by Penny Jordan
Re-read this classic romance by New York Times bestselling author Penny Jordan, previously published as Research into Marriage in 1986
Harassed by her brother-in-law’s loathsome advances, Jessica decides that the only solution is marriage. Besides, the experience could prove the thesis of her book: that romantic love is not the best foundation for marriage.
Lyle Garnett needs a mother for his two troublesome sons. When he answers Jessica’s newspaper advert, he’s equally determined to keep their relationship on platonic grounds. But their pragmatic pact begins to crumble as they realize keeping this marriage strictly practical is going to be harder than either of them expected!
The Garnett Marriage Pact
Penny Jordan
CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
CHAPTER ONE
JESSICA GRIMACED with exasperation as her phone rang, disturbing her train of thought. This was the fifth time it had rung this morning. How on earth was she going to get even the research done for this new book, with all these interruptions?
As she reached for the receiver she remembered that her sister had told her she ought to employ a secretary: with two definitive books in her particular field published already she was regularly in demand to speak at seminars and universities. Initially she had quite enjoyed these opportunities to lecture on her work, but now she was finding she was having to cut down on these activities. There was only three months to go before the draft of her third book was due at her publishers and as yet she was only half way there.
Rather abruptly she spoke into the receiver, her frown deepening as she heard her sister’s anxious voice on the other end of the line.
‘Jess…please…you’ve got to help me…I just can’t cope any longer. David’s behaving so oddly. I’m sure there’s someone else…. He’s so…so indifferent towards me…’
The mixture of pity and irritation churning inside her was not an unfamiliar one. Jessica had never wanted her elder sister to marry David Chalmers; right from the start she had recognised him as a weak, vain man who would soon grow tired of her sister’s open adoration and start to stray.
But what she had not bargained for, was that David would want to stray in her direction! Listening to her sister’s outpourings with one ear, she started to doodle absently on the pad in front of her, her frown deepening when she realised that what she had drawn was a caricature of her brother-in-law’s boyishly handsome features. Angrily she stroked through the sketch. The desire that David insisted he had for her was not something she returned. On the contrary she loathed the man; found him vain and shallow to the point where her irritation often threatened to boil over, but so far she had always managed to keep her temper under control, more for her sister’s sake than her own. Andrea had fallen head over ears in love with David during her university days when she had been one of his students. Delicate, blonde and rather fragile as Andrea had been in those days it was easy for Jessica to see why her sister had appealed to David, especially when one took into account the rather substantial amount of money both she and Andrea had inherited from their father on his death. Oh yes, David had always had a healthy respect for money and for all the comfort it could provide.
It was Andrea who had bought the large five-bedroomed house they lived in, on the better side of town; and it was Andrea’s investments that provided the money for the new BMW every two years, and private school for their son William. But the most damnable thing of all, at least as far as Jessica was concerned, was that when it came to revealing to her sister her husband’s inadequacies, her hands were tied.
From the moment her first book had started to be acclaimed a success David had been a nuisance. At first she had found his over-attentiveness in public, his constant claims to being what he termed ‘her only real male relative’, and his equally unacceptable physical overtures towards her whenever they met, more of an irritation than a threat.
She had presumed that Andrea, having gone ahead and married the man, was well aware of her husband’s weaknesses; and where better for a man with David’s taste for a succession of adoring, nubile young women in his life to be employed than at a university as a lecturer?
But as Jessica had discovered over Christmas, her sister seemed to have a facility for blinding herself to her husband’s true nature.
When she had come upon Jessica struggling in David’s arms, in the study, where she had gone to borrow some books, Andrea had immediately leapt to the conclusion that Jessica had been the one doing the inviting. For weeks afterwards there had been a coolness between the sisters, which Jessica suspected had affected her more than it did Andrea. Although Andrea was the elder, in many ways it had always been she, Jessica, who had been the stronger of the pair for all the three years’ difference in their ages.
It had been Andrea who almost collapsed following the death of their father from a heart-attack, her grief driving her to the edge of a nervous breakdown, even though neither of them had seen him since his divorce from their mother ten years previously.
Jessica had been stunned to discover that they had been included in their father’s will along with the two children from his second marriage. Following the break-up of their parents’ marriage her father had emigrated to Australia, where he had done very well for himself financially.
Jessica had gone to his funeral: Andrea had not been well enough to make the flight, but Jessica had felt totally out of place there; a stranger who had no right to be amongst the grieving family of a man whom she barely knew.
It had been following her father’s death, as a catharsis for the guilt she had unexpectedly felt, that she had written her first book; basing it on research which she had spent almost two years gathering. The book dealt with the problems arising from the breakup of family units and its effect on the members of those families and its publication so soon after she had obtained her degree in psychology had caused quite a stir.
