring me before I’ve made up my mind just what to say.’

‘Then I suggest it would make sense to forestall them both by calling them first.’

‘But what am I to tell them?’

‘If you want to buy time, tell them the negotiations are going well and you have every hope of success, but that it might be several days yet before any firm agreement is reached. When it is, you’ll let them know at once…’

Though she knew it was only putting off the evil day, she seized on the suggestion. At the very least, it should help to put her father’s mind at rest and prevent him worrying.

‘But this afternoon,’ Jared went on, ‘I was planning to take you to see the Petrified Forest—’

‘Oh, I’ve heard of it. Isn’t that where, because of a volcanic eruption that occurred millions of years ago, giant redwoods have been preserved?’

‘That’s the place, and it’s a longish trip…’ Reaching for the outdoor phone, he passed it across to her. ‘So it might make sense to phone them before we start. If my calculations are right, it’ll be evening in London and breakfast time in Tokyo, so with a bit of luck you should catch them both. Don’t forget you’re supposed to be in New York,’ he added, ‘where it’s mid-afternoon.’

Anxious to get it over, Perdita rang her father first and, when she heard his voice, said quickly, ‘Hi, Dad…Just thought I’d let you know…’

Having repeated almost word for word what Jared had suggested and heard him breathe, ‘Thank the Lord,’ she asked how he was.

‘Not bad at all,’ he said cheerfully. ‘In fact I’ve been told I can go home in a day or two.’

‘That’s really great news, so long as you take good care of yourself.’

‘Sally’s promised to look after me, and only bully me when it’s for my own good.

‘But what about you? Though you’re obviously spending a lot of time talking, I hope you’re managing to get out and about a bit?’

‘Oh, yes, as a matter of fact I’ll be going out as soon as I’ve talked to Martin.’

‘I’ll tell Sally. She seems a bit concerned about you. Every time she comes in to see me she asks if I’ve heard from you.’

‘Well, tell her not to worry, everything’s fine.’

When, after they had said their goodbyes, she ended the call, Jared queried, ‘Sally?’

‘Yes. Dad says she seems a bit concerned about me.’

‘It was nice of you to reassure her.’

‘I’m getting quite good at lying,’ she said. Then, seeing Jared’s quick frown, wished she hadn’t rocked the boat.

Only too conscious of the gulf that now yawned between herself and Martin, the call she made to him was even more stressful.

Having told him what she had told her father, asked how things were at his end and been assured that they were going reasonably well and he should be home any day now, she could hardly wait to get away.

Sounding more than a little put out, he observed, ‘You seem to be in a hurry.’

‘I’m on the point of going out,’ she told him, ‘but, in case I don’t get another chance to talk to you today, I wanted to do it before I went.’

‘I’m sorry.’ He sounded contrite. ‘It’s just that I’m missing you like hell.’

He was probably missing his mistress even more, she thought caustically.

‘Still, with a bit of luck,’ he went on, ‘you’ll be home before too long with a good result.’

‘I hope so.’ Then, quickly, ‘Well, I really must go. ’Bye.’

‘Love you.’

She smiled bitterly. He sounded as if he meant it.

‘You don’t look any too happy,’ Jared remarked as she handed him back the phone.

Once again, she found herself taking her anger and disillusionment out on him. ‘You think it’s easy having to sit here and lie to…the man I love.’

Jared’s face darkened. ‘Then you still love him?’

‘Of course I still love him. He may be far from perfect, but two wrongs don’t make a right, and I feel guilty about deceiving him.’

‘You didn’t seem to feel guilty earlier, when we were in bed together.’

Wanting to hit back, she said, ‘What I feel guilty about is encouraging Martin to believe everything’s all right when it isn’t…’ Then, dismissively, ‘When we were in bed together it was much the same as Martin visiting his mistress—just sex.’

For one brief unguarded moment Jared looked as if she’d kicked him in the solar plexus, then a shutter came down. ‘And that was all it was?’

‘It was all you said you wanted from me, and sex alone means very little.’

‘It seemed to mean a great deal to you three years ago in Las Vegas…’

‘That’s all in the past,’ she said desperately.

But, as though she hadn’t spoken, he went on, ‘It seemed to mean a great deal to you when you destroyed everything there was between us just because you thought I’d taken another woman to bed.’

‘I didn’t
think
you had. I
knew
you had. I can’t imagine that many men take a woman, other than their wife, to bed on their wedding night.’

‘I can’t imagine that many men are left alone on their wedding night.’

‘And that’s your excuse?’

‘No, I don’t need an excuse. I never so much as
looked
at another woman that night. Or any other night, for that
matter. As far as I was concerned, once I met you no other woman existed.’

She
wanted
to believe him. But how could she?

‘However, as you keep telling me, that’s all in the past. No longer important. We’ve moved on, and all that’s left is lust…’

Shaken to her very soul, she longed to deny his words but, as she had been the first to say it, how could she?

‘So, for the time being at least,’ he went on, ‘that will have to be enough.

‘Now, are you about ready to go?’ He sounded brisk, matter-of-fact, as if he had accepted the emptiness of their relationship and decided that it really didn’t matter.

