by Margaret Way
Their child! At the thought, a high rapture rose in him. He knew he could be a good father. Charlotte loved children. “Don’t be ridiculous, Charlie,” he said. “You’re my everything and you know it, but you have to be entirely free. Free to choose the who, the where, and the when.”
“Then I have chosen. I choose you, Brendon Macmillan. I choose you, despite your family. It might be sooner than expected, but maybe we’re simply wasting time not being together. Have you thought of that? I love you, Bren. I trust you. I need you by my side. I need your brains, your advice, your high principles, your strength, and your loyalty, not to mention your love. You’re perfect to me.”
An enormous load lifted clear off his shoulders. Despite everything, Charlotte chose him. There was a future. “As you are to me.”
“Naturally I’ve taken precautions,” she confided. “I’m nobody’s wild child.”
He broke off what he was doing, which was trailing kisses down her arched throat. “You conniving little minx.”
“Thank you.” Charlotte took it as a compliment. “There’s a lot of work to be done before we can think of a family.” She stared up at him as though the whole world was waiting with bated breath for his response.
“Meanwhile we have tonight to celebrate.” There was tragedy. There were tears, sadness, and recriminations. Perhaps even a touch of evil. But the future belonged to him and Charlotte. He swept her off her feet, holding her high in his arms. “I mean to show you, Charlotte, what a man’s love for his woman is like.”
“As soon as possible,” Charlotte said.
A dazzle of light was coming from her bedroom, spilling out onto the carpeted corridor. A moment later Brendon laid Charlotte down on the bed, where she remained motionless, staring up at him with glistening emerald eyes. Without taking his gaze off her, Brendon began stripping off his clothes, pausing for a moment to say, “I believe I should propose to you first.”
Charlotte broke into a beautiful, joyful peal of laughter. “Please, please do,” she begged. “We’re going to change everything, aren’t we, Bren?”
“Everything except our love for each other.” Naked, the light playing off his fine tanned skin, Brendon went down on one knee, reaching for her hand. What he saw made him ask worriedly, “Charlie, why are you crying?”
“Don’t you see?” Charlotte leaned over to plant a dewy wet kiss on his mouth. “I’m so happy!”
“Thank God for that! I mean for you to grow happier with every single day. You will do as I now ask. Will you marry me?” His silver-grey eyes shone brilliantly on her face.
“I will,” Charlotte said as solemnly as if she were making a sacred vow. Then unexpectedly she began to laugh again. “Can you really see me marrying anyone else?”
“Not after tonight you won’t,” said Brendon, rising to his feet.
He looked down at her, the coverlet she was lying on gleamed like some gloriously inviting stretch of sand. Charlotte remained motionless, her golden hair a halo around her head, her emerald eyes full of glittering lights. Those extraordinary jewel-like glints spoke of her desire for him, serving to increase his own ardour.
Before he got completely carried away by feelings of love and longing, he turned to switch off the overhead lights, leaving only one softly glowing lamp. Radiant moonlight streamed into the room with the city lights adding a whole spectrum of glowing colour to the silvery-white. The bedroom seemed to carry the scent of all the flowers in the world. It was the scent of her, he realized. He was breathing in her fragrance, her warmth, her very breath that had the freshness of citrus.
As he bent over her to take her mouth, her body rose up to meet him, her beautiful head thrown back, soft sweet moans coming from her parted lips.
“Bren?” There was agitation in the depths of her voice, mixed with wonder. “Come to me,” she pleaded.
“I’m coming.” His heart was hammering as the level of intimacy built and bonded them.
Charlotte repeated his name over and over as if she loved it when he was there beside her. When he was kissing her deeply inside her yearning mouth.
He started making love to her, gently gliding his hands all over her body, lingering over its soft curves and clefts that were lightly beaded with perspiration from the burning heat inside her. She twisted easily this way and that, her spine liquid, her breasts swelling from the tenderness of his mouth and fingertips. This was really happening to her. This was what she had been waiting for. Brendon, her beautiful Brendon. Her lover.