She had followed it up eighteen months ago with a more detailed study on the long-lasting effects of childhood events, including parental divorce, on children, and that book too had been received very well. She had, or so her publisher claimed, a facility for explaining the most obscure technical data in a way that made for easy reading and absorption.
However, as Jessica had discovered, success brought its own problems, and in her case the most unpleasant of these was the decidedly unpleasant knowledge that her brother-in-law appeared to have switched what shallow affections he had from her sister to herself.
Had Andrea been a stronger character Jessica could simply have told her how unwelcome her husband’s advances were, but then had she been a stronger character, she would have never married a man like David in the first place.
Physically as well as emotionally Jessica found that he repelled her. It had come to the point now where if he so much as touched her she could feel her body stiffening, his effect on her much the same as that on a cat whose coat has been stroked the wrong way. If it hadn’t been for Andrea she would have had no compunction in telling him exactly what she thought of him, but that was not possible.
Her sister, now in her third month of a very precarious pregnancy, had developed a paranoid fear of losing her husband, which seemed to focus on what she believed to be Jessica’s desire for him, and David, recognising the weapon his wife had put into his hand, was taking every opportunity of using it.
It was useless for Jessica to tell her sister that she had no emotional intere
st in David. Andrea would not be convinced. Jessica suspected that Andrea did not want to be convinced, because privately she was well aware that David was unfaithful to her, and for some reason she preferred to believe that this unfaithfulness involved her own sister rather than someone else—a stranger whom she could not manipulate by using the emotional tie between them.
‘Jessica…promise me you won’t see him again…I know you saw him last night…he was out until gone two…I rang you…you were out too… Please don’t insult me by lying about it…I know how you feel about him.’
Holding on to her self-control Jessica muttered beneath her breath, ‘I wish to God you did.’ Her fingers gripping the phone were damp and she could feel the tension spiralling up inside her. She knew quite well that Andrea needed medical attention, but David, because it suited him to pretend otherwise, refused to consult their doctor about her deteriorating mental condition.
Only last week when Jessica had pointed out to him how debilitating and dangerous her sister’s neuroses were becoming, especially in her pregnant condition, David had merely shrugged his shoulders and suggested slyly, ‘Well, since she already thinks we’re having an affair, why don’t we?’
His vanity and cruelty both sickened Jessica; sometimes she felt as though she were caught in a miasma of deceit from which there was no escape. She personally loathed lies and deception. It had shaken her world to its foundations when their parents split up, even though her mother had explained carefully to her at the time that it was a mutual decision.
Certainly as far as divorces go it had been reasonably amicable. Her mother had re-married nine years ago when Jessica started university and now lived in Canada with her new husband, who had offered both Andrea and herself a home. Guy was a nice enough man; he adored her mother but, as Jessica had learned from her own research, what a child wanted, no matter what the impracticalities and impossibilities as far as the adults were concerned, were for its two parents to be together, and since all adults carry within them the ghost of the child they had been, the feeling of desertion and betrayal that comes from being a child of a broken marriage never completely fades. It can be rationalised away, analysed and accepted, but something of it is always there.
She had no delusions about herself, or others; David wanted her now because she had something Andrea did not have—academic success. It would suit David very nicely to be the husband of a successful woman, but not for long. A man of David’s low emotional stature would very soon find those small cruel ways of undermining such a wife; those tiny, unkind gibes in public that she had so often heard exchanged by other couples. But there was no question and never had been of her marrying David, or anyone, come to think of it, she thought wryly. Her life had been so busy that there had never been any time for her to form a lasting relationship, and for her, marriage was something that had to be based on more than mere physical lust. Love, or what commonly passed for it, was no basis for security; better to marry for political, financial and practical reasons; to make a contract with another person and stick to it than to risk so much on the mere irrational whim of one’s hormones!
And that was to be the basis of her next book. At the moment she was deeply engrossed in her work on this book and what she had researched so far confirmed her views that so called ‘arranged’ marriages, provided they were motivated purely by a parental desire to achieve the best possible chance of happiness and contentment for a child, had more chance of succeeding than any others.
It was to be a radical and challenging book when it was finished, and Jessica had no doubt that she would receive an awful lot of flak about it, but she was sincerely convinced that she was right in her views.
In a surprising number of cases though, she had discovered that love had grown from these ‘arranged’ marriages, and although she was rather loath to admit it, that rather upset her theory that ‘love’ was not a necessary ingredient for success.
‘Jessica, are you listening to me?’
Andrea’s voice was high-pitched with hysteria. ‘Promise me that you’ll give David up, that you won’t see him again.’
This was getting ridiculous. She fought down an urge to tell her sister not to be so stupid, and instead said patiently, ‘Andrea, David means nothing to me.’
