Forbidden Fruit

by Charlotte Lamb

  It seemed very apt that it should be raining. London in the rain had such a bleak look, depressed and depressing—the grey-blue slate roofs of tall office blocks opposite shone wet, bare wintry trees bowed in resignation before the attack of the wind, and there was a sound of tyres on wet roads, the running of water in gutters. People huddled in doorways, ran for buses, hurried along the slippery pavements hunched in their coats.

  There was no wedding reception. Giles had ruled that that would be pointless, in the circumstances. He whisked her away without allowing her to exchange more than a few stiff words with anyone, and she was glad about that, even while she resented his high-handed assumption that he merely had to give an order for her to meekly obey.

  'What dreadful weather, isn't it?' his sister, Linda, said, trying not to stare at her. They had not met since before Malcolm's death, and, although she knew Linda had been told she was pregnant, it was obviously still a shock to actually see the evidence of it.

  'Were the roads difficult on your way here?' Leonie asked without caring whether Linda answered or not. What else was there to say? Anything that was really on their minds had to be left unsaid as too dangerous.

  She had said something to Mrs Kent, but she had hardly known what she was saying. Mrs Kent had answered her, but their eyes had never met. Perhaps they had both been thinking about that other wedding-day, which had never happened? It would all have been so different on that day. Not a brief, muttered exchange in a shabby London office, between people dressed as if for a day at work, but a sacred ritual, with everything that that meant—a bride in white, a church, the peal of an organ, crowds of smiling wedding guests, a groom waiting at an altar, faith, hope and love exchanged along with the rings they gave each other.

  How could she have met Malcolm's mother's eyes when they were both remembering what might have been?

  Yet Leonie had been very aware of the older woman's pallor and the fact that she was horribly thin. She had never bean anything but slim, an elegant woman with a good figure. Now she was fleshless, and as tense as a tightened bow. Malcolm's death had drained his mother, too, of life; had depleted her, left her looking some ten years older.

  Angela had come to hug her, half crying, and Leonie had tried not to cry, too, hurriedly turning to shake Andrew's hand.

  He made some conventionally polite remark, and she said, 'Thank you,' huskily.

  Leonie had been too angry to talk to her own mother, whose triumphant glitter she had seen out of the corner of her eye as she'd walked into the room. Martha was tense, too, but with excitement, exaltation. She was there to watch her daughter marry into a very rich family, and she was walking on air.

  She looked superb, of course; her pale hair in a French pleat at the back of her head; her face perfectly made-up, her slender body sheathed in coral silk, her small, thin feet in shoes that matched that shade exactly. She wore a tiny white silk hat perched on the top of her. head, a fine veil falling over her eyes, giving her an air of mystery.

  Leonie wondered how much the elegant clothes had cost her. A small fortune, no doubt, and Giles was probably going to have to foot the bill. Martha would make sure of that. It was humiliating, and Leonie almost hated her mother at that moment.

  'We're leaving now,' Giles had said, though, before she had had to decide whether or not to publicly ignore her mother, and a moment later she found herself walking away, his hand under her elbow, steering her.

  A sleek grey limousine had been waiting at the kerb, outside. Giles had helped her into the back, slid into the seat beside her. Then they were moving away, through the softly falling rain, through the grey London streets, and Leonie had leaned back, closing her eyes wearily, glad to escape from the necessity to be polite, to talk, to smile, to pretend.

  Giles sat beside her, an apparently relaxed figure; a tall, lean man in a smoothly tailored suit, a white carnation in his buttonhole the only evidence that they had been married. He didn't say anything; she barely heard him breathing.

  After a few moments she opened her eyes again and gave him a quick, nervous, sidelong look.

  'Where are we going?'

  'Home,' Giles said, and she had a confused moment of uncertainty about what he meant.

  'Home?' she repeated, her voice rising to a question.

  'Warlock,' he said, and she couldn't help an instinctive shudder. Warlock House might mean home to him, but she had been unhappy there on her few visits. She had been forced to recognise that Malcolm's family were hostile to her, rejected her, and at some level of her mind she had begun to feel that the house itself rejected her.

