The Second Bride (2 page)

'On the contrary.' He drank some of his brandy. "Though I admit I deliberately arranged a business dinner for tonight with someone who had never met Claire, in an effort to avoid talking about her.' He paused, jaw set. 'It still hurts.'

Jo had no doubt of it.

'Then I caught sight of you behind the bar,' Rufus went on, 'and suddenly I
needed
to talk about Claire. And who better to talk to on this subject than you! So when the man left I drove round here.'

'Just to talk about Claire?' Jo stared at him suspiciously. 'But you always resented me—and the time she spent with me.'

'Actually, you're mistaken. I didn't resent it at all.' He glanced at the candle on the table behind him. 'This is on its last legs. Do you have any more?'

'Afraid not.'

'Could you borrow some from the other tenants?'

'Everyone's away,' admitted Jo with some reluctance. 'We'll have to make do with these.' I 'Then put a couple out and save them for later.'

Jo got up and extinguished two of the candles, plunging the room into semi-darkness. She felt lightheaded, both with fatigue and the shock of meeting Rufus again. It was hard to grapple with the fact that she was alone in a room with the man Claire had wanted for a husband from the moment she first set eyes on him. Rufus had been the perfect husband for Claire, just what the Beaumonts had always dreamed of for their daughter—successful, secure, even attractive, in a remote, damn-your-eyes kind of way.

But Rufus Grierson, thought Jo bitterly, had never approved of his wife's closest friend. A freelance journalist who spent evenings behind a bar to make ends meet had rather obviously been a bit hard to take for the successful, ultra-conventional lawyer. Jo, determinedly cool in return, had kept her own opinion of him secret from Claire and made sure their paths crossed as little as possible. For Claire's sake the husband and the friend had preserved the civilities. And once Claire was dead Rufus Grierson had obviously seen no reason to come into contact with Jo Fielding again. Until now. Tonight was their first encounter since the funeral, and to her dismay Jo felt no more at ease in his presence now than she had then.

'You want me to go,' Rufus read her mind.

'No,' she said quickly. 'If it helps you to stay for a while, please do. Talk about Claire as much as you like. When I visit her parents they talk about nothing else, of course, which is—painful.' Jo bit a suddenly quivering bottom lip. 'It's different with my own family. When Claire's name comes up we just chat about her normally.'

'It's good that you can do that. Claire enjoyed spending time with your family—probably because it was so different from her own.' His eyes shadowed. 'She was a much indulged only child, of course. Growing up must have been a lot different for you, Jo. Tell me about it.'

She eyed him doubtfully. 'Are you sure you want to know? Our household bore no resemblance at all to the Beaumonts'.'

Rufus smiled faintly. 'So I gathered from Claire. I was always curious about the attraction it held for her.'

'Contrast, I suppose. There was never much cash to spare in my family, but the atmosphere at home was always—well, happy, really. My father taught classics at Pennington Boys School and coached the first-eleven cricket team. Even when he was at home he usually had some pupil or other around for extra tuition. Dad was a darling, but a typical academic— not the least handy about the house. There was no money to pay people to do the decorating, so my mother did it all, in between her PPP work—'

'What on earth was that?' he asked, relaxing slightly.

'Painting pet portraits,' Jo informed him. 'She always seemed to have a paintbrush in her hand for one reason or another, not to mention a hammer, or a screwdriver. She was perpetually mending something—in between baking and making our clothes and doing
the gardening
and helping us with homework and so on.'

'Is she still alive?'

'Very much so! My sister Thalia lives in part of one of those large country houses they divide up into posh apartments, and Mother lives in the lodge at one of the gates.' Jo smiled a little. 'She doesn't have to do repairs any more but she still paints animal portraits. My other sister lives only a few miles from her in Oxford, too, so it suits everyone.'

'I heard that your father died.'

