By Marriage Divided

by Lindsay Armstrong

  ‘How would it be if we went into partnership?’

  She blinked at him. ‘In what way?’

  ‘If I bought a share in your business and put in some management, say. You could still design but the day-to-day running of the place, plus all the energy you expend on marketing et cetera, would be taken care of and you’d have a lot more time to be a wife.’

  She opened and closed her mouth several times but was quite unable to find a thing to say.

  He smiled and touched his fist to the point of her chin. ‘Think about it while I’m away, then. It was only a thought.’

  ‘OK…’

  ‘And why don’t you start looking for our new place in town?’ he suggested.

  ‘Yes. I will. Can I drive you to the airport?’

  ‘If you like, although you don’t have to. I…’ he paused ‘…usually take a taxi.’

  ‘Ah,’ Domenica murmured, ‘but look at it this way—taxi drivers are all very well, but they don’t come in and have a cup of coffee with you, nor do they kiss you goodbye—’

  ‘Thank heavens!’

  ‘And they don’t have your extreme welfare at heart, your safety in mind, not to mention their own impending sense of loss.’

  He took her hand and raised it to his lips. ‘It’s only ten days.’

  ‘I know,’ she said gloomily. ‘That doesn’t mean to say I won’t be miserable.’

  ‘I could put someone in to take over from you right now, Domenica,’ he offered.

  ‘Angus, thanks.’ She folded his hand around hers and rested it against her cheek. ‘I don’t think you could, though, and I’m just being silly! But I do reserve the right to drive you to the airport.’

  She was extremely busy while he was away and, although they spoke to each other daily, she was tense and restless without him. After he’d been away for five of the ten days, she identified the cause of her tension as not solely to do with missing him, but the question of selling him a share of her business.

  It sounded so sane and rational. She was a wife. She was also a wife whose husband had business interests abroad and travelled a lot. She was the one who had yearned for this marriage, but—and it surprised her what a big ‘but’ this was in her mind—surrendering any part of her small empire, even to Angus, would be difficult.

  It occurred to her that she wanted to have her cake and eat it. But how could she want to have him constantly in her life without being prepared to make any sacrifices for it? Because she still wasn’t one hundred per cent sure about his motives for marrying her?

  She found herself wondering this, lying in bed one night but unable to sleep.

  She got up and made herself a midnight snack with a cool drink, and pursued her internal dialogue. There were all sorts of things to take into account, she told herself. Without the reassurance of his presence, it was natural to be lonely and correspondingly…tilting at windmills, something she was prone to in any case, she thought ruefully. Or at least had been accused of it.

  It was also natural to be suffering some reaction. In the space of less than a month she’d gone from heartbreak to intense joy, to being married almost before she’d had a chance to draw a breath, to a lovely honeymoon but, oh, so short, and now, to being alone again. Why wouldn’t she be feeling a little shell-shocked?

  Unless, she thought, it was the first occasion she’d had the time, and presence of mind, to look past all the passion and glory, even the homeliness of being at Lidcombe Peace with him—to the fact that, without her taking the drastic step of leaving him, he might never have asked her to marry him.

  She sighed desolately and took herself back to bed. But the next morning, she managed to convince herself she was simply lonely and missing him terribly and that was what it was all about. That same evening, however, he rang to say that he’d have to extend his trip by a week because of a domestic currency crisis that had thrown the country he was in into turmoil and was having a direct effect on one of his companies.

  She reassured him that she was fine and quite understood, but as she put the phone down she found that her first reaction was—nothing’s changed!

  ‘Nat,’ she said, the day Natalie got back to work after her holiday—Angus was due home in two days’ time—‘I’ve been toying with the idea of putting on someone to fill in for me when I can’t be here. What do you think?’

  ‘I think it’s an excellent idea. Now you’re a married lady, you don’t want to be working all your life.’ She paused and eyed Domenica. ‘As a matter of fact I was wondering whether you’d want to quit altogether?’

