Makeshift Marriage

by Marjorie Lewty

'I can imagine all sorts of things you might be doing. Now I've had a demonstration of your talents,' he drawled, his eyes passing over her with a long, assessing look.

  She flushed deeply. 'That's a rotten thing to say, Blake. I thought we'd left that particular subject behind for good.'

  'The subject of your talents in bed? Oh no, my dear, that's not a subject a man ever leaves behind, don't you know that?' He was looking at her in a way that sent a spasm of something like fear clutching at her inside.

  He stood up and deliberately took the empty glass from her fingers. 'You've finished your drink, I see. Now—how would you suggest we spend the time until dinner?'

  She looked away from his narrowed gaze that held an unmistakable meaning, and her heart began to throb with slow, suffocating beats. 'I d-don't know. I—I thought—'

  'Don't think,' he said softly. He lowered himself beside her on to the sofa and slid an arm round her waist, drawing her against him. 'Thinking is a bad habit at a time like this.' He pressed his cheek against her hair, nuzzling her ear gently. 'Maggie?' he whispered.

  She was tense all over as if an electric current had passed through her body, transfixing her. His hand was on her neck now, pushing away the thin cotton dress and stroking the smooth skin of her shoulder. Then he drew one finger down to her breast with a sensual, arousing touch that sent shivers of pleasure along her nerves.

  'Relax, sweetheart.' Blake's voice came huskily at her ear. 'We're so good together—remember?'

  He pushed her down gently, drawing away a little to unfasten the buttons at the front of her dress. She was swimming in a great warm wave of longing. In another moment she would reach up and pull him down to her. His fingers touched her skin lightly as he unfastened the buttons one by one, neatly and expertly. 'Wouldn't a zip be more practical?' he said, in an amused voice.

  Maggie never knew exactly why, but suddenly, at his words, a great revulsion of feeling overcame her. It was as if she stepped outside herself and saw the two of them lying there on the sofa. This had happened so many times before for Blake, with so many different girls. Probably he had said the very same words. He was a past-master in the art of lovemaking, he knew exactly the technique to get what he wanted from a girl.

  But something inside Maggie was screaming, I need more than that—to be one of the women he has made love to. I want something lasting—something special. I want his love, not just to be an object of desire.

  'No!' she gasped, pushing him away with all her strength and dragging herself upright, fumbling with shaking fingers to close the front of her dress. 'No—I don't want this—I told you. You promised!' she almost shouted as she saw his face darken and he reached out for her.

  She slid from his grasp and stumbled across the room, standing with her back to the bedroom door as if she were guarding it against invasion—which, perhaps, she was.

  Blake stood up, straightening his jacket. It was amazing how quickly he got possession of himself. He strolled to the drinks cabinet and refilled his glass. 'O.K., O.K.,' he said shortly, 'there's no need to get worked up about it. I merely thought we might attempt to close the breach between us, and I know of no better way. But if you don't want to, you don't. I'm not going to force myself on you.'

  It was extraordinary—she was capable of hurting his masculine pride, it seemed. She should have felt triumph, but instead she was conscious of a queer sense of remorse.

  She went across and touched his arm. 'I want to close the breach too, Blake, you must know that. But I expect a woman's way is different from a man's,' she added in her practical voice.

  He stood looking down at her for a long moment. Then he put a finger under her chin and tipped her head back. 'Funny little Maggie, you don't change, do you?' he said softly. Incredibly, he smiled and her heart seemed to miss a beat. It was so long since she had seen him smile. 'Perhaps we've been taking all this too seriously,' he said. 'We've been making a great big drama of it, both of us. Perhaps the time has come to draw back a bit and take things as they come. What do you think, Maggie, shall we call a truce?'

  She wanted to laugh aloud and throw her arms round his neck. Instead she said quietly, 'I think, Blake, that that's a very good idea.'

  He went on looking at her, his face suddenly quizzical. Then he said briskly, 'Good. Well then, suppose you start by telling me how your day went?'

