Shadow Marriage

by Penny Jordan

  After lunch they returned to Carew’s office to finalise details and sign contracts, promising that she would be in Spain for the end of the month.

  ‘After all,’ she commented to Carew when Guy had gone, ‘what’s to stop me?’

  ‘You’d better go out and buy yourself a ton of sunscreen,’ Carew warned her. ‘Guy won’t be too happy if your skin gets burned, and you’ll be filming all through the summer. I wonder why he wanted to know about your marriage?’ he added, eyeing her thoughtfully. Although he was basically a kind-hearted man, on occasions it irked him that Sarah was so resolute about not discussing her brief marriage. After all, Benedict de l’Isle was of sufficient importancé in the film world for his name to carry weight; Sarah could have used it. When she had first come to him he had read up on her press-cuttings, and it had been from them and not from her that he had learned of their affair while they were playing opposite one another in Shakespeare; she as Mary Fitton and he as Southampton, the man who ultimately destroyed her. They had been married at the end of the filming; there had been a party for all the cast, and then, within a week, it was all over. To quote Benedict de l’Isle, as many of the papers had done with evident glee, his new wife, like Mistress Fitton, had been unable to choose between her two lovers and in the end had chosen wrongly. He eyed Sarah obliquely. If de l’Isle had been speaking the truth, did that mean that she and Dale had been lovers, and if so…

  Anxious to get back to her library books and her research, Sarah was oblivious to his thoughts. This part was a gift from the gods in more senses than one. Another twelve months without a decent part and who knows, she might have been on the verge of abandoning her career. But she had got the part, and she fully intended to leave her stamp on it; to be the Princess Joanna, spoiled darling of the greatest house in Christendom until the woman accepted what the child could not; that princesses were but pawns, bought and sold to bind allegiances.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THERE would be a car waiting for her at the airport, Guy had promised, and Sarah looked dazedly for it as she emerged from the terminal building, and into the slumbrous heat of the Spanish night.

  Because it was the height of the tourist season, she had had some problems getting a flight and, in the end, had had to fly in on a late evening one. She was a relative newcomer to the cast, and she knew from what Guy had told her that some studio filming had already taken place, mainly the earlier scenes involving Richard as a youth and some of his clashes with his father. Telling herself that it was only natural that she should feel nervous, she searched the row of stationary cars, wondering which one was waiting for her.

  ‘Sarah! Sweetling!’

  Even if she hadn’t recognised the tall, broad-shouldered man striding towards her, she would have recognised the endearment he had picked up when they filmed Shakespeare, and his name left her lips on a pleased cry as she hurried towards him.

  ‘Dale, put me down!’ she protested as he swung her up into his arms, kissing her theatrically, adding with a grin, ‘I’m honoured, aren’t I, dear brother? Being collected by my liege lord himself, and the most prominent member of the cast.’

  ‘And I haven’t come alone,’ Dale told her, moving slightly aside so that Sarah could see the man standing behind him. Tall with brown hair, he smiled warmly at her, his brown eyes faintly amused by Dale’s obvious ‘play-acting’. ‘Meet your lover-to-be,’ Dale told her, adding, ‘Paul, come over here and be introduced to Sarah.’

  As they shook hands, Sarah found herself warming to Paul with a sense of relief, here was no Ben to disturb her hardwon peace of mind; less exuberant than Dale, there was nevertheless something very attractive and reassuring about him. Within seconds they were chatting away almost like old friends, and it wasn’t until she saw Dale frowning that Sarah felt a tiny shiver of apprehension dance along her skin. ‘Dale, is something wrong?’ she asked hesitantly. It wasn’t exactly unheard-of for petty quarrels and jealousies to develop in the tightly knit community involved in the making of any film, but the Dale she remembered had always been able to smile and shrug off these small unpleasantnesses. And yet, old friends though they were, it was practically unheard-of for a principal member of the cast to come and pick up a rather minor one. It was almost as though Dale had taken the opportunity to do so quite deliberately. Paul, too, looked rather grave, and as Sarah glanced from one face to the other, Paul suggested tactfully, ‘I’ll put the luggage in the car.’

