Part-time Marriage

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By Saturday morning Elexa had convinced herself that she was taking a right and proper course of action. It was an unusual arrangement, of course. She accepted that. But when all this initial trauma was done and dusted and—subject to her and Peverelle agreeing on everything—then he would have the promise of an heir, and she would have the promise of some space to concentrate on what she so enjoyed: a career without constant family pressure. A year, that was all she craved. To think, in a year’s time, she could have that all-important junior manager’s job! And from there—who knew? The possibilities were limitless.

By six o’clock that evening, however, Elexa was having to firmly remind herself of all the reasons for why she was taking this course of action. When the outer door buzzer sounded a half an hour later she was feeling so all over the place that she could barely remember one good reason.

She saw no point in going to the intercom to ask who was there. It would be Peverelle. She hesitated. What if he had come in person to say he had thought matters over and had decided he neither wanted to act as her ‘steady’ that evening, nor marry her either?

Well, he knew what he could do, she fumed furiously. But her fury was instantly doused when she thought of her mother, her father too, waiting to meet Noah Peverelle. Oh, heavens, she’d never hear the last of it if Peverelle had called in person to tell her ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’.

Suddenly realising that nerves about this whole business were getting to her, Elexa made herself think more positively. Why would he come to say that he thought it a rotten idea? If they went through with it he would be getting the son he wanted. He must know by now that if he wanted some woman who wasn’t out to take him to the cleaners financially, she—Alexandra Aston—was that woman.

Knowing from previous experience that he would not ring twice, Elexa picked up her bag and left her flat. Which must mean, she considered as she went down the stairs, that she herself was ready to carry this notion a little bit further. In any event, how could she now tell her mother—not to mention her aunts—that she had made up having a steady boyfriend? Oh, crumbs, another thought suddenly struck her: her mother would never forgive her if she had to pass on to her sisters, Celia and Helen, that she had a daughter who told whopping howlers!

‘You needn’t have rushed,’ Noah Peverelle greeted her sarcastically when she at last opened the door to him.

Elexa felt inwardly agitated enough without his help, and felt very much like telling him to go find his own dinner. But memory of her mother, Aunt Celia and Aunt Helen, was recent. ‘Okay, so I’ll make more of an effort,’ she conceded.

His grunt showed her how much he cared. ‘My car’s this way,’ he stated. He hadn’t thought better of it, then? He was still considering her ‘proposition’? He touched her elbow briefly in the direction he wanted her to go, though had manners enough, she noted, to walk with her rather than go striding ahead and leaving her to trail behind. ‘Where are we making for?’ he asked, once they were inside his Jaguar and he had the motor purring.

‘Got enough petrol for Berkshire?’

It was the last thing that was said in the car for quite some while. But the nearer they got to her parents’ home, the more Elexa started to become all stewed up inside.

Until at last she just had to explode, ‘This is all wrong!’

He was cool, was Peverelle; she had to give him that. If he heard the edge of panic in her voice he gave no sign. Nor, when the least she thought he might have done was to pull over and stop the car, did he do anything of the sort, but, his tone even, he enquired, ‘What’s wrong about it?’

‘I don’t know you! You don’t know me!’ burst from her. ‘How on earth are my parents going to believe that we’re an—an item?’

‘Point taken,’ he replied, still in that same even, unflustered way. He glanced briefly at her, but his stern expression in no way lightened when he informed her, ‘I’m thirty-seven. Your friend Lois will have told you what work I do. I have a house in London and propose ultimately, perhaps when my workload lessens, to buy a place somewhere in the country.’ That would please her mother. All too clearly it was pointless having a country home now, when, by the sound of it, he had no free time to spend there. ‘My parents are both living in Sussex and I have a sister, Sarah, divorced and with her own home. What do I need to know about you?’ He ended as if that was all he believed she needed to know—and sounded as though he wasn’t too bothered whether she told him anything about herself or not.

‘Have you ever been married?’ Since they had got started on this, she was suddenly not ready to risk tripping up on some unexpected nugget of information he might have chosen to keep to himself.

‘Never found the time,’ he answered, when for a moment there she’d thought he wouldn’t. ‘Nor,’ he added as an afterthought, ‘the inclination.’

From that she gathered that he had never fallen in love with any of the women he dated. That he hadn’t spent his life celibate seemed pretty obvious, without that conversation she had overheard when his friend Marcus had referred to Peverelle’s women-friends. Elexa stole a sideways glance at him—and quickly away again. He had a virile sort of look about him—there was a pounding in her ears suddenly; she didn’t want to think about that.

‘Until now,’ she said in a rush. ‘You’ve never contemplated marriage?’