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  This was what she had wanted, she told herself, swallowing a quite unreasonable twinge of disappointment. To be on their old terms of easy friendship was all she could expect. She must somehow manage to forget that Blake had held her in his arms, had roused her to a pitch of passion she had never thought herself capable of. She mustn't let herself remember, and yearn for him or the situation would become impossible.

  So she put a bright smile on her lips and began, 'Well, there's this Hong Kong Chinese girl I met in Macau, Ling San, and she's starting her own beauty shop in the hotel arcade and—'

  Blake listened with apparent interest, putting in a question here and there. When she had finished he said, 'It sounds quite a good proposition. Although I can't quite see you in a beauty shop, Maggie.'

  She pulled a face at him. 'Why not?'

  He put out a hand and tweaked a brown curl, as he had done many times before when they had laughed and teased each other. 'I suppose because I'm used to seeing you on a building site in jeans and windcheater. Or in the office in a businesslike trouser suit.'

  'Oh, people can change,' she said lightly.

  He looked down at her with an expression she couldn't interpret. 'Yes,' he said, 'people can change.' Then he began to talk about something else almost immediately and she had to make what she could of that remark.

  That conversation set the tone of their relationship in the next weeks. Blake was friendly but enigmatic and Maggie didn't dare question him, although she longed to ask about Fiona, about what he had in mind for the future of their marriage, whether he intended to get a divorce when the time came. Blake didn't ask any questions about her feelings or proffer any information about his own. It was a truce, but with no real understanding. An armed truce, it could be called.

  Never did he attempt to make love to her again, and only in the presence of one of the office staff did he touch her or kiss her. At night he took it for granted that he should sleep on the sofa in the big lounge room of their suite. He was punctiliously polite about sharing the shower-room, and grateful for any small chore she performed for him, like sewing on a button or washing through a pair of socks or a thin shirt when he needed something quickly.

  They might, Maggie thought, almost have been brother and sister.

  And of course he never knew of the sleepless hours that she spent tossing alone in the big bed, breaking all her good resolutions about not remembering how it had been when they had shared it, walking up and down silently on the soft carpet, half crazy with her need for him. Only the thought of his contemptuous acceptance of her stopped her from opening the door that divided them.

  Then one night he disappeared—she heard the door close behind him—and didn't return until early morning. Lying wide awake, shivering in the cool of the air-conditioning, Maggie drew her own conclusions about where he had been. She knew all about the topless bars and night-clubs of Hong Kong.

  After that it was a little easier for her to sleep at night. She only had to remind herself that Blake didn't change— if he couldn't have Fiona, then any girl would do.

  She saw hardly anything of him from the time he left after breakfast until he returned in the evening, hot and tired, and staggered into the shower-room. He was totally immersed in the job now. Maggie couldn't resist asking the odd question about it now and again and he answered quite readily, even going into some of the details that she would be familiar with—matters that they had been working on together before they came out here. One day he took her out to the site in the New Territories and she watched the great earth-moving machines at work.

  It was awesome
to think they could carve off the top of a hill and drop it into the water and then build on it. 'It's absolutely fascinating,' she breathed. 'I know it was all worked out and it's been done over and over again in Hong Kong, but somehow I never quite believed it was possible until this moment.'

  She turned to Blake, her eyes shining, and he smiled down at her. 'Missing being in on the action?' he queried. 'Isn't the beauty shop a good substitute?'

  'Oh, I'm quite happy,' she replied quickly. Blake wasn't going to be allowed to guess how much his rejection had hurt her.

  He said quietly. 'It was J.M.'s decision, you know, not mine, that you should stop working with me. He thought I needed you more as a wife than as an assistant.' He didn't give her time to make any reply, if, indeed she could have thought of one. He took her arm. 'Now, come along, I want to show you my headquarters.'

  As she went with him she was aware of a warmth spreading through her that had nothing to do with the hot, humid atmosphere of the place. So it hadn't been Blake's decision to get her out of her job after all. It hadn't been that he didn't want her working with him. That was a real consolation, another tiny boost to her confidence.

