A Heartless Marriage

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‘Yes?’ Leigh’s voice was grudging. To be woken up on a Monday morning at nine o’clock when she hadn’t slept all night and then asked to acknowledge her married status wasn’t her idea of a good start to the week.

‘I thought I’d got the address right but the card on the door says Leigh Wilson.’ The boy’s forehead was wrinkled. ‘Still, that’s your affair.’

‘Exactly.’ She wasn’t usually this snappy, she thought miserably as she reluctantly took charge of the flowers that could only be from one person as the boy left with a stiff nod. She had to get herself together! There was no card, just the picture of a small brown kitten fixed to the enormous silk bow at the base of the bouquet, its eyes enormous.

She deposited the flowers in the kitchen sink before having a shower and getting dressed, her movements mechanical and slow. The memories that had haunted her all night were just as vivid in the cold light of day and as she brushed her hair in the bathroom mirror she peered at herself critically for the first time in months.

The anxious face that stared back at her was averagely pretty, no more, she reflected miserably, the big brown eyes and thick dark hair pleasant but fairly mediocre. Her shape was inclined to plumpness, she wasn’t very tall and yet from the first moment they had met Raoul had called her beautiful.

She peered closer, trying to see what he saw, but after a few searching moments shook her head in defeat. Oh, Raoul. ‘Now none of that,’ she told herself loudly. ‘It’s over, finished! You are going to devote yourself to your work and become a great artist.’ The thought couldn’t have depressed her more and after a few minutes of claustrophobic misery she decided she had to get out and go for a walk. She needed to get her hopes and aspirations back on course and she couldn’t do it with the smell of fifty or more roses pervading her senses and weakening her resolve.

‘Running away? Again?’ The bright warm sunlight trapped neatly in the building-framed street had momentarily blinded her as she stepped out on to the pavement from the dark confines of the murky passageway leading from the lift, and as she raised startled brown eyes to Raoul’s cool sardonic face she almost groaned out loud. He had no right to look so gorgeous, no right at all. Dressed simply in figure-hugging jeans and a blue denim shirt that reflected the deep blue of his eyes, he looked…gorgeous. But he wasn’t hers. Not any more.

‘I happen to be going for a walk. if that’s all right with you, of course.’ She smiled tightly. ‘I’ll be back in an hour. My clocking-in card is in my pocket.’

‘Miaow…’ He touched her flushed cheek gently with a cool finger. ‘My little kitten is scratchy today.’ She glared at him without replying and he laughed softly. ‘I think I’ll join you; I need the exercise.’

Now she did groan out loud, and he eyed her quizzically as he fell into step beside her. ‘It’s lucky for me I do not suffer with the English insecurity,’ he said quietly. ‘You have been death to my ego from the first moment we met.’ He placed a casual arm round her shoulders and she saw two beautifully dressed career women across the road grimace with envy. She didn’t have to be able to hear what they were saying to know its content; she’d heard it so many times before. ‘What a dish! And what’s he doing with her?’

‘Do you remember?’ he continued softly in her ear as he moderated his large steps to hers. ‘In St Tropez?’

‘Of course I remember,’ she said painfully. ‘I was on a cheap package holiday with my cousin and you were on your yacht with Lord Somebody-orother.’ She eyed him morosely. ‘Very symbolic!’ He ignored the gibe with regal indifference. ‘And then you started to show off on the beach for all the women.’

‘I did not!’ Now she had his attention! ‘I merely played football with a group of friends, that is all.’ He shot her a warning glance. ‘You are not too big to fit over my knee, little kitten, understand?’ Now she ignored him. ‘And there was one girl who would not emerge from her umbrella. Buried up to her nose in her newspaper. Just a pair of round dimpled knees on view.’ He smiled slowly. ‘I fell for those knees then and there.’ The blue eyes were reflective.

‘Raoul!’ She pushed him slightly with her hand as she fought, unsuccessfully, to keep back the grin that was twisting the corners of her mouth upwards. She shouldn’t listen to this.

‘Oh, but I did.’ His eyes narrowed in remembrance. ‘And then, when I persuaded the butterfly from its chrysalis, it was to find that I was-how you say?—cradle-snatching.’

‘You were not,’ she said indignantly. ‘I was eighteen when we met and you were only twenty-five. Not exactly Methuselah by anyone’s standards!’

