The Bridegroom's Dilemma

by Lindsay Armstrong

  ‘I see.’ The faintest smile touched his lips and he fiddled with a curl of her hair.

  They eyed each other then they were laughing together, kissing lightly then more and more passionately, and finally there was only one thing more to do.

  ‘I love this bed and this room,’ she said dreamily, quite a time later.

  He held her in his arms and looked around his bedroom ruefully. ‘Well, it’s comfortable—’

  ‘It’s more than that. It’s where you first made love to me and it’s where we came back to each other. I think we’ll always keep this bed and this decor, Nick.’

  He nuzzled her neck. ‘It so happens I’m in complete agreement. You were sensational.’

  ‘So were you.’ Skye sighed rapturously because their lovemaking had been in fact not dramatic but more tender and exquisitely slow than ever before. A true union of hearts, minds and bodies, a drinking in of all the things they loved about each other, a time to say things they’d never said before. All the same it had left them wordless and clinging to each other, emotionally and physically moved as they never had been before.

  ‘Do you remember what you said to me once about fantastic sex making you starv…? Oh, no!’ Skye sat up with a hand to her mouth.

  He sat up beside her and took her hand, but he was laughing. ’Don’t tell me you’ve never burnt dinner before?’

  ‘Never—Nick, we could be burning the place down!’

  ‘I doubt it but shall we go and see?’

  ‘I’ll go and get my dress—’

  But he pulled her back into his arms. ‘You don’t need to.’

  ‘I…well, I do know I’ve taken to living dangerously but—’ She paused.

  ‘Being naked in the kitchen is a different matter?’ he suggested gravely. ‘Don’t forget you did it beautifully in the lounge.’

  ‘I’ve got the feeling you’re never going to let me forget—what I did,’ she replied equally gravely.

  ‘You could be right.’

  ‘Nick—’ she turned a laughing face to his ‘—just don’t remind me in public. I have the greatest difficulty not to go all weak at the knees when you only look at me in a certain way as it is.’

  ‘I think that’s just about the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.’ He was still being grave but what lurked in his eyes was another matter.

  She swallowed and touched her fingers to his mouth. ‘We should at least check the kitchen first.’

  ‘All right.’ He looked comically rueful. ‘But the reason you don’t need your dress is because of this.’ He released her and got up to go to the built-in wardrobe. From it he drew a yellow silk robe. Hers.

  Skye’s eyes widened. ‘I left it, didn’t I? I didn’t mean to. When I got home I remembered throwing it over a chair and…and…I thought you’d probably thrown it away.’

  ‘No.’ He sat down beside her. ‘I couldn’t bring myself to. It still had—still has the perfume of your skin on it. In really desperately dark moments I haven’t been able to stop myself from taking it out and—wishing to high heaven that I had you in my arms.’

  ‘Oh, Nick.’ She brushed sudden tears from her eyes. ‘I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me.’

  They inspected the roast lamb together.

  It was a shrunken, blackened piece of inedible meat.

  They looked at each other and burst out laughing.

  ‘It may have to be an omelette; think you can survive on that?’ Skye asked. ‘There’s not a whole lot else to work with.’

  ‘Whatever you cook is always magical, Skye, but you don’t have to rush. Should we continue living dangerously for a while?’

  ‘Do you mean go back to bed?’

  ‘Since that provides food for my soul, my darling, in a word, yes.’

  She went straight into his arms.

  Much later, when they’d showered together and Skye had cooked an omelette and they were eating it overlooking the view of the harbour, he said, ‘You were right.’

  She raised an eyebrow at him.

  ‘About my father’s memory deserving more.’ He picked up his wine glass and sat back with it. ‘I feel at peace with him at last.’

  ‘I’m so glad but—only over us?’

  He shook his head. ‘I may do things differently, I may do them my way; that’s been part of the problem—trying to weld our two visions together. He tended to look back, I tended to look forward. Natural, I guess, but I think that’s why I was so—restless. But I’ll never forget all the things he taught me or his basic wisdom, and the fact that he cared enough to know what was best for me even when I didn’t.’

  Skye said nothing but she raised her glass and touched it to his.

  ‘I see.’

  Twelve months on, Richard Kenneth Hunter, named for his two grandfathers, had not long previously made his way into the world, causing his father to make that comment.

  Skye, sitting up in bed with her new son in her arms, looked at her husband a shade warily. ‘What does that mean?’

  Nick closed the door of her private room, which was already resembling a hothouse, took his shoes off and got onto the bed to sit beside Skye. He stretched his long legs out, put an arm round her shoulders, and murmured, ‘You don’t still doubt me in any way, do you, Mrs Hunter?’

  Skye leant back against him. Her pregnancy had been trouble-free, her labour not too arduous and Nick had been wonderful all the way through. Just being married to him had been wonderful. The places she’d feared she’d never be able to reach in him hadn’t, after all, existed.

  There’d been times when he’d had to be away from her, and she’d made another TV series—her last for the time being—but it was always as if an invisible cord had bound them together.

  This, though, was the one thing she hadn’t been able to quite clear of a feeling of wariness—that this was the reality that might just change things…

  ‘I…no,’ she said slowly. ‘You’ve been so wonderful, Nick.’ She stopped uncertainly.

  ‘But you still can’t quite forget what I said about children?’

  She shrugged and laid her cheek on her son’s. He was fast asleep and, even at only a few hours old, was giving every indication that he would take after his father.

  ‘Then—may I hold him for a while?’

  Skye’s eyes widened. ‘I’m not that good at it myself yet.’

  ‘He doesn’t seem to be showing any disapproval.’

  Skye hesitated then passed the bundle carefully over to Nick—who held the baby as if he were breakable for a moment then made himself comfortable with Master Richard Kenneth lodged securely in the crook of his arm. He even, with his other hand, rearranged the blue bunny rug around his son so that more of him was visible. Richard pursed his lips but didn’t open his eyes and slept on serenely.

  ‘Nick!’ Skye stared at him with the light of laughter dawning in her eyes. ‘You look as if you’re an old hand at this.’

  ‘Not by any means,’ he responded. ‘But this is my son and heir. This baby doesn’t know it but as soon as he’s old enough we’re going to do some camping out under the stars, we’re going to look for lumps of rock, I’m going to tell him the stories his grandfather used to tell me. One thing I’m not going to do, though, is weigh him down with the pressures of an empire unless he wants it.’

  Skye could only stare at him, tears in her eyes.

  He reached for her hand. ‘The other thing he will always be aware of, as will any brothers and sisters he may have, is the unlimited admiration and love I have for his mother.’

  ‘And I for you,’ she said, and sighed with absolute relief and love as he drew her back against him.

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-1122-3

  THE BRIDEGROOM’S DILEMMA

  First North American Publication 2003.

  Copyright © 2000 by Lindsay Armstrong.

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