An Interrupted Marriage (Silhouette Special Edition)

by Bright, Laurey;

  “It was because you’re my wife!? he said.

  She closed her eyes, gulping in a painful breath. Not because he loved her, but because, as he’d told her on her first night home when they’d been walking on the beach, he took his marriage vows seriously—for better or worse. She hadn’t realised then that he thought she’d taken hers lightly. Recalling his mother’s views again, she asked, “Did you marry me because it was...convenient to have a free housekeeper and nurse??

  Glacially, he said, “I don’t think that deserves an answer, do you? I understand you wanting to hit back, Jade, but take care. I’m not in the best of moods, myself.?

  “What will you do?? she taunted him. “Hit me? It’s what you’ve wanted to do all along, isn’t it??

  He stepped back. “Don’t tempt me,? he said, and swung away, closing the bathroom door with a decisive snap. A moment later she heard the door to the adjoining room bang shut, too.

  Slowly, she lay back against the pillows. The tears had dried on her cheeks, checked by anger. Deliberately, she held on to that, the anger. Because as long as she had that, the hurt behind it remained muted.

  It was monstrous that Magnus should think what he did. Without reason.

  No, logic intervened. Not without reason. He’d had what he thought was evidence, incontrovertible evidence.

  Still, couldn’t he have had some faith in her? He knew her, knew she loved him. How could he have imagined—

  Patrick—again a face came to mind. A voice—restful, soothing. Concerned blue eyes behind glasses. A feeling of—comfort, relief, release from a burden. Gratitude.

  She closed her eyes, but the memory fled. Memory, or imagination?

  All right, suppose it had been a memory? Suppose she had, once, known someone called Patrick? By itself, that didn’t mean a thing.

  The journal, then. Her eyes opened, went to the dressing table. She supposed Magnus had been looking for some nightwear for her to use at the hospital. And found nothing suitable, so he’d rummaged right to the bottom, and found...

  She got up as though mesmerized and approached the dressing table, knelt to open the second drawer. Plunged her hand in, pushing aside lace, silk, diaphanous nylon, to the back left-hand corner. That’s where it should have been. A small book with a plain navy-blue leather cover.

  There was no book, but her fingers touched something cool and hard and cylindrical that rolled under them. Her heart stopped. She scrabbled for it, caught it, and lifted out the pen, staring at its familiar shape, her hand automatically adjusting to hold it in the writing position.

  She leapt to her feet as if it had burnt her, dropping it with a faint, metallic ring on the dressing-table, backing away while her eyes remained on the pen with an awful fascination. “No!? she whispered.

  The light from the bedside lamp gleamed faintly along the pen’s length. Almost fearfully, Jade reached out her hand and picked it up in trembling fingers. She turned back to the bed, pulled open a drawer under the bedside table and took out a writing pad.

  Seating herself on the bed, she opened the pad, and poised the pen over it, breathing in deeply. Then she began to write, trying to remember the words exactly.

  I don’t know how I’m going to survive. Patrick, how could you walk away when you know how much I need you? I can feel myself slipping into a black abyss. It’s swallowing me up. Oh, Patrick please. Please don’t go away. I can’t manage alone. I’m frightened. Without you, I’ll die.

  She stopped and stared at the words, and began to tremble all over. Dimly she recalled a terrible despair, a feeling of being abandoned, forsaken, betrayed. The words danced before her eyes, filled with a horrible familiarity. “Patrick—? The name left her lips involuntarily, a heartbroken whisper. “How could you—??

  Shaking, she deposited pad and pen on the bedside table. The pen rolled off and landed with a soft little thud on the carpet. She shrank back against the pillows, her knees raised, legs pulled up before her so that she could wrap her arms around them, rest her head on them, her eyes tightly closed. Even so, the room seemed to whirl about her.

  Was Magnus right after all in his fantastic assumptions? But how? How could the unthinkable be the truth?

  Chapter Twelve

  Jade slept badly. She decided not to join Magnus for breakfast and lay in bed, hoping that by the time she went down he’d be away in his office.

