The Last-Minute Marriage

by Marion Lennox

  ‘We need to stay in the same place.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘I have a settee in the sitting room that turns into a bed. You needn’t worry.’

  ‘I’m not worried.’ It was true. It was impossible to be worried when she was feeling as she was feeling. As if she was floating.

  ‘So…you think we should go home?’

  ‘One more turn around the dance floor,’ she whispered and he held her closer and she felt him smile.

  ‘How about six?’

  The fairytale ended at the front door.

  Robert brought them home. Marcus helped his bride alight from the car; she stumbled on her bad ankle and he refused to listen to her protests. He swept her into his arms and carried her into his apartment and the door slammed behind them.

  They were left alone. The lights were dim. He was standing in the hallway holding a girl in his arms-his bride-and she was gazing up at him with eyes that were luminescent, trembling, sweetly innocent.

  She was so desirable. And she was his wife! He could kiss her right now…

  ‘Cut it out,’ she told him, jerking her face back from his and jiggling in his arms. ‘Marcus Benson, put me down. Right now.’

  ‘I thought-’

  ‘I know what you thought. I can read it in your eyes.’

  ‘Peta…’

  ‘I knew you’d want something.’ She bounced and wriggled some more and he was forced to set her down.

  ‘I don’t want anything.’

  She fixed him with an old-fashioned look. ‘You’re saying you don’t want to take me to bed?’

  There was nothing he’d like better. She read his expression and he couldn’t get his face under control fast enough. ‘Ha!’

  ‘I didn’t marry you,’ he said softly, ‘to get you into my bed.’

  ‘No. You married me as a favour. But now we’re married…’

  ‘It’d be a bonus,’ he admitted, and smiled. ‘You’re saying you don’t think so?’

  ‘I don’t want to go to bed with you.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘There’s a definite physical attraction…’

  ‘Between man and woman,’ she snapped. ‘And tom cats and lady cats. And ducks and drakes and pigs and sows. You dress up in that gorgeous suit and you treat me like you have today and of course there’d be an attraction. But there’s no way in the wide world I’m going to bed with you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  It was a reasonable question, he thought, but Peta had other ideas on what was reasonable.

  ‘If I fall in love with you I’m stuffed.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Work it out, smart boy,’ she said and kicked off her bridal sandals. ‘Cinderella had no life at all. I’m going to bed. Do I sleep on the settee or do you?’

  ‘You can take the bed.’

  ‘Right, then,’ she told him and walked into the bedroom with scarcely a limp. And closed the door behind her. Leaving him…flabbergasted.

  What followed was a night of no sleep.

  How could she sleep? Peta lay in Marcus’s too-big bed and watched the moonlight play over her bridal gown, which was draped carefully over the bedside chair. The dress seemed to shimmer in the moonlight, as if it had a life of its own.

  A bridal gown. She’d had a wedding.

  There’d be photographs, she thought. There’d been so many cameras pointed at her this day. Maybe one day years from now she’d leaf through an ancient magazine and see this picture.

  The picture of a fairytale. With Marcus. Her Prince Charming.

  Did Prince Charming milk cows?

  Maybe not. In fact, he’d made that a condition of marriage. The thought made her chuckle. She should sleep, she thought. Tomorrow was another huge day.

  But Marcus was just through the wall. And he’d wanted to take her to his bed. It had been so hard to bounce herself out of the fantasy, she thought, and wondered how she’d ever done it.

  He married me, she told herself. I’m his wife.

  What, so you’d go to bed with him to repay the debt?

  No, but…

  You’d go to bed with him because he makes your toes curl. She winced and wriggled her toes, making them uncurl in the dark.

  It’d be a disaster, she told the other part of her brain-the part that was screaming at her to swallow her principles, forget her sensible self and…and do what good girls didn’t do. We’re worlds apart. You owe him a lot but you don’t owe him your heart.

  I have his bed, she told the dark. His bed and his name, without the man. Best of both worlds.