  Helping Ling San to set up her beauty shop was a new experience for Maggie. Sometimes she stopped and looked at her reflection in one of the long mirrors framed in silver filigree and hardly knew herself. The long-legged tomboy who had played on equal terms with her three brothers, the jeans-and-sweater student who had turned into a capable woman engineer, was now engaged in the business of glamour, of lotions and creams and face-masks, of mascara and eye-shadows, of powders and blushers and lipsticks, in such a bewildering range of colour and texture that Maggie's head spun as she arranged them on the rose-tinted glass tops of the cabinets.

  But Ling San knew exactly what she wanted. 'And you, my dear Maggie, will be my guinea-pig,' she announced, her little head on one side, her dark eyes full of fun. 'That does not sound very flattering, but wait until you see what I shall do to you. I have got a little out of practice since I left New York,' she explained as she pushed Maggie into one of the new treatment couches, upholstered in soft amethyst leather. 'I must see if I can get my touch back.'

  Maggie submitted, relaxing happily as Ling San's cool expert fingers massaged her face and neck with soothing strokes. 'It is quite a pity,' the Chinese girl lamented, 'that you have such a beautiful skin to begin with. There is nothing to work a miracle upon because the miracle is already there, but at least we can experiment to find the perfect make-up for you.'

  And experiment she did. 'A warm, glowing look for daytime,' she mused, 'emphasising your lip colour. You have such a tempting mouth, Maggie. So generous, so inviting.'

  Maggie felt the colour rising to her cheeks. 'I always thought it was too large,' she mumbled, but Ling San shook her head decisively.

  'It is a mouth a man would fall in love with,' she announced with all the assurance of a professional in such matters, and Maggie knew better than to argue. It wasn't true, of course. Blake had certainly not fallen in love with her mouth. Then her pulses quickened as she felt again the probing touch of his lips on hers, forcing her mouth to open to his kiss. With an effort she tried to concentrate on what Ling San was saying.

  'And for evenings,' the Chinese girl mused, 'mysterious, romantic, dreamy.'

  Ling San was in her element. She smoothed and patted and brushed, standing back to assess the results like an artist with his picture, chatting away to herself as she worked. 'Just the lightest dusting of powder over the foundation, a touch of shimmering blusher high on the cheeks here—and here. You have very beautiful bone-structure, Maggie. And your eyes—yes, a bronze shadow, I think, to make them glow like those lovely velvety wallflowers you grow in English gardens. There, I am getting quite poetic!'

  The results of the experiments sometimes astonished Maggie and sometimes gave her a heady sense of elation. But always, before she left in the evening, the exotic make-ups were carefully removed; that was her one condition. If she were going to confront Blake with a new Maggie (and she hadn't quite made up her mind about this yet) then everything must be right for the occasion. 'He's used to me looking ordinary,' she said to Ling San. 'I don't know whether he's going to take to my glamorous image.'

  Ling San argued, 'All men like their women to look glamorous, my dear Maggie, and I'm sure your Blake is no different.'

  Maggie agreed inwardly that that was probably true. Blake's girl-friends had all been lovelies, and she had never imagined she could compete. But now, under Ling San's clever hands, she began to wonder if perhaps she could.

  It was over a month before Ling San's beauty shop was ready to open, but finally the time arrived. Every last pot and bottle and packet and tube had been delivered and stocked. The very latest equipment had been installed. The whole shop, with its decor of amethyst shading to pale shell-pink, glowed with a muted, chic appeal. Here, rich women would come to be cosseted and pandered to, and sent out looking even more polished and urbane, fashionable and elegant than when they came in.

  As the day approached for the opening party Maggie became more and more undecided. Should she buy a romantic dress, let Ling San get to work on her, and if she did, would Blake be impressed—or indifferent—or even angry? She didn't know. She never had the least idea what Blake was thinking these days. On the surface their relationship was amicable, but it frightened her even to guess what lay below the surface.

  'Have you asked Blake if Wednesday is O.K. for him?' Ling San asked Maggie. 'I know how busy he is, but we must choose a time when he can come to the party. I cannot wait to see his face when he sees his new wife!'