  Instead, he tapped on her door, and she sat up, tempted to tell him to go away. But he tapped again, and then opened the door and came into the room. He was dressed in fawn trousers and a cream shirt, and her heart ached because he looked so handsome, and so desirable, and she felt as though a thousand miles lay between them instead of a few feet. As she sat up, he took several steps across the carpet and then stopped. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Thank you for asking.” She wasn’t able to keep the note of bitterness from her voice.

  “If you want to talk some more—”

  “I think we’ve done enough talking for now,” she said. “I don’t think I can take any more.”

  “All right. If you’re sure you’re okay....” For once he seemed uncertain, a frown between his brows, his shoulders less straight than usual. “If there’s anything I can do for you....”

  Her mouth tight, Jade shook her head. “You’ve done quite enough. Just...go away. Please.”

  He hesitated a moment longer, then turned to leave. “I’ll be in my office downstairs.” With his hand on the doorknob he looked back at her. “We’ll work it out, Jade,” he promised. “We’ve come this far, and I’m not giving up.”

  The door closed gently after him, and Jade hauled a pillow from behind her and hurled it at the unyielding panels.

  Well, she wasn’t giving up, either. She snatched coffee and toast in the dining-room and then waylaid Ginette as the nurse-aide came out of Mrs. Riordan’s sitting-room with a tray in her hands. “Ginette—can I ask a favour? Are you using your car today?”

  Ginette shook her head. “It’s not really mine. Mrs. Riordan’s feeling tired, she says. I don’t think we’ll be going anywhere.”

  “Could I borrow your keys, then?” Jade asked, trying to sound casual.

  “Oh, sure. I’ll fetch them for you when I’ve put this tray in the kitchen.”

  “I’ll take it. You go and get them.” Jade smiled at her.

  Five minutes later she had the keys in her hand. “Thanks. I don’t like to disturb Magnus,” she said. “If he asks, will you tell him I’ll be back for dinner?”

  She hoped that Lida was going to be home. She could have phoned first, but that would have given Lida a chance to put her off, and this wasn’t something that would wait, she’d decided. She wanted it sorted out today.

  It was strange driving again, but she didn’t grate the gears or bunny hop as she left the garage and steered slowly down the drive. She negotiated the winding stony road carefully, extra cautious on the numerous corrugated curves, and once having to pull into the side to make room for a small truck laden with bales of hay to pass. After she reached the highway, with its tar-seal and marked double lanes, the smooth stretch of road looked easy.

  She was nervous of entering Auckland, but the increase in the amount of traffic happened so gradually that she was over the bridge and into the city almost before she realised it. She took one wrong turning when she’d left the motorway, but although it was some time before she sorted herself out and found the correct route, it was no great disaster.

  Eventually she drew up outside the house in Remuera and pulled on the brake. Only then did she allow herself to sit for a while, drawing deep breaths of relief.

  As she stood on the front porch and pressed the bell, she realised she hadn’t checked that Lida and Graeme still lived here. Then the door was opened by a young woman with close-cropped black hair, holding a small child while another clung to her skirt.

  For a moment Jade’s heart sank. Then she saw the dismayed recognition dawning in the dark eye
s, and said, “Hello, Lida. When did you have your hair cut like that?”

  Lida didn’t move, and Jade wondered if she ought to put a foot into the gap left by the scarcely open door. Then the other woman said stiffly, “Ages ago. It’s easier, with the kids....” At last she stepped reluctantly back and said, “How are you, Jade? Come in.”

  * * *

  It was some time before they were able to talk. The baby was cranky—”Teething,” Lida explained—and the toddler was persistent in demanding his mother’s attention. “He’s always like this when I have a visitor,” she said, trying to detach his clinging hands from her skirt after leading Jade into the kitchen. “You’d better stay for lunch. They’ll both be going down for a nap about then, with any luck.”

  “Can I give you some help?” Jade asked, picking her way through a scattering of toys on the floor. A basket of clean washing occupied a chair, and breakfast dishes were stacked in the sink. At Lida’s wary, doubtful look, she added gently, “It’s all right—I didn’t escape. I’m officially recovered, and quite capable of folding nappies or washing dishes, if you’d like.”

