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The Mirror Bride
Robyn Donald
THE MARRIAGE MAKER"A mirror marriage, picture perfect but insubstantial, a mere reflection of the real thing." In marrying Drake Arundell, Olivia Nicholls will secure Simon's future… and condemn her own!Though she yearns for a "real" marriage with Drake, too many secrets, too many lies stand between them and the love, the passion, the substance she longs for in their relationship - but then, perhaps she has a guardian angel on her side!THE MARRIAGE MAKER - Can a picture from the past bring love to the present?
“And who,” Drake asked softly, “is Simon?” (#u0f50116b-7c84-528a-928b-b510dd27e992)About the Author (#uebb27802-0867-505d-b6d1-1eb4d7527407)Title Page (#u1e08e811-2592-5385-a8a7-32b8e3ee60d2)Dedication (#ua7af9d69-23d0-59fc-81fe-5c9ef077859a)CHAPTER ONE (#u86585878-d8ba-5632-956d-9c7847305403)CHAPTER TWO (#uf71b29f8-a0dc-5d89-b267-1229781489b5)CHAPTER THREE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“And who,” Drake asked softly, “is Simon?”
Olivia damped down incipient hysteria. “Simon is your son.”
Astonishment glittered in the cold eyes before being banished so completely that Olivia wondered whether she had seen alright. Oh, he was a brilliant actor! If she didn’t know better, she thought bitterly, she’d believe he hadn’t known of the child he’d fathered the year she was seventeen.
Olivia Nicholls and the two half sisters, Anet and Jan Carruthers, are all born survivors—but, so far, unlucky in love. Things change, however, when an eighteenth-century miniature portrait of a beautiful and mysterious young woman passes into each of their hands. It may be coincidence, it may not! The portrait is meant to be a charm to bring love to the lives of those who possess it—but there is one condition:
I found Love as you’ll find yours,
and trust it will be true,
This Portrait is a fated charm
To speed your Love to you.
But if you be not Fortune’s Fool
Once your heart’s Desire is nigh,
Pass on my likeness as Cupid’s Tool
Or your Love will fade and die.
The Mirror Bride is Olivia’s story and the first title in Robyn Donald’s captivating new trilogy, THE MARRIAGE MAKER. Look out next month for Anet’s story in Meant to Marry, and in April look for Jan’s story, The Final Proposal, which concludes the trilogy and solves the mystery of the haunting image in the portrait.
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The Mirror Bride
Robin Donald
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For Frances Whitehead. Thank you.
CHAPTER ONE
SHE was very young.
Olivia didn’t know her, but the beautiful face was familiar. Something, she thought hazily, about the surprisingly square jaw and the determined mouth—a mouth now set in a straight line.
‘Write to him,’ the unknown woman directed, the ribbons and feathers in her headdress swaying as she gave a swift, decisive nod of her elaborately styled head. Bright blue eyes commanded Olivia’s attention. ‘It is the only thing you can do now. You must write.’
‘I can’t!’
The sound of her own voice woke her. Blearily she lifted her head to gaze with slowly clearing vision around the small, shabby room. Of course no lovely young woman stood there, dressed in the frills and lace and silk of the middle of the eighteenth century. This room was definitely twentieth-century, from the faded, bargain-basement vinyl on the floor to the garishly painted wooden cupboards above and below the sink bench.
While sitting at the battered Formica table and poring over calculations that had kept her awake for nights, Olivia had gone to sleep and dreamed—a remarkably vivid dream, but in reality just a dramatisation of the decision she had already made, a decision she didn’t want to face.
So her subconscious had made her acknowledge it.
Yawning, she pushed a lock of honey-blonde hair back from her face. Her capable, long-fingered hand came down abruptly on the sheet of paper she had covered with figures, then curled, strangely vulnerable. Head bowed, she joined her hands loosely, looking at nothing in particular with great, lacklustre topaz eyes. Almost immediately she firmed her soft mouth, pulled a cheap, thin writing pad towards her and began to write, only to stop after two sentences.
‘Oh, that won’t do; it’s too stupid,’ she muttered, glowering at the stamp she’d already stuck onto the envelope—a tiny rock wren delicately depicted in shades of buff and black and gold.
Her eyes lingered on the words along the bottom: ‘New Zealand’, it said. ‘45c’.
Forty-five cents she couldn’t really afford.
Seed money, she thought, grimacing before she returned to writing the most difficult letter of her life.
Several times she stopped to frown more deeply, chewing on the end of the ballpoint pen and staring blindly through the window. On the other side of the busy street a row of run-down shops was topped by flats like the one she lived in, their windows reflecting blankly back at her.
There was no inspiration to be gained there. Or anywhere. After almost an hour spent crossing out and rewriting, she at last decided on the bare minimum.
Dear Drake,
I need to see you. There is something you should know.
And she signed it his faithfully, Olivia Nicholls.
It sounded faintly sinister, but that couldn’t be helped. Explicitness was impossible because there was always the chance of someone else—a wife, for example—seeing the letter.