He did not answer straight away, but then—and she could only conclude he had decided that there had perhaps to be a little give and take here—he unbent sufficiently to concede, ‘I’ve had moments recently when I’ve started to wonder what it’s all about…’

Elexa began to like him a little. ‘You mean the constant striving, being successful—but with no anchor—roots—’ She broke off, a shade embarrassed. ‘You spoke of buying a property in the country. I—er—thought that meant putting down roots. Somewhere for your son and heir to grow up and—’ Again she broke off. She had a feeling she was getting in too deep here. She didn’t want to know. She didn’t want that depth of involvement. ‘Anyhow,’ she went on hurriedly, ‘the fates may not be kind to you—it could be your child will be a girl.’

‘The fates wouldn’t dare,’ he decreed, and for all his expression was as unsmiling as ever she saw he had a sense of humour.

Her mouth picked up at the corners. Quickly, though, she repressed any semblance of a smile. For goodness’ sake—she’d be really liking him next, and that would never do. Clinical, detached; that was the way—if a way there was at all—that she wanted any ‘arrangement’ with him to go. The word ‘detached’ started to trip her up. How in creation could she be detached when…? She was glad when Noah Peverelle interrupted her thoughts.

‘You’re twenty-five, I believe.’

She had forgotten for the moment that he’d had her investigated. Perhaps that was why he hadn’t bothered asking her questions about herself. ‘I expect you know all there is to know about me,’ she answered, striving hard not to sound peeved.

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ he denied. ‘I know your grandfather made his money in retail, and set your father up in business. You’re an only child, by the sound of it with a doting mother who, obviously happy in her own marriage, believes that the only way her daughter will ever be as truly happy is if said daughter marries, and soon.’

‘Sounds pretty ghastly, doesn’t it?’ Elexa had to admit.

‘There are few worse fates,’ he agreed solemnly. But, turning to stare at him, Elexa wasn’t at all sure that she didn’t catch the merest curve of movement at the corner of his excellent mouth.

Excellent? Oh, for Heaven’s sake. ‘Perhaps I should mention my cousin Rory’s wedding,’ she said hastily. ‘I think my mother may bring it up. Um—I know things, mutually, may not go any further between us than this one—er—meeting, but my mother is bound to endorse the invitation to you that her sister, Rory’s mother, phoned me to extend.’

‘You’re getting pressured by your aunt as well?’ He seemed amazed.

Elexa gave him top marks for catching on so quickly. ‘Aunts,’ she corrected, glancing at him to see that he had noted the added pressure she was under, but going on, ‘Aunt Helen, Rory’s mother, rang wanting your address so she could arrange for the invitation to be mailed to you.’

Noah mentioned to Elexa the area of London where he had his house, and queried, ‘If the invitations are going out, I take it the wedding is nigh?’

‘Six or seven weeks,’ she answered. ‘But—and I can’t imagine you getting pushed into a corner with no way out—if you do feel obliged to accept my mother’s proxy invitation, I’ll find a way of getting you out of it later.’

She looked at him—his lips had definitely twitched then. ‘I think I can safely be left to manage that on my own,’ he replied—and once again Elexa felt very much like hitting him.

On which pugilistic moment, they arrived in her home village. ‘Turn left here,’ she ordered crisply. She half expected him to turn right, just to show her that nobody bossed him around, but clearly he was made of more superior stuff than that, and steered the car left, and soon he was making another left up her parents’ drive.

Her tall and slender mother was dressed in one of her smartest outfits, Elexa observed when, taking Noah into the drawing-room, she made the introductions. Her mother was a charming hostess and in no time, Elexa’s father having seen to the drinks, they were all seated and in light conversation. What surprised her, though, was to see another facet of Noah Peverelle’s character when he, in turn, was equally charming. Her mother was bowled over, at any rate.

Elexa watched him, ready to take up cudgels on her mother’s behalf at any first sign that he might be privately having an inner laugh at her mother’s expense. But studying him as she did, she saw no such hint, so that gradually, having been extremely tense at the start, Elexa began to unwind almost completely.

Almost completely, but not quite. Because when they moved from the drawing-room to the dining-room and began dinner, there were a few small snares during the meal that caused her to tense up again.

‘Elexa has been very reticent in telling us about you, Noah.’ Her mother smiled as she offered him more broccoli. ‘I don’t even know where the two of you met!’

Oh, help! Elexa wasn’t good at lying, and too late realised that if she was going to lie she ought at least to have rehearsed it first. She opened her mouth to make some comment, to intercede on Noah’s behalf. But then found he did not require her help. Though, whether he had rehearsed the lie or not, his powers of invention, instant or otherwise, were far greater than hers, she very soon realised.

‘I was in one of the offices at the Samara Group when Elexa called to discuss a marketing plan with the head of department there,’ he answered pleasantly.