  Maybe having a man in her bed would be no bad thing. Maybe having Marcus…

  Go home, Peta, she told herself. Get yourself back to your dogs if you want company. Settle for reality.

  Reality was good, she told herself. Reality was her future.

  But for now… She lay in the moonlight and looked at her wedding dress. And thought about Marcus.

  Reality seemed a long way away.

  He wanted the fantasy.

  Marcus lay in the dark and stared up at the ceiling. It was flat. Uninteresting. Boring.

  He was flat, uninteresting, boring.

  Today had been so different. Today he’d felt transformed. As if life somehow could be something of worth.

  Stupid thought.

  He lay back on his pillows and made himself remember all those weddings he’d been to as a child. His mother, starry-eyed in white, promising him the world.

  ‘This time he’s going to take us away from all this. We’re starting on a new life, Marcus,’ she’d said, over and over again.

  Yeah, right. Pure fantasy. Each time, the new life had begun before the wedding cake was finished and it had been invariably bleak and dreadful.

  So here he was, caught up in the same fantasy his mother had used to make life bearable. White weddings. The fairytale.

  It was just as well Peta had sense for the both of them, he told himself. Otherwise he’d have her in his arms right now!

  Which was a truly crazy thought. To marry her was fine. But to make love to her as his wife… No!

  How on earth had he ever become caught up in this? A wife? Australia? The immediate future seemed ridiculous. He’d been caught by a pair of twinkling green eyes, hauled in as surely as his mother had, sucked in by promises.

  But it had been Marcus who’d made the promises.

  ‘And I’m surely not dreaming of any happy ever after,’ he told the ceiling. ‘My life’s here.’

  Alone with a ceiling?

  Whatever.

  He’d upgraded her ticket.

  Peta wriggled down into the cocoon of her first-class seat-cum-bed and tried really hard to think indignant thoughts. How had he found out her flight was economy? How had he managed to change it, and what right did he have to do so?

  But her knees weren’t under her chin. She was nestled into a full-length bed. There were fluffy blankets tucking her in, soft pillows under her head, soft music playing on her personal entertainment system.

  She was on her way back to reality. Back to cows and hard grind. Maybe she could indulge in a little fantasy for now, she thought. And that was exactly what she was doing. Especially as her husband-her husband!-was lying right beside her. If she just reached out…

  She didn’t want to reach out. Of course she didn’t. Peta O’Shannassy had a very tight grip on reality.

  Sort of.

  He could have used his own jet. But: ‘You know how she reacted with the clothes,’ Ruby had told him. ‘She’ll react exactly the same to a private jet.’

  ‘She agreed to your plans for a wedding dress.’

  ‘That was fantasy. A private jet, in Peta’s eyes, would be ridiculous.’

  ‘But hell-sitting round airports…’

  ‘Join the human race.’

  ‘I’ve been part of the human race,’ Marcus had said grimly. ‘I’ve moved on.’

  ‘Well, pretend for two w
eeks,’ Ruby had said bluntly, so here he was, on a commercial flight with the prospect of a five-hour stopover in Tokyo.

  It was comfortable enough.

  Who was he kidding? He was really comfortable. And Peta’s round-eyed astonishment had been a delight, even if he did have the feeling she was controlling indignation at his perceived waste of money.

  Peta. His bride.

  Fantasy… Reality.

  The lines were becoming more blurred by the minute.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE moment she landed she transformed.

  For the last few hours of the flight Peta had withdrawn into herself. Finally, at the announcement to fasten seatbelts for landing, she turned to Marcus, her face resolute.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ she told him. ‘You can stop pretending now.’

  ‘Stop pretending?’

  ‘I mean…’ She flushed a little but her face became more resolute. ‘The whole wedding thing. Letting me travel with you first class. Buying me clothes. Treating me as your wife. It’s been great but you don’t need to do it any more. No one here cares.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  She smiled at that but it was an uncomfortable little smile.

  ‘I’m sorry. Maybe I put that really badly. It’s just… Well, hardly anyone here will have heard of you, and they surely won’t be fussed whether we’re married or not.’

