For Better for Worse

by Penny Jordan

  And yet now, he recognised, he not only felt angry and resentful, he also felt threatened somehow too.

  Because of a house? Because of the way Vanessa spoke to her? Why were they important enough to her to dominate their relationship? Wasn’t what they shared enough? Did she, despite all she had said to him, perhaps not love him as totally as he had thought? Was this obsession she had over the house just a way of trying to conceal from herself, from them both her awareness that their relationship, their love was not enough for her? Marcus’s legal training had taught him to be analytical and logical, just as his early upbringing had taught him to conceal his emotions and to deny the pain they caused him.

  Now, as he listened to Eleanor listing all the things she had to do, all the small problems which were beginning to dominate her life, he tried to confront the tidal swell of resentment and fear sweeping through him with calm logic, to tell himself that it was ridiculous to feel such resentment. But was he being ridiculous? Look at the way she was now denying herself the opportunity of taking on this new contract, and all because she had to be here for the house…

  He took a deep, supposedly calming breath and then to his own shock heard himself exclaiming harshly, ‘For God’s sake, Nell, forget the house! The whole purpose of buying the damn thing in the first place was to ease our problems, not cause us more.’

  He winced as he heard the tension in his own voice and saw the way Eleanor reacted to him, almost physically flinching back from him, shock and hurt registering in her eyes as she glanced at him and then looked quickly away again… almost as though she couldn’t bear to look at him.

  ‘Go away… just go away… I can’t even bring myself to look at you.’ That was what his mother had said to him, on more than one occasion when he had done something wrong: broken one of the many rules which had governed his childhood.

  His mother? He was a man now… approaching middle age. What the hell was the matter with him? It must be the pressure he was under at work. He had taken on a very heavy workload recently, anticipating the increased expenses they would have if they moved. He had worked hard before, he reminded himself harshly, and it had never had this kind of effect on him.

  He looked at Eleanor. Her face was set and pale. She was angry with him… and no wonder. He had over-reacted. What was it they had promised each other when they’d married… that they would also find the time to talk… to explain… to listen? Well, Eleanor seemed to have precious little time to do any of those things for him these days, he thought, guilt smothered by an atavistic male reluctance to admit to being at fault.

  ‘Forget the house,’ he repeated curtly. ‘And as for Vanessa, the girls… I am capable of looking after them… her. She is, after all, as you never seem to tire of pointing out to me, Nell, my daughter.’

  The antagonism in his voice was like a blow against her heart, making her wince with the anguish it caused her before she felt the reviving tide of responsive anger surging through her.

  ‘What are you trying to tell me, Marcus? That you would prefer me not to be here?’

  ‘For God’s sake, Nell, what’s got into you? You complained that you couldn’t go to Provence because of Vanessa; I’m simply trying—’

  ‘I suppose you think I’m taking the cowardly way out… that I’m running away. Well, I’m not. I need the money this commission will bring in, Marcus. We need it. I’m not having Vanessa or anyone else accusing me and my sons of being financially dependent on you as well as—’

  ‘Stop it, Nell. When have I ever suggested anything like that? My understanding was that you would keep on the business because you enjoyed it, because you wanted, not financial independence, but some degree of personal independence, and not just from me but from the boys as well. I respected and admired you for that… I never thought you’d try to use it against me to make me feel guilty.’

  ‘I’m not trying to make you feel guilty. You’re the one doing that.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes,’ Eleanor told him fiercely. ‘It’s easy enough for you to criticise me… to blame me for not being able to deal with Vanessa, but what am I supposed to do? She doesn’t want me here, Marcus. Everything I try to do to bring us all together she deliberately undermines, and you let her. It’s your fault she resents me, that she feels that I threaten her position in her life, that she feels so insecure.’

  ‘Mine?’

  ‘Yes,’ Eleanor said sadly, ‘she loves you so much, Marcus, and she’s afraid of losing you. She’s so insecure.’

  ‘She’s almost an adult,’ Marcus protested curtly. ‘You’re letting your imagination run away with you, Nell. Children might cling to their parents, but teenagers… adults—they don’t.’