They kissed light and fast, long and hard. They kissed deeply, intoxicated by the pleasure. It made Charlotte excited and breathless, poised on the brink, yet anchored by Brendon’s strong arms. She understood perfectly the miraculous power of sex with the right man. She was pinned beneath him, her long slender legs trembling, her breath coming in little rasps. She arched her back, her legs rising of their own accord to lock around his waist. Her thighs were fused to his in that single action. They were almost . . . almost . . . one. The pleasure was so intense she was moaning aloud, her breath catching as he penetrated the inner lips of her quivering flesh.
It was both an ecstasy and an agony for Brendon. He had to control the fierceness of his longing. Charlotte was a virgin. The penetration of her body needed to be gradual, causing no pain but a delicious tingling.
Very quickly they found their perfect rhythm. Both were preparing themselves for the ravenous climax that was surely coming. It built to a crescendo that was near frightening, it had so much power, agonizing, full of a primal rapture. When the moment came, Charlotte’s body was as tight as a high tension wire before shattering into a wild release that was pure ecstasy. Her fists beat helplessly against the body of her lover, the sounds coming out of her throat sounds that had never come out of her before. She belonged with Brendon and no one else.
It was quite a time after before Charlotte came to her senses. They lay, their bodies entwined. Brendon’s strong chest was moving up and down, his heart kicking against his ribs. What had happened between them was like passing through fire that was supernaturally empowering.
Charlotte lay murmuring against his shoulder, her voice low and throaty. “We go together, don’t we, Bren?” she said. “Like the sun and the moon, the earth and the trees.” There was such euphoria in her voice it made his heart soar. “I love you, Brendon. Love you. Love you. Love you.”
He pressed her ever closer to him. “And you are the very best thing that has ever happened to me, Charlotte. I worship you from the tip of your beautiful gold head to your twinkling toes. You are the one and only woman for me.”
“I agree.” She kissed him tenderly.
He took her hand in his, discovering he was wanting her yet again. They had all night. They had the promise of a blessed life.
* * *
Julian Macmillan was sitting quietly alone in the library. It was filled with golden light from a matching pair of Chinese blue and white vases mounted as lamps. The light gleamed on the paintings on the walls, the gold tooling on all the leather-bound books. His father’s diplomas, his, and Brendon’s, all had been framed with highly polished ebony borders. They too found a place. The Macmillan clan, like the Mansfields, was a highly successful, highly dysfunctional family.
He sat nursing an excellent cognac. It was his third. He wasn’t going anywhere. From time to time, he gave vent to a deep sigh. Christmas Eve and here he was, the very picture of despondency. He felt as though his marriage had finally come to the end of the line. Regrets were uppermost in his mind. Especially the regret that he had not won Alyssa’s hand before his friend Christopher had even laid eyes on her. In any case, Alyssa had truly loved Christopher. Whenever they met face-to-face, without any witnesses, his and Alyssa’s conversation had a warm quality to it, but the content could have been overheard by anyone. It was very possible that a woman like Alyssa had sensed his true feelings for her, but she had handled their relationship with grace and aplomb as he imagined he had. She was Christophe
r’s wife. He was Christopher’s best friend.
When he met Olivia, he had thought he could find happiness with this strikingly elegant, well-bred young woman who was clearly attracted to him. In the early days, he had been encouraged to think the happiness he had missed out on would start to flow. Olivia had offered herself to him completely. She was a fine hostess. She took a great interest in his professional life. She bore him the love of their lives, their son. It should have worked, only something terrible and mysterious happened. Olivia, literally overnight, was seized by her first violent attack of jealousy.
Since wedding Olivia, he had taken the utmost steps to appear totally devoted to his wife, which in the main, he was. Only that one evening when he and Alyssa had been talking on the terrace after one of Olivia’s dinner parties, Olivia had casually looked out through the bay window to where he and Alyssa were standing quietly, perhaps overlong?
