Reluctant Wife

by Lindsay Armstrong

  RELUCTANT WIFE

  Although Roz’s marriage to Adam Milroy wasn’t unhappy, it wasn’t particularly happy either—which was why Adam had suggested a temporary, informal separation. But how could Roz set about winning her husband’s love when she wasn’t at all sure he wanted it?

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the Author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the Author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

  The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the prior consent of the publisher in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Original hardcover edition published 1987

  Australian copyright 1987

  New Zealand copyright 1987

  Philippine copyright 1987

  First Australian paperback edition December 1987

  © Lindsay Armstrong 1987

  ISBN 0 263 75777 3

  Printed in Australia by

  The Book Printer

  North Blackstone, Victoria 3130

  CHAPTER ONE

  Roz MILROY tensed as her bedroom door opened, but it was Milly Barker who stuck her curly head around it to say, ‘Adam’s on his way, Roz. His office just rang. Can I get you anything in the meantime? Jeanette says you’re ready.’

  ‘No, thanks, Milly, I’ll come down …’ Roz hesitated briefly. ‘On second thoughts, I might have a drink up here. If you wouldn’t mind,’ she added.

  ‘Yours to command,’ Milly said cheerfully, revealing all of her small person in the doorway. She was middle-aged, wore her brown curls cropped short and an enormous pair of spectacles through which she appeared to view the world myopically, but in the two years of their association, Roz had come to realise that very little escaped Milly Barker. She also ran the Milroy household superbly. ‘What would you like? I must say that colour looks gorgeous on you, and Jeanette has excelled herself with your hair——oh, damn! There’s the phone again. A sherry?’

  ‘I think I’d like a gin and tonic,’ said Roz a shade tentatively, almost as if she expected to encounter opposition to this request, but Milly merely waved a hand and dashed out.

  A few minutes later the gin and tonic arrived via Jeanette, who said earnestly, ‘That was Mr Milroy’s office on the phone again. Something came up just as he was leaving, would you believe!’ She looked at Roz indignantly. ‘But he’ll still be here in good time, his secretary said. Here’s your drink.’

  ‘Thank you, Jeanette.’ Roz accepted the glass with a smile. ‘I suppose the place is humming downstairs?’

  ‘You’re not wrong,’ Jeanette replied, her plain, round young face creasing ruefully. ‘I don’t know where to put myself. You were right to stay up here, were you ever! Milly is convinced the extra help she got in all have ten thumbs and two left feet. What we need is for Mr Milroy to come home. He always calms things down.’

  Roz regarded Jeanette wryly and wondered why it didn’t irritate her more, the fact that Jeanette thought the sun shone out of Adam Milroy and never attempted to hide it. But then from the time Jeanette had been employed as a permanent live-in offsider to Milly and also to look after Roz’s wardrobe, they’d formed a bond of friendship, possibly because they’d been much of an age and both shy and raw. But anyway, how could you get irritated with such honesty and devotion?

  ‘Perhaps I ought to be able to calm things down,’ she suggested.

  ‘Oh no!’ Jeanette looked quite shocked. ‘You don’t have to worry your head about the preparations. It’s your birthday tonight and it’s Milly’s job and she’s really very good at it. Why, she could handle double the amount of people and not turn a hair—often does—but family nights, we-ell, you know how particular Mr Milroy’s mother is, and his sister, Mrs Whatney. It’s as if we’re on trial,’ Jeanette added, rolling her eyes.

  Roz grimaced, but Jeanette had only paused for breath.

  ‘Whereas your job normally when we entertain is to be the hostess. and that’s no easy job, I’m sure. I know I couldn’t do it, but it’s very important to Mr Milroy to have you at his side especially serene and poised and beautiful. You’re like the jewel of his house,’ Jeanette said fervently.

  Roz had to smile. ‘It’s very kind of you to say so, Jeanette. In fact I don’t know what I’d do without you,’ she added obscurely.