  Lida blushed. “I knew you were home—Graeme said. I meant to visit you in the hospital, but...well...” She looked at the children. “I don’t know, I couldn’t bring them, and I just never got organised.”

  “I understand,” Jade assured her. “Well, which is it? Nappies, or dishes?”

  For the first time, Lida smiled and seemed to relax a bit. She put the baby down on the floor, where it immediately made a grab for a plastic tractor and began enthusiastically chewing on it. “If you’re insisting, you won’t have to break my arm. You wash and I’ll dry.”

  By the time the children had been put down for their nap and Jade had helped Lida lay the table and butter sandwiches for their own lunch, the atmosphere was less strained. “Thanks, Jade,” Lida said as they sat down. “Sometimes they can get me down.”

  They were on to coffee before Jade felt able to broach the subject she’d come to talk about. “Lida,” she said carefully, “what do you know about Patrick?”

  Lida put down her cup so suddenly that coffee slopped into the saucer. “I thought that was all over. Graeme said you’d gone back to Waititapu with Magnus.”

  “I have. But...” Jade stared into her own cup. There was no way of avoiding this. “Magnus thinks I was having an affair with—this Patrick. And he says that you knew about it.”

  Lida had gone scarlet, her eyes stricken with guilt. “Oh, hell! He told you what I said at the party, didn’t he? Graeme gave me heaps afterwards. Look, I’m awfully sorry. I’ve never gone overboard on the liquor since, believe me! And I haven’t dared show my face at another office party. I can’t tell you how ashamed I was, when I realised what I’d done, shooting my mouth off like that.”

  “You did tell Magnus I’d been having an affair?”

  Lida shut her eyes. “Graeme says I did. To tell you the truth, I passed out on the way home and I don’t really remember much—except Magnus’s face.” She shuddered. “I think I’ll remember that to my dying day. Honestly, Jade, I can’t apologise enough.”

  “Never mind the apologies. The thing is, I have a memory problem, too. I don’t remember anything about anyone called Patrick.”

  Lida’s eyes opened roundly. “Nothing?”

  “A vague idea of a face. Who is he, Lida?”

  “Well...he’s your other man. The one you were meeting in secret. Your affair. You just said—”

  “I said Magnus believes I was having an affair. He thinks you know all about it. So tell me what you know. Did you ever meet Patrick?”

  Lida shook her head. “Never. You were very mysterious about him. The first I knew that something was up was when Magnus rang one day and seemed to assume you were here. It took me a minute to twig in that you’d told him so, and I got you off the hook. Then I called you at Waititapu the next day and asked you what was going on, and you said you couldn’t tell me on the phone, but you came to see me a day or so later.”

  “So, what did I say when I saw you?”

  “Not an awful lot. You apologised for using me without my knowledge. And I said okay, I was happy to help, but next time let me know so I could be more convincing.” Lida paused. “You don’t remember this?”

  Jade shook her head. “Go on.”

  “Well, then you asked, in an embarrassed sort of way, if I’d mind if you told Magnus that you were visiting me while his mother was having her regular physio session. You said it would be convenient for you, and save a lot of bother.”

  “I didn’t tell you where I’d be?”

  “Not exactly. You gave me a phone number, though, so I could contact you there in an emergency.”

  Jade said quickly, “Do you still have it?”

  “Sorry. Threw it out ages ago.”

  “And you thought I was seeing someone behind Magnus’s back.”

  “I was sure of it, ducky. You were awfully anxious that he didn’t know. Besides—”

  “Besides, what?”

  Lida leaned towards her, elbows on the table. “That time, I remember you looked frightfully tense and nervy. Even more so than the day I visited you at Waititapu and the old harridan was on your back all the time. But after you’d been with Patrick you always seemed more relaxed and normal. You used to call here occasionally on your way back to fetch Mrs. Riordan—just so you could truthfully say you’d been here, I guess—and the difference in you was amazing. Obviously Patrick was good for you.”

  “I told you his name?”