  Giles frowned, his body half turned towards her, his cold eyes stripping her face of privacy, invading her mind, understanding what she was thinking in a way she found increasingly disturbing.

  'It is your home now,' he said curtly.

  There was anger in his voice, in his face, and she knew why. Giles resented having had to marry her, he hated the idea of bringing her, of all people, home to Warlock as his bride.

  She shook her head, her face paler than ever inside its frame of fine silvery hair. 'No. I'll never feel I belong there, or that it is my home. How could I? I'm not really your wife. Our marriage was a crazy piece of legal fiction; it isn't real!'

  'Don't deceive yourself!' Giles snarled, brows heavy and black over those icy grey eyes. 'Or anybody else! Don't give anyone any wrong ideas. That guy Colpitt, for instance—I saw the way he looked at you, and the way you almost burst into tears when he was holding your hand. If he so much as shows up at Warlock, I'll set the dogs on him. Just remember this…our marriage is very real, and you not only are my wife, you are going to stay my wife unless, or until, I say otherwise!'

  A flood of startled, incredulous pink washed up her face. 'What are you talking about? Andrew?' Her voice broke down into a husky, embarrassed stammer. 'He isn't my…we aren't…'

  'Not yet?' sneered Giles coldly, then without warning caught hold of her chin in his long fingers, tipped her head back, and stared down into her wide dark blue eyes.

  'He's another guy like Malcolm, isn't he? Easy on the eye, easy to like—a charmer.'

  She was startled, incredulous. 'Andrew's nothing like Malcolm!' How could he think he was? 'Malcolm was much better looking, and very different in character,' she denied. There was much more to it than that, though. 'Andrew…well, he's serious…a very caring man…' She didn't want to seem to be criticising Malcolm, especially to Giles, but he had been light-hearted and at times even a little selfish. Andrew was probably a much better man, although he was not as lovable as Malcolm had been.

  Giles looked angrily into her eyes, seeming to dive down into them, read the mind behind them. 'You still think about him?' he bit out, and she went white again.

  'Damn you! This isn't the time and place to talk about Malcolm!' she muttered.

  He shrugged and let go of her. 'No. You're right. Well, remember what I said—if I find Dr Colpitt near you again I won't be so gentlemanly next time.'

  She shrank away from him into the corner of the limousine and stared out of the window as they drove east, through London's grimy suburbs, each mile taking them closer to the flat Essex countryside.

  What he had just said had shown her suddenly that her memories of Malcolm had changed in some inexplicable, subtle way. Her love for him hadn't so much ended as faded, like a photograph left in the light, the edges blurring, the sharpness softening. She thought of him far less; days passed without Malcolm entering her thoughts, although when he did she still felt a sadness, but without the incredulous, piercing pain, the ache she had once felt.

  That was why she had gone white when Giles had asked her if she still thought of Malcolm. It had shaken her to realise she could do so without wanting to cry—when for so long she had dreamt of him and woken in tears. She couldn't have borne it for Giles to know, to read the admission in her face. Her anger had been defensive; ashamed.

  She bit her lip, watching the thinning ranks of grey hous
es at the edge of London as they sped along a motorway leading towards the coast.

  Malcolm had only been dead for seven months! Shame washed through her and she closed her eyes. She had believed her heart was broken the day Giles had told her his brother was dead. How could she get over his death this soon? Was that all love meant? Seven months and you forgot?

  'Are you OK?' Giles spoke quietly, but he still made her start in shock, her eyes flying open.

  She looked round at him.' What?'

  He was pale. He looked into her dark blue eyes, frowning. 'I was afraid you might be feeling ilk You don't look well.'

  She relaxed slightly, seeing that his fit of harsh temper was over. He was a strange man and she did not understand him, but when he spoke gently like this she felt she might actually learn to like him.

  'I'm a little tired, that's all,' she huskily said. 'It was a bit of an ordeal, after all, the ceremony and so on.'

  He nodded. 'Of course. And I'm sorry if I upset you; it as stupid of me to start an argument over nothing. I was feeling rather tense myself , I suppose.'

