Reluctant Wife

by Lindsay Armstrong

Roz relented. ‘No, it does. Thank you. I think I told you earlier that I don’t know what I’d do without you.‘

  ‘Oh, bosh!’ Jeanette protested forcefully, but she was laughing herself. Then she looked around to see if she’d forgotten to put anything away, but the mushroom and dusky pink bedroom was perfectly tidy with the coverlet and sheet pulled down neatly on the big bed. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Will you be able to sleep? Should I get you something? Mr Milroy’s here, but …’

  ‘No, I’ll be fine, Jeanette. Goodnight.’

  But once she was alone, Roz hesitated before getting into bed and wondered whether Adam had come up yet. Their interleading door was closed.

  Then she shrugged and switched off all the lamps. She sat on the bed with one leg drawn up and her chin resting on it, pondering on a strange night and her equally strange mixture of feelings. But her overriding thought, she discovered, was how Adam would be next. Sardonic and mocking as he had been in their first encounter of the evening? But then he’d been apparently happy to see her happy later. And how would she be? What would she feel?

  She bit her lip, and the door between her bedroom and Adam’s opened.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Roz turned her head so that her cheek was resting on her knee and watched as her husband came slowly across to the bed. He had taken off his jacket and tie and his shirt was open at the throat, the sleeves unbuttoned and pushed up a little, and his dark hair lay across his forehead as if he had just, raked a hand through it.

  A swathe of light streamed in from his room and their eyes met. ‘Not tired?’ he asked after a moment.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

  ‘But you can’t sleep?’

  She moved, ‘I haven’t tried. Have you come to … to …?’ She broke off awkwardly.

  He waited, but she could only colour foolishly. Then he said, ‘Would you like me to, Roz?’ His dark gaze was sombre and very direct.

  She raised her head and looked away, but something seemed to clear in her mind and she said with an effort ‘I’d like to thank you for everything. And also,’ her voice sank, ‘try to make up for being… idiotic. So yes, I would like you to.’

  Adam was silent for so long she felt her nerves tightening almost unbearably.

  But it got worse as he said drily, ‘Well, that’s a new twist. How do you think you’ll feel about that in the morning?’

  Her eyes widened. ‘What do you mean?’

  A smile that didn’t reach his eyes twisted his lips. ‘I mean, do you think it will ease the way you normally feel? Will you be able to … say, see it in another light? As if you were paying your dues, so it was different?’

  She stared at him and dimly began to realise she had made an awful mistake.

  ‘Roz?’

  She licked her lips and a pulse started to beat erratically at the base of her throat.

  Adam made an impatient sound as she tried to speak, but twisted her hands together instead.

  ‘Do you think I don’t know how you feel in the mornings?’ he queried harshly. ‘You hate yourself and you hate me, although God knows why. But you see,’ he smiled grimly, ‘I know you better than you know yourself, I sometimes think, and being grateful isn’t going to make it any more acceptable to you for long, Roz. Nor me. I’d far rather you were honest with me. In fact, that’s the only thing I’m prepared to accept from you now, Roz. So goodnight, my dear, but of course if you can’t sleep don’t hesitate to call and I’ll get you something.’

  She stumbled off the bed. ‘You’re right—I do. I hate you!’ she stammered, but clenched her fists because she knew without a doubt that he wouldn’t be nearly so gentle with her this time if she hit him. And she was shocked that she should want to again, and so soon.

  What’s happening to me? she wondered despairingly.

  Then she realised that he was waiting for her to go on and watching her carefully but quite dispassionately. And that the light from his bedroom was striking through her nightgown so that it looked about as substantial as moonlight and so that her high, pointed breasts, tiny waist, hips and slender legs were outlined clearly.

  She turned away abruptly and defensively, and instantly felt incredibly foolish. Because it wasn’t as if he didn’t know every square inch of her body, hadn’t handled it with those long, strong expert hands, and much, much more.

