The Constantin Marriage

by Lindsay Armstrong

  His last words fell into a pool of silence like stones dropping to the bottom of a well, and seemed to Tattie to contain an unmistakable undertone.

  ‘Are you saying I forced you back into her arms?’

  He grinned wickedly, but sobered almost immediately. ‘Tattie, I know you’re very young and quite naïve, but a year is a long time,’ he said abruptly.

  She sat back and drained her wine in a single swallow. ‘I suppose so,’ she replied at last, and could have kicked herself for feeling so particularly young and naïve at that moment—something she would normally have denied hotly. ‘Uh—what happened then?’ she asked.

  ‘It became apparent that Leonie had revised her opinions on marriage and motherhood,’ he said simply.

  ‘How inconvenient for you,’ she countered tartly.

  His lips twitched. ‘Another Beaufort thrust? Yes, it was,’ he agreed, although blandly. ‘But, whatever my sins are, Tattie—and I’m not trying to deny them—you would not have approved of Leonie Falconer in what one could only describe as “haggling mode”. And, for your information, her true colours turned me right off.’

  ‘She…she gave me to understand you’d become infatuated with me and that’s why you’d cast her off. Was that true?’ She gazed at him.

  ‘Tattie, what you and I feel for each other is our own affair entirely,’ he answered a little grimly. ‘I have never discussed you with her or anyone else. Other than your mother,’ he added drily.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Talking of your mother…’

  He paused and moved his shoulders in an impatient gesture, reminding Tattie of his ambivalence towards her mother—she was never quite sure whether he liked Natalie or viewed her as seriously nutty. ‘Was that how you came to know ours was an arranged marriage?’ he asked.

  Tattie folded her hands in her lap and found an opportunity to refute the ‘young and naïve’ allegation, on some fronts anyway.

  ‘I’m not quite stupid, you know, Alex,’ she said finally. ‘No, she never actually said it, but I know how her mind works.’

  ‘So was it finding out about Leonie that convinced you?’

  ‘It didn’t help,’ Tattie conceded. ‘That, and the strong impression that you weren’t in love with me.’

  He favoured her with a darkly amused gaze. ‘You thought you could tell?’

  ‘I not only thought it, I could,’ she stated stubbornly.

  ‘What about you?’

  Her lips parted and her eyes widened. ‘What about me?’

  ‘Your mother gave it to me as her considered opinion that you were in love with me.’

  Tattie closed her eyes in frustration at her mother’s machinations, even if they happened to have hit the nail on the head…

  ‘There was a bit of a crush,’ she said, and tried to shrug fatalistically.

  He grinned. ‘Only a bit? So why did you do it, Tattie?’

  Time to lay her cards on the table? she wondered with a little flicker of panic. What else could she do? None of what had just passed between them gave her the hope that Alex Constantin had fallen madly in love with her.

  ‘I…’ She gazed at the oil rig with its mantle of lights, then looked at her husband directly. ‘I didn’t know what else to do. Beaufort and Carnarvon were going downhill fast. Mum has always been like a displaced person out there and—’ she sighed suddenly ‘—I didn’t have the expertise or authority to run them myself, although I have this almost mystical tie to them and this perhaps ridiculously strong sense of…being a Beaufort.’

  He said nothing for an age, and she watched his long fingers twirling the stem of his glass and his hooded eyes while she nerved herself to find that she was the object of his amusement.

  But when he looked up at last there was no mirth in his gaze, no patronising disbelief. In fact he said quietly, ‘We could be two of a kind, Tattie.’

  ‘We could?’

  He smiled absently. ‘Both realists. Look, thanks for coming clean. However, if Beaufort and Carnarvon mean so much to you you’re going to have to stay married to me.’

  She swallowed something in her throat. ‘Before I ask you why,’ she said on a tremor, ‘was that why you married me, Alex? To get them?’

  He considered for a moment, then gestured wryly. ‘They played a part, yes. I kept thinking of the—sorry!—mess they could get into with only you at the helm. It sort of…went against the grain with me, especially at a time when beef prices are going through the roof.’