  She gave a faint sigh of relief. 'I understand. It has been a difficult day for both of us.'

  They finished the drive to Warlock House in a friendlier silence, each staring put of the window at the countryside they passed through. Essex was not one of the most beautiful counties of England; it was flat and heavily built up in places, but in some of the older villages there were interesting houses and churches; white wood steeples, decorated plastering on house walls and white frame houses.

  As they drove along narrow, winding, hedge-lined lanes and came within sight Warlock House, Leonie began to get nervous. Every visit she had made to this house had been fraught and uneasy. She didn't know if she could bear to live there, under the same roof as Giles and his mother, even if it was only for a few months.

  She was feeling confused about that now. The marriage had happened so quickly; she hadn't seen much of Giles in the past few weeks and they hadn't talked much about what was to happen after the wedding. What he had said had given her the distinct impression that after the birth of the baby they would make some arrangement—an annulment, maybe, or at any rate a legal separation. He would obviously be the baby's guardian, but she would have custody of her child, and she had vaguely had an idea that she would find a flat, a job, as she had planned before, and someone to look after the baby.

  She certainly did not think of the marriage as a real one; as she had said to Giles just now, it was a legal fiction, meant to give Giles more power as the executor of Malcolm's will. She had agreed because of the blackmail Giles had threatened her with, but she had gone through with it without believing in what she was doing.

  She didn't feel like a married woman; she didn't feel as if Giles was her husband.

  She gave him a startled, confused look sideways. He was staring straight ahead, himself wrapped in thought, his black brows knit, his jawline taut.

  For the first time Leonie realised the fact—the man beside her was her husband!

  At that instant Giles turned to look at her, as if becoming aware that she was watching him, and Leonie felt hot colour wash up her face.

  For a second they stared into each other's eyes, and she heard her own heart beating, fast and loud, echoing in her ears like the sea in a shell, then Giles glanced away and said flatly, 'We're here.'

  As the car pulled up outside the house a man hurriedly emerged, buttoning up his black jacket. He opened the door and solicitously, as if she were an invalid, helped Leonie to descend, a polite smile on his thin face.

  'Welcome home, madam.'

  Leonie murmured a husky, 'Thank you.' She didn't know who he was, and hadn't seen him before.

  He flicked an uncertain sideways glance at Giles as he joined them, and she uneasily wondered just what Giles had told people about her and their marriage. Her condition was so obvious; she knew it must be arousing a lot of gossip, and her embarrassment made her flush to her hairline.

  'This is George,' said Giles, standing close to her, a frown knitting his brows. 'He and his wife ate running the house for us now. Is Marjorie waiting inside, George?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Good. Then come and meet her, Leonie.' Giles put a hand under her elbow and steered her towards the front door.

  She went reluctantly. Warlock House had always overawed her. She walked into it now with a sensation of disbelief; after Malcolm's death she had never expected to see it again, yet here she was walking into the house as the wife of Giles Kent himself.

  At least his mother wasn't here. She was spending the next week with her daughter, so Leonie would be given a short breathing-space, a little time to get accustomed to living in this house with Giles as her husband.

  She swallowed, giving him another sidelong look of confused incredulity. Her husband? Giles Kent?

  It made her feel odd to think about it, so she made herself think about her new mother-in-law instead. She was hoping Mrs Kent was less hostile towards her now, but she wasn't yet sure. Only time would tell.

  She hadn't seen enough of her new mother-in-law over the past month or so to be able to guess whether or not they were going to get on together. It all depended on how Mrs Kent felt about the baby. If Giles was right, she would be ready to make Leonie welcome for the baby's sake. If he was wrong about his mother's feelings, life was going to be impossible in this house.

  'Ah! There you are, Marjorie!' Giles said as a woman hurried towards them from the back of the panelled hall, and Leonie started, turning her attention back to the present.

  George's wife, Marjorie, was a woman in her forties, fair and flushed, rather short, but wiry, with lively blue eyes. She very carefully did not notice Leonie's obvious condition, smiling at her and beginning to talk at once in a breathless voice, 'Oh, I'm sorry I wasn't there to welcome you, but I was upstairs, putting the finishing touches to your room, when I heard the car coming up the drive.'