  ‘No.’ Domenica hesitated. ‘But we can afford an extra staff member now and I think that should take enough pressure off me for, well, you know!’

  ‘Your wifely duties?’ Natalie suggested and they both laughed until Natalie sobered and added, ‘Doesn’t Angus mind you working?’

  ‘Angus is realistic enough to know that I’d go crazy without something to do and also—’ she looked around ‘—what this all means to me. But I do need to be able to travel with him, and, as you yourself know, that can come up within half an hour!’

  ‘I do,’ Natalie agreed wryly, but somehow managed to look sceptical as well.

  ‘What?’ Domenica asked.

  But Natalie only shrugged and refused to be drawn, saying it was nothing.

  Domenica regarded her friend and partner frustratedly. ‘He did suggest that he bought a share in the company and put in some management of his own. How would you feel about that?’

  ‘If I had to lose you—’

  ‘I would always design,’ Domenica broke in.

  ‘All the same, if it came to having to break up our partnership and find another, I’m sure I couldn’t go wrong with Angus—yes, I would do it.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Domenica commented.

  Which was hardly enlightening, Natalie pointed out. She also added, ‘He is your husband, Dom.’

  ‘I know,’ Domenica said slowly, ‘but I’d like to try it my way first, if it’s OK with you.’

  Her reunion with Angus spoke for itself.

  He came back on a Friday and they spent the weekend at Lidcombe Peace in a daze of bliss, as she remarked once.

  The remark was prompted by the events that followed as they happened to be getting ready for bed on the Friday evening. And she happened to be wearing the camellia-pink voile dress she’d been wearing when he’d first laid eyes on her.

  He mentioned this to her as he stilled her hands on the buttons and appointed himself to the task of undoing them.

  ‘I do remember,’ she replied, studying his dark head as he freed each button. ‘I also remember how, on that occasion, you looked through this dress as if it simply didn’t exist.’

  He glanced up with the most wicked glint in his grey eyes and didn’t deny the charge. In fact, after agreeing that he’d done precisely that, he added that it was the first time she’d looked down her nose at him.

  ‘Wouldn’t you have, in my shoes?’ she countered.

  He straightened and slid the dress off her shoulders. Beneath it she wore a champagne camisole with a lace front and a matching pair of high-cut briefs.

  He said, as the dress slid to the floor, ‘I think you have to make some allowances for we poor males of the species, Domenica. On the other hand…’ he lifted the hem of the camisole and waited until she stretched her arms above her head ‘…I’m all in favour of you being at your most haughty and arrogant should any other man but me look at you like that now.’

  He pulled the camisole off but she didn’t lower her arms immediately, although she linked her fingers above her head.

  ‘I see,’ he said gravely, his eyes on the way her breasts had tautened.

  ‘Apart from the obvious, what do you see, Angus?’ she asked, with her own wicked little glint.

  ‘That I’m going to be made to pay for my indiscretions—that you fully plan to drive me wild, Domenica, or something like that,’ he murmured.

  ‘Something l
ike that,’ she agreed huskily, and turned away from him, but only to sit down on their bed, then lie back, and she spread her hair out with her fingers, lifted one leg to point her toe, then lowered her foot to the bed with her knee bent. And looked up at him with something akin to a challenge in the dark blue of her eyes.

  He sat down beside her but didn’t touch her.

  She grimaced, then raised her hips, wriggled out of her briefs and tossed the scrap of lace away.

  He put his hand on the slight mound of her stomach, then trailed his fingers down towards the triangle of dark curls at the base of it. ‘If I was impertinent that day, I was also right,’ he said barely audibly. ‘About all the—excellence that lay beneath that pink dress.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ she responded, ‘but if it is true, all this excellence is seriously in need of your particular brand of excellence before—’ she looked at him seriously ‘—you drive me quite wild, Angus,’ she confessed ruefully.

  They laughed together for a moment, then came together in a way she was later to tell him was pure bliss.

  The subject of selling him a share of her business didn’t come up until he’d been home for a while.

