Midnight Wedding

by Sophie Weston

  ‘But—’

  He interrupted. ‘For either of us.’

  ‘Ah.’ She digested that in silence for a moment. ‘You’re saying you didn’t want me.’

  ‘Of course I’m not saying that,’ he said impatiently.

  ‘We-ell…’

  ‘I wanted you so badly I broke all my own rules,’ he said harshly. ‘OK?’

  That made her feel a bit better.

  ‘That’s what I thought last night,’ she said.

  She met his eyes very directly. Jack’s face did not move but she thought he whitened under that wonderful golden skin.

  ‘So how do I make you feel this morning?’

  There was a shuddering pause.

  Then he said, ‘Old.’

  Holly was shocked. It showed.

  With a muttered oath he got up and walked over to the balustrade. She could see the tension in the back of his neck.

  She almost said, Would it have been all right if I hadn’t been a virgin? Almost.

  Not looking at her, he said, ‘It shouldn’t have happened. We were both tired. And you’d had too much of their devil’s brew. I knew that. There’s no excuse for me.’

  And then, like a hammer-blow, ‘It won’t happen again.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE extraordinary thing about Jack Armour, thought Holly, was how totally he could disguise his feelings when he wanted to. In the last twelve hours she had seen him break through his cool façade into passion that took her breath away. She had seen him furious with regret, too.

  But when they arrived at the little airport, to a hero’s send-off, you would have thought that he was a happy bridegroom looking forward to a life of conjugal bliss.

  Holly was not that good a liar. Jack’s words kept going round and round in her head, drowning out the chat and the laughter: It won’t happen again. It won’t happen again.

  Jack seemed to have put the whole conversation out of his mind. Holly could not. She could not help it. She held herself stiff under his encircling arm and answered the well-meaning questions in monosyllables.

  Shy, the islanders said kindly, and gave her a large straw hat to hide her blushes. But Jack knew she was not shy. He was impatient.

  ‘Come on,’ he said in her ear as he held her in front of him to wave at the crowd of well-wishers. ‘They’ve done their best for us. You can give them a smile.’

  Holly tried. She really tried. But that cruel mockery of an embrace felt like chains on her heart. Her wave was as mechanical as clockwork.

  Jack held her away from him, smiling. All his mates from the hurricane loved it. They did not see, as Holly did, that the smile did not reach his eyes.

  ‘You can do better than that,’ he told her. ‘Blow them a kiss.’

  She managed not to glare at him. She was weeping inside but she was not going to let him see that either.

  ‘I’m all out of kisses,’ she told him with a sweet, false smile.

  His eyes narrowed. ‘Oh, no, you’re not.’

  He kissed her. Hard.

  To the delighted watchers, it must have looked like the extreme of passion. To Holly, clamped to a body as unyielding as steel, it carried an altogether different message.

  I may have wanted you last night, it said. But don’t think that means anything. Never forget: it won’t happen again.

  She felt physically broken. It was as if Jack had extracted some essential part of her last night without realising it and in the muddle of the morning it had smashed beyond repair.

  I suppose this is what they mean by a broken heart, thought Holly.

  The mouth on hers felt angry. Or maybe it didn’t. Maybe that was her inexperience misleading her. Again.

  She could not bear any more. She removed herself from his embrace. It seemed to her—but maybe that was an illusion too—that his arms tightened possessively for a moment before he let her go. But then he was turning her back to the crowd, making her wave and smile.

  A small girl tottered through the barrier bearing a bright hibiscus flower. She looked up at Holly doubtfully, then cast a scared glance over her shoulder at her encouraging mother. Holly could hardly see through her tears but the child’s uncertainty touched her. She went down on one knee and took the flower.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Holly felt helpless. She knew nothing about children. Her mother had never had the time for other people’s babies and Donna was childless. She knew the child was alarmed by her swimming eyes but she did not know what to say to reassure her.

  It was not a problem for Jack, though. He scooped the little one up easily and set her on his shoulder. ‘What’s your name, honey?’

