For Better for Worse

by Penny Jordan

  At the time she had dismissed his complaint as mere childish possessiveness and jealousy, but now, aware of how disruptive she herself was finding it every time Marcus’s daughter visited and she had to move her own sons out of their room, it suddenly struck her ominously that something more than mere childish resentment might have underlain Tom’s complaint.

  Children needed security… needed to feel that they had their own special and protected place in adults’ lives, especially those children who had gone through the trauma of seeing their parents split up.

  Now, when she thought seriously about it, she recognised that Tom had been increasingly truculent and withdrawn recently, especially when Vanessa visited, and it was unfair to expect him to give up his room to Vanessa… Just as it was unfair to expect Vanessa to be happy with the discovery that the room she had always thought of as her own was now someone else’s.

  The answer was of course to buy a larger house, but she and Marcus had already discussed this and agreed that it was financially impossible.

  She glanced at her watch. Marcus should be home soon. Their large bed seemed empty without him. She smiled wryly to herself, acknowledging the direction her thoughts were taking.

  When she and Allan had married she had been sexually naïve, and they had never really been sexually compatible. This had been another source of friction between them. Secretly she had always blamed herself for her inability to respond as fully and passionately to his lovemaking as Allan had wanted her to, and then, after the birth of the boys, he had become less and less interested in making love to her.

  After their divorce she had been cautious about allowing herself to get involved with other men. Sex had been something she had pushed to the back of her mind and out of her life. She had the boys, and the excitement of a burgeoning career to keep her fulfilled and busy.

  And then she had met Marcus. He had patiently encouraged her to put aside her wariness and caution and to learn to celebrate and enjoy her sexuality. He was a very sensual lover. And a very experienced one?

  She frowned as she felt the tiny tremor of anxiety touch her spine. What was she worrying about now? Marcus had always been open and honest with her, making no secret of the fact that there had been other women in his life before they had met. He was not a promiscuous man but it would have been naïve of her to believe that he had lived a celibate life in the years between the break-up of his first marriage and their first meeting.

  Her frown deepened as she remembered how, the last time she had visited them, Vanessa had asked her if she ever got jealous or worried that Marcus might leave her for someone younger.

  ‘Most men Dad’s age marry someone a lot younger,’ Vanessa had commented. ‘Women aren’t attractive to men once they’re middle-aged.’

  ‘That’s not true, Vanessa,’ she had countered as firmly as she could, trying to dismiss her own personal feelings and to concentrate instead on her concern that already, while still only in her teens, Vanessa was being dragged into the female trap of perceiving her own sex as only being able to have a valid sense of self-worth when rated by their desirability to men; but Vanessa had shrugged her shoulders and walked away from her, telling her unkindly over her shoulder, ‘You’re only saying that because you’re old.’

  Old… at thirty-eight?

  * * *

  Marcus arrived home just after one. She had been asleep but she woke up when he walked into the bedroom, smiling sleepily at him as she asked, ‘Did you have a good time?’

  ‘Yes, but not as enjoyable as it would have been if you had been there,’ he told her, coming over to the bed and bending his head to kiss her briefly.

  ‘Did the Lassiters understand?’

  ‘Yes. As luck would have it, they’d had an extra unexpected guest, a young American lawyer, who’s over here on a year’s sabbatical. She came with Paul Ferrar and his wife. Her parents are friends of theirs.’

  ‘Pretty, was she?’ Eleanor asked him, and then immediately wondered what on earth was wrong with her as she caught the acerbic, almost hostile note in her own voice.

  No wonder Marcus was looking at her like that.

  ‘Not exactly pretty,’ he told her judiciously. ‘She was very fresh and enthusiastic in the particularly American way. She seemed to find our legal system outdated and old-fashioned. When she returns home, she plans to specialise in international law.’

  ‘Like you?’

  Marcus gave her another thoughtful look. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘How’s Tom?’