'Yes.' Jo's smile vanished. 'I miss him. It was hard to lose him so soon after—' She sipped some of her brandy hastily, coughed for a moment, then looked at him diffidently. 'It was good of you to write to Mother. She moved not long afterwards. But that's enough about my family. You really wanted to talk about Claire.'

'Not exclusively. I think I just needed to talk to someone who loved Claire for what she was—not a saint, but a warm, loving human being. Her parents have totally
canonised
her since she died.' Rufus drained his glass. 'May I have another drink?' he added, the diminishing light giving his voice a curiously disembodied quality.

'Of course.'

He poured a little brandy into his glass. 'I've sold the house at last.'

'Perhaps that's a good thing.'

'It is. I should have done it right away. It was so full of Claire, I had no hope of coming to terms with her death while I stayed there. I kept expecting to hear her voice, see her walk through the door.' Eyes
sombre
, he sipped some of his drink. 'So I moved into town. I've spent a lot of time packing and unpacking tea chests lately. I found these. I thought you'd like to have them as a keepsake.' Rufus took a small jeweller's box from his pocket and snapped it open.

Jo felt a searing pang of pain as she stared at the pendent pearl earrings that Claire had worn on her wedding day. She shook her head involuntarily. 'I— I can't take these, Rufus. They should go to Mrs Beaumont.'

'I handed the rest of Claire's
jewellery
over after the funeral,' he said quietly. 'I'd rather you had the pearls. I'm sure Claire would too. They were my personal wedding present to her, if you remember.'

Jo nodded wordlessly. How could she forget? Claire's wedding day was imprinted indelibly on her mind.

Rufus took a deep, ragged breath. 'I came across an old dinner jacket the other day and found the earrings in the pocket. Claire must have taken them off when we were at some party or other.' He held them out. 'She would have wanted you to have them.'

Jo took the box reluctantly. 'Thank you. I'll— treasure them.' But she would never wear them. Gypsy hoops were more her style.

There was an awkward pause while they avoided each other's eyes, Rufus sitting like a graven image.

'Are you still writing?' he asked at last.

'Yes. I'm just finishing a novel.' Now, why on earth had she told him
that?

'A novel?'

'Yes.' Jo peered at him through the gloom. 'Did you think I gave up my job at the
Gazette
because I was allergic to steady employment?' She forced a shaky little laugh, trying to lighten the atmosphere. 'Ah! You did.'

'Of course not. But Claire never mentioned a novel.'

'I didn't tell her.' Jo hesitated. 'I wanted to find out if I could do it before broadcasting the news. Mother knows what I'm up to, of course, but no one else. Except you now.' She eyed him militantly.

'Your secret's safe with me.'

'No one you know would be remotely interested, anyway,' she retorted.

'So you work at the Mitre instead of starving in a garret,' Rufus remarked, making a visible effort to shrug off his melancholy.
'Do
you earn enough to make life bearable?'

'Oh, yes,' she assured him. 'My articles pay reasonably well. My father left me a tiny legacy from an insurance policy, which eased my path quite a bit, and when Mother sold the house here in Pennington she gave me a bit more. It ran to a very basic word processor, and left me something in the bank for emergencies.' She paused, flushing, suddenly aware that she was talking too much. 'How about you, Rufus?'

'Like you, my work fills the vacuum. The firm's busy as ever, due to the solid client base we've established over the past few years. My brother's joined it now.'

'I don't know much about law. Do you
specialise
?'

He nodded. 'I advise merchant banks, financial institutions, public limited companies—that kind of thing.'

'Sounds very high-powered.'

'It keeps me busy.'

There was silence for a moment, then Jo got up and relit one of the candles. 'I wish the electricity would come back. Silly, really, but the moment we get a power cut I yearn for tea.'

'It's human nature to yearn for what we can't have,' said Rufus, with sudden, startling bitterness.