  The child beamed, relieved. ‘Felicia.’

  ‘Pretty name for a pretty lady,’ said Jack easily.

  He took her back to the barrier and handed her over to the proud mother. ‘You’ve got a star there, ma’am.’

  Holly got to her feet unnoticed. By the time he came back she had blinked the tears away.

  He still said, as they were going through passport control and security, ‘You all right?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Holly.

  She went on saying it all day. From Sugar Island to Barbados. From Barbados to Miami, to San Antonio. Eventually she was saying it in a lurching Jeep going up a mud-encrusted mountainside.

  ‘Say something else, for God’s sake,’ said Jack, losing his cool self-control at last. ‘I know you’re not fine. You’ve made it plain enough. Why don’t you just admit it?’

  But Holly was not admitting anything.

  ‘I need some time to adjust, that’s all.’

  She aimed a pleasant smile at his right ear. As long as she did not meet those dark searching eyes, she told herself, she would be all right. Eventually.

  She was aware of their driver looking at them in the mirror.

  In fact, Holly’s arrival had clearly thrown their driver badly. Outside the airport, Jack had refused to slip into the driving seat as the man obviously expected him to. Instead he had firmly stepped into the back seat beside his new wife. Ever since Holly had been trying to avoid his eyes, to say nothing of his too casual, too indifferent touch. And he knew it.

  Now he muttered something impatient.

  She looked down at the hibiscus blossom she had carried all through the various customs and immigration checks. Its golden glory was gone. Now it looked like a piece of brown rag.

  ‘Sad,’ she said, changing the subject deliberately. ‘Doesn’t travel well, obviously. I should have put it in water.’

  He sent her a shrewd look. ‘Hibiscus blossoms die at night. Water would have made no difference.’

  ‘Oh?’ She put the withered blossom carefully into her waist pouch. ‘Like me,’ she said trying to lighten the atmosphere. ‘We can do glamour but only until the clock strikes.’

  ‘You can do glamour whenever you want to,’ he said with unexpected softness.

  He pulled her plait forward over her shoulder. At once Holly stiffened in pure instinct.

  ‘Relax,’ he said, frowning.

  But he took his hand away.

  When they stopped, he swung quickly out of the Jeep and held out a hand to her before the driver could get out of his seat. Holly pretended she did not see the offered hand. She climbed out of the Jeep unaided and found her legs buckling under her.

  ‘Hang on,’ said Jack.

  He caught her competently and restored her to her feet. Holly’s eyes flew to his face. She was shocked at the way her heart bounded in her breast at even this most disinterested of embraces.

  ‘Altitude shock,’ he told her with a faint smile. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it.’

  ‘W-will I?’

  ‘We all do. The only question is how long it takes.’

  Which gave her the perfect opening to ask what she had been thinking about all the time on their silent journey.

  ‘Am I staying here long enough to get used to it?’

  Jack’s smile was en
igmatic. ‘Up for discussion.’

  Which of course was no help at all. Holly could have screamed. Only then he let her go and she was too busy standing upright on legs that felt as if they were made of candy-floss to do anything as energetic as screaming.

  Jack made sure that she was not actually going to slip sideways into the mud before turning back to the Jeep. He swung the bags out of the back and looped the strap of her roll bag over his shoulder as if he had been doing it all his life. As if the bag belonged to him. As if, thought Holly, leaning against the muddy car in a breathless daze, she belonged to him.

  It gave her the strangest feeling. As if he had some sort of rights in her and she did belong to him, somehow.

  Shocked, she took herself to task. It’s too long since I belonged to anybody, Holly thought, alarmed. That’s all it is. Too many years of loneliness and too much high-octane illusion yesterday. I will get over this.

  But she avoided his touch when he tried to steady her as they made their way up a path of duck boarding, even when she lurched and nearly stumbled.

  ‘Stupid,’ she said instead, brightly. ‘Where is this?’

  Jack’s hand fell to his side.

