An Interrupted Marriage (Silhouette Special Edition)

by Bright, Laurey;

  “It hasn’t been easy, but selling off part of one of the farms gave us some working capital, and the bank was accommodating, fortunately. They were impressed by my accounting ability and I persuaded them that I knew something about farming as well.” He paused. “I’m no millionaire, but within reason we can afford to spend on the things we want. But I’d never have managed it without your help over the first rocky bit. Whatever happens, Jade, I’ll always be grateful for that.”

  Grateful. The word was a stone sinking into her mind. Was it gratitude that had kept him by her side every weekend, given him endless patience, led him to take her back to his home although not to his bed, and offer her free use of his money? Hurt translated to anger, and she said, “I don’t want your gratitude, Magnus. And I don’t want your money! As soon as I can, I’ll be paying it back.”

  His hand dropped from her arm, and his face went blank, expressionless. Someone passing by jostled him, but he took no notice. His voice clipped, he said, “There’s no need for that. I wouldn’t take it. You’re still my wife,“ he added with a sudden vehemence, “for what it’s worth!”

  Which wasn’t much, Jade reflected.

  They had stopped outside a chemist’s shop. He reached out and almost forcibly removed the carrybags from her hands. “Go on, then,” he said. “I’ll see you at the car, if you’re sure you don’t want anything more.”

  She hesitated. “I need a little bit of cash.”

  “Sure. I should have thought of it.” He put down the bags and took some notes from his wallet. “Enough?”

  “Plenty, thank you.”

  By the time she rejoined him he’d regained his calm, aloof demeanour. And on the way home he seemed preoccupied, driving all the way in near total silence.

  When he’d driven into the garage, he said, “Did the doctors give you any medication to take?”

  “Only if I need it,” she said. “They weaned me off before I left. You know that.”

  He said, his expression carefully controlled, “Danella and her husband will be here tomorrow.”

  “I know. And their baby.”

  He glanced at her swiftly, and then away, frowning.

  “You think maybe I should take a tranquilliser? Don’t worry, Magnus. I’ll know if I need one.”

  His lips tightened. “Good.” He reached over to the back seat for her parcels.

  “I’ll carry them,” she said, leaving him to pick up the packages he’d got for his mother. “Thank you for driving me.”

  * * *

  She put away the new clothes in the wardrobe and stuffed the packaging into the wastebasket. Hearing footsteps she paused, listening, then opened the door. The door to Danella’s old room across the passageway was open and the housekeeper was making up one of the twin beds.

  “Can I help?” Jade walked forward and took one end of the sheet, tucking it efficiently into a hospital-type corner.

  “Thank you.” Mrs. Gaines pushed a pillow into its case and placed it on the bed.

  “I meant to tell you,” Jade said. “I appreciated the potpourri in my wardrobe.”

  “I make it myself,” the housekeeper confided. “Everything comes from the garden. It’s wonderful what you can do so close to the sea. Mr. Riordan told me you used to look after it all.”

  “I enjoyed it.” She’d found the formal beds with their precise edges rather sterile but had meticulously maintained them, only replacing some annuals with perennials and ground-covers to cut down on maintenance. Then she’d asked Magnus if she could use an adjoining corner of the neighbouring paddock, making an old misshapen totara and a couple of ragged pongas the nucleus of her own garden of native trees and shrubs.

  Mrs. Gaines placed the pillow on the bed, then shook out a cotton cover. “I must pick some flowers for this room.”

  “I’ll do it, if you like. I’m sure you’ve plenty of other things to attend to.”

  They finished making the beds in amicable silence, and Jade went out to find flowers. She had gathered a small bouquet of miniature roses, lavender and blue daisies when voices attracted her attention, and she saw Mrs. Riordan, leaning on Ginette’s arm and with a walking stick in her other hand, walking between the flower-beds.

  Jade fixed a smile on her face. “Good afternoon, Mother Riordan. Hello, Ginette.”

  Ginette smiled at her. “Hi.”

  “What are you doing?” Mrs. Riordan demanded.