  Roz closed her eyes and felt a flood of heat suffuse her from head to toe at the way he could make her feel just by touching her, just by looking at her, if one were to be honest. And how she could fall asleep in his arms afterwards as if she never suffered from recurring nightmares and sometimes did anything to keep herself awake so that her insomnia had become a vicious circle but …

  ‘All right,’ she swung back to face him, ‘so what if everything you say is true? I can’t help it and I can’t change it. Don’t think I haven’t tried—I have. The thing is, if you really must know, I feel like a … like a kept woman, and I thought it might be appreciated if I earned my keep for a change Adam!’ She took a step backwards in sudden fright, but he made no move, although his mouth had set pale and taut and a nerve flickered suddenly in his jaw.

  But then he drawled, ‘My, my, you have grown up, Roz! Two years ago I doubt if you’d have known what that meant.’

  ‘I wasn’t that naïve,’ she said, flushing. ‘But I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. It was ridiculous and melodramatic.’

  ‘But honest.’

  ‘You said that’s what you wanted,’ she whispered.

  ‘Go on.’

  She lifted her shoulders in a helpless little gesture. ‘We both know why you married me. Because I was in so much trouble …’

  ‘Yes, you were, Roz,’ he interrupted, but his voice had changed and he looked suddenly more weary than anything else.

  ‘You don’t have to keep reminding me …’

  ‘Do I do that? I can’t remember referring to it constantly. It’s you who keeps remembering my iniquities. How I married you to get my hands on a horse, how I tore you away from the love of your life … ’

  ‘Adam’ she broke in anguishedly, ‘I never believed that about Nimmitabel or Michael. But it was a marriage of … of …’

  ‘Convenience?’ he supplied sardonically.

  ‘Yes. I had all those problems. You said that after your first marriage you’d grown cynical about love, etcetera, but you wanted a family …’

  ‘I also told you I wanted you, Roz,’ he said quietly.

  ‘It’s not the same thing,’ she whispered. ‘You thought you could mould me into the perfect wife, didn’t you? But what I’ve really become is the perfect hostess. And to make it all worse, it seems as if I’m not going to be able to provide you with a family either. I … I don’t know why,’ she said jerkily, ‘but I really regret that. Perhaps it would have solved a lot of our problems, but anyway, I think you’d have made a good father. But it’s not too late for you. You have only to let me go.’

  ‘Go?’ He looked at her and laughed. ‘Go where? Perhaps I should have mentioned this before, but Michael Howard is married now.’

  Her mouth dropped open. ‘How do you know that?’

  He regarded her stunned blue eyes and shrugged. ‘It’s not important, and he’s two years older now. What is important is that that avenue is no longer open to you, in case you’ve been dreaming romantically of it, my dear Roz.’

  She gasped. ‘I …’

  ‘Hate me? So you keep telling me,’ Adam said leisurely. ‘But I’m afraid it’s something we’re going to have to live with.’

  ‘D-do you know what I think?’ she stammered in her anger. ‘I think you might have grown cynical and distrustful of women, but you still can’t bear to think of even one of them being unaffected by you …’

  ‘Unaffected?’ he drawled with a lift of his eyebrows.

  ‘You know what I mean. You’re determined to make me fall in love with you——that’s the problem!’

  But if she thought she could shock him or
even anger him, she was mistaken. Because he stared down at her for a moment, then his lips twisted into a cool smile and a genuine spark of amusement lit his eyes as he said, ‘Possibly. I never could resist a challenge. Well, now we’ve sorted all that out, should we go to bed? Together or separately-——you choose, Roz.’

  Then he laughed at her expression, dropped a brief kiss on her forehead, murmured, ‘So be it,’ and walked through to his bedroom, closing the door behind him.

  It was a long time before Roz fell asleep, and then only to wake up sweating but shivering and only by the greatest effort of will forced herself to calm down.

  And as the dawn broke she was thinking of Michael Howard and wondering who he had married with a haunting sense of sadness, but not, as Adam imagined, because she had been indulging in romantic daydreams about a reunion with Mike. That was impossible anyway, she knew, but she had more than once wished she could have explained things to him.

  She twisted restlessly and knew she would start to feel suffocated if she stayed in bed one moment longer.

  The air was clear and dewy and fresh as she arrived at the stables, and not a soul had stirred when she had let herself out of the house and stolen across the lawn. But the stables were a hive of activity, and the first person she bumped into was Adam’s trainer.