  But Jeanette assured her she would do quite fine, then took herself off downstairs to help Milly.

  Roz took her drink over to the window and pondered the fact that if Milly and Jeanette felt as if they were on trial on family nights, it was nothing to how she felt.

  The sun was setting, but the grounds around the house were already lit up and it was an impressive sight—the floodlit swimming pool and tennis court and the long sweep of lawn that led down to the stables. The house itself was two-storeyed and had a graceful veranda running right round. Above the sloping veranda roof all the bedrooms in the upper storey had long casement windows, which afforded different views of the eighty-acre property known as Little Werrington.

  ‘Why little?’ Roz had asked Adam once.

  ‘It’s named after the family property out west which we lost after a succession of droughts, slumps in beef prices——possibly too many cooks spoiling the broth,’ he’d said a shade drily. ‘But it was eighty thousand acres.’

  ‘Is that where you grew up?’

  ‘Yes. And most of the rest of us.’

  ‘Do you miss it?’

  ‘No. It was … another era of my life, I guess.’

  Just as I am, she’d thought.

  And she found herself remembering that thought on the night of her birthday——her twenty-first birthday——as she stared over the darkening acres of Little Werrington, set so conveniently in the rolling landscape of Pimpama, half-way between Brisbane and the Gold Coast, so that it was only half an hour’s drive to get to Brisbane where Adam had his headquarters, or half an hour in the other direction to get to the surf and the sand and the increasingly elegant shopping and exotic nightlife of Surfers’ Paradise. Yet you could be forgiven for thinking you were living in the heart of the country at Pimpama.

  ‘The best of both worlds,’ she murmured out loud, and turned away from the window to stare at herself in the mirror in the fading daylight.

  The dress she wore was a soft, glowing ruby red with a full long skirt, a fitted bodice and a small milled frill skimming the tops of her breasts and circling her shoulders. With it she wore a diamond and gold bracelet on her right wrist, a present that morning from Adam, as were the diamond earrings she wore——as was everything she possessed.

  Her high, slender-heeled shoes matched the dress exactly, and so did her engagement ring, an oval ruby surrounded by diamonds.

  She thought absently as she gazed at her reflection that Milly was right, it wasn’t so much the dress but the colour against her skin, the ruby red against her fairness, that made the impact. And for that Jeanette had to take the credit. She had sorted through endless swatches of material and picked it personally. She had also chosen the style, saying, ‘Mr Milroy doesn’t like you in anything too fussy or slinky.’

  She was right, Roz mused. Mr Milroy likes rich simplicity, and what Mr Mil
roy says goes, particularly for the second Mrs Milroy. I wonder …

  But she sighed suddenly and sipped her drink, knowing it was futile to speculate on that subject. And instead, as she thought of turning on the lamps in her beautiful bedroom but didn’t, she found herself wishing she’d been spared Jeanette’s words earlier on what her role in life was, but not because they weren’t true. It was her role to be pampered and carefully instructed in all the finer things so that she could be a fine hostess, always to be beautifully groomed, always to be watched and guarded against getting overwrought. Her role to be brought out and admired, rather like a jewel in her husband’s house, but …

  A sound behind her made her jump and spill some of her drink, and she swung round and peered through the gloom. ‘Adam?’

  ‘Yes. Why are you in the dark?’

  ‘No—no reason,’ she said with a catch in her voice. She heard a click and the central light sprang on, causing her to blink in the radiance.

  ‘Well,’ said Adam Milroy, leaning his wide shoulders against the doorframe, ‘you look stunning, Roz.’

  ‘So everyone keeps telling me, but thank you,’ she said jerkily, and their gazes clashed briefly across the wide expanse of mushroom carpet before she lowered a veil of carefully darkened lashes over her smoky blue gaze.