  “Picking a few flowers for Danella’s room,” Jade explained calmly. “The garden has grown since I’ve been away. Everything looks different.”

  “Of course. You didn’t expect things to remain the same, did you?”

  “You haven’t changed much,” Jade pointed out.

  “I’m older,” Mrs. Riordan said uncompromisingly, while Ginette raised her brows silently behind her. “And so are you. Though you don’t look it. Even with your hair cut.”

  “I...er, thank you.”

  Mrs. Riordan said, “It wasn’t a compliment, merely a fact. You’ve been buying clothes, Magnus says.”

  “You noticed yesterday that my clothes didn’t fit.” Why justify herself? Jade thought furiously. She tightened her lips, determined not to be drawn into a defensive stance.

  “And insisted on him accompanying you,” Mrs. Riordan went on as though Jade hadn’t spoken at all.

  Insisted? Keeping her voice even, Jade asked, “Did he say that?” She glanced at Ginette, watching with a gleam of perhaps sympathetic curiosity in her dark eyes.

  “Well, how he spends his money is his own business,” Mrs. Riordan said. “I’m glad that you’re well enough to go shopping.”

  “So am I,” Jade said.

  There was no way she was going to try to explain to Mrs. Riordan what it was like to be taken shopping in a group, shepherded by a couple of nurses in mufti.

  People hadn’t been fooled by that. They’d stared, either laughing or pitying. When she’d screwed up enough courage to take a purchase to the counter the assistant had spoken to her as though she must be both deaf and retarded. After the third or fourth such expedition, Jade had stubbornly refused all offers to repeat the experience.

  “You’d better put those flowers in some water,” Mrs. Riordan said. “The daisies won’t keep, anyway.”

  “They only need to keep for two days.” Jade relaxed her grip on the flower stalks. They’d grown warm in her hand. “I’ll see you at dinner, then.”

  She was thankful to get away.

  * * *

  After dinner the women sat in the big front lounge. Mrs. Riordan had a book, Ginette switched on the television set and watched a game show with the set on low volume, and Jade was glad to bury herself in the newspaper that Magnus offered her. She hadn’t realised that he didn’t intend to remain with them until he said, “If you’ll all excuse me, I have some work to catch up on.”

  The newspaper was a local giveaway, full of advertising and personal and business items concerning the surrounding community, and a careful perusal gave her the chance to fill in some of the inexplicable gaps in her memory. Inexplicable because there seemed no discernible pattern to what she recalled and what she didn’t. The cause of the haphazard memory losses was plain enough—her illness and the treatment that had been prescribed. Whatever she had lost was a small price to pay for the prospect of a normal life.

  When the game show ended Ginette changed the channel. Mrs. Riordan was engrossed in her book, and Jade had finished the paper. As she folded it up, Ginette said, “Is there anything you’d like to watch?”

  Jade shook her head. “You watch what you like.” She got up, the newspaper in her hand.

  Mrs. Riordan meticulously turned a page, then looked up. “You’re not going to bother Magnus, are you? He doesn’t like to be disturbed when he’s working.”

  “I know.” Jade stood undecided, then said rebelliously, “But I want to talk to him.”

  Mrs. Riordan looked thoroughly disapproving, but said nothing as Jade turned on her heel an
d marched out, her head high. She thought she heard a giggle, quickly suppressed, from Ginette. Then she was stalking along the passageway to the big room at the back of the house. She tapped on the door briefly and flung it open without waiting to be invited, then stood on the threshold.

  Magnus turned in his swivel chair at the desk and looked at her with surprised enquiry. A computer screen glowed on the desk, and he lifted his hands from the keys.

  “Jade!” He got up as though he might have come towards her, but after taking one step he halted. “What can I do for you?”

  “Nothing,” she said, closing the door behind her and standing just inside it. “I’m being childish.” Clutching at the newspaper in her hands, she confessed, “Your mother told me not to disturb you, so I thought I would. I’m sorry.”