Stunned, Elexa could only stare while her mother beamed and accepted straight away that the international chairman of that group must have taken a shine to her daughter on that instant. ‘Elexa is so good at planning,’ Kaye Aston told him enthusiastically. Every bit, Elexa thought in amazement, as if she stood at her elbow in her office watching her. ‘In fact,’ she went on, ‘Elexa has always been academically quite brilliant.’ While Elexa wanted to sink through the floor it was so embarrassing—her aunt Celia had used to go on like this to David about her daughter Joanna—her mother was adding, ‘Academically brilliant, but so unworldly about life.’

Heaven help us, her mother was all but warning Noah to look after her prized chick! ‘Aunt Helen rang!’ she interrupted, saying the first thing that came to her—too late realising she had triggered off an invitation to Rory and Martina’s wedding.

‘She said she would.’ Kaye Aston cheerfully admitted that the two of them had been under discussion. ‘You will be able to come to Rory’s wedding, I hope, Noah?’

‘I expect Noah has a full diary,’ Waldo Aston chipped in, much to Elexa’s relief.

Her relief was short-lived. ‘Oh, you business people,’ her mother declared. ‘Elexa works all hours and takes papers home, when there’s absolutely no need for her to work at all. Yet she’s never missed a day at Colman and Fisher in all the time she’s been there.’ She laughed lightly. ‘I’m sure she’d crawl there on her hands and knees if she had to.’ Elexa sent a desperate kind of look to her father, but her mother had warmed to her theme, and before he could say anything, ‘Why, I remember her struggling into work one day when she was so ill she was as near to having pneumonia as—’

‘A slight exaggeration,’ Elexa jumped in quickly. For goodness’ sake, Peverelle was a sophisticated man of the world—he didn’t need to hear her mother singing her daughter’s virtues—if virtues they were.

‘Not at all,’ Kaye Aston insisted lightly. And in friendly fashion continued, ‘I swear, Noah, this daughter of mine truly believes Colman and Fisher would collapse without her.’

‘Elexa is a great asset to them,’ he answered smoothly, every bit as if he knew it for certain.

‘What’s for pudding, Mother?’ Elexa asked, cringing where she sat, not bothered in the slightest about pudding, but ready to grasp at anything to change the subject.

‘Gypsy tart and or cheesecake,’ her mother replied, and drew breath to turn to her daughter’s ‘steady’ again, but was forestalled when her husband, perhaps having picked up his daughter’s distress signals, beat her to it.

‘You don’t by any chance collect stamps?’ he asked Noah.

‘I’m afraid I don’t. It’s a fascinating hobby, I’ve heard.’

Elexa was glad when the meal was over, and left Noah and her father in the drawing-room while she helped her mother clear the dining-room table.

‘Your father and I will see to the dishes later.’ Kaye Aston beamed. And, because it seemed she just couldn’t resist it, she declared, ‘Oh, darling, if I’d chosen someone for you myself I couldn’t have chosen better.’

Elexa stared at her parent and couldn’t help feeling slightly staggered. Only a week ago her mother had been all for her being ‘nice’ to Tommy Fielding. Noah Peverelle and Tommy Fielding weren’t in the same street! ‘Er—we’re only dating,’ she thought she had better mention. She had no idea yet which way this arrangement, or non-arrangement, was going.

‘You told Tommy Fielding you were seeing someone, long-term. Oh, please don’t tell me you’re thinking of just moving in with him.’

‘I can promise you, Mum, that’s the last thing I’m thinking of,’ Elexa replied, glad to be able to be honest about that at least. While she owned to starting to feel more than a touch confused about what she was doing—she could hardly imagine she’d had the nerve to ring Peverelle the way she had last Sunday—she was clear about that. She had her own place—why would she want to move into his?

Her mother seemed so relieved she came and gave her a hug, ‘You will tell me—as soon as there is anything to tell me?’ she asked urgently.

She meant an engagement, or marriage, Elexa knew that she did, and as her heart went all soft on her Elexa forgot for the moment the weight of pressure—well-meaning, but pressure all the same—that her parents constantly applied in their urgency for her to be married. All Elexa knew then was that she loved her worrying mother, and that if it would mean so very much to her to see her walk down that aisle then, if Peverelle was willing, it didn’t seem such a huge step to take.

‘I’ll be on the phone to you as soon as,’ she promised.

But when, not long afterwards, she was seated beside Peverelle as he drove them back to London she was starting to have second thoughts, and that wedding aisle seemed suddenly ten miles long.

Barely a word passed between them on the return journey, which was all right by Elexa; she had a lot on her mind. She guessed that Noah Peverelle had too, because they had almost arrived at her door before he let her into some of his thoughts.

‘It’s a bit late for us to have any lengthy discussion—there are things I have to ask you, matters you’ll want to clear up with me,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you a call in the morning and arrange a time to talk the whole situation through.’