  ‘You mean… Are you telling me to go away?’

  ‘You really think that Charles will check that we’re together?’

  ‘Charles will check.’

  ‘How can he?’

  ‘Private investigators are relatively cheap when there’s a lot of money at stake.’

  ‘He wouldn’t.’

  ‘He would.’

  She thought about it and then nodded, her face decisive. ‘Okay. Maybe you’re right. But no one can come further than our farm gate without the dogs barking their heads off. You can have Hattie’s house. My aunt lived separately from us but her house is on the farm, too.’

  He thought about it. ‘You don’t want me to stay with you?’

  ‘I don’t have a guest bedroom.’

  ‘You have four brothers.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, if three of them aren’t living at home, why isn’t there a spare bedroom?’

  She paused. She opened her mouth to speak but then appeared to think better of it. And then she smiled.

  ‘You can have Hattie’s house,’ she told him again. ‘Let’s leave everything else for now. I wonder who’s going to meet us?’

  Everybody met them. The plane touched down in Melbourne; they walked through the doors from Customs and Peta disappeared in the midst of a mêlée of large, male redheads. Marcus saw Peta’s brothers as a group, their family likeness unmistakeable as they leaned forward over the barrier in their eagerness to see their sister, and then Peta was through and they merged. Peta was enfolded into a group hug, and the hug went on for so long he thought he’d lost her.

  But finally she was released. Tousled and laughing, she gazed at them all with affection. Four boys, three of whom were well over six feet, and the fourth a smaller, freckled one with the promise of at least a foot of growth to come.

  ‘I’ve missed you all so much,’ she told them. ‘Come and meet Marcus.’

  The oldest broke away from the group at that. Lean and gangly, just out of adolescence, the boy’s smile died and his face grew serious. Red-headed, freckled like his brothers and all of about twenty, the kid had the same look on his face as the one Peta had worn when Marcus first met her. Defiance, and a vulnerability he was trying to hide. He stepped forward and took Marcus’s hand in a grip that was surprisingly strong for one so young.

  ‘I’m Daniel,’ he said simply. ‘Peta rang. She told us what you’d done for us. We’re all so grateful.’

  And Marcus, man of the world, world-weary and sophisticated, found himself almost blushing. For heaven’s sake. The gratitude of a stripling…

  The gratitude of them all. They were all looking at him as if he was their very own personal genie. Peta was smiling, and…

  And heck. Enough was enough.

  ‘I only married your sister,’ he growled. ‘That’s hardly a huge sacrifice on my part.’

  Daniel managed a shy grin. ‘I don’t know about that, sir. She’s very bossy.’

  ‘Hey!’ Peta said.

  ‘She’s messy, too,’ the littlest one volunteered. ‘And she can’t cook for nuts.’

  ‘She’s pretty good at animal obstetrics, though,’ the second one-Christopher?-volunteered. ‘Daniel’s doing vet science but he still reckons there’s no one he’d rather have around during a messy birth than Peta.’

  ‘Meet my brothers,’ Peta said faintly. ‘Daniel, Christopher, William and Harry. It’s just as well you didn’t meet them before taking the matrimonial plunge, hey? A list of all my faults and virtues-including delivering cows. Good grief!’ She reached out and grabbed the littlest again, hugging him close. ‘Did you miss me?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Harry sounded embarrassed but he let himself be hugged and even managed a swift hug back before masculine pride tugged him backward. ‘Can we go home now?’

  ‘Hey, how grateful is that?’ Daniel demanded. ‘Harry’s been really well looked after in university college.’

  ‘You weren’t found out?’

  ‘Everyone knew he was there,’ Daniel told her. ‘Even the masters. But they didn’t say a word.’

  ‘I was really good,’ Harry said with virtue. ‘I was so good I’m good up to my neck. Peta, I’m really glad you’re home.’

  ‘So you can be bad again?’

  ‘Yep,’ he said and everyone laughed.

  But the laughter was a little strained. Marcus was aware that he was being carefully appraised and the sensation was definitely unnerving.

