Forsaking All Reason

by Jenny Cartwright

  The best thing, she decided, would be to turn up at the dinner, dressed to the nines, and make up a threesome with Guy and Ella. The Press would be able to make nothing of the fact that London’s golden couple had a guest on board for the evening. Whereas if Guy were to be seen there with Ella on his own—well then the flash bulbs would pop and the tongues would wag for sure. And that just couldn’t be borne.

  She put on a beautiful, low-cut dress and then, having gift-wrapped herself very nicely, she had herself delivered to the appropriate hotel. She walked in with a deal of panache. She smiled her toothpaste smile. She bowed her elegantly coiffed and astonishingly beautiful head at the curious eyes of the other guests as she swept through the throng looking for Guy. Luckily, just as it was beginning to dawn on her that Guy and Ella weren’t there, who should she bump into but William Gresham, big in plastics and everlastingly interested in golf.

  If she had thought that going to the dinner would save her from humiliation, then she had been wrong, she reflected as she slipped into their apartment some time after midnight. Only by sticking like glue to her father’s friend, and asking endless questions about putts and fairways and number three irons, had she managed to keep at bay the zillions of people just bursting for an opportunity to ask her where Guy might be. She’d even had to allow William Gresham to drive her home to protect her from the malicious questions of the throng. Once in the apartment she slipped into the bedroom and took off her dress and her shoes and her jewellery. When she confronted Guy she didn’t want to be wearing the trappings of her humiliation.

  She sauntered into the drawing-room, wrapped in a cosy towelling robe, her feet bare and her hair loose.

  He was reading a report, but snapped it shut guiltily when she came in.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he asked.

  ‘Out with a friend,’ she returned blandly. ‘How did this evening go?’

  ‘Very well,’ he said guardedly.

  ‘Was it a good dinner?’

  ‘Excellent,’ he returned.

  ‘Did you get your business done?’

  ‘Er…yes. No problem.’

  ‘And how was Ella?’

  ‘Much the same. Fine.’

  Then Jane turned her back on him and walked stoically into their bedroom. When Guy came to join her she shrugged him away. ‘I’m tired,’ she said into the pillow.

  She was tired and yet not tired. She was tired of being married to a man who didn’t love her and never would. She was tired of being an arranged wife, with none of the tender promises between them which should have been more potent than any marriage vow. She was tired of wrestling with the temptation to give in and have Guy’s child in the hope that it would put things right. But she wasn’t tired enough to fall asleep. She lay awake all night. When the grey, wintry dawn came she got up and went and made herself a coffee.

  Then she went back to find Guy.

  ‘I’m leaving you,’ she said baldly.

  He stared at her in disbelief.

  ‘I’m sorry. But I can’t handle this marriage of ours. I’m truly sorry, Guy, but I should never have got into it in the first place. You were honest with me about what it was going to entail so I don’t blame you, but it’s not enough.’

  ‘Jane?’

  ‘No, Guy…don’t,’ she choked out as he approached her, his hands reaching out to hold her. ‘Don’t touch me, please.’

  He stood close to her and stared accusingly at her. ‘Don’t touch you? What the hell is going on?’

  She took a few steps back. She was frightened to death that he would touch her and all her resolution would melt in the warmth of her desire. She was as frightened of his touch now as she had once been of his laughter, which had seemed to mock her with its promise of unreachable depths. Well, she wasn’t frightened of his laughter any more, because she had sounded his depths now. Fathoms deep and icy cold, they repelled her to the bottom of her soul. He rarely laughed these days as it happened, but she wasn’t prepared to wait for the time—presumably when she had borne him his children—when he rarely touched her, either. She was cutting loose. It had been a horrible mistake. Soon it would be over.

  ‘You can’t leave me, Jane,’ he insisted, his face weary and hard. ‘We’re married.’