  She showed him all the apartments she’d looked at and was overjoyed when he liked the one she liked best, one right on the harbour with a roof garden. One that, somewhat to her amusement, he immediately bought and told her to decorate as she liked. The penthouse was to be sold furnished, as Angus had bought it, apart from his art collection, and Christy and Ian were considering buying Domenica’s apartment.

  ‘Don’t you want to have any input?’

  He thought for a bit. ‘I rather like this room.’ He looked around the penthouse den. ‘And I’d like a spot in a room like it for my picture. Otherwise it’s up to you.’

  She’d bought him the painting of the drover for a wedding present and he’d loved it. He’d bought her an oval ruby engagement ring surrounded by a collar of tiny diamonds. She had gasped, and still did sometimes, at the beauty of it.

  ‘OK, well, busy times ahead,’ she said. They were having a late supper after a concert, in the penthouse den, of tea and toasted cheese.

  ‘Did you think about my suggestion for Primrose and Aquarius?’ he asked idly.

  For some reason she took a little breath, then looked at him straightly. ‘Yes, I did. But I had another idea.’ She told him what it was.

  He didn’t respond for a moment or two and she watched his long fingers twirling his teaspoon while he stared absently into space. Then he shrugged. ‘It’s up to you.’

  ‘You just said that,’ she pointed out, ‘in relation to decorating our new home. Why do I get the feeling you don’t approve of this—it’s up to me? Or, am I imagining it?’

  He brought his gaze to her face and the frown on it. And said mildly, ‘If you can’t let them go, you can’t.’

  ‘Could you let Keir Conway go? By the way, I’ve always meant to ask you who the Conway is?’

  ‘No one in the company. It was my father’s first name.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t like your father, Angus.’

  He moved his head and seemed to be contemplating something rather puzzling. ‘He was still my father,’ he said at last. ‘And, no, I couldn’t let Keir Conway go, but I’m not the one who will be attempting to do two jobs.’

  ‘This way, I will be able to do two jobs, although that’s rather an odd description of it,’ she said slowly, and with a little chill running down her spine.

  ‘Then we have no problem, Mrs Keir.’ He lay back and allowed his heavy-lidded gaze to play upon her figure in the grey sheath dress she’d worn to the concert, with her grandmother’s pearls. ‘Why don’t you come and sit next to me? I might be able to come up with a better job description.’

  She hesitated, then her lips curved. ‘I’ve already been given one for—that kind of thing.’

  ‘Oh?’ He looked amused. ‘Such as? And who by?’

  ‘Nat. She referred to them as “wifely duties”.’

  ‘Well—’ he laughed softly ‘—that’s one way of putting it. But do you see it as a duty, Domenica?’

  ‘Ah.’ She got up, kicked her shoes off and came over to curl up on the settee beside him. ‘Not really.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘No, I’d put it more in terms of—job-wise—a rather thrilling and challenging occupation.’

  ‘I’m all for the thrilling but what’s so challenging about it?’ he asked wryly.

  She paused. She had her head on his shoulder, and couldn’t see his eyes, but she made no attempt to as she said, ‘There’s the challenge of not knowing what you’re really thinking sometimes.’

  ‘I could say the same for you.’

  She laughed. ‘I thought I was an open book to you! Aren’t I?’

  ‘Domenica…’ he picked up her hand and twisted the ruby on it ‘…no, but I don’t think we should worry about it or dwell on it. We are individuals and it’s probably nice to surprise even your nearest and dearest sometimes.’

  She lifted her head and looked at him at last, but was conscious of going into retreat mode—after all, if there were areas he didn’t want exposed to her, she had her own no-go zones, didn’t she? ‘If you say so, Angus. I shall do my best to surprise you from time to time,’ she added teasingly, although that little feeling of chill was still with her, but she had no idea how to deal with it now.

  ‘I can imagine. By the way, I’ve thought of a much better job description. How about designating you as The Fashion Designer Who Invades My Dreams—in capitals, and in the most specific way?’