  ‘I don’t suppose you guys have any free time to come back to the farm?’ Peta asked, and had three head shakes.

  ‘It’s end of term,’ Daniel told her. ‘Exams. In three weeks we’ll all be home to do the hay. Unless you need us.’ He cast a sideways glance at Marcus and his message was unmistakeable. Unless you need help with this strange guy you’ve brought home. Unless he’s not really the benefactor he’s supposed to be. ‘But meanwhile…’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I’ve got lectures this afternoon and so have the others. Can we leave the brat with you?’

  The brat. Peta had her arm around Harry’s shoulders and the three older boys were looking at him with expressions that said not one of them thought he was a brat. This family exuded affection, Marcus thought, and the sensation was so…well, warm that it made his gut twist in a sudden surge of longing. But that wasn’t what he was here for. He was involved enough with Peta. He had no intention of becoming more involved with her family.

  ‘I brought your truck into the car park,’ Daniel was telling his sister. ‘But you can’t all drive home in it. You won’t fit.’

  ‘I assume Marcus will hire a car. I doubt he’ll want to be stuck on the farm at my beck and call.’

  ‘Isn’t that what marriage is all about?’ William asked.

  ‘William…’ Peta’s tone was warning but the kid was grinning.

  ‘Hey, what would we know?’ he asked, spreading his hands. ‘But you guys have been married-what-two days? You must be old hands by now. Becking and calling all over the place.’

  There was general laughter. It was still strained-this was a situation that must surely lend itself to awkwardness-but they were nice kids, Marcus thought.

  They were a nice family. Of course. How could they not be when Peta was…

  No. He needed to stick with practicalities here. A car. He glanced down at his travel documents and, sure enough, there was a docket for car hire. But…

  ‘Maybe this isn’t big enough for all of us, either,’ he told them. ‘It’s a sports car from a specialist firm. Ruby knows what I like.’

  ‘What sort of sports car?’ Harry demanded, re
leasing his sister’s hand in an instant.

  ‘A Morgan 4/4.’

  ‘A Morgan?’ Harry’s eyes practically popped out on stalks. ‘You’ve hired a Morgan 4/4? Peta, you’ve married a guy who hires Morgans?’

  ‘Pretty cool, hey?’ Peta’s eyes twinkled at the bemused Marcus, and the strain eased. ‘I guess that settles that. Can we have a quick meal with you guys here to catch up with news? Then we’ll go. I’ll drive the truck and Marcus and Harry can follow behind in the…what did you say? The Morgan. Right. Let’s move.’

  Which was why an hour later Marcus found himself travelling south along the New South Wales coast road, not with his fantasy bride-his Cinderella-but with a scrubby schoolboy who asked questions at a mile a minute and who was clearly entranced by this new personage his sister had brought home specifically for his enjoyment.

  The farther south he and Harry drove, the more disconcerted he grew. Harry appeared to have accepted Peta’s explanation of this marriage as a great piece of good fortune-that good fortune appeared to have been capped off by Marcus’s taste in gorgeous blue Morgans-and Harry enveloped Marcus as if he’d been courting Peta for years. The little boy seemed totally, gloriously happy.

  ‘It’s not just because of the Morgan,’ he told Marcus. ‘It’s because I’m going home. You’ll love it.’

  He was more and more out of his ken.

  By the time Marcus arrived he’d driven through some of the loveliest country in the world-with a schoolboy by his side chattering thirteen to the dozen. He didn’t have a clue what he was letting himself in for.

  Peta had reached the farm before them. When he pulled to a stop she was crouched on the veranda steps of a dilapidated cottage, surrounded by a gaggle of misbegotten dogs. The dogs came barking furiously down the steps to the car and Peta followed.

  She was still limping, Marcus noticed. She was still the Peta he’d left two hours ago. She was wearing the clothes she’d worn on the aeroplane-the skirt and top they’d bought in New York to face Charles.

  But she looked indefinably different. The haunted air had gone, he thought. She was smiling and there was something about that smile…