  She forced herself to look steadily into his eyes. ‘I know. And when I married you I honestly believed that we would be good together. But a marriage where not all of the vows are meant to be obeyed turns out not to be a marriage at all. The temptation to look elsewhere creeps in through the gaps, whether one wants it to or not. I was too impetuous. I should have taken my timethought more carefully. I’m sorry to have to let you down, Guy, but that’s the way it’s got to be.’

  There was a terrible silence. Guy’s eyes raked back and forth across her face. At last he said harshly, ‘Go to your parents’ for a few days and think it over. Don’t make this decision too hastily as well.’

  She nodded, out of consideration for him more than anything. Because she knew she wouldn’t change her mind. And oddly, as she drove herself up the Ml she realised that her father was safe once again. He would never sell his genius to Mr Guy Rexford now.

  Her mother and father were badly shocked, but accepted her news unquestioningly. ‘You’ll tell us in your own good time—if you want to,’ said her father with tears in his voice. ‘And you’re always our daughter, Jane. For ever and ever. There’s always love and a home for you here.’

  Jane went back to her old bedroom with the small window and the lumpy bed and the carpet which had been intended to make the room look feminine but which had ended up making it look like mutton dressed as lamb. She lay on her bed. Inside her the gravel shifted uncomfortably, making her eyes hurt and her throat ache. It was a terrible thing not to be able to cry.

  After three days Guy turned up. Jane saw his car turn into the drive and abandoned her walk and fled to her bedroom, sprinting across the grass in her trainers as if the devil himself were after her.

  She wouldn’t come out of her room. She heard her parents talking and talking, and Guy’s voice, deep and dangerously charming, and she bit the sheet and waited until he had gone.

  ‘What did he say?’ she asked when she came downstairs.

  ‘He wants you back.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘Nothing, love. You’re our daughter. We like Guy, of course, but you’re our daughter, Jane.’

  ‘Yes. I know. I’m sorry.’

  Her father handed her an envelope. ‘He left you this.’

  It was a cheque for a very large sum of money indeed. An astonishingly large sum of money. There was a note inside as well. It just said, ‘So that you can have your heart’s desire, after all.”’

  She folded and unfolded the note. She read it and put it against her upper lip and smelt it. She didn’t do the same with the cheque. She just put that on her bedside table. Well, Guy hadn’t been prepared to give her lovebut then, he’d made that plain from the start. He’d always been generous with his money—but that had been part of the bargain too. She wanted to tear up the cheque, but she felt that it would be too great a betrayal of Guy. He was keeping his part of the bargain, after all. She couldn’t throw it back in his face.

  Guy didn’t try to contact her again, and she was relieved not to have to see him. So it was a horrible shock to walk into a London hotel on a brief visit to town and find him leaning against the reception desk.

  ‘Guy!’

  He looked at her suspiciously. ‘What do you want now?’ he asked, and his words slashed across her skin so bitterly that her hands started to shake.

  ‘Nothing. I’m staying here. I didn’t know I was going to bump into you.’

  ‘It’s just a coincidence, is it?’

  ‘Yes. As it happens it is. Why on earth should I have expected to find you here, anyway?’

  ‘I’m living here for the present. I sold the apartment.’

  ‘Oh. I hope the new people like the decor.’
r />   He shrugged. ‘I doubt they will. I expect they’ll have it all ripped out and fresh stuff put in.’

  ‘There was nothing permanent about that place, was there?’ she agreed bleakly.

  ‘Like us,’ he said sardonically, and she looked away so that he wouldn’t see the pain in her eyes.

  And then, to her dismay, his hands came out and caught her by the shoulders. Oh, God, how she wanted him. Night after night her body had ached for him. Something in the way her shoulders drooped, in the defeated contours of her face, must have told him this, because he pulled her roughly to him and said, ‘Come on. Let’s go up to my suite…’

  They didn’t speak another word. Once the door was closed Guy loosened his tie and slipped off his jacket. He dropped it on the floor. Jane unbuttoned her coat. Little by little they shed every garment, standing wordlessly facing each other, eyes transfixed by the other’s body. She saw his eyes flicker warm with desire when she unfastened her bra and let it fall on to the plush carpet. She heard her own breath catch in her throat as he unzipped his trousers and stepped out of them. Revealed at last, beautiful, golden, naked bodies. Bodies made the one for the other. Bodies which knew nothing of heartache or cool, rational thought. Bodies which once they had tasted the other, must be forever hungry. Jane reached out her hand. Guy took her fingers and led her to the bed.

