An Interrupted Marriage (Silhouette Special Edition)

by Bright, Laurey;

  “I know what you thought!” She still wasn’t looking at him.

  There was a short, fraught silence before he said, “It wasn’t exactly rape, you know.”

  “I’m not accusing you, Magnus.”

  “It was good for you, wasn’t it? Or were you faking? And if so, why?”

  Jade took another deep breath and met his eyes at last. “I wasn’t faking. But sex can’t solve everything.”

  Slowly, he said, “I’m not suggesting that it could. It does help, though. What exactly is the problem?”

  “The problem is, you think I’ve been unfaithful to you.”

  “We’ve been through all that!” he said. “I have no intention of raking it up again.”

  “You mean you’ve forgiven me.” There was irony in her tone, but he didn’t seem to hear it.

  “If it’s important for you to hear the words, yes. I forgive you.”

  Jade shook her head in rejection. “That’s what I can’t accept,” she said. “That you still believe it happened.”

  “Jade, whether it happened or not, it doesn’t matter!“

  “It matters to me!” she said fiercely. “It matters quite a lot to me.” Last night had only confirmed that.

  He took her shoulders in a firm grip. “Look at me.”

  Jade raised her eyes, staring into his sombre, intent gaze.

  “I love you,” he said. “No matter what you’ve done or haven’t done. As far as I’m concerned that’s the only important thing. I was hurt and jealous and angry, and no doubt I’ve let that show sometimes, but I swear it’s over. Maybe I had to work through it, and I know I was rough on you at times. But believe me, I never deliberately set out to punish you. Jade—I’ve waited long enough for you to come home, and I’m bloody thankful that you’re here. I don’t have any right to cavil about—the other.”

  She ought to accept that and be glad of his generosity, yet she found it wasn’t possible. “But you won’t forget, will you? Things will never be the same between us.”

  “If we work at it—”

  Jade shook her head, pulling away from him. “I can’t, Magnus. I can’t just go on as though nothing has happened. If last night was an indication of how things are going to be—”

  “You said last night was good!”

  “I said I wasn’t faking,” she reminded him.

  “And that it doesn’t solve everything,” he added impatiently. “I realise that. So what’s the problem?”

  “The problem is, there’s been a shift in our relationship. You are the magnanimous, forgiving husband—I’m the erring wife. It isn’t a partnership of equals any more. And I don’t think I can stomach sex on those terms.”

  Magnus made a small, jerky movement with his head, his eyes narrowing to slits. “Just what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that I feel shamed. Not by an act—or acts—of adultery that I don’t remember and can’t believe really happened, but by the way you made love to me last night.”

  “You had no complaints at the time!” Magnus said coldly.

  “Physically,” Jade conceded, “it was everything you thought it was. But emotionally I felt you’d...humiliated me.”

  “Not by intention!” Magnus denied.

  “Perhaps not,” Jade said, “but...as long as you believe what you do about me, that’s the way you’re going to make me feel.”

  Magnus frowned. “Don’t you think you’re being a bit oversensitive?”

  “If I am, I’m sorry. But it doesn’t alter my feelings.”

  “All right. So let’s see if you still feel the same next time.” He reached for her and drew her towards him again.

  She held back, resisting. “I don’t think that’s the answer.”

  “Can you come up with a better one?” His arm fastened around her waist. “Well?”

  Her hands were against his bare chest, his warm skin. “Magnus, wait!”

  “What for?” he enquired. “We can talk about this forever and a day. The only way you’re going to know if these feelings of yours are a temporary aberration or a permanent condition is to make love again. One thing is sure. If you brood over it long enough the permanent condition is likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

  He could be right. She stopped pushing at his chest and allowed him to lift her face to his, to find her mouth in a kiss that tipped her head back against the curve of his arm, while his other arm imprisoned her so closely that she couldn’t be unaware that he was already fully aroused.