  ‘Not if they’re secure enough, perhaps,’ Eleanor agreed. ‘But Vanessa isn’t secure… she—’

  ‘Leave it, Nell. Stop looking for someone else to blame because the pair of you don’t get on. Perhaps you’re trying too hard. You can’t force these things. They take time and even then it’s all a matter of luck. You have to accept that. You can’t force Vanessa to accept or want your rosy view of the future or Broughton House, the way you can’t…’

  He stopped abruptly. Eleanor stared at him, the anger and pain she felt bringing sharp tears to her eyes. She blinked them away, demanding hoarsely, ‘Go on…’

  Marcus shook his head.

  ‘No. It doesn’t matter.’ He rubbed his forehead tiredly. ‘This isn’t getting us anywhere, Nell. Perhaps a few days apart will do us all good. Give us both time to…’

  ‘So you think I’m to blame,’ Eleanor challenged him shakily.

  ‘Nell, for God’s sake. I don’t have time to think about anything other than my work. I’m up to my eyes in it. This case…’ He made a small explosive sound of impatience. ‘I don’t think I can take much more of this. What’s happening to us…? What’s happening to you?’

  ‘To me?’ Why did he make her feel as though everything was her fault, her responsibility?

  What had happened to the harmony, the closeness they had once shared and which she had so smugly taken for granted? Where had it gone? How had they lost it?

  An anguished sadness overwhelmed her anger. She gave a small forlorn shiver. She felt vulnerable and afraid, and, although she tried to hide from it, at the back of her mind lay the knowledge that somehow their quarrel had spoiled and soured their relationship and that she was angrily resentful of Marcus for allowing it to do so.

  Was he equally disenchanted with her; did seeing her vulnerable and hurt diminish her in his eyes?

  He had always praised her calmness and self-control. Where had they gone now?

  It was a new experience for her, this anger and intensity, something she had never experienced with Allan; their relationship, their marriage had simply faded, died. There had not been any violent quarrels, any emotion of any kind as they had slowly drifted apart.

  It hurt her more than she wanted to admit that Marcus had not denied immediately that he wanted her to go to Provence.

  What had she really wanted? For him to beg her to stay, to tell her that she was indispensable?

  Those were the thoughts, the vulnerabilities of a woman low in self-esteem and self-worth. She was not that kind of woman, was she?

  ‘Look,’ Marcus told her wearily, ‘all I’m trying to do is help to make things easier for you. You want to go to Provence but you say you can’t because of Vanessa, but then, when I say that I’ll look after her, you accuse me of wanting to get rid of you.’

  Eleanor looked away from him. How would she tell him how afraid she felt, that she didn’t want to go and leave him alone with Vanessa in case… In case what? In case Vanessa turned him completely against her? Wasn’t she doing a good enough job on her own? And besides, why should she feel suddenly that his love was less strong than her own, his need of her less than hers of him?

  ‘I don’t understand, Nell. I’m doing my best.’ She took a deep breath, closing her eyes, willing back
the sharp tears burning behind her closed eyelids.

  ‘I’m sorry, Marcus. It’s just…’ She shook her head. ‘You’re right. It probably will be better for Vanessa if she has you to herself for a few days.

  ‘For God’s sake, Nell. It’s not Vanessa I’m doing this for, it’s you…’

  She smiled crookedly at him, wondering why she felt as though the assurance had somehow come too late; as though it had no power to smooth the pain away from the raw, hurting place inside her.

  ‘Why do these things always have to come at the wrong time? I need the business so badly, Marcus, but I need to be here as well—the house…’

  She caught herself up as she heard his smothered exclamation of impatience.

  She felt achingly empty and sore inside and wondered if he was concealing the same suppressed feelings of resentment and pain from her as she was from him…

  They made love that night—if you could call it that—perfunctorily and silently, and afterwards, when she was sure Marcus was asleep, Eleanor lay on her back, letting the tears trickle silently on to her pillow, contrasting the silent distancing act with the ecstatic intimacy they had once shared.

  The first time they had made love she had been so nervous… and uncertain—not of loving and wanting Marcus, but of not disappointing him or herself.

