The Bartered Bride

by Anne Weale

  ‘It isn’t locked. You can come in.’

  The door didn’t open. Speaking through it, he said, ‘I’m going down to order a picnic for tomorrow. When you’re ready, we’ll have a stroll round. OK?’

  ‘OK,’ she echoed, half relieved, half disappointed that the moment of truth had been put off till later.

  When she went downstairs the locals had gone from the bar and Reid was having a drink with two people with backpacks on the floor by their chairs.

  He and the man both rose as Fran joined them. Reid said, ‘This is my wife. We’re Reid and Francesca Kennard.’

  ‘We’re Ben and Jenny Lewis. How d’you do, Mrs Kennard.’ The man extended his hand and his wife shook hands with Reid.

  Both in their middle fifties and looking extremely fit, the Lewises, as she soon gathered, were midway through a walking holiday. They had been lucky with the weather, spending every day following parts of a complex network of sheep and cattle tracks.

  They always spent their holidays walking. Ben was an experienced climber but his wife had a poor head for heights so they didn’t climb together.

  At first Fran thought they were at La Terrasse for a drink, but it turned out that they were staying there. When they went up to their room, Reid and Fran had their stroll.

  The town had an ancient clock tower, a World War One cenotaph with a sculpture of a wounded soldier, and buildings of every period since the fourteenth century. More or less parallel with the through road was a small gurgling river spanned by a granite bridge. Nearby, in a small meadow under the spreading branches of a sweet chestnut tree, hens scratched in the grass.

  ‘That’s a nice sight,’ said Reid. ‘Hens living out of doors as nature intended.’

  Fran had been thinking the same thing.

  As they moved on, he took her hand. ‘Do you like it here?’

  ‘Very much. It’s a lovely place.’

  ‘I thought we’d stay here for two nights and then move on somewhere else. If you like, later on, we could cross the frontier and try a few nights in Spain.’

  ‘Do you speak Spanish?’

  ‘Enough to get by.’

  He continued to hold her hand all the way back to the hotel, only letting it go in order to open the door for her. As they entered, Mr and Mrs Lewis were coming down the stairs.

  ‘We’re both starving,’ said Jenny. ‘Eight hours in the open air works up a massive appetite. As we seem to be the only people staying here, shall we join forces for dinner?’

  ‘By all means,’ Reid agreed. ‘If there are only the four of us, it does seem a bit antisocial to sit at separate tables.’

  The meal with the Lewises was the first one Fran had enjoyed since they arrived in France. It turned out that, like Ben, Reid was an experienced and enthusiastic rock climber. While they talked about that, Jenny explained her job, giving technical support to people who had bought computers from one of the best-known manufacturers in the UK.

  Purely as a pastime, Fran had bought a PC and taught herself to use it. So she was able to ask intelligent questions and was much amused by Jenny’s tales of some of the crankier people who used the hotline.

  ‘How long have you two been married?’ Reid asked, during the cheese course.

  It was Jenny who answered him. ‘Thirty-five years in September. It seems to have gone in a flash, doesn’t it, Ben?’

  Smiling, her husband agreed. ‘We married too young...our families thought. But so far so good,’ he said—with a teasing sideways glance at his wife.

  ‘Unfortunately our children haven’t been as lucky,’ said Jenny. ‘Our son is divorced and our daughter is living with someone. There’s so much of that these days. It’s a nice change to meet a young couple who are a Mr and Mrs. To me, all these so-called partnerships aren’t the same as a real commitment. I think they’re a copout.’

  Clearly she was assuming that Reid and Fran had been married some time and had no idea they were newly-weds.

  ‘What’s the secret of your success, do you think?’ Reid asked.

  ‘Friendship,’ said Ben. ‘The difference between a marriage that lasts and one that doesn’t is friendship. That’s what it really boils down to.’

  As soon as they had finished eating, the Lewises said goodnight and retired to their room. By now there were some late arrivals in the dining room, but none of them was English.

