Marriage Reclaimed: Marriage at a Distance / Marriage Under Suspicion / The Marriage Truce

‘And probably long overdue.’ The tawny eyes rested on her meditatively. ‘If I’ve learned anything from the debacle of our marriage, Joanna, it’s been the unwisdom of sacrificing personal relationships to work. I shan’t make the same mistake again.’

Somehow, Joanna drank the rest of her coffee, put down her cup, and rose to her feet.

She said quietly, ‘I’m sure your future wife will be glad to hear it.’

He smiled faintly. ‘I’ll make sure she is.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Shall we say half past three?’

She stared at him, thrown. ‘For what?’

‘Our visit to Charles and Sylvia,’ he said patiently. ‘We’ll take my car.’

She wanted to scream at him, Take your future wife instead. But she forced the words back with an effort.

‘Actually, I have some errands in Westroe this afternoon,’ she improvised swiftly. ‘Perhaps it would be better if I met you there.’

‘Perhaps.’ He rose too, coming round the desk to her. Joanna made herself stand her ground, return his gaze with apparent unconcern.

He said softly, ‘Just as long as you don’t forget, or find yourself detained by some unforeseen circumstance. Because that, Jo, wouldn’t amuse me at all.’

‘In other words—your rules.’ She kept her tone flat. ‘You’ll have to supply me with a list of them, Gabriel, in case I inadvertently transgress.’

His eyes glinted at her. ‘What—you, my little plaster saint? Impossible.’

‘Plaster saint?’ she exclaimed, stung. ‘That’s a foul thing to call anyone.’

‘Isn’t that what you want to be?’ There was no amusement in the tawny gaze now. ‘Safe in your little niche—immune from the sins of the flesh—untouchable and—untouched? Because you’ve never wanted to be a woman, Joanna.’ He paused, ‘Or was it simply being my woman that was so abhorrent to you?’

His words were like knives, but she made herself shrug lightly.

‘Can’t we simply agree we were incompatible and leave it there?’

He shook his head slowly. ‘You were one of my failures in life, Jo. And I don’t like to lose.’

Her heart was hammering against her ribcage. His eyes were like molten gold. She felt them searing her flesh.

She lifted her chin. ‘Not a failure, Gabriel. Just—a mistake. From which we can both learn.’

‘Or we could choose a different lesson.’

One hand snaked round her, pulling her forward. The other lifted to release her hair from the confines of its prosaic elastic band.

She found herself held against him—imprisoned by his arms.

He said huskily, ‘Forget the pious platitudes, Jo. For once in your life kiss me as if you wanted to. As if you wanted me.’

His mouth was so close—just a butterfly’s wing away. His hand moved on the nape of her neck, under the fall of her hair, softly, teasingly, sending a deep shiver pulsating through her body.

He whispered, ‘Kiss me…’

It would be so easy, she thought longingly, to yield to his persuasion. To let the desire of the moment sweep her away. To assuage the pain and the need of the past unhappy years by putting her lips against his. And by following wherever that led.

Oh, dear God, so disastrously, fatally easy.

She wrenched herself free. Took a step backwards, distancing herself. Out of harm’s way.

She said, between her teeth, ‘This is not a game, Gabriel, and I am not some toy. You don’t like to fail. I won’t be used. Checkmate.’

She turned and went out of the room, across the hall and up the stairs, without looking back and without hesitation, in spite of the scalding tears that were half blinding her.

Tears that she dared not let him see. Tears she could not allow herself to shed, because they were a sign of the weakness she could not afford.

And she knew with painful desperation that she was going to need all the strength she possessed—just to survive.

CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_f7e55b8f-07eb-5293-8b95-c9578c1b23cb)

‘MY DEAREST child, what a nightmare for you.’ Sylvia Osborne’s hug was warm, but the look she directed at Joanna was searching as well as kind. ‘I can hardly believe it.’

‘Nor I.’ Joanna’s voice was constrained. ‘I still look up, expecting him to walk in…’

‘Of course.’ Sylvia drew her over to one of the comfortable, sagging, chintz-covered sofas and sat down beside her, clasping Joanna’s hands in hers. ‘If only we’d been here. Not that we could have done anything…’ She paused. ‘And now Gabriel is back.’ She let the words sink into another silence.

Joanna bit her lip. ‘Yes. Have you heard the terms of Lionel’s will?’

Sylvia nodded. ‘Gabriel told me when we spoke on the telephone this morning. It’s all quite unbelievable.’

Joanna swallowed. ‘He—he’s very angry about it, isn’t he?’

‘Small wonder,’ Sylvia said tartly. ‘Firstly he’s dragooned into that ridiculous marriage—which anyone could see was going to be a disaster, and which one would have thought might have cured Lionel of interfering in other people’s lives—and now, in spite of everything, he’s being manipulated again.’

‘But he doesn’t have to be,’ Joanna said flatly. ‘I’ve told him I’ll renounce my bequest. Go somewhere else. Start a new life. Only he won’t allow it.’

‘Well, of course not. However muddled his motives, Lionel has provided you with a future. Gabriel wouldn’t let you deprive yourself of that.’ She shook her head. ‘Verne men, my dear. Pride, stubbornness, and a keen sense of honour—particularly where their dependants are concerned.’

‘I,’ Joanna said very clearly, ‘have no wish to be a dependant of Gabriel’s.’

‘A view he shares, no doubt.’ Sylvia paused. ‘I thought he was coming with you. What have you done—murdered him and shoved his body out of the car?’

For the first time in many days Joanna heard herself laugh out loud.

‘Now why didn’t I think of that?’ She shook her head. ‘He’s joining us presently. I—I had some shopping to do, so we decided to arrive here separately.’

As soon as she’d composed herself that morning, Joanna had changed out of her riding gear into skirt and sweater, topped them with her trenchcoat, and driven into Westroe.

She’d lunched on scrambled eggs on toast in a local tea room, and spent the rest of the time mooching grimly round the parade of shops, eventually buying a cream silk shirt that she didn’t need simply for appearances.

‘Separately, but not that far apart.’ Sylvia looked past her through the window. ‘Gabriel’s here now, surveying the frost damage in the garden with Charles.’ She patted Joanna’s arm. ‘Come and give me a hand with the tea things. In awkward situations, I always find it helps to appear busy.’

No one could feel uptight in Sylvia’s kitchen, Joanna thought, arranging sandwiches on plates and filling dishes with jam and cream for the batch of feather-light scones still cooling from the Aga.