Second-Best Husband

by Penny Jordan

  ‘Oh, but he’s perfect for you,’ her mother enthused. ‘Just exactly the sort of man your father and I would have chosen. Have you set a date yet? When—?’

  ‘Give her time to draw breath, Eileen,’ her father protested mildly. ‘Let the lass tell us herself what’s happening.’

  ‘We…we haven’t made any firm plans yet,’ Sara told them weakly. ‘It’s…it’s early days, I haven’t even—’

  ‘Well, there’s no reason for any delay,’ her mother interrupted, before she could explain that she hadn’t even accepted Stuart’s proposal yet, or tell them what had prompted it. ‘After all, you don’t need to look for a house, or… You could have a June wedding. We could have the reception here in the garden. The roses will be at their best then, and the lawn’s big enough for a marquee.’

  Sara heard her father making a half-hearted protest about the potential hazard to his beloved garden, but she wasn’t really listening. She was picturing herself wearing a misty creation of heavy old cream satin, floating ethereally toward Stuart while he…

  She caught herself up with a guilty start. What on earth was she doing? She was far too sensible, and surely far too mature, to drift into that kind of daydream. Weddings…wedding dresses, the whole paraphernalia of a traditional ceremony had never really held any particular appeal to her, although by choice she would prefer a church ceremony, but as for the dress… She gave a small swallow of pain, surprised to discover how tight her throat was.

  If she had been marrying Ian, he would either have wanted the brevity of a civil ceremony and no celebration or the exact opposite—an ‘in’ London church, the kind of reception that ran into thousands upon thousands of pounds, and hopefully made the gossip Press. From one extreme to the other, but then that was Ian: a man of extremes, of sudden passions and short-lived enthusiasms. Would he be faithful to Anna? If not, she would make him suffer for any infidelities. She was not the kind to suffer her pain in silence. Their marriage would be modern, bonded together by their mutual desire to live a fast-lane high-profile life.

  As she contemplated the differences between the life she would have had married to Ian and the life she would have with Stuart, she acknowledged how painful and alien she would often have found her life with Ian. If he had loved her with the same intensity as she loved him, that would have compensated for the lack of mutual goals…for the lack of compatibility. Or would it?

  She gave a tiny shiver, causing her mother to ask her anxiously if she was feeling all right.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she assured her.

  ‘I must ring Jacqui. She’ll be so thrilled. You’ll want to have the boys as pages, of course. Such a pity Jessica is still only a baby.’

  ‘Eileen,’ Sara heard her father warn gruffly, ‘this is Sara’s wedding. Give her a chance to say what she wants, eh, love, before you go making all kinds of plans? Don’t fancy an elopement, do you, Sara?’ he asked teasingly, his expression hopeful.

  Sara responded with a smile to this paternal chestnut, while her mother protested, ‘Good heavens, Jack, what can you be suggesting? Of course she doesn’t. Of course there’ll be a lot to do…the catering for one thing, and the marquee.’

  ‘Mum, I haven’t…’

  I haven’t decided if I’m going to marry Stuart yet, she had been going to say, but somehow or other she found she had changed it to, ‘I haven’t decided what kind of wedding to have yet. Stuart’s only just proposed. He might prefer something very quiet and informal. Men do…’

  ‘Well, maybe,’ her mother allowed, ‘but he’ll soon come round once he realises—’

  ‘Eileen,’ her father warned again, causing her mother to stop and say ruefully,

  ‘I’m sorry, love. I am running on a bit, aren’t I? Of course it’s up to you. If you’d rather have a small wedding…’

  ‘I’ll have to discuss it with Stuart,’ Sara told her. She still couldn’t believe it was all happening. Either that Stuart had proposed or that she had somehow or other allowed her mother to believe that not only had she accepted him but also that their relationship and future marriage was not the prosaic reality it actually was, but instead some kind of romantic fantasy.

  While she drank the cup of tea her mother had poured her, she tried to come to terms with what had happened. She would have to tell Stuart that she wished to accept his proposal and soon, otherwise the whole village would know that she was marrying him before he did, she reflected wryly, as she interrupted her mother’s excited plans to warn her that for the moment she wanted her news to be kept between the four of them.

  She tried to ring Stuart to suggest seeing him that evening to explain to him what had happened and to warn him that her parents now believed they were madly in love, but as she had expected he wasn’t in. She would have to ring later when it had gone dark or leave matters as they stood until the morning.

  The decision was taken out of her hands a little later on over an early meal when her mother said, ‘Well, I expect you’ll be wanting to get changed and get back to Stuart. No doubt we’ll hardly see anything of you between now and the wedding. I remember how it was when your father and I were engaged… Couldn’t spend enough time together, could we, Jack?’

  It was no use now trying to explain to her parents that their relationship was completely different from the one she would be having with Stuart and that, far from wanting to spend every possible second with her, he would probably appreciate a little distance.

  She frowned to herself as she tried to work out why that knowledge should cause her a pain like a tiny sliver of ice embedding itself in her heart.

  She delayed for as long as she could before giving in to her mother’s urging to go upstairs and get ready to drive back to the manor.