  ‘You seemed to find Jenny good company. You were laughing a lot,’ said Reid, while they were drinking coffee.

  Fran repeated one of the anecdotes. It made him laugh too.

  Then, as the smile faded, something else came into his eyes. He said quietly, ‘Would you like some more fresh air...or shall we go up?’

  Fran held his gaze. ‘Let’s go up.’

  A new smile made little curls at the corners of his mouth. ‘There’s still some coffee in the pot.’

  ‘I don’t want any more. Do you?’

  Her right hand was on the table, toying with the stem of her empty wine glass. Reid took it and lifted it to his lips, brushing a kiss across her knuckles. Even more softly, he said, ‘No...I want you.’

  They put their checked cotton napkins on the table and rose. As they did so, there was a commotion in the bar-cum-reception area. A policeman and another man had come in and were talking to the patron’s wife whose response conveyed agitation.

  As Reid and Fran left the dining room, the policeman gave him an assessing look, then spoke to him in French.

  The conversation that followed was too rapid-fire for Fran to follow any of it.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  HALF an hour later she was back at the table, sharing a fresh pot of coffee with Jenny. Both their husbands were out with the mountain rescue team which, being shorthanded that night, had had to seek volunteers in the local hotels.

  All the two women knew about the accident was that it had happened some time that afternoon. Two foreign girls had been climbing together. One had fallen and been badly injured. The other, returning to their hotel for help, had mistaken the way and got lost.

  ‘It’s lucky Ben and Reid were here,’ said Jenny. ‘If the injured girl is stuck on a ledge halfway up a rock face, they’ll need a full team to get her down.’ She shuddered. ‘It makes me feel bad just thinking about it. I can’t bear to watch Ben climbing. I wish I could share it with him, but I don’t feel safe on the top of a stepladder. Do you have a good head for heights?’

  ‘I really don’t know,’ said Fran. ‘I’ve never done any climbing.’

  She was wondering how long the rescue would take. A long time, by the sound of it. It might be the early hours of tomorrow morning before Reid came back.

  ‘You may enjoy it. What does Reid do for a living?’

  ‘He’s a banker.’

  ‘Really?’ Jenny seemed amazed. ‘He looks such a fit, outdoorsy kind of man. I can’t imagine him stuck in an office all day. Does he enjoy it?’

  ‘It’s a family tradition. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather were bankers.’

  ‘Oh I see...so there was a lot of pressure on him.’ Jenny’s tone was commiserative. ‘It was a bit like that for Ben. At the time he left school climbing wasn’t a career option. His father was a dentist so Ben followed in his footsteps, even though it never really fulfilled him. He’s longing for retirement so that he can begin to enjoy himself full-time. I feel that, in that respect, he’s wasted his life,’ she ended, with a sigh.

  ‘What does your son do?’ asked Fran.

  They had been chatting for an hour when Jenny said, ‘I think we should go to bed. There’s no point in sitting up.’

  Alone in the double divan where, but for the unforeseen emergency, she would now be in a deep postcoital sleep, Fran lay awake for a long time. It had been a strange sort of day, beginning badly and ending inconclusively.

  But there had been some moments to remember with pleasure. Reid holding her hand while they strolled and kissing it at the table, his face neither angry nor cold, as it
had been earlier, but warmed by desire.

  She had responded...then. The wine they had drunk, the conversation at dinner, the encouraging success of the Lewises’ marriage had all combined to make her feel hopeful that she and Reid could shape the strangeness of their relationship into something good and enduring.

  But would that optimism still be in place in the morning?

  She woke up with a start to find Reid standing at the foot of the bed. She had fallen asleep with the light on. Struggling into a sitting position, she was about to ask him what had happened when he put a finger to his lips, tapped his wristwatch and held up four fingers.

  Then he came and sat down close to her, saying in a low voice, ‘Panic over. The girl is on her way to hospital. Her arm is broken but she’s going to be OK. I’m sorry I woke you.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she whispered. ‘You must be exhausted. Would you like a cup of tea?’ The room was equipped with a kettle, crockery and a choice of tea, coffee or chocolate.