Quickly, because although she’d spent days agonising over this she still wasn’t sure she was doing the right thing, Olivia sealed the envelope, then ran with it down the rickety outside stairs to the grimy street below. She’d give him a fortnight—no more and no less. If he hadn’t answered by then, she’d have to step up her campaign.
Auckland at the fag-end of autumn was depressing. Autumn meant that winter was not far behind, and winter meant earache and the dreaded Auckland cough, which in Simon invariably turned to bronchitis. Winter meant nightmares about trying to dry and air clothes. It meant expensive vegetables and the pain of seeing Simon go off to school in inadequate clothing.
For the last three years she and Simon had lived in Auckland, and this third winter was promising to be worse than the two previous ones. Only five days ago she’d lost her job as an outworker sewing tracksuits for a factory. It hadn’t brought in much, but the small amount had supplemented the unemployment benefit which was now all they had to live on. Saving money would be impossible. And there was the crushing debt she owed Brett, her next-door neighbour...
And, to cap off the series of disasters, she’d developed a rotten head cold.
She stopped outside the letterbox, looking down at the address on the envelope. You don’t have to send it, a voice reminded her—a cautious, cowardly voice. You can struggle on—nobody dies of starvation in New Zealand.
Her eyes lingered on her hands. Once they had been pampered and smooth, the fingernails polished; now the fingernails were cut straight across and the skin was slightly chapped, marred by calluses from the constant use of scissors. Had she seen them, her mother would have had a fit. Elizabeth Harley had considered it part of her purpose in life to be elegant and well-groomed. She would have thought that Olivia was letting down the side.
But then, Elizabeth had been the indulged only daughter of a rich man, whereas Olivia had no money at all.
A shiver ran down her spine. What she was doing was dangerous, but there was no alternative. Defiantly she pushed the letter into the slot.
Trying to banish the matter to the back of her mind-it was done, she had made the decision and now she’d just have to wait—she set off to pick Simon up from school.
As she came down the street he burst through the gateway like a prisoner released from long incarceration, a too-thin six-year-old in the throes of a growing spurt. Olivia’s eyes lingered on his bony wrists. He’d already outgrown the clothes she’d made for him at the beginning of summer, and although she had shopped carefully the year before at the winter sales, making sure that the two jerseys and the jacket were a size larger than she’d thought necessary, she suspected he was almost too big for them too.
If that letter worked, she thought wearily, she’d no longer need to worry about money to buy the shoes they both needed. If it didn’t work—well, she’d go without, and his would be bought from the op-shop.
The letter had to work.
Banishing the odd little clutch of fear in her stomach, she smiled down at Simon.
‘Hello, Liv,’ he said, incandescently delighted at being freed from school.
‘Hello, young Simon,’ she said, speaking clearly. ‘Have you had a good day?’
A year ago he used to hold her hand down the street, but she knew better than to hold it out now.
‘Mrs Adams sent a note home.’ Although belligerence darkened eyes the same colour and shape as hers, she caught a glimmer of wistfulness before he looked away.
‘Oh, Simon!’
‘I haven’t been naughty,’ he shouted, kicking a stone. ‘It’s about a trip to the beach. I said I couldn’t go but she said I had to take it home anyway.’
Both of them hated those notes—Olivia because it was so rarely that she could afford the promised trip, and Simon because his absence made him an outcast amongst his peers. Even in this poor area most families were better off then they were.
Until she’d begun saving for his ear operation she had always managed to find the money to send him away with the rest of his class. She had explained why he could no longer go, but when you weren’t much over six, and all your friends teased you about staying behind, it was difficult to comprehend the need to save money. Especially as he didn’t really understand that he was going deaf.
‘Hand it over,’ she said.
He did, but before she had a chance to read it asked, ‘Liv, why do we speak different?’
‘Differently,’ she said automatically. ‘From whom?’
‘Well, everyone. I had a fight with Sean Singleton today ’cause he said I was up myself, talking like the Poms. Are we Poms?’
‘No, we’re not English. You speak the way you do because that’s how I talk.’ She didn’t really know what to say. Although New Zealand believed itself to be a classless society, it was untrue. End up with no money and you were automatically relegated to the bottom of the heap. And if you lived on a benefit with a child and no husband you became a solo mother, the subject of smug, middle-class disdain.
Not looking at her, he mumbled, ‘Sean said I was a dummy.’
‘You know that’s not true. As soon as we get your ears fixed you’ll show Sean Singleton that you’re every bit as clever as he is. Until then, darling, try not to fight.’ A glance at his mutinous expression made her ask with a sinking heart, ‘What else happened?’
Children could be so cruel—little animals picking mercilessly on anyone who was the slightest bit different. A sunny-tempered child, Simon had adored school when he first started, but it was an effort to get him there now. His teacher did what she could, but she had a big class and the school was under-resourced.
‘Nothing,’ he muttered. ‘I don’t care about Sean Singleton. I can beat him any time. Aren’t you going to read the note?’
The school was planning an overnight trip to the marine reserve at Leigh, sixty miles up the coast. Unless Drake accepted the responsibility he’d avoided these last seven years there was no way she could take money out of her bank account for a school trip. Not now, when she had no job and little hope of getting one.