  ‘I came to pick you up because I wanted to have a word with you, Sarah,’ Dale told her. ‘Well, more to warn you really…’

  ‘Warn me?’ Sarah could feel tension coiling along her spine.

  ‘Umm, Paul insisted on coming with me, which was rather a nuisance. Judging by the looks he was giving you I shouldn’t be at all surprised if he wants to extend your relationship beyond the confines of a working one. What do you think of him?’

  Sarah tried not to feel too exasperated. ‘We’ve only just met,’ she protested. ‘He seems very pleasant, but I’m not in the market for personal relationships—you know that, Dale.’

  ‘Umm, just checking.’ But the smile he gave her was understanding and friendly. ‘Look, Paul will be back in a second, and I’d better tell you before he comes. We’ve got a new director…’ He paused and Sarah felt her heartstrings jerk and tighten indefinably with tension.

  ‘I thought Guy was going to direct, himself?’ she protested shakily.

  ‘So he was,’ Dale agreed bitterly, ‘and if I’d known any different, I wouldn’t have taken the damned part, but it seems something went wrong on his last film, and he’s having to re-shoot several scenes. The backers demanded it, and because everything was set up here, and any delay now would mean waiting until next summer, we’ve got ourselves a new director.’ He glanced at her as Paul closed the car boot and started walking towards them.

  ‘It’s Ben, Sarah,’ he told her quickly, his hand going to her arm as he saw her sway slightly. ‘Look, I know what a shock this must be to you, that’s why I wanted to be the first to tell you. Knowing that bastard, he’d just let you walk right into him without any preparation at all. You must have done quite well out of him when the divorce went through.’ He gave her an oblique look. ‘I mean, by that time he’d have been working in America; he went there right after Shakespeare finished, didn’t he?’

  Sarah made no response—she wasn’t capable of doing so. Ben directing Richard—she couldn’t believe it! She didn’t want to believe it. Paul came to join them, and if he found anything strange in her pale face and strained features, he was too polite to say so, simply opening the front passenger door of the car for her when she reached it, and helping her with her seat-belt, causing Dale to raise an eyebrow and comment that he obviously believed in working himself into the right mood for a part. ‘Not that you’ll find Sarah a walk-over,’ he added, grinning at Sarah encouragingly. ‘She knows all about the dangers of getting involved with her leading men, don’t you, sweetling?’

  Sarah knew that Dale was only teasing her, but she wished he had been a little more reticent when she saw the way Paul looked at her. ‘Some of them have caused problems,’ she agreed lightly.

  ‘And in case you think she means me, Sarah and I have always had a very special relationship, haven’t we?’ Dale chipped in.

  They had in many ways, and Sarah grinned back at him, trying to banish from her mind the knowledge that soon she was going to come face to face with Ben, Ben whose acting ability in Shakespeare had been so greatly acclaimed, but who had gone on to find equal fame in directing and producing. She could vouch personally for his acting ability; she had had first-hand personal experience of it. She smiled rather bitterly to herself. God, how naïve she had been! Dale had been a good friend to her then. If it hadn’t been for him she would never have known the truth; never known how cruelly Ben had deceived her. She had thought he loved her as she loved him while all she had really been to him was the fulfilment of a bet. Even now to think about what
had happened brought her flesh out in goose-bumps, shivering with distaste and despair. Dale, frantic when he learned that Ben had married her, had told her the truth, wanting to protect her; Ben with whom she was so crazily and deeply in love had married her for no other reason than simply to win a bet. It had started in complete innocence, on Dale’s part at least. When the three of them started to film Shakespeare, Dale had bet Ben a thousand pounds that he would be the first one to get her into bed, and Ben had accepted the wager. When he had told her of his own part in what had happened Dale had had the grace to be very shamefaced, but he had not known her then; she had just been another very pretty girl and the bet had been made half in jest, but already there had been a certain competitiveness between himself and Ben; Dale being the more acclaimed and well-known actor of the two, and Ben had obviously determined that this time he was going to be the winner.