  And there they made love, silently, passionately, shudderingly. They made love not once but again and again and again, until the black of the night beyond dragged them, exhausted, into its blind heart.

  In the morning when Jane woke up she almost cried out aloud. She had slept on his left side. He had slipped down the bed a little, so that he lay flat on the mattress, his feet hanging over the end of the bed. And he had not shaved before he took her, so that now his face was shadowed as dark as pirate’s with a day’s growth of beard.

  Oh, now she could cry, all right. Now tears stung her eyes and demanded their release. She jumped out of bed and gathered up her clothes and slipped on her coat, ready to dash along the hotel corridor to her own room.

  But Guy woke up. He stared at her.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Back to my own room.’

  ‘Come back to bed.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Because I’m about to cry. ‘I’ve got a busy day.’

  ‘Really?’

  She had come to London to exchange contracts. She had to be at the solicitors by nine-thirty, but it was still only seven. Flustered, frightened of the power of her own emotion, she rattled out, ‘Er…yes. Really. Quite an exciting day as it happens. I’m spending rather a lot of your money today, Guy, you see. So…um…so I’ve got to dash,’ and she slammed the door behind her as she fled.

  By spring she had spent every penny. She had decided to take the scathing words on the note at face value. She couldn’t have Guy, but perhaps she could use it to buy a little of what her heart had once desired, after all. It was not the most beautiful house in the world, but it had a farmhousey quality and a modern secret passage in the form of a concealed wardrobe. It would need a great deal of work—the artificial fountain would need filling in for a start, and all that nasty silk wallpaper would have to go. In fact, she’d had to pay well over the odds for the place, as it was being sold complete with everything the previous owner had installed in an attempt to make the solid, eighteenth-century building resemble the Palace of Versailles.

  But that was all to the good really. It meant there was plenty to do, getting the place right. The work would fill her life for years. Especially now that she was out of money and had to do it all herself.

  The day the last pound was withdrawn from her account she felt light-hearted with relief. Perhaps now she could begin the long task of putting him behind her? The feeling lasted from eleven in the morning, when she visited the bank, till three in the afternoon when Guy’s black Lotus pulled up outside her front door.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  GUY had a suitcase in his hand. He banged on the door almost viciously.

  Bewildered, Jane went to the door and opened it, dragging her sweatshirt down over the gaping waistband of her jeans as she went. She’d lost weight these past months, and her clothes showed it.

  ‘Guy,’ she acknowledged dully as she opened the door.

  ‘Jane Garston…’ he drawled sarcastically.

  ‘I still call myself Rexford, as it happens. Perhaps when the divorce is final—’

  ‘Don’t wait,’ he cut in disparagingly. ‘I have no desire to share my name with you any longer than is necessary.’

  Jane closed her eyes briefly. ‘What do you want, Guy?’ she asked. She didn’t blame him for showing his dislike so openly, but it hurt, none the less. She supposed that she had assumed that Guy would always maintain that air of civilised control where she was concerned.

  He walked past her into the hall. He glanced about him for a moment, then seeing that the door to the drawing-room was open he went directly through. Her heart was thundering as she followed him in. His turning up like this so unexpectedly had unnerved her badly.

  ‘What do you want?’ she repeated more urgently.

  He turned on his heel and looked at her with very disapproving eyes. ‘I want to give you something,’ he said. And then he opened the suitcase and held it high in the air, letting piles of crisp new banknotes, held together in bundles of elastic bands, pour out into a heap on the silk carpet.