Unfortunately she couldn’t tell Simon that; if Drake refused to acknowledge his obligations Simon would be all the more shattered for having had the prospect held out to him.
Olivia slipped the note into her pocket.
Simon’s eyes followed her hand. Angrily he said, ‘I knew it would cost too much.’ He hid his disappointment too well for a child of six. ‘We better go home and fold some papers.’
They spent some hours each week folding a variety of advertising pamphlets which he and Olivia delivered around the district. The money it earned used to pay for the meagre luxuries they couldn’t have afforded otherwise, but from now on it would all go towards necessities.
Olivia’s whole being rose up in hot resentment. It simply wasn’t fair that Simon should be denied most of the things his classmates took for granted, that he should live in a grotty first-floor flat with no garden except an unmown stretch of grass cluttered by a clothesline, three car bodies and a lemon tree that struggled to survive from year to year. It wasn’t fair that he had to wear clothes she made from cheap remnants or hunted for in opportunity shops and end-of-season sales. It wasn’t fair that his life should be so circumscribed, that he should be unable to take advantage of the many things New Zealand’s biggest city offered.
But then, she’d learned that nothing in this life was fair. However, she thought, firming her mouth, she had taken the first steps to redress the balance for Simon.
Back home, she sent him to put his bag away while she drew a cup of hot water from the tap and squeezed a lemon into it. Sitting down to drink it, she watched him make a sandwich, and winced at the amount of peanut butter he spread on it. She bit back the unguarded protest. Simon wasn’t greedy.
She wanted to take him places, to buy him books and toys to keep his active mind stretched—she yearned to give him some sort of future. Instead, he took their poverty for granted. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she’d been able to claim the child benefits the country provided, but she didn’t dare.
For Simon she would do anything, even sink her pride, because he was all she had.
Olivia pulled a sheet of newspaper across the table. It was about six weeks old, and she’d been lucky to get it. Brett always handed on his newspapers to her, but he very rarely bought them, preferring to get the news from the radio.
Her eyes were drawn to a photograph. Although she had spent too much of the last three days looking at it, her vision wavered, a sudden rush of blood to her head making her close her eyes.
Drake Arundell. A man she had known all her life, yet this man was a stranger.
Blinking swiftly, she forced her eyes open. Her gaze lingered on the hard face, its blunt contours set in an expression of assured authority. The seven years since she had seen him had added an air of maturity to his strong features. Power radiated from him, a power different from the untrammelled sexuality that had cut such a swathe through Springs Flat while he was growing up. Whatever had happened in those seven years had modified and strengthened the young man’s arrogance into a disciplined self-reliance.
The boldly cut mouth was now controlled into a straight, uncompromising line, while level, enigmatic eyes surveyed the world from beneath black brows that winged up at the outer corners to give a saturnine expression to his face.
Those eyes were grey-green; when he was angry the green predominated, so that they became piercing slivers of crystal. Heavy-lidded, with thick, curly black lashes that didn’t mitigate their inherent aloofness, they were astonishing eyes.
A formidable man, Drake Arundell, infinitely tougher and much more dangerous than the reckless, charismatic young man so vividly delineated in her memory. Just over six feet tall, he was in perfect proportion to his height, with a well-made smoothness of movement that satisfied the eye. He’d be—she made some quick calculations—about thirty-two, eight years older than she was.
Of course he’d be married by now. Men with his particular brand of virile masculine magnetism didn’t stay single. And when they flashed across the motor racing scene like a singularly blatant comet, attracting the attention of film stars and models and any number of beautiful women, marriage usually followed. There were probably children too.
At seventeen, Olivia had responded to his heady, aggressive confidence as helplessly as most other women. More fool her, she thought sardonically.
‘Have you got a headache?’ Simon enquired around his peanut butter sandwich. ‘You look funny.’
‘Darling, swallow everything in your mouth before you talk. No, I’m fine.’
He came over to stand beside her. ‘Who’s that?’
‘A man I used to know.’ Had known all her life. ‘He owns hotels and boats and things.’ Her voice sounded quite normal.
Drake Arundell, the news item said, had announced the opening of the Tero ski-field. Three years ago Arundell had returned to New Zealand to buy the almost moribund FunNZ empire, and with a combination of shrewd, resourceful financial ability and an intuitive understanding of the tourism business had not only brought it back to life but expanded, without setting the powerful conservation movement at his throat.
The item went on to mention his spectacular reign as a Formula One driver, when he had been prevented from winning the Drivers’ Championship only by injury. Drake Arundell had dropped out for five years before emerging to carve out an equally fast-moving career in the business world, being one of the first far-sighted enough to see the opportunity for the now world-famous eco-tours.
An unsteady wind blustered against the windows, streaking them with rain. A truck took its time about going by, changing gear with a jarring thump that rattled through Olivia’s head. Shivering, she rubbed her arms to stir the circulation.
Her eyes returned to the photograph. The last time she’d seen him Drake Arundell had been furious, his striking face cold and unyielding, his eyes narrowed and savage beneath their half-closed lids.