  He straightened. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Roz drew a quivering breath and turned away. ‘Nothing,’ she said flatly, and sipped her drink, glancing down anxiously at her dress to see if she’d spilt any of it on it. Then, although she had heard nothing, she shivered inwardly and knew he’d crossed the carpet silently with that lazy, easy grace and was standing behind her like the Prince of Darkness she had once romantically, as a teenager, thought of him——for that matter still sometimes did, despite being twenty-one and despite knowing him in the biblical sense.

  She turned round suddenly, and he was there as she’d guessed, tall and dark, her senior by some sixteen years and several lifetimes of experience; A man who was a formidable opponent but with a lightning sense of humour and a brilliant, crooked smile that sometimes took her breath away, sometimes made her feel dull and slow. But then experience had taught her some things, hadn’t it? That to fight him was hopeless, for one thing…

  ‘I’m all right,’ she said, and was surprised at the steadiness of her voice. ‘Really. Well, just nerves, perhaps.‘

  He said nothing for a moment, then, ‘I thought you’d got over that. Especially with the family.’

  Roz shrugged.

  ‘What’s that?’ he asked, looking at her drink.

  ‘Gin and tonic.’

  ‘Adam raised his dark eyebrows quizzically. ‘Dutch courage?’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with it, is there?’

  He looked at her consideringly. ‘Not so long ago you were hard to persuade to even have as pre-dinner sherry.’

  This was true, and she still usually only drank wine with meals and generally only a glass at that. But she said with a tight little smile, ‘I’m not going to get drunk. I just——perhaps I just felt like breaking out. After all, I’m eligible for the key of the door now, aren’t I? So if I feel like choosing my own drink,’ her voice rose, ‘…what are you doing?’

  ‘Getting rid of it,’ he said calmly, and took the glass from her. ‘I’d be surprised if you even like it.‘ He put the glass down and turned back to her to say softly, ‘If you really wanted to exercise your,—key of the door powers, I can think of a much better way.’ His dark gaze flickered over her from head to toe, from her upswept hairdo that gleamed so fair beneath the light, her oval face, deep blue eyes and straight little nose, at the ivory-tinted skin of her arms and shoulders, the slenderness of her waist beneath the ruby material—and back to her face again.

  ‘Wh-what do you mean?’ she asked unevenly ‘You don’t surely …?’ She tailed off, her eyes widening.

  ‘Why not?’ Adam said lazily but with a glint in his dark eyes. ‘It would be a very adult thing to do. Particularly,’ he went on barely audibly, ‘if you could persuade yourself to admit that contrary to all expectations, for some strange reason I’ve yet to fathom, you like me making love to you as opposed to simply enduring it. Or did you think I was unaware of it, my lovely Rozalinda? Unaware that it’s getting harder and harder for you to lie in my arms as passively as you used to, before the … possibilities of it were known to you ?’

  Her lips parted and her cheeks grew hot with a lovely delicate flush of colour, but her eyes darkened with something like anger.

  But Adam only looked amused and lifted a hand idly to trace the outline of her mouth with one finger. ‘It’s hard to have to admit you can be wrong about things, whatever the reason, I know,’ he said with gentle mockery ‘But I’ve generally found it’s the best policy. Also,’ he added meditatively, and his hand moved down to slide the ruby ruffle resting on the point of her shoulder. a fraction lower, ‘wouldn’t it be terribly daring and grown-up to snap your fingers at everyone due to descend on us shortly, to keep them waiting for a little while and come to bed with me now?’

  ‘No! No,’ Roz said raggedly, and jerked away from him. ‘Anyway, you’re only teasing me!’ she said hotly as he laughed softly.

  His eyebrows lifted. ‘Try me,’ he invited.

  ‘I…it would take me ages to get ready again…’ She broke off in confusion and feeling foolish.