  Magnus sighed sharply, then unexpectedly laughed. “I’m sorry, too,” he said. “I know she’s difficult, sometimes. But it’s not entirely her fault, you know.”

  “I know.” When she had first come to Waititapu Magnus had explained the doctor’s warning that stroke victims sometimes became abnormally moody or hostile, that character traits might be exaggerated or reversed, and social inhibitions on speech and behaviour lost. “I’ll try to be patient. Heaven knows, I ought to understand.”

  She came into the room and dropped the newspaper on a chair. Another desk held an electronic typewriter, a filing cabinet stood near the window, and two walls were lined with shelves holding files and thick books on accounting practice. “You haven’t been lucky with the women in your life,” she said, and then bit her tongue. Perhaps he did feel lucky, now. Maybe he’d found someone healthy and uncomplicated and undemanding. Like Ginette. “I mean,” she said, “between me, and your sister, and your mother—it hasn’t been easy for you, has it?”

  “Sympathy isn’t necessary. It wasn’t exactly a picnic for you, either. And I’m not sure that I’m the unlucky one. Having your own family around might have helped you a lot.”

  A faint stinging behind her eyes made her blink quickly and look away from him.

  “You still miss them, don’t you?”

  She kept her eyes wide and looked at him. “What’s the point? It won’t bring them back.” The doctors had taken her through all that, believing the trauma of losing her entire family in a matter of days might well have had something to do with her admission to a psychiatric ward seven years later.

  You feel guilty that you weren’t with them?

  Who had asked her that? The question surfaced briefly, a flash of memory. The voice...but then it was gone. One of the doctors, no doubt. There had been so many of them.

  Maybe, whoever he was, he’d been right. Maybe she had some unresolved guilt that when her father, with her mother sitting beside him and her younger sister in the rear seat, had in a moment of fatal inattention driven into the path of an oncoming train, she had been with her own friends at a party. Her parents had died instantly, and her sister had followed them in less than a week. But that wasn’t what had sent her over the edge.

  Magnus said, “You’re right, there’s no point in dwelling on the past. But somehow, the past has a way of catching up on the present.” He indicated the chair she’d flung the newspaper onto. “Why don’t you sit down?”

  “I don’t want to be a nuisance.”

  “You’re not a nuisance. A distraction, maybe....”

  The note in his voice was one she hadn’t heard since she’d come home, but as she looked up at him in quick, eager hope, the small, teasing smile on his mouth faded, and the once-familiar light in his eyes with it. He stepped back towards his desk, his face stiffening into a mask.

  She picked up the paper and sat down, her gaze puzzled and questioning. “Magnus—what’s the matter?”

  Magnus sank back into his own chair, half-turned from her. He said, “You’re not the only one who has things to get used to.”

  Carefully she lowered the folded newspaper to her lap. “You can get used to most things if you put your mind to it.”

  He steepled his hands, briefly looking down at them. “You should know.”

  Jade wondered if he was having second thoughts. She recalled the expression in his eyes when he’d come into the changing booth and looked over her shoulder at her reflected back, bared by the deceptively provocative dress.

  She guessed that he’d started the afternoon by just being kindhearted, considerate. Perhaps faintly aware of the ordeal it was for her to do some simple shopping, he’d tried to make the experience easier. But if at first he’d play-acted his interest in her purchases, he hadn’t been able to hide the darkening of his eyes at that moment, or the glint of male admiration when he’d stepped back to look at her.

  He still found her desirable, at least occasionally when he was caught unaware. The thought quickened her pulse. She smoothed the paper on her knee, and it made a small crackling sound. She looked down, studying a picture of a smiling child leading a disgruntled white-faced calf with a black patch over one eye. “You were kind, today,” she said. “I appreciated that.”

  “Don’t count on my being kind!” The sudden harsh note that grated in his voice brought her head up, her eyes fixing on his.

  He stood up again with a violent movement that set the swivel chair gently rotating behind him. His hands thrust into his pockets, he said curtly, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  She’d instinctively stiffened, her fingers tightening around the newspaper she held. Deliberately she relaxed them. “I’m not scared of you, Magnus.”