  ‘Well, I thought you’d be sleeping in this morning, Roz,’ he said with a grin. ‘Good party?’

  ‘Great, thanks, Les. Have you worked Nimmitabel yet?’

  ‘She’s just about to go out. Want to ride her?’

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘Now why would I mind? You’re one of the best track riders I’ve seen. Just wish you were on the permanent staff. Anyway, she’s yours.’ Then he turned businesslike. ‘Three furlongs, three-quarter pace this morning, Roz, and give her a good warm up-—-but watch her, she’s fresh.’

  ‘Thanks, Les,’ Roz said warmly. ‘Will I work with another horse?’

  ‘No, take her out on her own. I want to watch her action. Hey, Jake,’ he called, and the stable jockey just about to mount an excited-looking brown filly, turned and touched his cap. ‘Mrs Milroy’ll take her,’ said Les.

  ‘Morning, ma’am,’ said Jake. ‘She’s a bit of a handful this morning.’

  ‘Good,’ said Roz, ‘that’s just what I need.’ And she sprang lightly up into the saddle, adjusted her cap while Jake held the filly and Les altered the irons. Then she was off.

  Twenty minutes later she was back in the stable yard with her cheeks glowing and her eyes bright, and even Les, who didn’t display much emotion about a horse unless it was really called for, was shaking his head—a sign of enthusiasm. ‘Goes like a bird, Roz. I reckon she’ll be everything your grandfather expected of her and more. She does it so easily. Long time since I’ve seen a galloper like her.’

  Roz slid off Nimmitabel to a little round of applause from everyone watching. ‘Thanks!’ she called breathlessly. ‘Can I wash her down and put her away? When do you think she’l1 be ready for her first start, by the way?’

  ‘A month or so,’ said Les. ‘Barring accidents and shin soreness, etcetera, but you don’t have to …’

  ‘I want to,’ Roz said firmly.

  ‘But Adam …’

  ‘What Adam doesn’t know can’t hurt him. Come on, Bel, it’s just you and me this morning, as it used to be,’ Roz said softly to the horse, and led her away.

  But as she worked on the horse, walking her to cool her off, hosing her down, then walking her again and finally attending to her feet before putting her into a stall where a feed awaited her, Roz was aware of a decision——or at least the need to make a decision growing within her.

  She watched the filly tuck into the feed bin hooked on to her half stable door and played with her forelock for a time, then wandered away to a secluded spot where she could see the track and the horses working undisturbed.

  She found herself thinking that she had unwittingly got on to shaky ground. And that the crux of it all seemed to be that she had been deluding herself. She’d thought she had hidden her inner torment from Adam; she’d thought, well, I sleep with him whenever he wants it, I don’t make a fuss, and if I hate myself afterwards that’s my business …

  Yes, I did think that, she marvelled, and never even considered that he might know me so well. But why should I be so surprised? He certainly knew what would make me marry him. No, that puts him in the wrong light, it wasn’t like that really, if I’m honest.

  She plucked a stem of grass and chewed it with eyes narrowed as she tried to concentrate and to wonder a little desolately where she’d gone wrong, why she’d gone wrong, why her best intentions had misfired …

  She shrugged and watched two horses working together, pounding down the straight, then she closed her eyes and sniffed the air and simply listened for a while, to all the sounds that made up the life of a racing stable, the faint cracking of whips as the two horses on the track reached the winning posts, the clatter of hooves on concrete, horses snorting indignantly, soft voices, hoses gushing, buckets clanking. And there were the smells-—molasses, manure, the smell of straw and tar, dust and grass, leather.

  Adam Milroy had acquired his wealth in a variety of ways—he was good at wheeler-dealing, he had once told Roz. In fact, she’d learned that when he was a child, two things had fascinated him—electronics and horses, both of which he had acquired considerable understanding of. But it was his flair for computers that had seen the mushrooming of his small electronics business——started on a shoestring, Flavia always boasted—to a nationwide company.

