The Bartered Bride

by Anne Weale

  The trick worked. When she woke up, it was an hour and a half later and she felt refreshed and more equal to coping with the evening ahead. She wondered where Reid was.

  Perhaps he was having a drink with the Lewises.

  She showered and shampooed her hair, blew it dry and used a styling mousse to comb it into shape. Then she put on a minimum of make-up and went to the wardrobe. She was taking out the simple shirt dress she had worn the night before when Reid walked in.

  For a second or two his eyes scanned her slim body only partially concealed by a lacy bra and matching briefs. Then he turned away and poured himself a glass of spring water from the litre bottle he had brought up the night before.

  ‘I’ve been thinking things over,’ he said.

  Fran buttoned the dress and watched his reflection in the mirror behind the dressing-table-cum-desk.

  ‘Have you? I’ve been asleep,’ she said, sounding calmer than she felt. ‘What conclusions did you come to?’

  He didn’t turn round but looked at her through the mirror, as if he wanted to depersonalise what he was going to say. She had an ominous feeling she wasn’t going to like it.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘I THINK we should treat the rest of this trip as a holiday rather than a honeymoon. Obviously we don’t know as much about each other as we thought we did. We need to fill in those gaps before we can...come to terms.’

  Before Fran could make any comment, Reid went on, ‘The Lewises are leaving tomorrow. I thought we’d have dinner with them and then move on to a place they’ve recommended. It’s not far. If we pack now and leave about nine, we can be there before ten. I’ve checked that they have a room free and paid the bill here.’

  She wondered why he wanted to leave tonight instead of waiting till tomorrow. The charge for the room was on a printed notice pinned to the back of the door. It was far less than the cost of staying in an equivalent hotel in Britain and clearly the waste of money was a matter of indifference to Reid, as it would have once been to her.

  But a bankruptcy in the family had made her see everything differently. Even though she was now the wife of a rich man, she would never again be recklessly extravagant.

  At dinner, no one would have guessed from Reid’s manner that, since the previous evening, his relationship with his bride had been through a crisis. Secure in their own long and stable relationship, Ben and Jenny remained unaware of the unresolved problem hanging over their new acquaintances.

  The two men split the bill and exchanged addresses and Jenny gave Fran a warm hug. ‘I hope we see you again. Enjoy yourselves... well, of course you will,’ she said, laughing, as if it were a law of life that a honeymoon must be blissful.

  Driving deeper into the mountains, along twisty roads where, in places, melt-water streams poured down the hillside and disappeared into culverts under the road, should have been a joyous adventure. But Fran couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that Reid had some underlying purpose in this hurried departure from La Terrasse.

  ‘What’s the next place called?’ she asked.

  ‘Les Trois Sommets, le sommet meaning the mountain peak.’ Reid changed down to swing the car neatly round another hairpin. It was clear he was used to driving on serpentine mountain roads.

  There was a party taking place in the dining room at Les Trois Sommets. The patron was with the merrymakers, but saw Reid and Fran arriving and came to welcome them, insisting on taking one of the suitcases and showing them the way to their room.

  The first thing Fran noticed, as he switched on the light, was that it had twin beds.

  When she woke up next morning, the other bed was empty and the bathroom door was open.

  Reid was chatting to the patron when she went downstairs.

  ‘I’m sorry I overslept.’ She had lain awake a long time, listening to his regular breathing from the other bed.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Did you sleep well?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. And you?’

  ‘I always do,’ he said briskly.

  They might, she thought, have been two people on a group holiday. Their next topic would be what the weather was going to do.

  On cue, Reid said, ‘It’s going to be another fine day so I’ve ordered a picnic lunch. Ben told me about a small lake...a good spot to have a picnic.’

  They had the lake to themselves, an idyllic spot where they watched a kite hovering high ahead. ‘They’re quite rare in England now,’ Reid said, handing over his field glasses for her to take a closer look.

  For the rest of the week they spent long hours walking, evenings playing board games or cards—Reid could play bridge but didn’t seem to mind that Fran could only play rummy—and slept in their separate beds. He made a point of getting up early and coming to bed after she’d finished in the bathroom.

  They might, she thought, have been a financially pressed brother and sister economising by sharing a room. Except that there were times when her feelings about him were anything but sisterly.

  One night, over dinner, she said to him, ‘Jenny was talking to me about the pressure Ben felt to follow his father into dentistry. Did you ever feel you’d like to break the tradition?’

  It seemed to her that he gave her a reflective look before he said, ‘Yes, many times, but it would have upset my father. He’d been very broken up when my mother left him. By the time I was eighteen he was fighting cancer. I couldn’t add to his burdens by rejecting the career he’d mapped out for me.’

  ‘What would you have chosen to do?’

  Reid gave a sardonic laugh. ‘I wanted to go into a partnership with a guy I knew who was setting up a wilderness travel company. It seemed a risky undertaking at the beginning, but he’s done very well.’

  ‘After your father died, couldn’t you have given up banking then?’

  ‘By then I had missed the boat,’ he said with a shrug.

  ‘Why? You’re still only in your thirties. You’re terrifically fit. People switch careers all the time...often it’s forced on them.’