  ‘I…’ she mused, and, suddenly deciding humour was the only way for her to keep going ‘…well, it’s a bit of a mouthful but I…like it. I’ve thought of one for you. The Chief Executive Who Makes Me Go Weak At The Knees.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Don’t you know it?’ she countered.

  ‘I’ve suspected it occasionally but perhaps I ought to put it to the test, as in right now.’

  ‘Be my guest,’ she said softly, but with her eyes alight with mischief.

  ‘You wouldn’t be planning to hold out on me for as long as you can?’ he asked, looking at her askance. ‘You have a certain look in your eye I mistrust devoutly.’

  ‘That will be for you to find out, Angus,’ she replied gravely. ‘But if you’re good enough at the job you may even be promoted.’

  ‘What to?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when the time comes, Mr Keir,’ she said coolly and stood up. ‘The office is this way.’ And she walked towards the bedroom, regally ignoring her shoes and purse.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Angus,’ she gasped, some time later, ‘if you don’t—bring this to a conclusion soon, I might die.’

  ‘I might just die with you,’ he said unevenly, ‘but I need to know if I’m worthy of a promotion.’

  He had brought her, with exquisite sensuality, to the brink several times, only to retreat at the last moment. And what had started in fun in the den had soon seen the tide of their desire run red hot but, she’d realized dimly, with a darker side to it. A contest, in fact, or maybe even a power play. But what was he so determined to get her to admit? she wondered as she shivered beneath his touch and made a husky sound in her throat as he teased her nipples with his teeth.

  She pressed her fingers through his hair and gasped, ‘Enough, it’s too nice, I give in…’

  He lifted his head and stared down into her eyes. ‘Tell me, Domenica.’

  ‘Yes,’ she breathed, ‘you’ve been promoted.’

  ‘To?’

  ‘The…The Husband Of My Heart—in capitals and every other way. Angus, I love you!’

  She felt him sigh, then he gathered her close and finally, and powerfully, brought them to the release they were both desperate for.

  ‘Domenica.’ He stopped her with a hand on her wrist as they were about to part the next morning, both on their way to work.

  They were just inside the front door
of the penthouse. He was wearing a fawn suit with a brown shirt and a dark green tie. She was dressed more formally than normal for work, in a straight cornflower linen dress with cinnamon suede accessories and her hair up—she was lunching with a fashion-store buyer.

  ‘Yes?’ Her shoes had little heels so she had to look up to him.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Fine. Why?’ Apart from the question in them, her blue eyes were cloudless, although there were the faintest of shadows beneath them.

  ‘Last night was—’ he paused ‘—a little dramatic.’

  She moved her slim shoulders. ‘I’m not some fragile flower.’

  ‘No,’ he agreed rather dryly, ‘but I still may have got a bit carried away.’

  ‘I may have had something to do with that,’ she said prosaically, although it was far from how she felt, and the unresolved question on her mind was what had it really been all about? Was there some deeper reason behind that tempestuous game they’d played last night? Which she had lost, although in the fiery finale, then the tender aftermath when she’d clung to him and he’d soothed her slim body as well as her mind, it had seemed as if they’d never been closer…

  ‘You did,’ he murmured. ‘You always do, in fact. But I’m sorry if I did get carried away. May I buy you lunch?’ He carried her hand to his lips.

  She started. She hadn’t told him why she was dressed up. ‘Um…actually, I can’t. I’ve got a business lunch. But, may I cook you dinner tonight, Mr Keir? I could even do your favourite meal.’

  She’d noted the way his hand had briefly hardened on hers as she’d spoken, and she held her breath. But a slow smile lit the back of his eyes as he said, ‘Not hamburgers?’

  ‘Uh-huh. With the works. Just how you like them.’

  ‘It’s a date,’ he said, and released her hand and bent his head to kiss her gently on the mouth. ‘Go safely, Mrs Keir.’

  But despite finding their old footing that evening when she made hamburgers and they drank beer with them, and despite the fact that their life seemed to even out after that, somewhere deep in her heart that little chill lingered.