  When she came downstairs, having changed into a clean shirt, still wearing the suit she had worn for work, her mother expostulated with her that she might have chosen to wear something a little more feminine and pretty.

  A shadow touched her eyes as she turned away from her, her mild criticism suddenly far too reminiscent of Anna’s taunts.

  Was she unfeminine? She had never thought so; perhaps her clothes were a little on the formal, businesslike side, but she felt equally at home in her jeans, a thick sweater and a pair of Wellington boots. If she chose not to wear frills and fussy flounces, surely that did not rob her of her femininity.

  ‘Leave the lass alone,’ she heard her father saying easily. ‘She looks fine the way she is.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ her mother reassured her. ‘I just thought…’

  Quietly Sara opened the kitchen door. She was committed now; it was too late for second thoughts and all because she had allowed her mother to jump to the wrong conclusion, thus forcing her into an acceptance of Stuart’s proposal, his ‘proposition’, as he had termed it. And yet hadn’t she known deep inside herself what would happen the moment she tried to explain the situation to her mother? Had she done so in fact with a hidden secret corner of her mind already knowing what the outcome would be?

  After all, wasn’t it far easier to tell herself that she had had no option but to accept Stuart’s proposal, once her mother had assumed they were in love, than to coldbloodedly and analytically weigh up the fors and againsts of the situation like two opposing columns of figures?

  Despite all her doubts, all her awareness of how very unorthodox what she was doing was, she now wanted to marry Stuart and yet until he had broached the subject it had never even occurred to her.

  It surprised her how quickly, how easily she had come to envisage herself in the role of his wife.

  He would not be expecting her to return this evening. He might even be out, she warned herself as she drove up the lane and then parked in front of the house.

  Now that she was here, she felt a little uncomfortable, a little foolish and very, very vulnerable. After all, what she had to say to him could quite easily have waited until the morning. She could surely have easily found some way of deflecting her mother�
��s curiosity at the fact that they weren’t spending the evening together; told her that Stuart was under pressure to complete his new planting.

  There was no sign of the Land Rover in the yard as she stopped, just a pile of what looked like huge old pieces of wood. Stuart was obviously still working, which meant that she would either have to return home, stay here and hope that he came back soon, or drive over the estate looking for him.

  Rejecting the latter course, she was just mulling over what she should do when she heard the Land Rover approaching the house.

  ‘Sara!’ Stuart hailed her as he cut the engine and got out. ‘I wasn’t expecting…’

  ‘No, I know, but my mother…’ Realising she was beginning her explanation from the wrong end, Sara stopped, took a deep breath and then asked him unsteadily, ‘Stuart, was I dreaming this afternoon or did you really suggest that we should get married?’

  ‘You weren’t dreaming,’ he assured her, watching her.

  In the strident light from the security lights illuminating the yard he looked tired. There were streaks of dirt on his face, and a small laceration on his cheekbone where a thin whippy branch had perhaps cut the flesh.

  As he came towards her, she caught the warm, active scent of his skin and to her consternation she felt her body reacting overwhelmingly to it.

  Thank goodness she wasn’t actually wearing the soft feminine frills suggested by her mother was her first panicky thought. Had she been, the swelling tautness of her nipples would have been instantly visible to anyone who looked at her, including Stuart himself.

  As it was she had to suppress a sharp urge to pull her jacket more protectively around her body, conscious as she moved that even the small friction caused by that movement caused her now sensitive nipples to throb and ache.

  ‘Let’s get inside,’ she heard Stuart saying. ‘You’re obviously cold.’

  Her face flamed as she thought that he must somehow after all have noticed what had happened to her, and then she realised that it was far more likely to be the fact that she was hugging herself into her jacket that made him think she was chilled.

  As she followed him inside, she protested, ‘I shouldn’t really be here. You probably haven’t even eaten yet, and I know how busy you are…’

  ‘Not too busy to make time for you,’ he assured her, turning to give her a grave-eyed look. ‘Something’s obviously worrying you. I take it you’ve discussed my…my proposition with your parents.’

  ‘Well, I tried to, only Mum got the wrong end of the stick and before I could stop her she’d assumed that it was more of a proposal than a proposition. She thinks that you and I are in love,’ she told him starkly. ‘I know I ought to have at least tried to explain to her, but once she’d made the assumption, and was obviously thrilled with the idea…’ She gave a helpless shrug.

  ‘It’s cowardly of me, I know. I should have told her the truth, but it would be rather like trying to stop an express train,’ she told him ruefully. ‘Before we’d even finished our cup of tea, she’d virtually got the wedding planned. A marquee on the lawn—a June wedding… Oh, I’m so sorry, Stuart; you must think me very weak-minded. I didn’t intend to come up here like this when I know how busy you are, but Mum had virtually pushed me out of the house before I could stop her. She even told me she thought I ought to change into something more feminine.’

  She stopped as she heard Stuart laugh.

  ‘You’re not…you’re not annoyed, then?’ she asked him uncertainly.

  ‘Not if your mother’s very natural misconception means that you are going to marry me.’

  Sara ignored the fierce leap of sensation his words caused inside her, and concentrated instead on anxiously trying to make sure he fully understood what had happened.