  ‘Ignaz’s answer to the Ritz,’ he said drily. ‘You’ll be sharing my tent, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Holly coolly, though her heart’s instant reaction nearly made her stumble again. She looked round the sea of tents. ‘In these circumstances I wouldn’t dream of anything else.’

  ‘Good girl,’ said Jack, unexpectedly.

  He took her into the command post and introduced her rapidly. Holly got about four names before her jet-lagged brain gave out but she thought she would recognise most of the faces again.

  ‘And Ramon, of course, you know,’ Jack ended.

  Ramon put aside the map he was studying and shook hands.

  ‘Good to see you.’ He seemed genuinely welcoming. His next words explained why. ‘We can really use another interpreter.’

  Holly was worried. ‘I hope Jack hasn’t misled you. I’m OK in colloquial Spanish but I haven’t got any language qualifications or anything.’

  Ramon grinned. ‘As long as you can count and kick ass that will do.’

  ‘Count?’

  ‘Ten trucks. Five thousand shots of antibiotic. That sort of thing.’

  Holly relaxed. ‘I can probably manage that.’

  ‘And it’s about time you learned to kick ass,’ Jack agreed blandly. He put that proprietorial arm round her again and moved her out of the tent. ‘Rules: we don’t go out of the camp alone. The land may still be unstable. On the street, don’t eat anything uncooked unless you can peel it. Report any injuries or fever immediately. And no hair-washing.’

  She stopped. ‘What?’

  He grinned down at her. ‘We only use water for essentials. You’ve got too much hair. Keep it up out of the way and it won’t be too bad.’

  Holly pulled a face. But she did not demur. She could see how precious water must be here.

  He pulled her plait. ‘I promise you the best power shower in Miami when I ship you out.’

  ‘I look forward to it,’ she said with feeling.

  His grin widened, almost as if he shared her anticipation. Holly stared at him suspiciously. At once he turned businesslike, leading the way off on a spur of duckboard.

  ‘My tent is over here.’

  Holly followed perforce. But, if anything, her suspicions increased. Was that a twitch at the corner of his mouth? Was he amusing himself privately at her expense?

  He pushed aside a heavy canvas flap and she stepped up onto a prefabricated floor of some sort. The tent had the bare essentials—two low beds with sleeping bags on them and a stalk with a lantern on it. Old banana crates seemed to serve for everything else from storage to a writing surface.

  Holly swallowed. She had travelled on a shoestring and thought she had lived in some pretty poor places. She had never come anywhere near this.

  ‘Basic,’ she said lightly.

  Jack tossed her roll bag onto a crate.

  ‘You should have seen what it was like when we first got here.’

  That sobered her. She had seen the news footage on friends’ televisions.

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘And hard beds are good for your back.’ He swung his own case onto his bed and was unpacking with the speed of long practice. Over his shoulder he added, ‘Anyway, you’re so tired you’re asleep before you hit the bed.’

  Holly unzipped her roll bag. ‘I can imagine,’ she said again. ‘And whose bed will I be hitting?’

  He turned round, one wicked eyebrow raised. Furious, Holly found she was blushing to her hairline. She began to flounder.

  ‘I mean—two beds…Someone must have…You can’t have had a tent to yourself. Who were you with…? Oh, damn!’

  She threw a pair of rolled-up socks at the tent wall. They bounced back.

  Jack took pity on her.

  ‘Ramon. And before you ask, no, I didn’t kick him out. He decided to move on all on his own.’

  ‘I know you didn’t kick him out,’ muttered Holly, her cheeks still burning.

  Had he not said to her only this morning, ‘It won’t happen again’? Would she ever forget it? Jack was the last person to make sure that they shared their sleeping arrangements. He was going to hate it almost as much as she was.

  ‘We’ll just have to live with it,’ she said, pursuing the thought upper most in her mind.

  There was the tiniest pause.

  ‘You’ll get used to it. In fact, pretty soon you’ll be too tired to notice,’ Jack assured her pleasantly.

  It gave her the perfect alibi.