  His lips left hers and wandered hotly down the curve of her throat, to the hollow of her breasts. She felt his hand tug at the belt of her gown. “Come back to bed,” he muttered, and lifted her in his arms, taking her to it and laying her down on the sheets. His eyes glittered over her as he stood shucking off his pants, and then he was lying beside her, one hand caressing her through the slippery satin, while his mouth trailed fire across her skin.

  At first she lay quiescent, resentment at his high-handed solution warring with the stirring of her senses under his determined erotic assault. He knew her all too well, she thought as her body moved of its own volition under the deft, intimate touch, and her breathing altered its tempo. Cleverly, he sensitised every nerve under her skin, until the merest brush of his fingers across her breast made her shudder with pleasurable anticipation.

  When he moved from his position at her side to poise himself over her, she opened glazed eyes and looked at him beseechingly. “Magnus—please...say you believe me.”

  His eyes were dark gems, on fire with wanting. “I believe you,” he said huskily. And he parted her thighs and placed himself between them.

  Her own eyes closed as her body opened to him. “I love you, Magnus....” she whispered urgently against his roughened cheek. “Only you, ever!“

  And then his mouth surged against hers, drowning words, drowning thought, leaving only a warm, rushing cascade of sensation.

  * * *

  It seemed ages later that the heavy warmth of him shifted, leaving her suddenly cold, and a hand drifted softly over her thigh. “All right?” he asked her, his voice scarcely louder than a whisper.

  “Yes.” Jade lay with her eyes closed, unmoving. Tiny prickles of remembered pleasure still feathered her skin. There was a faint dampness on her temples and between her breasts.

  She felt his breath on her lips, and then he kissed her very gently and lingeringly, as though setting a seal on something. The sheet rustled as he drew it up over her, covering her nakedness.

  “Sleep in if you like,” he said. “I have to go down.”

  She didn’t answer. After a moment the bathroom door closed behind him and she heard the thud and hiss of the shower. She lay very still, breathing evenly.

  He’d said he believed her. Said it in the heat of passion, when she’d demanded it from him as the price of...what? Her submission? Whatever—he had said it.

  And she knew he had lied.

  * * *

  There was no point in brooding on it, Magnus was right about that. He had promised not to raise the subject again, and she ought to be grateful for that. After all—she made herself review the evidence—no one in their right mind would believe she was innocent.

  No one in their right mind...

  Jade shivered. Perhaps she hadn’t been in her right mind, when...if...anything had happened at all. That might explain the diary, the accident that Magnus believed was no accident. And its long aftermath.

  For the first time she made herself consider the possibility that Magnus was right, that her own instinctive rejection of his conclusions was a mere defensive mechanism, a childish denial of wrongdoing. Oh, come on, Jade! Lida had said. What was anyone to think?

  What, indeed, but what they did think—both Lida and Magnus. And, she realised, past conversations, innuendos, taking on new significance, so did his mother and Danella. And heaven knew how many others.

  Even if she hadn’t been physically unfaithful, there seemed no doub
t that she’d been meeting another man secretly, behind her husband’s back, that she’d confided to him the most intimate details of her life, that she’d become emotionally, if not physically dependent on him, and had been thrown into a state of desperation and despair when the relationship came to an end.

  And there was no way she could prove otherwise, even to herself. She’d been warned that although she might randomly remember things she’d temporarily lost from her consciousness, there was a chance that parts of her memory would never be restored. It was something she’d been prepared to live with.

  And so was this. Who Patrick was, exactly what part he had played in her life, she would probably never know.

  * * *

  In the following days she did her best to live in the present. Most mornings she spent some time helping Magnus in his office, gradually establishing a routine. Sometimes she looked up from what she was doing to find him staring at her silently, but when she caught his eyes he would look away and return to his paperwork.

  After lunch she would sometimes go down to the beach, to walk or swim or just sit on the rocks watching the water. Once she borrowed the car and went for a drive, trying to renew her knowledge of the district. She found that many things were still familiar to her—the rolling landscape of grassy paddocks populated by the woolly white blobs that were sheep, or by brown-and-white beef cattle; the irregular patches of ragged bush, the narrow streams racing along stony beds between banks of fern.