  ‘If that’s what’s worrying you,’ he said wryly, making her feel even more foolish, ‘I’m sure Jeanette could do an express job on you and …’

  ‘It took her an hour just to do my hair,’ Roz interrupted with strained but deliberately gathered composure. Her very own weapon against Adam and one that she was gradually perfecting—she had thought until tonight had let her down, and for some reason Adam himself had apparently decided to test it, whereas he normally only acknowledged it with an ironic look but mostly ignored it. But the trick is to keep at it, she thought drily. ‘I’d hate to disappoint her, not to mention possibly shocking her rigid,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, do you think you would?’ he countered, and he was suddenly no longer laughing or even looking amused. ‘I suspect you shock more easily than Jeanette, Roz. In fact I think she’d be delighted. I’m sure she’s a romantic at heart.’

  ‘Which I am not?’ Roz asked coolly.

  ‘No,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘And in some danger of becoming a virtuous bore…’

  It happened before she could stop herself——as shockingly, sharp little explosion of sound as she reached up and hit him. ‘I h-hate you!’ she stammered through clenched teeth, her face scarlet now and her‘ eyes burning, but she also backed away a step a bare moment later.

  If she expected some physical retaliation it was not what she got, however. Adam’s mouth tightened and he lifted a hand to explore the red mark; on his cheek. Then he reached across and grasped her wrist and her heart started to pound, but all he said very evenly was, ‘I wouldn’t do that again, Roz.’

  ‘Then don’t provoke me!’ she retorted angrily, but in her heart she was still half afraid of what he might do but determined not to let him know it. And she tilted her chin defiantly at him.

  He surprised her. He said, ‘That’s better, actually,’ with a wry little smile twisting his lips.

  She stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’

  Adam shrugged and grinned. ‘Provided you keep your fists to yourself,’ he curled her hand into a fist and covered it with his own, ‘provided you do that,’ he looked into her stormy blue eyes, ‘I prefer to see you in a rage than cold and polite and haughty. But there’s just one thing you shouldn’t forget. We made a bargain for various reasons, my dear Roz. One which I’ve stuck to. Perhaps you ought to remember that.’

  ‘I’ve stuck to it too! I …’

  ‘Have you?’ he said drily.

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Or would it be more accurate to say—stuck to it but hated it?’ he queried, his eyes now glinting with impatience.

  ‘No,’
she whispered, her lips trembling. ‘I mean …’

  ‘Then spare me your pride and your holier-than-thou looks, Roz,’ he put in sardonically. ‘Or I might be tempted to take you down a peg or two—oh, in the nicest possible way,’ he added softly and with a look that brought the blood to her cheeks again.

  ‘If you mean what I think you mean,’ Roz said stiffly,

  ‘there’s nothing you can do to me that hasn’t …’ She broke off and bit her lip.

  He smiled faintly. ‘You don’t really believe that, do you?’

  They stared at each other.

  ‘Well then,’ he said drily, ‘it’s definitely time I showed you otherwise, my love.’

  ‘I’m not your …’ But he cut her of with an irritable gesture.

  ‘Let’s not go into that now, Roz.’

  ‘You brought the subject up,’ she said defensively.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘because you’re as tense as a piano wire and looking as if your heart is full of tears again, for nothing. Believe me, Roz, the alternative to this would have been something you really wouldn’t have liked. I thought you understood and accepted that. But now it seems as if I’ve become some sort of an ogre.’

  Roz stared up into his dark eyes, then her gaze fell away guiltily. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said huskily, ‘if I seem ungrateful after all you’ve done for me. I don’t mean to be—I’m not.’ Her shoulders slumped. ‘And I’m sorry if I’ve been a fool and I’ll try to make amends …’ She blushed suddenly and for the first time considered that she might sound virtuous and boring and holier-than-thou.

  He said, ‘If you could just relax it might help. It can’t all be hard labour, surely?’

  ‘No …’

  ‘Then forget this conversation and concentrate for once on enjoying yourself tonight. It is your party, and even if my family are all mad, I’m sure they’d like to see you happy. Which reminds me, I’d better get ready. Finish that,’ he added over his shoulder, gesturing towards her drink as he walked across to the interleading door to his bedroom. ‘You’re right, at twenty-one you are entitled to break out.’