  And that, for a boy from the bush, Flavia always added, is really something. But Roz now knew that the ‘bushie’ tag was somewhat overdone. Werrington might have been an outback cattle property, but the Milroys had always contrived, through good times and bad, to

  send their children away to good schools, whatever else they might have gone without. And they had placed great store on not only education but culture, particularly Charles Milroy, who had read aloud to them every evening and conducted his own classes on a wide variety of subjects whenever he could lay his hands on his flock. He should have been a teacher, not a grazier, Margaret had told Roz once. He was mad about literature and music. So was her mother, and it became quite a battle of wits to evade their little sessions. ‘Oddly enough,’ said Margaret, ‘Aunt Elspeth used to help us. She thought it was a lot of nonsense. Very down-to-earth and practical is our Aunt Elspeth. I think that’s where Adam got his streak of practicality—it certainly wasn’t from his father. Uncle Charles was a real dreamer.’

  What about his mother? Roz had asked, and Margaret had thought for a bit, then shrugged and agreed that Aunt Flavia was actually quite a practical person too, yet in a different way from Aunt Elspeth, whose motto in life could be summed up in two words—no frills.

  But it was his success in the electronics world that had allowed Adam to indulge his other passion, horses, although by the time he had grown up it could be said, and had been sometimes, that he had three great interests in life——beautiful women being the third.

  Yet, while he made a profit on his breeding and racing involvements——Roz found it unthinkable that anything would mean so much to Adam that he would be prepared to lose money at it, and was oddly comforted by this thought—he had never raced or bred a champion.

  Certainly, some handy horses, quite a lot of them, but not one you could call an out-and-out champion.

  And that’s where I came in, she thought very early in the morning after her birthday party as she sat beside Adam’s training track and his private training establishment with the sound of the voice of his private trainer ringing in her ears as some unfortunate strapper copped a mouthful over some misdemeanour.

  ‘Life’s really odd sometimes,’ she said softly to herself. ‘If Grandad hadn’t … well, it all goes back a bit further, if my parents hadn’t died and left me to my grandfather to be brought up, who was such a honey but a compulsive gamb
ler … If he hadn’t acquired Nimmitabel’s dam Amanda Belle and got her in foal in extraordinary circumstances to a top-flight stallion … If our stables hadn’t been burnt down, causing Grandad’s death, and leaving me with an orphan foal, a mortgage, so many debts—-well, I wouldn’t be here today, would I?’

  No, she thought, I wouldn’t. But I am. I turned my back on Mike, I weighed up all the odds and came to a decision … what else can I do but stick to it?

  ‘You were up very early, Roz.’

  ‘Yes, I was, Adam,’ she said patiently as she poured herself some coffee in the breakfast room. It was Saturday, she remembered, but although it was still early, Adam was already dressed for the races in a navy blue suit and a pink shirt with a white collar—although his jacket and blue tie were hung over the back of his chair. She was just about to comment on how early he was ready when he remarked,

  ‘You said that with a curious air of resignation, Roz.’

  ‘Did I?‘ She blinked and cast her mind back. ‘Oh, um … maybe because you’re the third person to mention it to me. Both Milly and Jeanette have just remarked on it. Fourth—Les was surprised too.’

  ‘I see.’ He held her gaze levelly and she wondered if there was something wrong with her appearance—she wore blue jeans, boots and a yellow and blue checked shirt and had tied her hair back loosely with a ribbon. But then he turned his attention back to his breakfast and said, reaching for the butter, ‘So you were not trying to humour me?’

  ‘Humour you ?’

  ‘Like a good little wife? If you recall we … er … had words last night.’ He looked up briefly, his eyes glinting.

  Roz swallowed a very hot mouthful of coffee and spluttered slightly. ‘I recall,’ she said when she was able to.

  ‘Or perhaps you’re waiting for me to humour you, Roz?’ he said politely, and started to eat.

  She watched and battled a tide of helplessness, wondering what had ever made her think she was a match for Adam Milroy in any way, but particularly in this dangerous mood. Yet only a short while ago she had made a decision to try and get their relationship back on its old footing, after fruitlessly pondering why she had allowed it to slip out of gear, so to speak, why she had allowed herself to be trapped into displaying such emotion. The only answer she had been able to come up with was that Jeanette’s words the night before had somehow triggered everything that had happened since.