  'Not at all,' Leonie shyly murmured, shaking hands.

  Marjorie gave Giles an uncertain look. 'I hope everything went off OK? I mean, I hope it was a nice wedding.' She was stammering now, looking confused under Giles's ironic gaze. 'And congratulations… best wishes for the future…'

  'Thank you, Marjorie, that's very kind,' Giles said drily. 'Now, would you show my wife her room? She is tired and would like a rest before lunch.' He glanced down at Leonie. 'I'll see you down here in half an hour, OK?'

  'Yes,' she said in a low voice, turning to follow the housekeeper towards the staircase.

  Giles had promised her that their marriage would be one in name only; they would not share a room. She was relieved to find he was keeping his word, but at the same time it embarrassed her that everyone should know they were sleeping apart. But in her condition that probably wouldn't surprise anyone! After all, she would have the baby very soon, a matter of a few weeks now!

  She gave Marjorie a secret glance, biting her inner lip. What was the other woman really thinking? Leonie was glad she did not know.

  Marjorie flung open a door and stood back, smiling. Leonie walked into the room and gave a spontaneous cry of pleasure. 'Oh, it's lovely!'

  Marjorie beamed. I'm glad you like it.'

  It was obvious she had taken trouble over the room; it was immaculate and smelt of roses, a large vase of pink ones which stood on a bedside table next to a glass bowl of fruit. The decor was light and spring-like, green and cream; the antique oak furniture, mostly from the end of the last century, in the art nouveau style, was golden in colour and so highly polished that you could see the room reflected in it.

  'Your bathroom is through this door,' Marjorie said, and Leonie looked into the matching room beyond, that too decorated in cream and green; the deep-piled cream carpet identical to that in the bedroom, the green and cream chintz curtains the same, too. Thick, fluffy cream towels, embroidered in dark green with the initial 'K' for Kent, hung over a heated towel-rail. On shelving behind the bath stood rows of
jars and bottles full of expensive lotions and bath oils, and the air was scented with perfume.

  'What a nice deep bath—and a shower cubicle, too!' she said politely.

  'And this is Mr Giles's room,' Marjorie said with a little smile, opening another door.

  Leonie felt herself blush and didn't look into the other room, turning away, wishing Marjorie would go now and leave her alone.

  As if picking that up, Marjorie said, 'Is there anything I can get you? A cup of tea? Some milk?'

  'No, thank you.' Leonie just wanted a little privacy.

  'Well, I'll be off, then—I'll turn down the bed for you first.' Before Leonie could protest she deftly stripped the green and cream chintz cover, which matched the curtains, from the bed, and turned down the sheet. 'I'll draw the curtains, too, shall I?' she said, straightening.

  'No, please don't,' Leonie said, staring at the window and watching as sunlight shone through the clouds in the sky. The rain had stopped now; the clouds were blowing away. Leonie did not want to shut out the sun; it made her feel less bleak and depressed to see it.

  'OK, then, have a nice rest,' said Marjorie cheerfully. The door closed behind her and Leonie was alone. She stood in the middle of the room, looking around, feeling lost and bewildered, and very much afraid.

  This was her home now. She stared into the dressing-table mirror, her dark blue eyes enormous, incredulous. This wasn't happening, it couldn't be. She was not here, in Warlock House, Malcolm's home, as the wife of his brother.

  Giles couldn't be her husband. He hated her, he always had; he had not wanted her to marry his brother, he had not wanted her to join his family. Yet she was here now, in this house, and she was his wife.

  She put both of her cold, trembling hands to her face, her fingers exploring the delicate bones of her cheeks, temples, jaw. In the mirror the reflection did the same.

  She still didn't believe it. She wished someone would tell her it was only a strange, terrifying dream, from which at any moment she would awake. None of this was real, including herself. She did not know that face she saw in the mirror, the face her fingers had touched. It couldn't be her, standing here, in this room; she did not know that girl with the huge, frightened eyes and white face, the strangely distorted body.