  ‘Oh.’

  He looked at her intently for a long moment, at the gentle, slender lines of her figure beneath the pale rose silky knit of her top, the sweep of her dark hair against her throat and the shadows of her absurdly long lashes against her cheek as she looked down—in disappointment? he wondered.

  ‘But I must tell you, Tattie, that I fully intended to make this a real marriage before you…said your little piece.’

  Her lashes flew up and her deep blue eyes were suddenly surprisingly cynical. ‘A marriage without love?’

  ‘A marriage that would grow into love, respect and mutual expectations,’ he said steadily. ‘You may not think it can work but I’ve seen the evidence of it.’

  ‘But—’

  He overrode her. ‘But living like brother and sister is not going to achieve it, Tattie. I hesitate to do this, but…’ He paused. ‘How you felt earlier on the couch is a prime reason to…go forward.’

  ‘Alex—’ She put her hands to her hot cheeks. ‘I was in shock and horrified at what had happened to me. Don’t you think that might have accounted for a lot of it?’

  He smiled suddenly. ‘Let’s put it to the test again, now some of the shock and horror has receded.’

  She stumbled up. ‘No—I mean, no,’ she stammered. ‘Let’s not.’

  ‘What are you scared of, Tattie? How much you’ll give yourself away?’

  ‘Alex,’ she said desperately, and dredged through to her soul to find an answer for him, ‘I have one very good reason for not wanting to change our marriage at the moment. Maybe I’ll tell you what it is one day, maybe I won’t, but it’s there and I can’t help it.’

  ‘Another mystery?’ he said with considerable irony, and frowned.

  ‘Another man?’ he asked incredulously after a moment. ‘But one who doesn’t have the ability or the money to save Beaufort and Carnarvon for you—is that it, Tattie?’

  She opened her mouth to pour supreme scorn on this supposition, then closed it, almost biting her tongue in two. ‘There has been another woman in your life,’ she pointed out.

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘I didn’t say that! I’m only… I don’t see why you of all people should be so surprised if it were the case but…well, that’s all I’m saying!’

  ‘And do you honestly think I’d hand you over to another man to enjoy, along with two cattle stations I’ve rescued?’

  There was something unusually grim in his dark eyes as they flickered over her.

  ‘If you don’t love me that can only be because you want them yourself or your macho Greek background is coming to the fore, Alex. Perhaps it’s both,’ she surmised, ‘but either way it doesn’t impress me.’

  ‘Who the hell do you think you are, Tatiana?’ he said softly, and added, ‘I wouldn’t trade on being a Beaufort too much with me, because I couldn’t give a damn about that.’ He stood up and reached for her.

  Surprise was her downfall. It rooted her to the spot, it even opened her mouth for her, and he took advantage of it all to sweep her into his arms and bend his head to kiss her.

  It was a hard, merciless kiss but, to her horror, it still ignited some of the fires he’d lit in her earlier in the afternoon. How could that be? she wondered helplessly, then knew—intuitively?—that sometimes between a man and a woman a release from their demons only came this way. But it didn’t end that way…

  When he had her helpless and aroused in his arms he lifted his head and, looking supremely macho, dark and dan
gerously attractive, said softly, ‘You’ve been playing with matches for the last twelve months, Tatiana Beaufort. Don’t be surprised when you get burnt.’

  And he left her to stride away to his study, closing the door behind him.

  ‘Pearling in northern Australia has a colourful history,’ Tattie said, slowly and clearly.

  She picked up a handful of lustrous free pearls and let them slip through her fingers into a velvet-lined porcelain bowl.

  “‘That elusive pearl, the one bigger, brighter and more beautiful than all the others”,’ she quoted, ‘has drawn men like a siren song, and they’ve described them as teardrops of the moon or a full moon rising…’ She paused. ‘Here at Constantin we produce the finest cultured Australian South Sea pearls, and I’d like to show you how.’ She stopped and the camera clicked off.

  ‘That was quite good, Mrs Constantin,’ the director of the video said. ‘Not too bad at all.’