Whatever Olivia had spotted on her radar, from that evening on she had changed. There had been no jealous tears, no discussion, certainly no accusation, but it was made clear to him that Olivia understood his feelings, however well hidden, for the wife of his lifelong friend. There was no outward unpleasantness, but Olivia’s smiles had become rare. What smiles she had were reserved for their son.
On the surface, everything went on as before. In spite of her many skills, Olivia, who had started off well, lost her first flush of popularity. As for him, there was always the unspoken insinuation that he was . . . well, a traitor. Alyssa and Christopher were no longer in her good graces. Indeed, Olivia could never hear Alyssa’s name without sharply moving off. Since that fateful evening, there had been no real communication between them. He buried himself in his work. Olivia slipped off her pedestal to start the vicious round of rumours that he and Alyssa Mansfield had been carrying on a secret affair.
She had then established the right to accuse him of monstrous behaviour, of disgracing them, when she was the one who had in secret dishonoured them all. As far as he was concerned, Olivia would never get her honour back. Even after the fatal accident on the mountain, Olivia had clung to her paranoia. Her pathological jealousy of Alyssa, instead of dissolving in a wave of guilt, had fallen on Alyssa’s daughter, the twelve-year-old Charlotte.
His son had set himself up as the young girl’s champion. They seemed to play the parts of close cousins, only they weren’t. It was inevitable that the quality of their relationship would pass from close friends to the romantic love that was waiting for them on the other side.
He had made it very clear to his wife that he would not tolerate any effort on her part to drive a wedge between the young people. Not that she could, Julian thought. That would be attempting the impossible. There was a passionate honesty to Brendon. At least one Macmillan would find the happiness that had eluded him, he thought. As well as had eluded his father, Hugo, when Sir Reginald had stolen Julia away from right under his nose.
Julian was so lost in his thoughts he didn’t notice his wife slip into the darkened room.
“May I speak to you, Julian?” Olivia asked from the open doorway.
He didn’t turn his head. “We can’t go on at this rate, Olivia. I thought I made that very clear.”
“I can’t give a good account for my past, Julian,” Olivia said passionately, “but I love you. I’ve always loved you. Love made me do it.”
“I think you mean possessiveness made you do it,” Julian said, the tone of his voice driving the point home. “That’s quite different from love, my dear.”
“Please, may I sit down?” Olivia’s voice quavered, and she seemed genuinely distressed.
Julian waved her into an armchair. “What is it you want to say?”
“Ah, well . . .” Olivia drifted into an armchair close by, a tall, elegant figure in an expensive ivory silk nightdress and matching robe, her hair caught up by a Spanish comb. “You and Brendon are all that matters to me in this world, Julian. I couldn’t live without you.”
Julian put up a staying hand. “No emotional blackmail, if you please, Olivia. It won’t work. Not anymore. Whatever you chose to do is on your head, not mine.”
“But I’m not trying to blackmail you, Julian,” Olivia exclaimed. “That would be detestable.”
“I’m glad you finally realize it,” he said with great irony. “Lying to yourself is equally as detestable.”
Olivia bowed her lustrous dark head in shame. “I’ve hurt you terribly, haven’t I?”
“You’ve hurt yourself more,” Julian retorted. “What you will not be doing is hurting our son. In hurting him, you’ll be hurting Charlotte. They’re madly in love, in case you haven’t noticed?”
Olivia made a muffled sound. “How could they keep it from me, Julian? I’m Brendon’s mother. Of course I know he loves her.”
Julian almost started out of his chair. “Her . . . he . . . Her name is Charlotte. For God’s sake, can’t you say it?”
“Charlotte!” Olivia cried. “All right, Julian, I accept that I destroyed her mother’s life.”
“Don’t forget Christopher’s,” Julian added bleakly.
“I’ve been begging God’s forgiveness every night of my life,” Olivia claimed.
“Then you’ll have to beg harder,” Julian advised.