  ‘I’d rather have a kiss.’

  Before she was properly awake, she was in his arms, being kissed with startling enthusiasm considering that, twenty-one hours ago, he had woken up with a hangover and had just spent half the night assisting a rescue in the middle of nowhere.

  Roused from a confusing dream, with her mind still in subconscious mode, Fran was functioning by instinct, and the messages coming from instinct were to go with the flow.

  His face was cold from the night air and he smelt different from usual. But his mouth was warm and she liked being held in strong arms. Her lips softened and parted under the pressure of his.

  It would have been nice to continue the kiss indefinitely, but suddenly he put an end to it. ‘I’m filthy,’ he murmured in her ear. ‘I can’t come to bed like this. I’ll have a quick shower.’ He moved to the end of the bed and bent to unlace his boots.

  Before he and Ben set out, she had discovered that the boots, and a pair of light ones for her, had been in his luggage all the time. He had found out her size from her mother. His other climbing equipment—the stuff he had bought in Bordeaux—had been in the boot of the car he’d rented.

  The boots off, he stood up and shed the rest of his clothing, except for his undershorts. Then he disappeared and moments later she heard the shower running. Would it disturb the people in the next room? she wondered. With so few people in the hotel, perhaps that room was empty.

  Waiting for him to come back, she identified the unfamiliar aroma as sweat from strenuous exertion. She pushed back the bedclothes, swung her feet to the floor and picked up the coral-coloured sweatshirt he had stripped off. Only the faintest trace of his body scent lingered on the garment but she found it curiously exciting.

  The noise of the shower stopped. There was a pause. Then she heard him brushing his teeth.

  I need to brush mine, she thought.

  She was standing near the bathroom door when he came out, vigorously towelling his head, a hand towel worn like a loincloth.

  ‘I shan’t be long.’ She slipped inside, closed the door, and splashed her face with cold water before reaching for her toothbrush.

  The bedroom light was out and Reid was standing by the window when she rejoined him. Fran extinguished the bathroom light. She had discovered earlier that, with the shutters open, the bedroom was never in total darkness because, although they overlooked a side street, there was a powerful street lamp where it joined the main road.

  It would take a little while for her eyes to adjust to the dimness after the brightness in the bathroom. But Reid’s eyes had adjusted. He came to where she was standing and took her face between his hands.

  ‘It was hard to concentrate on what I was doing...hard not to think about you.’ He resumed the interrupted kiss, his hands gliding down the sides of her neck, along her shoulders and then down her back to her waist where they pulled her closer against him.

  For a moment or two Fran was passive, her hands trapped between them against the solid wall of his chest, her fingertips feeling, for the first time, the burnished texture of his bare skin.

  The sensation of being held close by someone much bigger and stronger, against whom, if he chose, she was powerless, was strangely exciting, like swimming in a rough sea.

  Knowing the time for restraint was over, that she owed it to him to be generous with her responses, she ran her hands up his chest to the strong column of his neck and then slid her forearms behind it, pressing herself against him in implicit abandonment.

  She heard his sharp intake of breath and felt his broad chest expand against the softness of her breasts. Then his hands moved down from her waist, slowly caressing her flanks until, catching her by surprise, he took hold of the skirt of her nightdress and pulled it slowly upwards.

  Fran stepped back to allow him to draw it over her head and toss it aside. All her shyness seemed to have vanished. A second later she was being swung off her feet and held like a bride being carried over a threshold. Seconds after that he was lowering her onto the bed, pausing only to dispose of his own covering before following her down. He had, she realised, already thrown back the top bedclothes, leaving only the smooth undersheet. Hours earlier she had disposed of the sausage-shaped bolster, replacing it with the two large square pillows found in the top of the wardrobe.

  In the dim silvery light, the bed looked like a low table spread with a white damask cloth, or perhaps a white marble altar prepared for some ancient ritual.