Still his grey eyes held a bleakness that made her want to cry, and her heart felt like lead as she allowed herself to be escorted out to the car.

Over the next two or three days, as though they had tacitly agreed a truce, they were both careful never to say a word out of place.

But, although Jared was always scrupulously polite and mindful of her comfort and well-being, there was never any feeling of closeness.

Part of him stayed aloof and remote, as though he had mentally distanced himself, while Perdita found she was trapped in a kind of limbo. A prisoner who was waiting, without quite knowing what she was waiting for.

The only time she could escape for a while was at night when she closed her eyes and her mind and abandoned herself to Jared’s passionate, sometimes almost fierce, lovemaking.

But, in spite of the intense physical pleasure he gave her, afterwards, when she lay in his arms, she always felt strangely empty, incomplete, as if something fundamental and necessary was lacking.

Each morning, given the option of either idling by the pool
or going out sightseeing, things being as they were, she chose the latter.

One day they visited Sonoma and, on another, they drove all the way to Clear Lake. Then the following day they walked one of the many scenic trails in the Robert Louis Stevenson State Park on the slopes of Mount St Helena.

But, even when their days were fully occupied, Perdita had the feeling that she was trapped in some kind of time warp, unable to either retreat or go forward, where very little was how it seemed and nothing was quite real.

While her father phoned only once to tell her he was now home, Martin, who was back in London, showed every sign of becoming restive. As though he’d picked up the fact that everything wasn’t as it should be, he had phoned almost every day.

Each time he had asked her if she loved him and if everything was all right, forcing her to either lie or prevaricate, and causing Jared’s face to grow hard and set as he listened to her stumbling replies.

On the last occasion, having replaced the phone, she said raggedly, ‘I can’t go on like this…But neither can I bring myself to tell him and Dad how things are…’

His voice even, Jared suggested, ‘I thought you might have come to terms with the idea by now?’

‘Well, I haven’t.’

‘Is it really going to be so impossible to tell them that everything’s all right? To explain that we were married in Las Vegas and we’re still legally man and wife?’

‘I can tell them we’re married, but how can I pretend that everything’s all right when they both know I would never willingly live with a man I couldn’t trust?’

A white line appearing round his mouth, Jared said, ‘It always comes back to that, doesn’t it?’

There was such a look of despair on his face, such bitter
desolation, that she longed to take back those words, to try and make things right between them.

But it was too late, she recognized hopelessly. Nothing would make things right between them. He no longer loved her. As he had said, all that was left was anger and bitterness and lust.

As she sat in stricken silence, he changed the subject and for the rest of the day when they talked it was stiltedly, like a couple of adversaries forced into an unlikely truce.

That night when she went to bed, instead of accompanying her he stayed on the terrace and, hours later, still lying alone, Perdita shed silent tears.

Nothing could alter the past, she knew, and as it was, things would never be right between them.

It was a long time before she finally fell asleep.

When she awoke, it was to find that she was still alone in the big bed, and an undented pillow made it clear that Jared hadn’t even slept beside her.

For the past three or four mornings he had kissed her awake and they had showered together, but now the door between their rooms was closed.

Heavy-hearted she got out of bed and went to shower and brush her teeth before returning to the bedroom to dress.

Hilary, an amiable, fair-haired woman in her late forties, was quietly efficient, and freshly laundered clothes and underwear had been replaced neatly in the wardrobe, giving Perdita plenty of choice.

When she had put on clean undies and a light cotton dress, she fastened her gleaming flaxen hair loosely in the nape of her neck and made her way out to the sunny terrace, where Sam was waiting to give her his usual enthusiastic welcome.

There was still no sign of Jared, and Hilary was bringing out breakfast before he appeared, looking heartbreakingly handsome in well-cut trousers and an open-necked sports shirt.

He exchanged pleasantries with the housekeeper and, having fended off Sam’s boisterous greeting, took a seat at the table and reached to pour the coffee.

When Hilary had disappeared kitchenwards, his expression cool and guarded, giving nothing away, he turned to Perdita and enquired with distant civility, ‘I hope you slept well?’

‘Very well, thank you,’ she lied. And wondered with a sinking heart how she was going to get through the day. It had been bad enough previously, but now, faced with this polite stranger, it was an even more daunting prospect.

They were just finishing what had proved to be an almost silent meal when Jared’s cellphone rang.

‘Hello?…’ he answered crisply. Then, ‘Yes, of course. I’ll be along as soon as I’ve finished my coffee…Yes, we can manage that…Yes, I’m sure she will. It should be a nice change…Right, see you shortly.’

Dropping the phone back into his pocket, he remarked, ‘That was Don. It seems I’m needed over at the winery. The problem should be sorted out by mid-morning at the latest, then Don and Estelle have invited us to a lunchtime barbecue. It’ll give you an opportunity to meet some of the people who live in the Valley.’

Carefully, she said, ‘That should be nice.’

‘In the meantime, do you mind being left alone?’

‘No, not at all,’ she assured him. In many ways it would be a relief.

‘Then I’ll see you in an hour or so.’