by Penny Jordan
At teatime she felt well enough to get up, but Mrs Johnson was adamant that she should not. She had made Nicky bread and butter soldiers to eat with his egg, and Nicky was dipping these enthusiastically into the yoke when Briony pushed open the kitchen door.
‘Mr Blake told me that you were not to get up on any account,’ she protested.
‘Mr Blake doesn’t give the orders round here,’ Briony replied tartly. Her hair felt untidy and tacky and she wanted to wash it. Besides, lying in bed gave her too much time to think.
When Nicky had finished his tea, she thanked Mrs Johnson for her help and firmly dismissed her. Nicky chattered happily while she bathed him, and they played all his favourite games. It was amazing how much more he seemed to learn every day, Briony thought fondly, listening to him telling her all about his day.
‘When will my daddy be coming?’ he demanded suddenly.
Kieron had not said when he would return. He had told her next to nothing about the arrangements for the wedding. If he did not ring her tomorrow she would have to phone him, Briony decided unwillingly. Nicky was staring up at her uncertainly and she took a deep breath, telling herself that she must start preparing her son for the changes to come.
‘I don’t know when exactly,’ she began carefully. ‘Soon, probably.’
‘And then we’ll be going to live with him for ever?’
‘I expect so.’ She lifted him out of the bath, briskly towelling his squirming, solid little body, and tickling him playfully.
‘Won’t we be living here any more?’ he asked her suddenly, his forehead puckering. ‘Will we be going away like Gina?’
‘Perhaps. Now come on. Which story shall we read tonight?’ she asked him.
She tucked him up in bed with one of his books while she went to wash her own hair and shower, towelling her thick curls briskly before pulling on a thin robe and padding back to his bedroom.
She had just reached the end of the story when the bedroom door opened and Kieron walked in, pulling off his jacket which he flung across the bed, loosening his tie, the oddly intimate gesture tightening her throat with tension.
Kieron smiled briefly at Nicky, who was watching him round-eyed and uncertain. Briony closed the book, not surprised to see that her hands were shaking. There was something she had to do now which would cause her the most bitter agony, but for Nicky’s sake she must. Bending over the bed, she said softly to her son:
‘Look who’s here, Nicky—it’s your daddy.’
There was a tension-filled moment when she felt Kieron’s incredulous stare and Nicky’s uncertain one, and then Kieron was sitting next to her on the bed, his eyes on his son’s face as he said huskily, ‘Hello, Nicky.’
When she closed the bedroom door behind her, there were tears in Briony’s eyes. She couldn’t remember a time when anything had caused her quite so much pain, unless it was the discovery of Kieron’s deceit, and she had to bite her lip to prevent herself from crying out loud. What was Kieron saying to Nicky? Was he trying to poison the little boy’s mind against her?
She went into her own bedroom, plugging in her hair-dryer and brushing her hair, the activity helping to disperse her restless thoughts.
They could not be held back for ever, though, and she was on her knees, her head in her hands, the hairdryer whirring away unregarded at her side, when Kieron walked in.
He was beside her before she was aware of his presence, her eyes moving slowly along his lean length, as he gripped her arms to pull her upwards.
‘Thanks,’ he said softly. ‘That was a very generous thing you did.’
‘Nicky?’
If he heard her anxiety and guessed the reason for it, he gave no sign.
‘He’s asleep.’ His fingers touched her cheek, and when he turned them over they were damp with her tears.
‘Oh, Briony,’ he protested softly, gathering her up against him, ‘is marriage to me so abhorrent to you that it makes you cry?’
‘I’m not,’ she retorted, but the words were lost against his chest. She hadn’t cried in years and she hated herself for the weakness that made her do so now, but now she had started it didn’t seem possible to stop. She wanted to tell Kieron to let her go, but her body seemed to mould itself treacherously to his as though drawing strength from his masculine frame while Kieron’s soft reassurances were murmured into her hair. As though her tears were the melting ice which had frozen her heart, she could feel her body coming to life beneath his stroking hands, sensations she had completely forgotten surging up inside her. Kieron’s hands found their way inside her robe, caressing her quivering flesh, emotions dammed up for years clamouring urgently for satisfaction as she yielded mindlessly to his touch, her will-power overridden by a primeval need that nothing could stem.