‘Ah, but you were a baby in the ways of love,’ he said deeply. ‘But how quickly you learnt. You will always be mine, Leigh, you know this?’ She couldn’t quite place the timbre of his voice but there was something in the hard handsome face that was quite ruthless and she shivered in spite of the heat.

‘Like your car or yacht, you mean?’ Her voice was deliberately cold. ‘Something to be used when necessary or convenient and then put into the appropriate slot or maybe even forgotten if a better model comes along.’ She looked straight up at him now. ‘Maybe another Marion?’

‘You say these things but you do not believe them,’ he said grimly as he brought her to a halt at the opening of a tiny green park with a pocket handkerchief square of lawn surrounded by a border of orderly bushes and regimented benches. ‘Marriage is forever. There has never been a divorce in my family.’

‘Is that all that matters to you? Your family’s reputation?’

He brought her angry words to a halt by the simple expedient of placing his lips on hers, bending down to take her mouth with an arrogant gesture of familiarity that had her head jerking away immediately. She ignored the response the casual action ignited in her body, veiling her eyes against him as she glared up into his face. ‘Don’t.’

‘I have decided there is only one way to deal with your stubbornness, kitten,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I have given you time to to find yourself, to become established in your work. I let this happen because I had to. Now it is time for you to come back to me.’

‘You’re crazy.’ She stared at him in amazement. ‘I’m not coming back, Raoul.’

‘This person, this Jeff, does he have something to do with your decision?’ he asked coldly as he drew her down beside him on one of the benches, his touch burning her arm.

‘My life is my own affair now,’ she said quietly as a dart of anger at his presumption turned her eyes black. ‘You don’t own me any more.’

‘I never did.’ He looked down at her quizzically. ‘I never wanted to “own” you in that way. Possess you, as you possess me, maybe, but not “own” you.’

‘We’re finished.’ She had said it! She shut her eyes for an infinitesimal moment of time, expecting another explosion, but apart from a stiffening of the big body there was no change in his manner. He sat watching her, his blue eyes reflecting the sky overhead and the faint breeze ruffling his hair. This was merely a game to him, she thought wretchedly.

‘Did you like the roses?’ he asked with cool detachment. She stared at him for a moment, nonplussed by his control.

‘They’re lovely.’ She smiled nervously. ‘You must have bought the shop out.’ What on earth did he expect her to say?

‘A rose for every month we have been apart.’ There was no expression in the smooth voice. ‘How are you going to convince me you are adamant our marriage is at an end?’ he asked in the same tone of voice. ‘I feel you still want me on a physical level but I also know that you have remained celibate since our break so I do not doubt your control of your physical desires. But nevertheless, you do want me, don’t you?’

This total change of front into cool quietness puzzled her. Yesterday he had been volatile, passionate and angry. Today, at first thoughtful and reflective-and now.? Now she wasn’t sure but she didn’t like it and she didn’t trust him an inch. She had once, implicitly, and look where it had got her!

‘I have a suggestion to make that I would like you to consider very carefully,’ he continued softly. ‘You know me, Leigh, you know I do not give in easily.’ She smiled inwardly. The understatement of the year. ‘My proposal is that you come back to live with me for three months.’ Her eyes shot up to meet his but he was ready for her, his hand already raised for silence. ‘This will not involve you doing anything you do not wish to do, either on a physical level or a social one. You understand?’ She nodded silently, her eyes enormous in the chalkwhiteness of her face. ‘If, at the end of that time, you are able to tell me coldly and dispassionately that you still want a divorce, I will make sure you get one immediately. You have my word on that.’

‘And if I can’t?’ She forced a note of mockery into her voice to hide its trembling.

‘Then you become my wife again in every sense of the word.’

‘This is ridiculous.’ She rose from the bench to look down at him, her hands clenched into fists at her side and her heart-shaped face fiery. ‘I don’t need to do this! We have been apart for five years. I can get a divorce now if I want one, with or without your consent.’

‘Maybe.’ He smiled coldly. ‘But maybe not. We would see. But that is by the by. The real issue is that I would not be satisfied.’ He stared at her proudly, his face ruthlessly arrogant. ‘I need to know you mean what you say, that you are absolutely sure; only then would I leave you alone.’