“Oh, I will, I will! I promise you, I will.” It was a plea for mercy. “I can’t lose you, Julian. You should have confronted me years ago. It might have brought me to my senses. I knew I appeared dreadfully dull to you compared to Alyssa, and now her daughter, Charlotte. I lack charm. I always have. My own mother told me that from an early age. In fact, she told me that constantly. She even told me once I should have been a nun. When I think about it now, I realize she was very harsh with me. I grew up thinking that I lacked any womanly grace. I couldn’t believe it when you looked my way. My mother told me I wouldn’t get far, but I did. You married me. You treated me like I was precious to you, especially after Brendon was born. I tried, I really tried, Julian, to overcome my jealousy of Alyssa—a woman who had all the charm and the vitality I lacked. It was my mother, you know, who first pointed out your attraction to Alyssa.”
Julian gripped the arms of his chair, his heart dilating. “Louise did?” His voice revealed his shock. He turned fully to his wife, his expression one of deep and grave amazement. His late mother-in-law, Louise, had been a handsome, coolly manipulative woman, but he hadn’t thought her to be cruel. She had always been very pleasant to him. Olivia, on the surface so aloof and apparently self-assured, was in reality a deeply vulnerable, damaged woman. Her mother, Louise, could well have made her what she had become. He had gone along thinking his wife and his mother-in-law were very close. They had been, but not apparently in the best, most harmonious way. “Did your mother know it was you who started the rumours?” he asked, his blood curdling in his veins.
Olivia averted her face. “She must have known, although we never talked about it. She altered quite a bit after the . . . accident. She stayed away. Do you remember?”
He did. They had seen Louise less and less. “So your mother never gave you any help to overcome your jealousy, as a good mother would?”
Olivia’s mouth twisted painfully. “You’d think your mother would be the one person you could always count on. You could go to her, tell her everything, and she would understand. Better yet, she would assist you in following her good advice. It never happened to me. I know it has never occurred to you, but my mother never complimented me on my dress, how I ran the house, or the good job I made of entertaining. She never told me I made you a good wife. She never once told me she was proud of me like my father did. Thank God he was there. I think it might have been hard for her seeing me married to such a successful, handsome man. From relative obscurity I became Mrs. Julian Macmillan. A psychiatrist might analyse my mother’s state of mind and conclude she had a deeply jealous nature, which she handed on.”
Julian tried to step back in time. “Why have you never told me any of this, Olivia? I would
have known how to handle your mother.”
“I was too ashamed,” Olivia said with stark truth. “You know I’ve never had a close female friend to talk to. Other women recognize the dark in me. I know they’ve found my company increasingly off-putting.”
“That could all change, Olivia,” Julian said, pity in his heart. “It’s odd you allowed your mother to convince you that you were a person of little value. It’s simply not true. I always complimented you on your skills and talents. Your good looks have never been in question, either. You’re a very stylish woman.”
Olivia’s eyes were great dark pools. “Would you give me another chance, Julian?” she begged. “I swear you won’t regret it. I’ll make friends with Charlotte. God knows she’s an admirable young woman. I will start making amends with her tomorrow, as I beg her to forgive me. You can trust me, Julian. Truly you can. I will never repeat my mistakes of the past. I’ve learned a bitter lesson. I’ve made you unhappy. If you want a divorce, I’ll give it to you. You deserve some happiness.”
“I don’t want a divorce, Olivia,” Julian said, realizing, despite everything, it was true. “All I want is for things to change, to become easier. I want you to be happy. Your mother is dead and gone now. She can’t hurt you anymore.”
“Would you hold my hand?” Olivia begged in a mere thread of a voice.
“Come here to me,” her husband said.
Life was a gamble, but sometimes it was worth the risk.
Epilogue
Inside the church, with its soaring archways and domed ceiling, the atmosphere, alight with the wonderful entrance music, was thrumming with anticipation. This was after all the wedding of the year; the union of two of the country’s most illustrious families, the Macmillans and the Mansfields. The interior of the beautiful church was more spacious than most, was packed out with guests resplendent in their wedding finery. From the delighted faces and the soft, happy buzz of conversation they were thrilled to be here on this most auspicious occasion.