  ‘She’ll expect us to behave as though we’re in love. I don’t know if you realise…’

  ‘Well, of course she will, and so will everyone else, but I don’t see that being any problem. After all, I don’t know about you, but I hadn’t intended to go round telling everyone that ours was a marriage founded on…on mutual beliefs and aims, rather than on mutual passion. The reasons for our marriage are our affair and need not concern anyone else.’

  ‘But you don’t understand,’ Sara protested helplessly. ‘People will expect—’

  ‘People will expect what? Us to behave like lovers? I think your mother’s right. I think a June wedding will be ideal.’

  When she frowned and looked confused, he explained quietly, ‘June is less than six weeks away. The sooner we get married, and settle down to the mundanity of married life, the faster people will cease regarding our relationship as a novelty, putting it under a microscope, so to speak. I don’t think it’s a task beyond either of us to at least give some semblance of being idyllically happy together in public for the short space of six weeks, do you? That is, of course, if you have decided that marriage to me is what you want.’

  ‘What? Oh, yes, it is…that is, I do…’ Sara told him in a flustered voice. Married in June. So soon… She felt a tiny flutter of nerves beat frantic wings inside her stomach.

  ‘Why don’t you stay and have supper with me?’ Stuart suggested. ‘We can talk the whole thing over then.’

  Immediately she shook her head. Not because she didn’t want to be with him, but because as yet the whole situation was still too new to her, and because her body, that rebellious entity which seemed to be behaving in such an uncharacteristic way recently, was something she couldn’t trust in its present mood. Witness the way it had already reacted to him once this evening.

  ‘No, no, I must get back,’ she fibbed, edging her way towards the door.

  For a moment he looked oddly grim, unfamiliar almost, a different Stuart from the one she knew, and then he was striding past her to open the door for her and to walk with her to her car.

  As she passed the collection of wood by the door, she asked him curiously, ‘What on earth’s that?’

  ‘Pieces of oak I rescued from a demolition site.’

  ‘Oh, you mean like the wood you used for the kitchen units?’ she asked him, enlightenment dawning.

  ‘That’s right,’ he agreed, without specifying what purpose he intended to put it to.

  Outside her car, she hesitated, telling herself she had no right at all to feel chagrined or rejected when he made no move to touch her or kiss her, and yet oddly enough as she drove home she did feel conscious of a small ache, not just of disappointment but of apprehension as well. They would be sexually compatible, he had said, and yet how could he really know that on the strength of one or two kisses? It was all very well for them both to talk logically and calmly of their mutual desire to have children, to be parents, but what if when the time came…?

  She trembled a little, clutching the steering-wheel of her car. It was too late to have those kind of thoughts now. She was committed. There was no going back.

  Committed. Wasn’t that how they’d used to describe people who were locked away in those awful Victorian mental institutions? Committed…

  She gave another tiny shiver. Was she mad to have accepted Stuart’s proposal? Would a marriage between them work? Would it endure? Would they be able to build a secure, happy environment for their children?

  Beneath her apprehensive fear, she was conscious of a slow, steady pulse of calming reassurance; a deep-seated and deeply buried belief that if she would just allow herself to ignore her fears she would find it surprisingly easy to accept that she had done the right thing.

  At the moment she was allowing her judgement to be clouded by the mythology that surrounded modern courtship and marriage: the belief that only the most intense and passionate of emotions could be any basis for marriage. She must put aside that conditioning, that reasoning, which was after all no reasoning at all. She must turn her thoughts away from the past and towards the future; a future which she owed it to Stuart to commit herself to completely.

  Commit…there was that word again. She must make th
e same commitment to Stuart that he was obviously prepared to make to her. Now suddenly she found the word comforting rather than frightening.

  Commitment. Yes, she liked the sound of that, and she must not forget that Stuart, like her, knew already what it was like to experience all the pain of loving the wrong person, and of not having that love returned. They had so much in common; far more than she had ever had with Ian.

  They could be happy; it was after all up to them.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THEY could be happy. Sara soon discovered how prophetic that thought had been.

  Well as she had thought she had known Stuart, it had surprised her to discover what a good actor he was, and how easily and convincingly he slipped into the role of a man on the verge of marriage to a woman with whom he was very much in love on those occasions when they had to appear together in public as a prospective bridal couple.

  There had been Sunday lunch with her family, arranged so that her sister, her husband and the children could be with them; a visit to the vicar to arrange the dates for the ceremony. Stuart, it seemed, shared her mother’s view that since they were going to get married they might as well do so in style, thus endearing him even more to her parents; and, making him even more popular with her father, he had tactfully suggested that since the manor had much larger grounds and a far less well-cared-for garden it might be as well to have the marquee and the reception there.

  They weren’t having a formal engagement; there was no point when they were getting married so quickly. Everyone who knew them both, or so it seemed, was now announcing that they had felt all along that they were an ideal couple, something which caused Stuart to give her a wryly amused glance whenever this view was uttered.

  He would make a wonderful father, Sara had acknowledged, watching him with her sister’s children; he was patient, caring, concerned…everything that any woman could want in her life’s partner, and yet she was still afraid.