  Life as a successful single woman might have taught her that it was not her or any other woman’s duty to do anything, material, emotional or sexual, to please a man, and that she had as much right to expect to receive as she had to give, but her early conditioning, the feeling of constantly having to work for her parents’ love and approval, a burden which she had carried with her into her marriage and which she knew had contributed greatly to its failure, was still there, lurking ogre-like in the deep subterranean caves of her psyche. She never felt it more forcefully than at that point in their relationship, when she knew she was going to have to strip herself, not merely physically of her clothes, but mentally as well of the protection of her success, her calm control, her so hard-won self-confidence, and to reveal herself to another human being as she really was.

  It was this fear which had held her back from committing herself to the possibility of several earlier relationships with men whom she had liked but for whom she had never allowed herself to feel strongly enough to put aside her self-made protection.

  Liking was not what she felt for Marcus, though. She had surprised herself with the intensity of her physical and emotional need for him.

  But she was not an accomplished lover, not skilled or experienced in the way that she felt a woman of her age ought to be.

  The act of coition was after all a very simple and basic one, but all the nuances of desire and arousal that went with it—they represented a vast and, to her, unfamiliar territory, which she wasn’t sure she had the skills or instincts to traverse successfully.

  It was only since the break-up of their marriage that, paradoxically, she had been able to talk with her ex-husband freely about the causes of their problems, both of them now free to admit that they had mistaken other emotions for the kind of love needed to bond two people together and be strong enough to endure the pressures of staying together. Allan had told her that part of the reason he had wanted to marry her was because she had seemed so suitable as a wife.

  ‘I knew that my parents approved of you, that you were a “nice” girl. The problem was that every time we made love I still thought of you as a “nice” girl and to initiate between us the kind of sexual intensity I wanted seemed to be a violation of that niceness…’

  Marcus knew, of course, the history of her life, her marriage and the years since then, just as he had told her, briefly, about his own childhood and marriage. About his relationships since his marriage ended he had said very little, but she had learned from friends that there could have been far, far more of them than there had been; that he had the reputation of being not just a sexually skilled lover, but a truly loving and appreciative one as well.

  Marcus had been open with her about his desire for her, but he had not rushed or pressured her.

  It was after one evening out that he had driven her home, and told her, after slowly releasing her from the passionate kiss they had been sharing, ‘You know I’m not going to be able to stand much more of this, don’t you?’ and she had known that she must make up her mind one way or another, although it hadn’t been until she had found herself in her doctor’s surgery discussing various methods of birth control that she realised she actually had.

  She had vaguely imagined that their first time together would be one evening after they had been out together, here at Marcus’s house, a slow, skilled seduction to which she had no doubt at all that she would respond as helplessly and overwhelmingly as she did when he kissed her; but how would she fare when it was her turn to repay his skilled pleasuring of her? However, in the end it was nothing like that, nothing at all…

  She turned her head in the darkness, her body chilled by the knowledge of how insecure and frightened she must feel to need to relive those memories… to cling to them. To remember and cherish them was one thing; to need to relive them because they now seemed to be all she had was another.

  But it had been so good… so natural and easy. She had been in the kitchen at home, cleaning out some cupboards; the boys were spending the weekend with their father and Marcus was away in The Hague.

  It was a hot, sticky day, she had had her hair tied back in a ponytail and she had been wearing an old T-shirt she kept for household chores. Just the T-shirt… nothing else apart from her briefs.

  She had gone to answer the doorbell in some irritation at being interrupted, padding to the door, too stunned to see Marcus standing outside to do anything other than stare at him.

  When she did find her voice, all she could manage was an inane, ‘You’re supposed to be in The Hague…’

  ‘I know.’ He had smiled at her but her heart had suddenly given a little unsteady beat; part of her subconsciously aware of the silent messages his body was giving off, the tension behind his smile, the way he had looked at her as she opened the door.

  Self-consciously she stepped back so that he could come in, her hand going to her hair, her face flushing as she started to apologise for her appearance, explaining what she was doing.

  In the kitchen the tap was running. As she went to turn it off Marcus followed her, standing behind her.

  She could feel herself starting to tremble, her body caught up in the sexual surge of shock and excitement.