  ‘He’s fine,’ Eleanor responded. Suddenly she wanted to talk to him about her concern for her son; about the doubts and guilt his accusation to her had aroused, but as she started to speak Marcus turned away from her. Her sons were not his problem, she reminded herself, and he had already hinted once today that he thought she was fussing too much; being over-protective.

  ‘Hang on,’ he told her. ‘I’ll just go and have a shower.’

  She lay where she was for several seconds, and then, suddenly restless and wanting to be with him, she got up and followed him.

  From the open bathroom door, she asked him, ‘Marcus, this American girl. What was her name?’

  ‘What?’ He stepped out of the shower, shaking his head, smoothing his wet hair back from his face.

  ‘The American girl—what was her name?’

  He looked surprised. ‘Oh, her… I… Sondra something. Cabot. Yes, that’s it… Sondra Cabot.’

  ‘Very WASP.’

  His eyebrows rose slightly as he smiled at her. Silently Eleanor watched him, wondering if she would ever cease to be slightly astonished by the intensity of her own desire for him. When she and Allan had married, Allan’s body had still had some of the thin gawkiness of youth, and in those days of course people had not been as aware of the importance of physical exercise… the fitness boom had not yet swept the country and she had assumed it was quite normal for a woman not to be particularly aroused by the sight of a man’s naked body, that it was in fact necessary for the man to arouse the woman by touching her.

  Of course she had learned long before she had met Marcus that this was not the case, but it was not until she had actually met him that she first experienced for herself her own arousal caused not by Marcus touching her, but simply by her own awareness of him and her desire for him.

  They had been lovers for almost two months before he had told her how much it had turned him on to look at her and see in her eyes that she wanted him, and to know that she was doing her best to pretend that she didn’t.

  Marcus’s body was nothing like Allan’s. Once, when she had told him dreamily that for her, physically, he embodied all the sensuality and masculinity so admired by the ancient Greek sculptors, he had laughed gently at her, saying that no mere mortal man could hope to rival that sort of perfection, reminding her that he was forty-two years old.

  Now he was forty-five and his body still had the power to make her hold her breath at the build-up of a slow, sweet tide of desire he caused to flow through her.

  When he got into bed and turned to take her in his arms, she told herself that they could talk about Tom later.

  ‘Mmm…’ he told her softly as his hand cupped her breast and he started to feather small kisses along her throat. ‘Have I told you lately how very sexy you are?’

  Smiling, Eleanor moved closer to him.

  ‘No,’ she whispered back. ‘But you can tell me now if you like.’ She paused, her voice thickening a little as she added huskily, ‘Tell me and show me…’

  * * *

  Eleanor bit off a sharp little sound of pleasure, voluptuously abandoning herself to the delightful sensations Marcus was giving her as his mouth slowly caressed her clitoris, his tongue stroking delicately over and over her receptive flesh in the way he knew she most liked. In another few seconds, her pleasure would become almost too intense for her to bear and then she would cry out to him that she wanted him; that she needed him; that she couldn’t wait any longer to be a part of
him.

  She felt the orgasmic tension seize her and trembled deliciously.

  ‘Marcus…’

  She shuddered deeply and opened her eyes, and then froze as she saw their bedroom door opening, wrenching herself away from Marcus’s embrace and pulling up the duvet in one quick automatic reflex action as Tom came into their room.

  At her side, she heard Marcus groan. Her own body was reacting rebelliously and angrily to Tom’s interruption, but emotionally she was already responding to Tom’s entrance, pulling on her robe as she slid out of bed and hurried towards her son.

  ‘What is it, Tom? Are you feeling sick again?’ she asked him anxiously, guiding him back to his own room.

  By the time she was able to leave Tom, Marcus had fallen asleep. He was lying on his side facing away from her side of the bed.

  Quietly she slid in beside him and tiredly closed her own eyes.

  * * *

  ‘Nell, could you spare half an hour? There’s something I need to discuss with you.’