  ‘If I’d switched careers,’ he said dryly, ‘I shouldn’t have been able to pick up the pieces from your father’s disaster...nor would you have agreed to marry me.’

  She flushed. ‘That would have been no great loss. You might have married for love.’

  ‘My father did that,’ he said cynically. ‘It didn’t bring him much happiness.’

  ‘Why did your mother leave him?’

  ‘She was bored and unhappy. She ran away with a travel writer.’

  ‘How old were you when she left?’

  ‘Ten. But I was away at school so it didn’t have a lot of impact. I always preferred my father.’

  I wonder if that’s true? she thought. Or was it the way he coped with being deserted by her? How could she have done that to him? How could any woman leave a child at such a vulnerable age? The anger she felt towards the unknown woman surprised her.

  ‘Has she ever made contact with you?’

  ‘She’s tried. I’m not interested,’ he said coldly. ‘And I don’t need an amateur psychologist probing my psyche, Francesca. I know women enjoy self-analysis and baring their souls to friends. Men don’t.’

  ‘Perhaps if they did they’d be less of a pain in the whatsit,’ Fran retorted robustly.

  That made him laugh. She found when she answered back he seemed to prefer it to when she was meek and mild.

  He changed the subject. ‘Would you like to move on, or are you happy to stay here another day?’

  ‘Whatever you say. You’re in charge.’

  The next morning he taught her to abseil, using a rope and metal clips called karabiners to lower herself down a rock face. By lunchtime Fran had discovered that being suspended halfway down a small cliff didn’t bother her. She could look down without feeling either giddy or panicky.

  In the afternoon she watched him working his way up a much higher escarpment she would have thought was unclimbable. At first he went up it as easily as a steeplejack on sc
affolding. Then he came to a more difficult stretch.

  Suddenly she couldn’t bear to watch him. But when she rolled onto her tummy on the stretch of warm turf where he’d left her and tried to read a paperback, she found it impossible to concentrate. She had to sit up and watch Reid and the rest of the time he was on the face of the cliff was one of the most unpleasant ten minutes she could remember.

  By the time he rejoined her, having found a way to walk down, she had pulled herself together, at least outwardly. The experience had reminded her of an incident in her childhood, a visit to a circus whose performers included a family of acrobats. The rest of the audience had enjoyed their feats on the trapezes and the high wire. Fran had felt increasingly queasy. While everyone else was applauding what the ringmaster described as death-defying stunts unequalled in the history of the circus, she had had to be hurried outside to be physically sick on the grass outside the big top. When Reid came striding towards her, a look of satisfaction on his face, his bare chest and shoulders slick with sweat from the exertion of the climb, she told herself that the knotted feeling inside her had been the same reaction she had felt as a child.

  Some people got a thrill out of watching others take risks and a few people found it scary. Watching Reid had been worse than watching the acrobats because for him there had been no safety net.

  ‘Do you often climb on your own?’ she asked, as he dried himself on a small towel he kept in his pack.

  ‘I have...up to now. It occurred to me, halfway up, that today had better be the last time. If I’d dropped off while I was up there, it wouldn’t have been a nice experience for you... or for me, come to that,’ he added humorously.

  ‘How can you joke about it?’ Fran hadn’t intended to say anything about her reaction to the climb, but she couldn’t help sounding irritated when he made light of the horrific risk he had taken.

  Reid tilted a quizzical eyebrow at her. ‘There are worse ways to go. It would have been over in seconds... and you look very fetching in black, I remember.’

  ‘That’s not funny!’

  ‘I should have thought the prospect of being a rich widow might be rather pleasing.’

  She glared at him. Without pausing to consider the wisdom of firing off the first retort that came into her head, she said angrily, ‘I’m not even properly your wife yet. If you had fallen off that cliff, I wouldn’t have touched a penny of your money. I’m only in this situation because of my mother. If I hadn’t needed help for her, I’d have told you to go to hell.’

  Reid dropped the towel on the grass and thrust his hands into the pockets of his shorts, a gesture suggesting that he might be restraining an impulse to place them round her neck and squeeze.

  ‘You did,’ he reminded her. ‘But then you thought better of it.’ His face an impenetrable mask, he went on, ‘The arrangements made for your mother will remain in place whatever happens. Our marriage, as you point out, isn’t fixed in stone...not yet. If you want to have it annulled...’ He left the rest in the air.

  She took a deep breath. ‘I didn’t say that...I don’t. I—I just resent the implication that I’m a gold-digger, out for all I can get. It’s not true.’

  He bent to pick up his tee shirt, slipping it over his head before thrusting his arms through the sleeves and pulling it down over his washboard midriff.

  ‘I know that, Francesca. If you had been, I wouldn’t have married you. Let’s start making tracks, shall we?’

  The rest of the day followed the pattern of previous days. Earlier, after his pre-breakfast shower, Reid had shaved with an ordinary razor, but after his pre-dinner shower he used an electric razor to remove the slight shadow appearing round his mouth and along the hard outlines of his jaw. She heard it buzzing while she was having her bath. Usually by the time she had finished in the bathroom, he had dressed and gone downstairs to read a paper or magazine until she joined him for a drink.