  ‘I think I’m too tired now.’ Holly gave an enormous and not entirely contrived yawn. ‘It’s been a long day.’

  He looked at his watch. ‘The daily briefing is nearly due. We all go to that. Afterwards you can eat with the rest of us or come back here and sleep, as you choose.’

  The briefing, Holly found, was an informal affair and as quick as the participants could decently manage. Today there was some slippage of one of the spurs of duckboard; the doctors were asking for an isolation tent; the water purification system was having problems. The weather, however, looked set to improve. And there were more visitors coming up from the capital tomorrow.

  ‘Holly can translate,’ said Ramon, who was leading the meeting. He looked across at her. ‘OK?’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  He came over to her when the meeting dispersed.

  ‘How do you like bean stew?’

  ‘Fine, I suppose,’ she said surprised.

  ‘Because that’s the evening meal. The Emergency Relief people gave us those little packets of reconstituted food that astronauts use. But frankly the water is too precious. So the women keep a cauldron bubbling. If there’s anything in it apart from beans, I haven’t come across it.’

  ‘Sounds interesting.’

  He took her arm to guide her to the communal tent.

  ‘Did anyone think to give you a torch?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘You’ll need it. Even in daylight, sometimes, we’re getting strange cloud shut-down. I’ll bring you one over. Jack tell you the rules?’

  Holly found herself tensing instinctively. But she answered steadily enough. ‘Yes. He’s been very—conscientious.’

  Ramon sniffed. ‘Conscientious. Great. Just what you want on your honeymoon.’

  She turned to him. ‘Ramon, will you tell me something?’

  He looked uneasy. ‘If it’s about Jack, you’d better ask him.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  His uneasiness increased. ‘Why not?’

  ‘I can’t pry. It’s not that sort of marriage.’ She looked at him very straightly. ‘You know it’s not that sort of marriage.’

  His eyes were the first to fall. ‘All right,’ he said at last, resigned. ‘What do you want to know?’

  Holly hesitated. ‘Who was she?�
��

  Ramon muttered again. ‘You mean someone’s told you about Susana. I knew they would. I told him…’

  ‘Susana.’ Holly tasted the name. ‘Susana who?’

  He looked round at the darkening sky. ‘Not here. Let’s go to my tent. At least I can give you something to burn out the taste of the beans.’

  There were three beds in Ramon’s tent but it was empty of people. He excavated a flat bottle from a pile of papers and offered it to her.

  ‘No glasses.’

  She unscrewed it and took the smallest possible mouthful. And coughed until her eyes watered.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Local cane spirit. Sort of rum. Good antiseptic in a crisis.’

  ‘I believe it,’ said Holly, blowing her nose.

  Ramon grinned. ‘Cures everything from manic depression to gall stones, so the locals say.’

  She smiled but it was perfunctory. ‘Am I going to need it?’

  If he thought it odd that Jack’s wife in this unemotional marriage deal should ask such a question, he did not say so. Holly suspected that for Ramon marriage was marriage and curiosity about a husband’s past life came with the package. She also had a nasty feeling that he expected any woman who married Jack Armour to fall in love with him, no matter what public disclaimers they issued.

  She set her teeth. ‘I’m not in love with him, you understand,’ she announced. ‘I just don’t like being the only one in the place who doesn’t know.’

  Ramon sighed. He took the bottle back and gave himself a heartening swig.

  ‘OK. Jack had a thing going a couple of years ago with a woman in Colombia. Susana Montijo. She was a teacher, but during the earthquake he took her on as an interpreter. For a while we all thought it was serious but in the end it just—’ He made an expressive gesture which dissolved the affair into thin air.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’ he said irritably.

  ‘How long did it last? Who broke it up? What was she like?’

  ‘Come on, Holly. You know guys don’t talk about stuff like that.’

  ‘But you knew her?’

  Ramon agreed reluctantly that he’d known her.

  ‘So what did you think? Did you like her?’

  He was surprised into pulling a sour face. ‘Not a lot, no. She was too much of a Mona Lisa for me.’