  ‘Louise—yes, of course.’ Eleanor smiled warmly at her partner. ‘If you want to ask me how I’m getting on with narrowing down the job application lists for the freelancers, I’m afraid I’m going to have to admit that I’m not making very much progress. What with Tom not being very well and one thing and another…’

  ‘No… no, it isn’t that,’ Louise told her curtly. ‘Well, that does sort of come into it, but…’

  Eleanor could see how unhappy and ill-at-ease Louise looked as she sat down, and a feeling of disquiet began to ice up her own spine.

  ‘Louise, what is it? What’s wrong? Everything’s all right at home, isn’t it… with you and Paul… ?’

  ‘Yes, of course it is,’ Louise told her almost snappily.

  Her question had offended her partner, Eleanor recognised with concern as she saw the angry red flush staining Louise’s skin.

  She was on the point of apologising, but Louise didn’t give her the chance.

  ‘Why shouldn’t everything be all right?’ she demanded almost aggressively. ‘Just because you’ve never liked Paul… Well, he’s my husband, Eleanor, and I think he’s right when he says that your antagonism towards him is bound to affect our business relationship. That’s why I wanted to talk to you, as a matter of fact.’

  Eleanor stared at her. It was true that she didn’t particularly like Louise’s husband, but she had certainly never said anything against him, not even when he had tried to interfere in the business.

  ‘I’m sorry if you think that I’m antagonistic towards Paul,’ she began quietly, ‘and I guess that it’s something we ought to have discussed before—’

  ‘That’s not what I want to talk about,’ Louise interrupted her quickly. ‘It’s the business itself.’

  A presentiment iced warningly down Eleanor’s spine, her anxiety escalating as she waited for Louise to continue.

  ‘Paul and I are moving to France.’

  Louise couldn’t quite meet her eyes, Eleanor noticed absently as her body absorbed the shock of what Louise was saying to her.

  ‘It’s something we’ve both wanted to do for a long time. Paul already has business connections there, several of our friends have moved there, and, as Paul says, with 1992 and the effects of the Common Market we owe it to ourselves and to the boys to do anything we can to make ourselves financially secure.

  ‘I can work just as easily from France as I can from London—more easily really. We’ll be so much more conveniently situated for Brussels, Paul says, than London. This whole country really will become a total backwater. And you’ve only got to think of our overheads here.’ Louise was speaking much more quickly now as her words gathered momentum, her eyes sharp and defiant when she finally raised them to Eleanor’s face.

  So this was why Louise had been so on edge with her recently; so sensitive… Eleanor felt as though her brain had gone into slow motion as she tried to deal simultaneously with both the emotional shock and the practical aspects of the bombshell Louise had just dropped on her.

  ‘But Louise, we’re a partnership,’ she protested quietly. ‘We’d made plans… You never said anything…’

  ‘We hadn’t made up our minds then.’ Louise flushed defensively. ‘Besides, Paul feels that my Russian will have more commercial value than… after all, most European countries already speak English.’

  Eleanor winced. What was Louise trying to say to her; that her language skills were of more value to the partnership than Eleanor’s own?

  She was tempted to point out what Pierre Colbert had said: that with the break-up of the Soviet Union no one as yet had any real idea of what language the re-emerging independent states would eventually choose to do business in, but what was the point in getting embroiled in a pointless battle of scoring off against one another?

  If only she had recognised what was happening earlier; before Louise had made so many plans. If only Louise had had the consideration to tell her… give her some warning, she realised bleakly.

  And she had thought they were such good friends… such good working partners. She had believed that they trusted one another… that she could rely on Louise to deal honestly with her.

  ‘You do understand, don’t you, Nell?’

  Louise’s voice had taken on a pleading note now, and Eleanor tensed, resenting her familiar use of her shortened name, the name by which those closest to her—her friends—knew her.

  ‘It will be so much better for the children. London is no place for them to grow up. Paul and I have found the most marvellous château… it’s unbelievably cheap.’ Louise was starting to gabble nervously now, Eleanor recognised numbly. No doubt with relief that she had discharged the task Paul had undoubtedly set her.