She reached blindly towards him, tracing the heard bones of his shoulders, barely aware of him shrugging impatiently out of his shirt and lifting her to carry her to the narrow bed.
Her mouth parted on a soft groan, her whole body shuddering deeply in response to his kiss, her body moving passionately against him, until he cupped her hands and held her away from him, his voice husky and unsteady.
‘No one’s touched you in years, have they?’ he demanded incredulously. ‘It’s all been waiting there, dammed up behind the ice, just needing a touch to set it free. Well, it’s free now,’ he groaned against her skin, pulling her against his hard body, ‘Feel what you’re doing to me, Briony. I want to make love to you, but this time without deceit. I’m not going to be accused of that twice.’
His words shattered through the partition she had erected between her mind and body, forcing her mind to accept the actions of her flesh, and she cringed back from him immediately, her face white and sick.
‘What the hell?’ Kieron stared down at her. ‘Don’t tease me, Briony,’ he commanded. ‘I don’t like it, and you may find out you’ve bitten off more than you can chew. For a moment there you were a woman. You can’t wall her up for ever. Some time or other she’s going to break through and play havoc with your emotionless little world.’
Horror engulfed her. What had happened to her? She had reacted to Kieron’s touch like brushwood to tinder. She pushed him away, sick with self-revulsion. Oh, God, what must he be thinking? She couldn’t possibly marry him now. White with self-loathing, she stared up at him, her eyes blazing defiantly.
‘Well, go on, then,’ she hurled at him. ‘Gloat! That’s what you’re doing inside, isn’t it? Thinking how easy it was to turn me on? Oh, God, how I hate you!’
Kieron’s face was nearly as white as her own.
‘Is that what you think?’ he demanded furiously. ‘That I’d deliberately and coldbloodedly do something like that?’
How long they stared at one another in mutual bitterness, Briony did not know. She only knew that when she eventually managed to drag her eyes away from him she was shaking uncontrollably.
‘You did it once before,’ she reminded him bitterly.
‘And since then you haven’t allowed a man into your life, is that it?’
She laughed then, sobering only when he shook her hard. ‘What’s so funny?’ he demanded harshly.
‘I’ve let one man into my life,’ she reminded him. ‘Your son. The reason we have to go through this farce of a marriage.’
‘It’s too late to back out now,’ he warned her. ‘Nicky.…’
‘Yes, I know. It’s for Nicky’s sake that I’m doing this. I want that understood plainly, Kieron. I won’t be degraded by lovemaking without love again.’
He studied her for a few minutes, his expression unreadable, and then the colour drained from her face as he said slowly.
‘And if it was with love?’
Her mind rejected the words instantly, only the terrible aching of her body confirming that she wasn’t entirely free of the past. She clamped down on the feeling.
‘I don’t love you!’
The ring of the telephone broke the tension-filled silence like a guns
hot. Kieron got off the bed and went into the living room, leaving Briony to fasten her robe and pad resentfully after him.
‘It was for me,’ he told her calmly, replacing the receiver. ‘I gave the paper your number.’
Who had it been? Gail? Why should she care?
‘Something’s cropped up and I’ve got to get down there,’ Kieron told her as though he had sensed her suspicions. ‘What I came to tell you is that I think I’ve managed to find us a house. Some friends of mine who live in Surrey are going to the States for twelve months and they’re prepared to let their house to us, which should give us time to look round for what we really want. It will also mean that you aren’t exhausting yourself going round estate agents’ offices. What are you going to do about clothes?’
The question caught her off guard.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked stiffly.
His impatient sigh rustled through the space between them.