  Sarah had had no idea about the bet between her two fellow actors; no idea of what was intended, and while from the very first she had been wary of Dale’s outrageously flirtatious manner and had kept him at bay, she had had no defences against her own feelings for Benedict, falling in love with him almost at first sight, allowing herself to become so bemused by him and their roles that she had permitted him to make love to her, and she had thought when she had refused to allow him to make their relationship public that his proposal of marriage stemmed from his desire and love for her, not realising that he simply saw it as the only way he could force Dale to acknowledge that he was the winner of their bet.

  Dale had been enjoying a brief break away from the set when it happened and only returned the day they were married by special licence, less than a week after Ben had made love to her. Dale had got slightly drunk at the post-wedding party given by the cast, and he had followed up to her hotel room when she went to get changed, to tell her the truth. Sarah had still been in tears when they heard Ben outside the door, and it had been then that Dale had whispered to her that they would turn the tables on him, taking her in his arms and wrenching unfastened the front of her dress so that Ben had discovered them together locked in what appeared to be an intensely passionate embrace, Dale’s cool comment that he had after all lost, as Sarah preferred him, driving Benedict from the room and ultimately from her life. She could still vividly remember the climax to their wedding party when Ben very obviously drunk, had announced to the assembled cast that she and Dale were lovers.

  She thought guiltily about Dale’s comment on their divorce. She always described herself as ‘divorced’, but the plain facts of the matter were that she was still, legally at least, married to Ben. They had been married in England, where the law had been and still was that only an uncontested divorce could be obtained after three years. Where both parties were not in agreement the waiting period was five years, and it was still only three and a half years since they had been married. Why Ben refused to give her a divorce she had no idea, unless it was because he feared she might make some sort of financial claim on him. Either that, or he simply wanted to punish her. But she wasn’t the guilty party. She had married him because she was deeply in love with him and had believed he felt the same way about her. Their love scenes together had possessed an intensity, a luminosity which had far transcended even the most gifted acting, or so she had believed, and driven half mad by her love for him and the constant exposure to the sensuality imposed on them by their roles, she had abandoned all her dearly held beliefs—and herself—to him.

  The screech of the car brakes jerked her back to the present. Dale had always been an aggressive driver and in that regard he didn’t seem to have changed.

  ‘I’ve just been telling Sarah about our new director,’ he commented to Paul. ‘Unlike me,’ he added for Sarah’s benefit, ‘Paul likes our new director. Of course he isn’t the only one. Gina, my sweetly innocent Berengaria, had made her preferences in that quarter very well known. Of course Ben’s playing it cool—he can hardly do otherwise since Gina’s lover is one of our most influential backers. He’s having quite a hard time of it trying to keep Gina at bay without offending her, but then he always was adept at double-dealing. Still, you’re going to come as quite a shock to him.’

  From the back seat Paul interrupted gently, ‘A very pleasant one, I’m sure, Sarah. It’s just that there’s been a change on the continuity side as well, and the girl who replaced Ellen, our first continuity girl, must have forgotten to take Rachel Ware’s name out and insert yours in the casting list.’

  Sarah’s heart sank even further. She hadn’t realised that someone else had actually been cast for the part ahead of her. ‘Come on, Dale,’ Paul protested. ‘You’re frightening the life out of Sarah! Ben won’t eat you,’ he told her. ‘Oh, he’s demanding all right—knows exactly what he wants from the cast and makes sure he gets it, but…’

  ‘Sarah knows all about Ben, Paul,’ Dale interrupted, his eyes leaving the road for a second as he turned his head to frown at the man in the back seat. ‘We both worked with him on Shakespeare. You’ll have to forgive Paul’s ignorance,’ he added to Sarah. ‘He’s come rather late to the acting scene. He was training to be a chartered accountant when he suddenly got the bug.’

  ‘I qualified, too,’ Paul put in with a disarming grin. ‘I had a girl-friend who was a model, and she got me some ad work, which is how I got started.’

  ‘Yes, he’s the original chocolate-box hero,’ Dale retorted.

  So Paul didn’t know about her marriage to Ben; of course it was over three years ago and had happened in England, and Sarah couldn’t help hoping that the rest of the cast were similarly ignorant. It wasn’t going to be easy working with him, especially not with the eyes of the rest of the cast monitoring their responses to one another.