  On the way home she slowed for a couple of youngsters on horseback nearing the gateway of the Mediterranean-style whitewashed house that she’d been told belonged to the Beazleys.

  Despite her caution, one of the horses took exception to the car and danced suddenly across the road in front of it, tossing its head as the rider attempted with only partial success to control it.

  Seeing the flying hooves coming close to the grille, Jade hit the brake hard and swung the wheel, so that the car slewed sideways and one wheel descended with a jarring thud into the shallow ditch at the side of the road.

  The horse had come to a standstill, its hooves planted four-square in the middle of the road, the rider scolding it in a disgusted, girlish voice. The other rider swung over to come to a halt beside the driver’s door, and a young, anxious face framed by long blond hair peered in at Jade. “Are you all right?” the girl enquired nervously.

  Jade’s hands were tightly clamped to the wheel, her temples throbbing and clammy. But she wasn’t injured. “Yes.” She unbuckled her safety belt and pushed open the door. The other girl, so similar in looks that they must be sisters, had dismounted and was leading her reluctant mount to join them. “I’m awfully sorry,” she said breathlessly. “I don’t know what’s the matter with him.”

  “He’s a pig!” the first girl said witheringly. “He gets spooked at the stupidest things.” As Jade warily climbed out and stood on the rough grass verge, the girl backed her horse and said, “I’ll get Dad. He can probably pull you out with the tractor. I hope the car isn’t damaged.”

  She cantered up the drive to the house, and her sister said politely, “Would you like to come inside? You look a bit pale.” She said hesitantly, “You’re Mrs. Riordan, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Jade said. “Madeline?” she added as something clicked into place. “And your sister—is that Yvette?”

  The girl smiled. “Yes. We’d heard you were home. We wanted to come and say hello, but Mum and Dad said you needed a chance to settle in first. Do come up to the house. Mum will be pleased to see you.”

  “You’ve both grown,” Jade told her. They’d been about nine and ten when Andrew and their brother had sometimes allowed the two girls to tag along on sufferance.

  Yvette came back with her father, who shook hands as though genuinely pleased to see Jade, and walked around the car, inspecting it. “I’ll get it out,” he said, “but there could be a bit of damage to the suspension.”

  In the end Jade yielded to their invitation to go inside, and was warmly welcomed by a woman she vaguely remembered, made to sit down and given tea and muffins.

  After a while the farmer returned, kicking off his boots at the back door. “Don’t think you’d better drive it,” he said. “Steering looks a bit rocky. I’ll ring Magnus and ask him what he wants to do. Unless you want to?” he queried Jade.

  Jade shook her head, reluctant to confess to Magnus that she’d damaged the car, and taking the coward’s way out.

  In the event, she wished she had made the call herself. She heard Mr. Beazley say, “Magnus—afraid your wife’s had a bit of an accident—” and a sharp sound from the other end of the line, clearly audible before Mr. Beazley said hastily, “Just by our place. She’s okay—sitting here drinking tea with Glenda and the girls. Do you want—” There was another short burst of sound, and he broke off and put down the phone, looking faintly mystified. “He’s on his way.”

  He was there in less than five minutes, the big car skidding to a halt outside, the back door of the house exploding inwards without ceremony moments later. His eyes went straight to Jade, sweeping over her in one lightning, comprehensive glance. Then he halted in the middle of the floor as though he’d just run into a stone wall. “You’re all right,” he said.

  “Told you she was,” Mr. Beazley said.

  “It was my fault,” Madeline owned bravely. “Monty’s, anyway. He jumped out in front of her car.”

  “It’s okay, Maddy,” he said absently, without moving his eyes from Jade.

  Mr. Beazley cleared his throat. “You’d better take a look at the car—”

  “Later.” He looked away from Jade at last, his gaze encompassing them all. “Thanks for looking after my wife. I’ll take her home now.”

  He held out his hand, and she stood up uncertainly. He looked as though he was leashing something dangerous that threatened to get out of control. As she hesitated, he leaned forward and scooped her hand into his, scarcely giving her time to thank her hostess before he whisked her out of the room and into his car.