  “Let it slip, more like. You were really cagey. I was sort of teasing you a bit, one day. I’d poured some sherry for us both—it was one of those days and I felt the need, but I never liked to drink alone—slippery slope and all that. So I persuaded you to join me. I said something like, ‘So, is he married, too, your other man?’ And you said, ‘Patrick isn’t—’ But I couldn’t get any more out of you. After that you just clammed up and refused to talk about him. It was just like when we were flatting and you wouldn’t tell me who you were seeing then, either. Of course, that time it was Magnus.”

  “So, all you had was a first name and the fact that I was secretly meeting...someone?” Jade said slowly. “Weren’t you just a little bit shocked?”

  “What shocked me,” Lida told her, dark eyes sparkling with indignation, “was Magnus thinking he could marry you and then shut you up in that great barn of a house, miles from anywhere, with his bossy old mother and his spoiled-rotten family, and expect you to slave away like some wretched Cinderella for the lot of them, when he could well afford—”

  “No, he couldn’t,” Jade interrupted. “There was no money after his father died, except for what Magnus earned. If he hadn’t poured it all into the estate, they’d have had to sell the farms and the house.”

  “Is that so?” Lida’s voice rose. “But still, he had no right to sacrifice you for his family. And frankly, I think you were nuts to let him do it!” She gulped. “Oh, sorry!”

  Jade waved that aside. “It was my idea, not his. I wanted to help.”

  Lida looked unconvinced. “Anyway, I reckon you deserved any happiness you could get, on the side. Pity it didn’t last.”

  “How long?” Jade asked. “How long did I go on keeping these—appointments?”

  “Oh....” Lida thought. “Two or three months. Towards the end, though, you were looking haunted again. I figured things must be going wrong. Then I realised you were pregnant. So I thought maybe it was just that. Only I wondered...”

  “Wondered?”

  “If you knew whose baby it was,” Lida confessed. “I mean, it must have been pretty awful if you didn’t know. When I heard...what happened, I thought maybe that was why.”

  “I never told you?” Jade asked, her heart thumping uncomfortably.

  “Never even told me you were expecting. I figured it out for myself. You didn’t show much, but you had that look. And once, you threw up in my bathroom.” Lida picked u
p a spoon and stirred her coffee, though it must have been lukewarm by now. “Are you trying to find him—Patrick? Do you want to see him again?”

  “I just want to know...if I was really having an affair with him—with anyone,” Jade said. “Do you truly think that’s what it was?”

  “Oh, come on, Jade! What else was I to think? What’s anyone to think?” Lida shook her head, smiling at the naïvety of it.

  Jade’s shoulders slumped. “I see.” What, indeed, was anyone to think? Was she tilting at windmills, refusing to acknowledge the incontrovertible evidence against her? The facts apparently spoke for themselves. And yet deep inside her some small, stubborn core of resistance refused to accept them.

  Lida picked up her coffee cup and grimaced, but drained it all the same. “Graeme says Magnus has been devoted to you all the time you were in hospital. Full of admiration, Graeme is. I said,” she added darkly, “that it was a pity he waited until then. You could have done with some devotion a bit earlier in the piece.”

  “You’re being unfair to him,” Jade said. “I never let him know what a strain it was. I rather prided myself, you know, on being some kind of Superwoman. He thought I was strong.”

  “Hmm. Is he looking after you now?”

  “I’m scarcely allowed to raise a finger.”

  “Well, that’s a change. Maybe he’s learned his lesson. I’m having another cup of coffee. How about you?” Lida asked, getting up.

  “No, thanks. I’ll be going soon. There’s someone else I want to see. May I use your phone?”

  “Sure, help yourself.”

  Annie had left the hospital, the voice on the other end of the line told her briskly, for a halfway house in the city. No, she couldn’t have the address, but after some demurring she was given a number to ring.

  “Jade!” Annie shrieked when she heard who it was. “Yeah, of course you can come and see me! Now? That’s great—of course I’ll give you the address. Got a pen?”

  * * *

  Jade arrived back at Waititapu late in the afternoon, drove into the garage and had hardly released her safety belt before the driver’s door was flung open and Magnus’s voice, low but vibrant with suppressed anger, said, “Where the hell have you been?”