  As Reid loomed over her, a dark silhouette with only the shape of his head and the outlines of his shoulders discernible, she felt like a virgin being sacrificed to a god. But such a magnificent god that she welcomed her immolation.

  ‘You’re so beautiful...’ His voice was a husky whisper. Leaning on one elbow, he placed the flat of his other hand on the space between her breasts and her navel. Immediately every sensitive part of her body felt as if it were switching on, like a computer booting up before the opening screen of a mind-blowing program.

  Slowly, his hand moved upwards and outwards to glide up the swell of her breast and pause on the summit, his palm still open, the heel of his hand moving lightly in a caress of such exquisite subtlety that it made her gasp with pleasure.

  Like a hawk dropping out of the sky, his mouth seized her parted lips in a kiss that set up a network of delicious sensations. For the first time she felt the coaxing warmth of his tongue and her own instinctive response. She was conscious of being surprised that it all felt so easy and natural, as if they had done this before in other times, other lives, and were rediscovering each other. She knew now it was right to have waited, that only with this one man...

  The thought came into her mind, only to evaporate as she felt his hand coasting downwards to explore the curl of her navel and all the territory south of it, the flat plane between her hipbones, the thicket of dark red curls and beyond, like two long smooth dunes, the curving lines of her thighs.

  Gently, he moved them apart, tracing patterns of delight on the sensitive inner skin, making her breathing quicken, her heart beat in rapid thumps as his fingertips moved tantalisingly close to the place where she wanted to feel them, only to move away.

  Suddenly he rolled her over, kissing a path down her spine while he ran a possessive hand over her behind and, finally, sank his teeth into the soft flesh in a series of playful bites, making Fran bury her face in the feather pillow to stifle small animal sounds she couldn’t repress.

  He turned her onto her back, starting to kiss her breasts. It was almost twenty-four hours since he had shaved. His chin and cheeks felt rough, but she found that exciting. Everything about him thrilled her. She plunged her hands in his hair, her body arching as his marauding mouth sent streaks of ecstatic feeling zinging along her nerves.

  Dimly, her own emotions already out of control, she was aware that he hadn’t reached that point. Somehow, by sheer force of will, he was still in charge of them both, his own feelings firmly leashed while he drove her mad with longing
.

  At last she felt his hand where she wanted it to be, searching for and finding the key to the ultimate pleasure. There was nothing tentative in his touch. He knew exactly what she needed to drive her over the edge. Almost at once, she was there, free-falling off the edge of the world in a white-out of feeling she had never achieved on her own.

  Limp, exhausted, drained, she came slowly back to her senses. ‘Oh, Reid...why? Why not together?’

  ‘Together comes later.’ Even speaking in an undertone, his voice had a hungry rasp that sent a small frisson of trepidation through her. What was he expecting of her? Something more than she could give? Was she going to disappoint him?

  He began to make love to her again, kissing her mouth, softly stroking her body. Amazingly it wasn’t long before she began to feel flickers of renewed arousal irradiating from the core of her body out to her fingertips and toes. This time the magic worked faster. This time, driven by impatience to relieve that amazing sensation, she felt for the hand caressing her and led it to its destination.

  She felt Reid tense and knew by his smothered exclamation that her inviting gesture had stretched his control almost to breaking point. But this time he didn’t touch her where he had before. His fingers explored beyond that, searching and parting the delicate folds of tissue as if he were touching the petals of an exotic flower.

  She could feel his heart pounding now. His skin burned against her hand. As a car went past on the main road, its headlights shone into the room like the moving beam of a lighthouse. For a brief shining instant the face above hers was illuminated. She saw the glitter in his eyes, the fierce mask of controlled desire.

  Then, without meaning to, he hurt her.

  Her teeth set, she drew in a sharp breath.

  Immediately the pain stopped. ‘Darling... what is it?’

  He had never called her ‘darling’ in private before.

  ‘It’s nothing... nothing.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. I hurt you. Why are you tensing?’