  'Ling San, I'm not quite sure—' began Maggie, but the Chinese girl was poring over her list of guests, biting the end of her pencil. 'Dietrich will bring many of his rich clients,' she said. 'He has promised. And they will bring their elegant wives. And you will look more elegant than any of them, Maggie. They will wonder who it was that did your hair and chose your make-up and they will guess, and I shall have a long, long queue waiting the next morning.' She laughed gaily. 'Well, it may not be quite like that, but there is no harm in hoping. Now, let us talk about your dress, Maggie.'

  Maggie smiled and sighed and gave in. She couldn't tell Ling San about her doubts. They had had such fun together, and Ling San was so innocently pleased with her plan for a transformed Maggie, that it would be too unkind to refuse. 'I was wondering if you would come with me and help me choose,' she said, and was rewarded by Ling San's beaming smile.

  'I so hoped you would ask me,' she confessed. 'Let us go this afternoon. We will look at all the boutiques and all the big department stores and have a lot of fun.'

  Maggie agreed. 'Just so long as you don't want me to wear scarlet,' she said.

  'Scarlet? You?' Ling San screamed in horror. 'Never in this world! It would not suit you at all. But why do you say no scarlet, though?' She lifted her pencil-thin eyebrows.

  'Blake doesn't like it,' said Maggie wryly, and Ling San asked no more questions. She had often told Maggie that she believed that wives should dress to please their husbands, which meant that they should look their most appealing selves.

  That evening, over dinner at their usual restaurant, Maggie asked Blake about the party.

  'Oh lord, must I?' he groaned. 'I've got a hell of a lot of paper work to get through in the next couple of weeks.'

  'Ling San will be terribly disappointed if you don't come,' Maggie said, adding with a sideways grin, 'She's taken quite a fancy to you, it seems.'

  Maggie and Blake had dined with the Hausers, at their luxurious apartment high up on Victoria Peak, one evening soon after Maggie had started to work with Ling San, and the occasion had been quite a success. The two men had got on well together, talking business until Ling San put a stop to it by insisting that Blake and Maggie should learn to play mah-jongg. Blake had approved of Ling San too. 'She's like a Chinese work of art,' he said in his amused voice. 'Quite exquisite, and very feminine.'


  'I'm glad you like her,' Maggie said brightly. It hurt a little to think that never in this world would he describe her in those words. She was 'Maggie' again now. Good old Maggie. Maggie the reliable friend. Maggie the colleague with whom he was once again talking over his problems at work. She wondered bleakly if he had ever seen her as a desirable woman at all, not even on the night he made love to her and drew a passionate response from her. That was all in the past. Now he was looking elsewhere for his women, she supposed, as he had disappeared every night this last week and only come back in time for breakfast, without making an excuse or offering an explanation for his absence.

  It wouldn't go on long like this between them, Maggie thought. It couldn't. Soon now, they would have to talk it out and make some plan for their future. Whatever Blake himself wanted, she didn't think she could go on living this way, a wife and yet not a wife.

  And there was something else too. She hadn't faced it yet; she hadn't even tried to imagine how it would affect the situation if she were actually pregnant. It was a huge, awesome possibility that got more and more like a probability as each day passed. Maggie couldn't allow herself to believe it yet. More than anything she longed to have Blake's baby. But how Blake himself would view the prospect was an unknown quantity. There was just one thing about which she had already made up her mind in advance. Nothing and nobody—not even Blake himself—would persuade her to get rid of Blake's child.

  The day of the opening party arrived. Blake had gone off very early to the building site in the New Territories. 'I'll make it if I can,' he had promised vaguely. 'But don't expect me to be on time. I have to go into the office when I get back.'

  It had been arranged that the guests should assemble in the salon. There they would drink champagne and toast the success of the new venture. After that they would all repair to the hotel's most exclusive restaurant for dinner, arrangements for which had been made in advance. There would be almost fifty invited guests and Maggie thought that it was going to cost Dietrich a pretty penny, but he seemed quite oblivious of the expense. It was enough that his adored little wife wanted it. Ling San basked in his loving generosity and showed, whenever they were together, that she returned his adoration. Lucky couple, Maggie thought wistfully.