  But not good enough, Tattie said to herself, and looked around. It was two days after her attempted kidnapping, but even more importantly two days after Alex and she had come to a monumental misunderstanding. So monumental that she’d forgotten, until reminded yesterday, that she’d agreed to, and even looked forward to, making a video on the Constantin pearling operation, to be played in their stores.

  And she’d looked forward to it because there were segments to be filmed at the actual pearl farms, as well as in the luxurious Darwin showroom where she was now, in a beautiful dusky-pink linen dress that shouted couturier, and wearing her own pearls.

  Trouble was, Alex was there too. Alex, leaning his broad shoulders casually against a wall, out of the way of the cameras but all the same—to her—an enemy in a war, even if she wasn’t sure what the precise nature of the war was.

  She’d hardly seen him over the past two days, but when she had she’d been treated to cool uninterest. She’d been told that their visit to Beaufort would have to be postponed—he’d also forgotten about the video, apparently, so it was a legitimate excuse, but she had no doubt he would have made some other.

  As for her feelings, they ranged from boiling indignation through a certain sense of mystification and some mortification to a nervous speculation about what she’d brought on herself. She’d had time to reflect, and regret bitterly, that she herself had driven him back into Leonie’s arms, even if she’d had little idea at the time of what she was doing. All in all, she reflected, more than enough under that dark gaze to become tongue-tied and afflicted with stage fright.

  ‘Uh…if I could just have a glass of water? Thank you.’

  ‘Tattie.’ Alex straightened and came over to her. ‘I think you look a bit too solemn. You’re supposed to be a gorgeous young woman full of the mystery and romanticism of pearls, alive and warm and vital—which you normally are.’

  There was an embarrassed huffing and shuffling around the room as everyone avoided looking at anyone—apart from Tattie and Alex, whose gazes were locked.

  ‘Alex…’ Tattie licked her lips. ‘This may sound crazy but I think I’d find it easier if you weren’t here. You’re making me self-conscious.’

  ‘Uh…’ The director interposed, and cleared his throat.

  ‘That’s not unusual. Acting is often easier in front of people you don’t know. But I think you’ve made a good point, Mr Constantin. What we’re striving for is exactly what you described.’

  Everyone held their breath, including Tattie, but Alex looked amused, if anything, and with a shrug said, ‘My dear Tattie, I would hate to discomfort you in any way, so I’ll leave, but I’ll meet you for lunch.’ He left the showroom.

  Why did that sound like a threat? Tattie wondered. His tone had been light and casual. Had she imagined the insolent flicker in his eyes in the last moment they’d rested on her? She didn’t think so…

  ‘When you’re ready, Mrs Constantin,’ the director said. ‘Just take your time.’

  Tattie turned away and took a deep breath. And she let her mind wander down the ages of pearl diving in the area since the 1850s. The hard-hat era of cumbersome brass helmets, the many Japanese divers who had made Broome and Thursday Island their home. The lovely but really remote bays and rivers of north-west Australia, the Northern Territory and far-north Queensland that were so suitable for the farming of cultured pearls. All places where the scenery was spectacular and unspoilt, remote, tropical Australia in all its wild glory.

  And she thought of the technology associated with cultured pearls. Diving for the wild shell, the delicate seeding operation, the care of the shells in those tropical waters as the oyster deposited layers of nacre around the minute seed to form a pearl.

  She looked at the bowl of pearls beside her, all with an exquisite lustre or the quality of light being reflected from the surface of the pearl and at the same time refracted from within the nacre. At their different colours: white, white-pink, silver, gold, fancy and yellow. And their different shapes—circlé or baroque in this case. And she felt the magic of it all seep into her psyche…

  She turned back to the cameras. ‘I’m ready,’ she said simply.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘REALLY red-hot sex liberates not only the body but also the mind—you should try it.’

  Tattie faltered with her hand on a chair as she was about to sit down, and couldn’t help but look round at the source of this advice. Alex had chosen the Darwin Sailing Club for lunch, a pleasant spot with tables outside under shady trees overlooking Fannie Bay and the flotilla of yachts anchored in it. It being a weekday, it wasn’t crowded.