  * * *

  ‘Is it much further?’ Sarah queried, trying to ease the crick in her neck. They seemed to have been speeding through the dark, apparently empty countryside, for half a lifetime, and on top of her flight, the journey was beginning to take its toll on her.

  ‘Only another ten miles or so,’ Paul comforted her from the back.

  ‘If Guy wasn’t such a fanatic for realism we could have shot most of these scenes in the Californian desert and used the studios for everything else,’ Dale chimed in rather bitterly.

  Telling herself that it was only natural that Dale should sound a little disgruntled, after all Hollywood was home to him now and he must have grown accustomed to all the luxuries it offered, Sarah wondered what he would say if she confided to him how thrilled she was that they were filming on location.

  ‘Well, here we are,’ Dale announced fifteen minutes later as he pulled off the main road and they bumped down a dusty, narrow track.

  Ahead of them a collection of lights shone from the windows of large trailers, and the guard on duty at the makeshift ‘gate’ grinned a welcome to Dale, eyeing Sarah with a flat curiosity that made her raise her eyebrows a little. ‘He obviously thinks I’m someone you’ve picked up for the evening,’ she commented to Dale as he parked his car outside a darkened trailer and Paul got out, having wished them both goodnight,

  ‘And he’s probably envying me,’ Dale retorted with a grin, coming round to open her door. ‘By the way,’ he added casually, ‘one of the problems we have here is that we’re a little short on accommodation at the moment. Will you slap my face, sweetling, if I suggest you share with me for tonight? There’s a separate bedroom, and rather than rouse half the outfit…’

  Hiding her surprise, Sarah nodded her agreement. A glance at her watch showed her that it was after one in the morning, and her body ached for sleep. She knew Dale well enough to know that she could trust him, and although she had half expected to have to share a trailer—accommodation always being notoriously problematical on location—she had reckoned on sharing with one of the other girls.

  ‘You were to have shared with Gina,’ Dale explained to her as he extracted a key from his pocket and unlocked the metal door, flicking on the light as he did so, and al
lowing Sarah to step past him into the illuminated interior, ‘but our dear Garia kicked up a fuss. It seems that sharing with someone would not be convenient—unless of course that someone happens to be our director. However, Ben isn’t playing—at least not publicly. With all the other problems he’s got on his hands, I don’t suppose he’s any too keen to upset one of our backers. He’s going to have a hard time of it, trying to appease both Gina and her lover. He could, of course, always bow out and let someone else take over, but his last film wasn’t exactly a box-office winner and…’

  ‘Oh, but surely,’ Sarah broke in impulsively, without thinking, ‘it got the Best Film Award, and…’

  ‘It might have got the Award, sweetling,’ Dale told her dryly, ‘but if you want my opinion, Ben over-stepped himself, spending so much on making it, and that money won’t be easily recouped. Would you like a drink before I show you to your room, madam?’ he parodied, laughing at her, as he changed the subject and indicated one of the three doors leading off the narrow corridor which ran from the living area in which they were standing, and down past a small but very highly sophisticated kitchen.

  ‘If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go straight to bed,’ Sarah told him, suddenly conscious of the hectic day behind her, fulfilling the last of her ad commitments, and the long journey to their destination. ‘Are you sure you don’t mind putting me up for tonight, Dale, I could…’

  Was there a touch of impatience in the frown lining his forehead? Dale was probably tired, too, and she was fussing unnecessarily, Sarah told herself when he assured her that he didn’t.

  ‘Come on, you can have this room. I’ll say this for Guy,’ he added as he pushed open the door, ‘these trailers are well equipped, even down to air-conditioning. He even had a temporary pool installed on the site. Not that we get much chance to use it with dear old Ben in charge. He’s a real slavedriver!’ He slanted Sarah a sideways glance, and her scalp prickled with sensitive awareness. There had always been keen competition between the two men, but now she sensed that this had changed, deepened in some way, and this suspicion was confirmed when Dale said slowly, ‘He’s changed since we filmed Shakespeare together, Sarah, and much as I hate to say it, he’s a sore loser. Don’t worry about it, though,’ he told her, his expression lightening, ‘Uncle Dale’s here to protect you.’