  He kicked contemptuously at the money. ‘There’s a million there,’ he said cruelly. ‘The bank assures me it’s been counted. It’s all yours, Jane Garston. You’re a millionairess now in your own right.’

  Jane glanced at the obscene heap of money and then up at Guy’s coldly disgusted face.

  ‘This is grotesque,’ she breathed.

  ‘Isn’t it? That’s why I wanted to do it. I felt it was absolutely your style.’

  The shock of his words froze her for a moment. ‘Why…?’

  He moved his shoulders disdainfully. ‘The bank told me you were down to your last fifty pounds a few days ago. I couldn’t bear to think of you penniless, dear girl. Mainly because I had a nasty feeling that you might go and rip off your parents again. They’re very nice people, Jane, and I found myself feeling sorry for them. Hopefully this will keep the wolf from the door until the divorce comes through and you can finally marry the man of your dreams.’

  Jane began to shake horribly. She perched on the edge of a brocade-covered chair which was supported by a set of flimsy, ormolu legs. She felt sick. ‘There’s no other man. And as for my parents…’ Her voice cracked and she had to swallow hard to bring it under control. ‘Guy…I don’t understand what you’re getting at.’

  He was looking at her so harshly she could hardly bear to meet his eyes. ‘No other man? Oh, I doubt that poor Rupert Berrington has entirely given up hope yet. You could always get in touch with him and find out. Though I wouldn’t if I were you. I seem to recall him making some very tasteless remarks about your origins that last time you saw him—you were very upset at the time, weren’t you? Though you chose to forget re- markably swiftly. But then you’ve alternatives to Rupert lined up, haven’t you?’

  ‘Guy…’ She knotted her hands in her lap. ‘It wasn’t Rupert who said…um…and anyway it wasn’t me that they…they…’ she sighed bitterly. She still didn’t want him to know what had been said about him, though why she should care about sparing his feelings when he was behaving like this, she really didn’t know. ‘Look, I really don’t understand,’ she finished more firmly.

  ‘Don’t you? I do. The day you walked out the phone must have rung a dozen times, you see…all those fairweather friends you were so anxious to cultivate couldn’t wait to let me know that you’d found yourself a new meal-ticket and were busily flaunting the fact. ‘Hanging on to his every word” was the expression most of them came up with if I remember correctly. Oh, and ‘inseparable” was the other.’

  Jane looke
d at him wide-eyed with shock. ‘A meal-ticket?’

  ‘I said a new meal-ticket. I may be rich, but I’m not as rich as William Gresham. Nor as old. No doubt he wasn’t the least bit anxious to hear the patter of tiny feet at his time of life. That must have counted in his favour quite considerably.’

  Jane’s mouth gaped. The blood drained from her face so abruptly that it felt as if she could actually sense it sinking heavily through her veins; her ears buzzed and her brain hummed to a halt. She had trouble in catching her breath.

  ‘Is that what you think of me, Guy?’ she said a little unsteadily at last.

  ‘Well, what do you expect me to think?’

  ‘You…you said you were going to that dinner with Ella. So how you can imagine that I went there with Bill, I really don’t—’

  ‘Bill?’ he bit out scornfully. ‘And what do you call him in private? Billy Boy? Sweet William?’

  ‘I’ve never spoken to him in private, as it happens. He’s a friend of my father’s. I’ve known him all my life.’

  ‘Ah…so you’ve always known how rich he is—and that he’s a widower? That must have made the decision very much easier when you hit a banqueting-hall full of extremely wealthy men—and wearing a dress that displayed your assets to full advantage, by all accounts. Rumour had it that you homed in on him with extraordinary speed.’

  ‘Guy!’ she groaned. ‘You were out with Ella that night! Remember? You ditched me for your floozy! So don’t you go accusing me of—’

  ‘Floozy?’ She made him laugh then. A dry, hateful, bitter laugh that frightened her to death. ‘My God, Jane, is that what you chose to think? Did you really believe that I’d been carrying on with Ella? So that evening was tit for tat, was it?’