‘You’re lying. I know he’s seeing someone and if it isn’t you then…’
The high-pitched voice was suddenly silent, tension humming along the wire as though her sister had suddenly discovered a chasm had opened at her feet. As indeed she probably had, Jessica thought tiredly. Poor Andrea. If she was to accept that her sister was not having an affair with her husband then that meant she must accept that he was in all probability having one with someone else, someone she could not control so easily. And it wouldn’t be his first affair, Jessica thought angrily.
‘Andrea, try to calm down,’ she said quietly. ‘Think of the baby.’
It was obviously the wrong thing to say as it provoked a storm of weeping and hysterical demands that ‘no, you think of it, think of it when you’re making love to my husband,’ and then before Jessica could retort the phone was slammed down.
Jessica knew what that meant. Tiredly she stood up, flexing her muscles, where they were strained from tension. A tall woman, with long legs and full breasts above a very narrow waist, she had a shape which she remembered from her teens as being distinctly out of fashion. That view had stuck, and now she tended to wear clothes that concealed rather than revealed her almost lush femininity.
Her hair was thick, with a natural curl to it, a deep shade of copper; her skin almost translucently pale, except in summer when it freckled. Her eyes were a curious shade somewhere between green and gold, and depending on her mood could look either colour.
Up until the success of her first book she had disdained make-up, but several appearances on television without it had convinced her of the necessity of adding at least some colour to her pale skin, and thanks to the make-up departments of the various television studios she had visited she was now able to apply it with a fair degree of skill.
She would have been openly astonished if anyone had referred to her as looking sexy; as a teenager she had been so conscious of the differences between herself and all the other girls she knew, who all seemed to have fragile, slender bodies, with thirty-two inch chests that she had firmly imprinted on her mind as the type of women preferred, these almost androgynous females.
David’s desire for her she put down quite simply to money, and the fact that she was indifferent to him.
She was wearing her normal working clothes which consisted of a track-suit and a pair of ancient trainers. Most mornings she liked to go for a run or a long walk before she started work, it helped to get her mind in gear and made up for all the long hours she spent shut up in her study. When she moved it was with a loose strong gait that, had she but known it, drew every male eye she passed in a mixture of fascination and frank awe.
Now she would have to go round and see her sister. Despite her present exasperation with her, she was truly fond of Andrea, and if privately she thought that her sister would be far better off without David, she was wise enough not to voice these thoughts.
It only took fifteen minutes to drive from her flat, one of half a dozen in a large Victorian mansion with its own grounds, to her sister’s house.
She found Andrea in the kitchen, her face swollen with pregnancy and tears, and genuine fear for her sister’s health drew Jessica’s eyebrows together in a frown.
Andrea had been warned by her doctor that if she wanted to carry her baby to full term she must rest and relax as much as possible, but that was proving almost impossible, what with Andrea’s ridiculous suspicions about David and herself, and her sister’s highly strung nature.
As she walked into the kitchen Jessica noticed that the date was ringed round on the kitchen calendar as being one on which Andrea should have attended her ante-natal classes, but when she questioned her about it, Andrea shook her head and
said bitterly, ‘How can I concentrate on anything like that when my own sister’s having an affair with my husband?’
Holding her breath and slowly counting to ten Jessica sat down and said gently, ‘Andrea, I promise you I am not having an affair with David.’
‘But he wants you,’ Andrea interrupted shrewdly.
It was not something she could deny. She had never been a good liar and she doubted that she could start now.
‘He does want you, doesn’t he?’ Andrea demanded, her face flushing alarmingly as she picked up on her sister’s inability to deny the charge. She was trembling visibly, her body far too thin and frail. ‘Why don’t you find a man of your own?’ Andrea demanded hysterically. ‘Why must you take what’s mine? If you want a husband…’
Unable to bear the torment in her sister’s face Jessica turned away, her attention momentarily caught by the newspaper on the table. It was open at the personal columns and absently she noted all the ads for potential mates both of a temporary and a permanent nature. Apparently it was quite commonplace these days to advertise in this way, proof, if she had needed it, that more and more people were beginning to realise that it was possible to have a marriage based on something other than mere physical attraction. Her mind once more on her work, it was several seconds before she realised her sister was speaking.
‘Jess, please, please give him back to me.’
Andrea was crying now, ugly, gulping sobs that shook her thin body. Jessica could feel the exhaustion of trying to cope with her sister’s disturbed mental state creeping over her. It would kill Andrea if she lost this child; she had already had two miscarriages in the years since William’s birth, but another miscarriage was exactly what she would bring on if she continued to torment herself in this fashion. But what could she do to convince Andrea that there was nothing going on between David and herself?
She hadn’t realised she had spoken her last thoughts out loud until she heard Andrea saying thickly, ‘Find a husband of your own, marry someone, Jess, and then I’ll believe you.’