‘I mean do you want me to organise someone to look after Nicky while you go out and buy yourself a wedding dress? Look, I’m not suggesting white with all the trimmings,’ he said hardily when she flinched, ‘but most women seem to consider marriage an excuse for buying themselves a new outfit.’
‘Well, I’m not most women,’ Briony said tartly. ‘If I wore something appropriate to my mood, I’d probably be dressed in sackcloth and ashes!’
For a moment she thought she had gone too far. Something blazed angrily in his eyes, but as she took a step backwards it faded, to be replaced by a faintly mocking smile, which strangely enough annoyed her more than his anger.
‘You really do believe in making things hard for yourself, don’t you?’ he said softly. ‘Tomorrow you will go out and buy yourself something to be married in. And if you don’t, I shall personally make sure that you do, even if it means stripping you myself and putting your clothes on you. Do you understand?’
He was gone before she could retaliate, leaving her exhausted and drained and yet, curiously, more alive than she had felt in years.
* * *
Kieron certainly didn’t believe in doing things by halves, Briony thought lightheadedly as she sipped her champagne. She had had no idea until after the ceremony that Kieron had arranged a reception at the Savoy.
The wedding itself had been a surprise too. She had somehow expected a simple register office service, and had been caught off guard when the taxi Kieron had organised for her stopped outside her local church.
There had been a moment when they had been making their vows when she had thought fleetingly of how different it could all have been if Kieron had been the man she had once thought, but she had banished it as being stupidly romantic, concentrating instead of the real reasons for their alliance.
‘Well, well, you are a dark horse, aren’t you?’ Gail eyed her assessingly. ‘Who would have thought it?’
‘Who would have thought what?’ Kieron drawled, suddenly materialising at Briony’s side, the arm he slid deliberately round her waist making her stiffen, her eyes flashing resentfully.
‘Cross already, sweetheart?’ His mouth laughed, but his eyes were warning her against defiance. ‘I promise I’ll stay right here at your side for the rest of the day—and the night.’
Anger burned up under her skin, Gail forgotten as she turned impulsively towards him intending to demand that he let her go, but her objections were stifled under the warmth of his mouth, his voice a silky whisper as he murmured:
‘Remember, we’ve just been married. Everyone expects us to look happy. It’s all very romantic. You don’t want everyone thinking I was forced to marry you to give Nicky a name, do you? Because that’s what they’ll think.’
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that she didn’t care, but she swallowed the impetuous words.
‘Goodness, Kieron, I never realised you were so demonstrative,’ Gail said with a brittle smile. ‘And I thought I knew you so well!’ She flashed Briony a look of pure malice and added softly, ‘Is it true, Briony, that you have a child? I couldn’t believe it when Kieron told me. I’ve always thought of you as such a little goody-goody. Heaven knows what poor Matt will do when he hears! He’s practically distraught with the news that you and Kieron are marrying.’
‘Not “a child”, Gail,’ Kieron’s deep voice drawled, ‘but my child.’ Briony felt him look at her. ‘I suppose we’d better make a clean breast of it, darling, we can’t hide something like Nicky.’
Briony’s hands clenched into small fists. The falsity of the situation sickened her. When she had agreed to marry him she had never dreamed that she would be expected to play the part of the blushing bride.
‘Don’t stop there,’ Gail urged. ‘Heavens, it all sounds like a fairy story!’
‘Not really,’ Kieron shrugged. ‘Briony and I quarrelled before she knew she was expecting Nicky, and she was too proud to tell me what had happened. When I came back to this country and we met again, we found ourselves falling in love with one another for a second time, and the discovery that Briony had had my child was the final gilt to the gingerbread.’
‘Kieron tells me you’re giving up work,’ Gail said to Briony, who had remained silent through Kieron’s highly edited version of what had happened. ‘Won’t you be bored to tears?’
Briony stiffened, resenting her patronising tone, but Kieron answered for her, his eyes gleaming with amusement as he looked down at her flushed face.