  But there was a bearded, tattooed man with a Crocodile Dundee hat holding court a couple of tables away, and the advice had been offered to a woman companion who was looking singularly unaffected.

  ‘Did you think that was directed at you?’ Alex murmured as he pulled out her chair and waited politely for her to sit down.

  ‘I didn’t know what to think,’ Tattie confessed.

  He sat down opposite. ‘Have you ever indulged in really red-hot sex?’

  She bit her lip. ‘I’m sure you have.’

  ‘That doesn’t answer the question.’

  ‘Nor do I intend to.’ Tattie fussed over the placement of her calfskin handbag that was dyed exactly to match her dress and added, ‘I feel a little overdressed for the sailing club.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about it,’ he drawled. ‘I felt like being outdoors. And you don’t have to look so embarrassed, we’ll leave sex—of any kind—off the menu for the moment. As is your obvious preference.’

  She shot him a fighting little look this time. ‘Thank you. I’d appreciate it,’ she said arctically. ‘But if you’ve brought me to lunch in order to insult me—’

  ‘Not at all,’ he interrupted with his lips twisting. ‘It came up out of the blue. How did the rest of the shoot go?’

  She waited until their drinks had been placed—a glass of wine for her, a beer for him. ‘I’ve been reliably informed by the director that I’m a natural once I get over my nerves. Not that I agree with him.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘It wasn’t really acting.’

  ‘You must have managed to instil some more life into it than you were while I was there.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Yes. I’m really curious, Tattie.’

  She eyed him, but could see only a genuine enquiry in his eyes. She sipped her wine and sat back. ‘I love this part of the world, I love the Kimberley, as I’ve told you, and that’s where a lot of the pearling history is, as well as the farms. And despite this being your company, Alex, it’s…it’s been fascinating to learn all about it, so I just made myself think about all that.’

  ‘I’m glad something about your association with me has been fascinating. Shall we order?’

  ‘Before we do that,’ Tattie said in a swift undertone, ‘I gather I’m in some kind of disgrace with you. Well, that’s fine with me, and don’t expect me to grovel, Alex! We know w
hy we married each other, and in light of it I am still not prepared to be a dutiful little wife.’

  ‘Or indulge in red-hot sex? It was getting pretty hot the other day,’ he said lazily. ‘I got the distinct feeling you could no more help yourself than I…might have been able to.’

  She looked around a little wildly. ‘I can’t believe you’ve chosen a place as public as this to have this kind of conversation with me!’

  He raised a dark eyebrow and smiled satanically. ‘Would you rather we were home alone?’

  The most acute memories flooded Tattie, of that never-to-be-forgotten day, so that she had to drop her gaze and by a huge power of will block the vibes that were coming her way even with a table between them and the amount of discord that existed in the air.

  In a light beige linen jacket, a cream shirt and khaki trousers, with his dark hair ruffled, Alex Constantin was the stuff to dream about. But the reality was turning out to be more sexy, more dangerously fascinating and less easy to handle than she had dreamt, and she’d been married to him for a year.

  The knowledge awakened two things to be confused about. She might be in love with him, but would she ever be able to come up to what he needed in a woman? A twenty-one-year-old virgin who, thanks to her old-fashioned father and her mother’s paranoia about fortune-hunters, had never really been let off the leash…

  The other troubling point was how safe she felt with him in almost every other circumstance. As if there were suddenly two Alexes and she was unable to fuse them.

  She clicked her tongue, shook her head, and said at random, ‘I’d never seen so many beards and tattoos in a city until I came to Darwin. I guess it’s the “outback” influence, because really, in the Northern Territory, even in the middle of Darwin, the outback is only a few miles down the Stuart Highway.’

  He blinked, and said gravely, ‘How true, Tattie!’ Then he started to laugh. ‘I take it you’ve given up?’

  Her shoulders slumped. ‘I’m not too sure what I’m fighting about,’ she said honestly. ‘It’s all got very confusing.’