  He said, “There were times....”

  A faint flush in her cheeks, she said, “I was sick, then. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

  “So you wouldn’t shrink back and scream if I touched you?”

  “You fastened my bra for me today, and I didn’t scream then.”

  “Did you want to?” His eyes were sombre, watchful.

  Jade’s lips parted. What did he want from her? Hadn’t she invited his touch last night, and been rebuffed?

  As she hesitated, he said, “You were certainly clutching at your dress like a startled virgin.” He paused. “You did want to scream, didn’t you?” His voice had flattened.

  Jade shook her head. “No. I told you, the doctors have told you, I’m better! Why are you asking me this?”

  She saw the quick rise and fall of his chest. “Because, God help me, maybe I’m wondering if you’d scream if I tried to unfasten it.”

  When they were first married he might have said something like that in fun, laughing, and she’d have laughed back and dared him to do it. Now there was no laughter in his face, his eyes. They looked almost tortured.

  Hope and puzzlement and dread stirred her blood and shortened her breath.

  She was his wife, she reminded herself. If she was going to have to fight for him, she had that advantage. And it was an advantage, because Magnus wasn’t a man to take his marriage vows lightly. He’d said as much last night—proved it over the last two years. He must have been lonely, in need of companionship, comfort, the solace of sex. How could she blame him if he’d found those things with a sympathetic woman?

  She said, “I wouldn’t scream.” And then, “There is such a thing as forgiveness. But...” She bit her lip. He hadn’t asked her for forgiveness. He’d asked for—or at least hinted that he wanted—his freedom.

  “But...” Magnus echoed. His mouth twisted. “Some things are difficult to forgive.”

  “That isn’t really the issue, is it?”

  Slowly, he agreed, “Perhaps not. You might say it’s only the beginning.”

  Did he want her to forgive him so that he could start a new life with a clear conscience? A life that didn’t include her?

  Jade stood up, laying the paper alongside the electronic typewriter on the nearby desk. She might understand his defection, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t hurt by it, and that she didn’t feel like lashing out and trying to hurt him in return.

  But she didn
’t want him to think that she was reacting out of pique or anger. She lifted her head and directed a steady green gaze at him, keeping her voice calm. “I’ll never agree to a divorce, Magnus. If it’s what you want, you’ll have to arrange it yourself. I believe that’s possible. But I want no part of it.”

  She saw his face change, from a wary determination to some kind of shock. Obviously this wasn’t what he’d expected. She didn’t wait to say any more, but with her head still held high she went to the door and wrenched it open, closing it with a snap behind her.

  Chapter Five

  She heard Magnus come up the stairs some time later. She’d been trying to read, too tense to sleep, but this time he didn’t pause at her door, his quiet footsteps going straight past. A few minutes later he was in the bathroom.

  Unexpectedly the connecting door opened. Magnus seemed to hesitate, and then came towards the bed. “Jade—”

  “Yes?” She closed the book.

  “I don’t want a divorce, either. I can’t say I’ve never considered the question—I did, early on, when I—when I was having some trouble accepting...things. But last night, I was offering the choice to you. I thought you understood.”

  Jade closed her eyes. The room seemed to whirl about her. “You thought I might want it?” He must have been blaming himself, taking the responsibility for her eventual collapse, and she couldn’t let him. He had borne enough burdens for other people in the past. “Things will be different, now,” she said, “won’t they? We can learn from our mistakes, both of us. That’s the important thing.”

  Magnus said slowly, almost unwillingly, “Yes, you’re right, of course.”

  She stirred, lifting herself against the pillow, her hand tight on the sheet that had fallen to her waist, revealing one of the flimsy, lace-trimmed nightgowns that he used to delight in removing from her. She said, “Magnus—do you want to come to bed...with me?”

  For the longest time he stood immobile, so silent he didn’t even seem to be breathing. Then at last he said, “You’ve only been home two days, and you’ve a lot to assimilate. It’s a bit soon—”