‘Oh, I think we could find a remedy for that,’ he said smoothly. ‘We don’t want Nicky to be an only child.’
Briony was glad that someone else claimed Gail’s attention. ‘I don’t.…’ she began heatedly, only to be silenced by the firm fingers Kieron laid against her lips.
‘No man likes being laughed at,’ he told her. ‘I want it clearly understood that Nicky is my child, just as I want it clearly understood that you are now my wife. I like the outfit, by the way,’ he added carelessly, his eyes resting deliberately on the soft swell of her breasts beneath her cream silk suit.
She had told herself that she would not buy anything special, but somehow or other she had found herself buying this silk chiffon three-piece with its pencil-slim skirt and brief camisole top under a delicately pleated long-sleeved jacket. The pale colour set off her hair, making it seem more red than usual and her eyes a more vivid green, and as Kieron looked at her she was uncomfortably conscious that beneath the thin chiffon top she was wearing nothing at all. The camisole was too brief and thin to wear over a bra, and in impatient haste when she dressed she had worn it without giving a thought to any possible consequences.
‘Mm, it’s very nice,’ Kieron drawled softly as though he had read her thoughts.
‘You shouldn’t have told Gail about Nicky,’ Briony protested, trying to change the subject.
His eyes glinted with anger.
‘Why not? Nicky might be a dark secret to you, but not to me. I’m proud of my son and I don’t care who knows that I fathered him.’
His chauvinism infuriated her.
‘I don’t suppose you care about them knowing how you fathered him either, do you? You’re practically inhuman! You expect me to behave as though this were the happiest day of my life, when all the time you’ve forced me into this marriage to prevent you from taking my son—a son that you fathered without thought or love, or any other emotion except ambition. Your arrogance is astounding! I.…’
Her words were smothered by his mouth, the hard, angry pressure of his hands bruising her skin through the thin chiffon. She could hear people laughing and cheering, and when Kieron released her she was chagrined to discover that they were the centre of a small crowd of grinning onlookers.
Someone claimed Kieron’s attention, and he turned aside to talk to them. Most of their guests were people from the paper. There were one or two people Kieron had introduced as old friends, and Briony had endured their curious inspection with as much fortitude as she could muster.
Mrs Johnson was looking after Nicky, and al
ready she was fretting to get back to him. Ever since his accident she worried whenever she was away from him, and Kieron had already rebuked her once for fussing over him.
She had been bitterly angry, resenting his assumption that he had an equal right to say what was best for Nicky, and now her stomach lurched protestingly as she realised that marriage to him had given him that right.
She wandered away, deep in thought, not realising until he caught her arm that Matt had been following her. He looked thin and unhappy, and she was consumed with guilt at not letting him know what was happening.
‘I couldn’t believe it,’ he reproached her. ‘Briony, what am I going to do without you? No one listens to me but you.’
She almost laughed out loud at his childish self-absorption, realising with new clarity that his appeal had been similar to Nicky’s, only far weaker, and that it had been his dependence upon her which had relaxed her barriers, as though she had known instinctively that he would never represent the same threat to her defences that Kieron did.
‘I miss you so much, Briony,’ he mumbled. ‘I wanted to talk to you. I don’t know what to do. Should I take Mary back?’
If he had to ask her he couldn’t be very sure of his feelings, Briony thought in exasperation. She was just about to tell him that he would have to make his own decisions, when a dark shadow loomed, and she glanced up to find Kieron bearing down on them, his face grim and unsmiling.
‘Briony is my wife now,’ he told Matt angrily, grasping her wrist painfully tightly. ‘Just remember that. And as for you,’ he grated to Briony as Matt shrank back, ‘what the hell do you think you’re playing at? I haven’t gone to all this trouble to convince everyone that we’re a pair of deliriously happy reunited lovers just to have you sabotage everything by letting that idiot weep all over you!’
The intensity of his anger shocked her into silence.