  She heard him say her name, felt his arms come round her as he bent to kiss the side of her neck.

  Instinctively she leaned back against him, sharply conscious of the feel of his suit-clad body, the fabric of his suit dark and slightly rough against her thin T-shirt, her bare skin, conscious too of a certain unexpected frisson of arousal at the contrast between the fabric of their clothes, the way they were dressed. There was something unfamiliarly erotic to her about their fulfilment of the rules of sexual stereotyping: Marcus, so powerfully male, in his formal business clothes; she, so vulnerably female, in her half-undressed state.

  Silently she acknowledged to herself that there was something—some unexpected part of her that actually responded to that awareness, that the contrast between them was heightening her arousal; and that her apparent vulnerability was exciting to her.

  And to him?

  As she moved against him she could feel the hardness of his body and its tension.

  ‘Mmm… you feel good—very good,’ he added as he slid his hands up over her breasts. Her nipples, already hard and erect, responded to his touch, her breath locking in her lungs as he turned her round to face him and started to kiss her with real urgency.

  Later she felt it must have been something about that naked, uncontrived, uncontrolled urgency which had broken down the barriers of self-consciousness. His touch… his words, but most of all his clearly demonstrated desire, made her feel that she could perhaps after a
ll be not only a ‘nice’ girl, but a woman as well… and a woman who could wantonly take her lover’s hand and urge him to touch her naked skin, to discover for himself how responsibly aware and aroused she felt.

  They didn’t make love right there and then in the kitchen, too impatient to remove all their clothes, too hungrily eager for one another to care, but that was only because Marcus’s awareness of how close to her orgasm the hot suckling of his mouth against her breast and the eager, urgent stroke of his fingers against her flesh had brought her.

  ‘Not here,’ he had told her thickly when she had clung to him, reaching down to hold his hand against her body, arching herself into it, trembling with a mixture of arousal, need and fear of deprivation.

  Yes—here, now. Now… she had wanted to protest as her body screamed its need for him, but old habits, old ingrained inhibitions held the words back, old ingrained beliefs that it was men who experienced uncontrollable desire while women… nice girls… controlled and ignored what they felt.

  She had expected Marcus to release her, to let her lead him into the bedroom where they would both undress and then decorously make love, like adults, not like two crazy out-of-control teenagers, desperate to touch each other and be touched, as they had done in the kitchen.

  With this in mind she started to turn away from him, but he stopped her, pulling her against him, picking her up, kissing her mouth as he pushed open the door, pausing just past it to run his free hand up over her body, his kiss deepening, hardening as he reached her breast.

  Her body quickened, tensed, trembled, taut with urgency. The flat wasn’t large, the bedroom door open, the room itself quite small, but it seemed a lifetime to Eleanor before they reached it, Marcus’s mouth, Marcus’s body, Marcus’s hand as it travelled over her, stroking and touching her, absorbing her to the exclusion of everything else.

  Later she hadn’t been able to piece together just how he had managed to go on touching and kissing her while undressing, but somehow he had; somehow he had undressed her as well without ever losing contact with her, so that by the time they were lying naked together on the bed she was so aroused that every touch, every sensation was acutely heightened, every smallest breath she took seeming to cause the tiny quivers of sensation rippling through her to increase. Just the touch of Marcus’s hands as he slid them into her hair, holding her head as he bent to kiss her, just the tiny abrasive movement of his body against hers, the thick, silky stroke of his body hair against her nipples, the slightly rough rasp of his jaw against her breast, the difference between the softness of her inner thigh and the abrasion of his fingertips, were all explosively sexually stimulating to her in her heightened state of arousal. In the end, just the feeling of the warmth of his breath against her body as he slowly stroked open the swollen outer lips of her sex, lingeringly caressing her flesh as though he not only derived pleasure from her ecstatic delight and arousal but as though the physical contact with her, the act of touching her was as intensely emotionally and sexually necessary for him as it was for her, was enough to bring her body to orgasm in a series of intensely powerful, visible physical contractions that left her shuddering helplessly, tears stinging her eyes, her throat raw, torn between elation over what she had experienced and guilt because she had enjoyed her own pleasure so selfishly and hedonistically, while Marcus…