  This evening, not hearing the outer door close, she expected him still to be there when she returned to the bedroom. But he wasn’t, and she felt a pang of disappointment. What had she been hoping? That he would be lying on the bed, waiting for her like the eager lover of her dreams?

  While she was dressing she thought about what he had said to her earlier. Did he want the marriage annulled? Had he realised that his plan had gone wrong...had been a mistake from the outset?

  ‘I think tomorrow we might cross the frontier and take a look at the Spanish side of the mountains,’ said Reid, during dinner. ‘I’ll ring the parador tonight...make sure they’ve got a room for us.’

  Fran spooned up the last of her pineapple millefeuille. But instead of raising it to her lips, she met his eyes across the table. ‘Do you know the Spanish for twin beds?’

  ‘Camas gemelas.’

  ‘What a marvellous vocabulary you must have. I can’t believe you’ve ever needed those words before.’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said blandly.

  She had told him, and meant it, that his past was not her business. Why then did it hurt her to think of him holidaying in Spain with someone else?

  ‘I’ll go and make the call now. You can order the coffee, can’t you?’

  Fran nodded. Watching him walk away, his body as lithe as a leopard’s, she realised that every day, every hour, his attraction for her grew more powerful. This afternoon, if something had gone wrong, all that remained of that potent masculinity would be in a French morgue and she would be facing the rest of her life without ever knowing what it was like to belong to him.

  When the waiter came to take away their pudding plates, instead of asking for coffee, Fran managed to tell him they wouldn’t be having it tonight. Would he please tell her husband that she was waiting for him in their room?

  ‘D’accord, madame.’ His smile added a subtext to his polite reply: he wouldn’t mind being in her husband’s shoes.

  Fran needed the boost to morale his unspoken admiration gave her. Was she doing the right thing?

  In their room, she went to the bathroom and quickly brushed her teeth. She was undressing when she heard Reid enter. Seconds later he tapped on the bathroom door. ‘Fran...are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine. I’ll be out in a minute.’

  She wrapped a towel around her, sarong-fashion, and remembered to take off her earrings and her engagement ring, the only jewellery she was wearing.

  As the hotel was a haven for walkers, climbers, botanists and bird-watchers, the dress code was informal. Even in the evening shorts were seen in the dining room. Tonight Reid was wearing a clean pair of pale cream chinos and a dark blue cotton shirt.

  When she opened the bathroom door, he had unfastened the buttons to show a strip of tanned chest but the shirt was still tucked in his trousers.

  He stood with his hands on his hips, the thumbs to the back, male-style. ‘It’s early to turn in, isn’t it?’

  She closed the door behind her and moved to where he was standing between the beds and the window. ‘You can have enough rummy. Tonight I’d rather... make love.’ She moved even closer and slipped a hand inside his open shirt, pressing her palm against the warm brown skin over his breastbone.

  He clapped a hand over her hand. She could feel the tension in him.

  ‘Are you sure about that, Francesca? As things stand you can still back out.’

  ‘So can you. Do you want that?’

  For a moment longer he gave her a brooding stare and she couldn’t tell if he would say yes or no. Then he said in a low husky voice, ‘I want you,’ and, taking hold of the towel, he whipped it away before crushing her naked body in his arms and kissing her with a passion that made her doubts seem ridiculous.

  When she woke up in the morning, in his bed, he wasn’t with her. But the other bed hadn’t been used so, despite the limited space, he must have stayed with her until he got up.

  In a way she was glad to have some time to herself, to adjust to being, at long last, fully a woman, seeing life from a new perspective, knowi
ng instead of wondering. For some people finding out was a disappointment, a let-down. Not for her. It had gone beyond her expectations, far beyond. The momentary spasm of pain had been nothing compared to the pleasure before and after it. Reid was a terrific lover.

  She stretched and jumped out of bed. Today they were going to Spain, and tonight, unless the hotel was crowded, unlikely at this season, they’d be sleeping in a double bed with masses of room to...

  She smiled at her lecherous thoughts and hurried to run a bath.

  Her buoyant mood was slightly deflated when she ran downstairs and found him reading a paper, not looking like a man for whom the desert had bloomed. But of course for him it hadn’t been a new experience, she reminded herself. He had done it before...many times, with partners who matched his own skill.

  Smiling, she said, ‘Bonjour, m’sieur.’

  He rose, putting aside the paper. ‘Bonjour, madame.’

  There were no other guests about yet. Would he have kissed her if, just at that moment, the hotelier hadn’t emerged from the rear of the premises?

  After saying good morning, the Frenchman said, ‘You are leaving today. I hope you’ve enjoyed your visit and want to return another time.’

  ‘I’m sure we shall.’

  As the two men went on chatting, Fran wondered if they would come back. Perhaps, although he had needed a woman, what had happened last night had been a flawed satisfaction for Reid. She had often thought that, except for a very unimaginative man, an act of love which involved inflicting pain, even unavoidable pain, must be a strange experience. To have to do that without love must be even stranger. No wonder he had been angry at finding she was a virgin.

  She came out of her thoughts to find the patron had gone and Reid was passing his hand in front of her face.