Jo felt a lump in her throat. The first wedding anniversary after his wife's death was obviously hard for him. She sat down again, peering at the taut, hard features she could only just make out in the gloom. 'I know we're not soul mates, exactly, Rufus, but we've been acquainted a long time—'

'Which means you're about to say something likely to offend,' he said drily.

'I thought my mere presence in the same room was enough to do that,' she retorted, stung. 'You certainly behaved like it in the old days when—'

'When Claire was alive,' he said morosely, then gave her a long, dissecting look. 'You were rarely in my company at all, Jo. You took good care not to be.'

'It seemed the best way to make life easy for Claire,' said Jo quietly.

'Life usually was easy for Claire.' Rufus leaned forward, his hands clasped between his knees. 'It was a damnable twist of fate to deny her the one remaining thing she lacked—and wanted more than anything else in the world.'

'A child.'

He
nodded,
a bitter twist
to his mouth. 'Odd, really. Two normal, healthy people get married and a child is the usual outcome. But not in our case. And the worst part was that Claire began to feel she'd failed me. I won't deny I wanted a child. I did. I still do, very much. But no matter how much I told Claire I loved her, child or no child, that we could adopt if necessary, it was no use.'

Rufus ran an unsteady hand through his damp hair. 'Poor darling, she became obsessed—swallowed handfuls of vitamins, checked her temperature constantly so she'd know when she was most fertile, could hardly talk of anything else. She insisted we made love only when the time was right—' He shot a sudden, appalled look at Jo. 'Forgive me. You don't want to hear this.'

'I knew some of it,' she muttered, staring down at her clasped hands. 'Not anything private, of course, but I knew about the ever present thermometer and the vitamin-E pills, the special diet. I looked on it all as another good reason for staying single.'

Rufus frowned, his eyes questioning. 'But you
were
going to marry someone, Jo. I've only just discovered you called it off.'

'Yes.
It didn't work out.' She shrugged. 'I like men. They like me. But these days I enjoy coming home here and closing the door on the world.' She gave him a wry little smile. 'I was brought up in a household with a strong female majority. I adored my father, but other than him, a man has never been vitally necessary to my life.'

'What about sex?' said Rufus baldly.

'Well, yes. A man's necessary then, of course.' Jo looked away,
colouring
. 'But, since you've brought the subject up, I admit I can live quite happily without a sexual relationship.'

'You're fortunate.'

'Ah, but you're a man.'

Rufus' dark, narrowed eyes met hers. 'You never seemed aware of the fact.'

'Of course I was,' she said impatiently. 'You're not the sort of man to go unnoticed. But you were— well. . .'

'Someone you disliked.'

'No,' she said, with more truth than he knew. 'Just not my style, I suppose.'

'You're very polite. Do you still feel the same about me, Jo?' he asked, surprising her.

If she'd conned herself into thinking she didn't, one look at him tonight had demonstrated beyond all doubt that she did. 'I haven't thought about you in a long time,' she said, crossing mental fingers at the lie.

'I think it was always your damnable honesty I couldn't cope with,' he said bitterly. 'It does damn all for a man's ego to know he's not worth a woman's consideration.'

'I should imagine, Rufus Grierson, that you've had plenty of consideration from a great many women over the past year—an eligible widower in need of consolation,' she added deliberately.

'The operative word, Jo Fielding, is widower,' he pointed out with stark emphasis. 'A grieving widower, I might remind you.'

His reminder was hardly necessary, thought Jo miserably. After Claire he probably couldn't bear the thought of any other woman. 'But you must have been invited to a good many dinner parties in the past few months.'

'Invited, yes. But unless the dinners were legal, all- male affairs I've rarely accepted.'

'Why not?'

'Apart from the obvious, old-fashioned reason of being in mourning for my wife, I prefer to avoid being paired with anyone, even at a dinner table,' Rufus said bluntly. 'I'm a normal sort of male. Among the things I miss from my marriage the sex is by no means the least. But I won't buy it. Nor will I mislead any woman who's convinced I'm contemplating marriage again.'