  He gave her a hard glance as he climbed in beside her before he turned the key and set the car in motion. They didn’t speak until he had driven into the garage at Waititapu. Only when he turned to her as he snapped open his safety belt, she said, “I’m sorry about the car. Will the insurance cover it?”

  “Don’t worry about that.” He paused, looking at her. “You got a fright, obviously. Is that all that’s wrong?”

  Her hands were clenched in her lap, her back rigid. “I...thought—” she swallowed, her eyes wide open and staring in front of her at the blank wall of the garage “—just for a second, I felt I was going into the sea... It was only a ditch, but I could see the sky, the rocks...the water coming over the windscreen....”

  “You remembered the crash,” he said.

  Jade shuddered. “Yes.... And, Magnus—I know now that I didn’t deliberately do it. I remember parking near the edge, getting out of the car, and standing on the cliff. I was upset, confused...I can remember clearly thinking that if I just jumped, it would all be over....”

  Magnus drew in a breath, but was silent.

  “But I didn’t do it,” Jade said. “I knew it was a coward’s way out, and there was the baby....”

  “So what happened?” He’d turned to look at her, she could feel his gaze, but hers remained fixed.

  “I got back in the car, started it up, but...I wasn’t concentrating, I know I was crying and my vision was blurred. And I must have parked too close to the edge. I had trouble with the gear, and when I thought it was in reverse, it must have been in fifth—I’d had the same problem a couple of times when I first began to drive that car. It jumped forward, and I couldn’t do anything—I felt the wheels lurch over the edge, and—” She bent her head, her face hidden in her hands as she took a deep, shuddering breath.

  Magnus leaned over and unfastened her safety belt and took her shoulders in his hands to make her face him. His eyes held hers. “It’s over, Jade. A
ll that’s over now. Put it out of your mind. Come along, I’ll take you inside.”

  * * *

  At dinner he said to Ginette, “I’m afraid the Toyota will be out of commission for a few days. If you need anything let me know.”

  Mrs. Riordan said, “What’s wrong with it? Jade was driving it this afternoon, wasn’t she? Did you have some trouble?” she asked, turning to Jade.

  Magnus explained briefly, and his mother frowned. “Perhaps you shouldn’t allow Jade to drive,” she suggested, “if she’s going to panic so easily.”

  “I didn’t panic,” Jade said evenly. “I might have made an error of judgement, not seeing the ditch, but I didn’t want the horse kicking the car. It wouldn’t have done either of them any good.”

  “Driving it into the ditch doesn’t seem to have done the car much good,” Mrs. Riordan pointed out.

  Inwardly, Jade sighed. “No,” she had to agree. “In hindsight perhaps it wasn’t the best thing to do.” Though she didn’t know what else she could have done at the time.

  Mrs. Riordan looked vindicated, and Jade noticed that Magnus seemed slightly amused. He said, “You need a car of your own, Jade.”

  Surprised and pleased, she stammered, “They’re very expensive. I can do without one.”

  He gave her a look that she couldn’t read and said, “We’ll talk about it later.”

  * * *

  As they prepared for bed, she said, “It was my fault the insurance lapsed on my car before I wrecked it—otherwise I’d have been able to buy a new one.”

  “I’ll buy it. If nothing else, it will mean one less cause of friction between my mother and you,” he added rather wearily.

  Jade bit her lip. “I’m sorry we can’t get on better.”

  He shrugged out of his shirt, throwing it down on the bed. “Well, another few months and you won’t need to try—at least on a day-to-day basis.”

  “What do you mean?” Jade paused on her way to the bathroom.

  “I hope that by then I’ll be able to hand over completely to the farm manager,” he explained. “We can afford an extra worker to help out, now. Laurence will be here, too, in the holidays, over some of the busiest times. And in another year he’ll have completed his degree and be able to take over. Of course if he wants my advice it’ll always be available, but I intend to move out of Waititapu.”