  ‘You must all come out and see us once we’re settled out there. I’ve enjoyed working with you, but you can, I’m sure, understand how it is… and with our rent due to go up again…’ Louise gave a small shrug. ‘As Paul says, we would be fools to pass up on this kind of opportunity.’

  ‘Yes… Well, I hope it all works out for you, Louise.’

  Try as she might, Eleanor knew her voice lacked warmth and pleasure. Her face felt stiff and cold, her body wooden.

  As Louise came towards her she found herself automatically stepping back from her, physically rejecting her, not wanting her anywhere near her.

  It wasn’t so much Louise’s desire to end their partnership that was responsible for her feelings, Eleanor acknowledged, it was the feeling that Louise had been dishonest with her, that she had in fact betrayed her… betrayed the relationship Eleanor had believed they shared.

  She could remember so clearly now, when Louise and Paul had first married, Louise telling her vehemently, ‘Of course our marriage won’t make any difference to the business, Nell. Paul knows how important our partnership, our friendship is to me!’

  Eleanor had sensed then that, whatever he might have said to Louise, Paul was the kind of man who liked to feel that he was in control of every aspect of his life and the people in it.

  ‘You know, I’m surprised that you and Marcus haven’t thought of moving to France,’ Louise burbled on. ‘The financial benefits alone are just too good to ignore and when I think of the freedom the boys will be able to have… It isn’t just that the French education system is far superior to ours… The boys have been having extra French coaching and Paul has become amazingly fluent. We all speak French every evening during supper now and—’

  ‘I’m sorry, Louise, but I have to go out,’ Eleanor lied.

  Her head was beginning to ache and her body still felt cold with shock. How long had Louise known that she was going to do this? Why couldn’t she have said something earlier?

  You know why, a small cynical inner voice told her. She… Paul wanted to make sure, to secure their own future first.

  A telephone call to their accountants later in the afternoon confirmed, as Eleanor had already suspected, that it was simply not financially viable for her to continue
to work from their existing premises on her own, and that without a partner to share the load it was impossible for her to generate enough income on her own to service the costs involved.

  Which meant… which meant what? she asked herself tiredly after she had replaced the receiver. She had a small amount of capital of her own, thriftily garnered over the years, a small bulwark to protect her and the boys, but nowhere near enough to cover all her existing expenses for any real length of time.

  When she and Marcus had married she had been determinedly insistent that she wanted to be financially self-sufficient, at least as far as the boys were concerned. She knew from odd comments which Marcus had made that his first wife had been recklessly extravagant, using whatever income she earned as an actress for maintaining the kind of wardrobe and polished appearance she insisted was essential to her career.

  And, while it was true that Marcus commanded high fees, he also had considerable expenses to meet. Vanessa attended an exclusive private school and Eleanor knew and applauded the fact that after the divorce he had assumed full financial responsibility for her.

  Then there was also the Chelsea house which was expensive to run and maintain, and, while Eleanor knew that Marcus would willingly support both her and the boys, she did not want him to have to do so.

  They had discussed her career before their marriage and she had told him that not only did she enjoy her work but she felt she needed the sense of self-worth and satisfaction she got from being financially self-sufficient; that she was proud of the fact that she was able to support both herself and her sons, that she did not want to go back to being financially dependent on someone else, no matter how generously that support might be given.

  But how was she going to be able to maintain that financial independence now? As their accountant had pointed out, their expenses had risen uncomfortably high, and the number of commissions they were receiving was less than it had been; the recession meant that everyone was cutting back. Some of their smaller clients had even gone out of business altogether; everyone was having to fight hard just to survive.

  The thought of working for someone else, even if she could have found a job, held no appeal for her; she was too used to being her own boss. And looking for another partner? The way the thought made her flinch was its own answer. Louise’s defection was too new and raw for her to even think of risking entering another partnership. The reason she and Louise had worked so well together was because they operated in different but complementary fields. To find another partner like that would be time-consuming and probably impossible. No, she would be better off working alone.