An Unsuitable Wife

by Lindsay Armstrong

  Sidonie took a shaky breath and closed her eyes.

  ‘Whatever you say, Mike,’ she murmured. ‘I…you see, I never thought it could—even begin——’

  ‘Oh, it could begin all right,’ he said into her hair.

  ‘But …’ She stopped. They both stopped as Morning Mist rocked violently. ‘What was that?’ she whispered.

  He swore. ‘They were predicting a southerly change, but for tomorrow; I think it’s come in early.’ He swore again and put her away from him.

  ‘But we’ll be all right here, won’t we?’ she said anxiously.

  ‘No, we won’t; we could end up on the beach if it gets strong enough.’

  ‘But Mike, it’s still raining and it’s probably as black as pitch out there——’

  ‘All the same we’re going to have to move round the island, Sid. You see, it’s so unprotected out there, which is why the Percys haven’t got a great name in any kind of weather unless you’re on the right side of the island. Now listen, we’re going to have to do this by radar.’ Another strong gust hit the boat. ‘Will you get the set warmed up and tuned in? I’ll get the anchor up.’ He reached for his oilskin, his nightglasses, and disappeared up the ladder and the engine throbbed to life. But a few minutes later he was down again. ‘We’ve got real problems, Sid,’ he said tersely.

  ‘Switch on the radio.’

  ‘What?’ she asked fearfully.

  ‘Not us, but another yacht must have come in without us knowing. I shone the spotlight on it and it’s already dragged anchor; by the look of it they can’t start the motor or something’s wrong and they’re heading for the beach—thanks.’ He took the micro-phone from her and said into it, ‘Blue Bird, Blue Bird, this is Morning Mist; we’re anchored behind you, what’s your problem? Over.’

  ‘Morning Mist, Blue Bird,’ a thankful voice gasped. ‘We couldn’t get the anchor up when it started to drag, the winch is playing up and in the panic we may have flattened the battery—we can’t get her to start although I must have a bit of power if the radio’s working, but—you wouldn’t have a spare battery, would you, mate?’

  Mike grimaced and thought briefly before he pressed his PTT button. ‘Affirmative, Blue Bird. Look, I’ll get as close to you as I can then bring it over by dinghy—unless you’ve got yours in the water?’

  ‘We haven’t but…’ there was a hesitation during which a woman’s panicky voice could be heard ‘…but we’ll try and put it down.’

  ‘Negative,’ Mike said decisively, ‘just try to stay put. If you’ve got a spare anchor put it down—just throw it over—and I’ll come across. Morning Mist standing by.’

  ‘Mike,’ Sidonie whispered.

  ‘Sid, look, you can do it,’ he said firmly but gently. ‘Just head her into the wind and try to hold her there. The rain’s eased off so with the help of the spotlight you’ll be able to see where you are, but, all the same, watch your depth sounder and radar like a hawk; if you get too close in you’ll go aground. I know the wind sounds fierce but the water isn’t that rough yet, and I’ll be as quick as I can. But if I don’t go they could end up on the beach or on the rocks in a splintered wreckage, and don’t forget you’ve got your beloved Gardiner beneath you and plenty of power to cope with this. Plus I know you can do it.’ And he kissed her briefly on the lips and hoisted himself up the ladder again.

  Sidonie touched her fingers to her lips then reached for her oilskin.

  Once she’d orientated herself and felt the power he’d spoken of through the throttle, she shed all her nerves for herself and Morning Mist and her greatest concern was for Mike. Because the wind was undoubtedly strengthening and the water getting increasingly turbulent and she watched the dinghy ploughing through it with her heart in her mouth as she held Morning Mist as close off Blue Bird as she dared to go. It had not been easy to lower the dinghy with the added weight of the battery in it. It wasn’t easy to swivel the spotlight, which was mounted on the mast and remotely operated, so that she didn’t blind him, but it was going to take a lot more than would be required of her to get back. And she found herself praying silently.

  It took an hour to fix the winch, connect the new battery and reel both anchors in, the second of which had also started to drag. But with a sigh of relief she saw Blue Bird turn into the wind, and heard Mike on the radio…‘Sid, I’m coming back.’

  ‘Romeo, Mike. Be careful.’

  How he made it she didn’t know. Several times she thought he would be swamped and when he got to Morning Mist she couldn’t even leave the helm to help him. But finally, looking strained and soaked, he slid down beside her. ‘Well done, kid,’ he said briefly and took the wheel. ‘Now for the next instalment of this drama—they’re following us round. You should always carry spare batteries on a boat—but I didn’t have the heart to tell him with his poor silly wife having hysterics.’

  Sidonie grimaced. Then she said tentatively, ‘She might be a good cook.’

  Some of the tension drained from his expression and he put his arm round her and hugged her. ‘Give me a good sailor and a mechanic any day.’

  The northern anchorage of Middle Percy was relatively calm but finding it in the conditions was not. So that when they both finally stumbled down the ladder, secure in the knowledge that not only Morning Mist but Blue Bird was safe, Sidonie could barely stand.

  ‘You poor kid,’ Mike said and stripped her oilskin off, ‘this probably hasn’t done you any good at all.’

  ‘I’ll be all right. You’re the one who’s been humping batteries round and so on.’ But her face was white and her bruise stood out lividly.

  ‘I’m as tough as they come,’ he said with a faint smile touching his lips. But he flexed his shoulders wearily and there were still the marks of strain etched in the lines and angles of his face.

  Sidonie took a breath then noticed his hands again. ‘Your poor hands,’ she said softly. ‘They’re all grazed and bruised.’

  He looked at them ruefully. ‘We had to pull Blue Bird’s second anchor up by hand. They’ll heal—we make a good pair, Sid—’ But he stopped and looked at her intently as she started to crumple from sheer exhaustion, the tension of the night finally claiming her. He took her in his arms. ‘Let’s go to bed, sweet Sid.’

  ‘I’ll——I’ll sleep in my own bunk,’ she managed to stammer.

  ‘Like hell you will.’ He picked her up and shouldered his way into the aft cabin. ‘Now don’t say a word,’ he admonished, ‘because I couldn’t sleep if I knew you were all tense and wound up. I’ll be back in a moment.’ And he laid her on the bed and pulled the covers over her.

  Five minutes later he came back and slid in beside her, and took her in his arms again.

  ‘Mike…’ Some foolish tears slid on to the pillow.

  ‘Just go to sleep, Sid.’ He stroked her hair. ‘You’re not alone and you’ve been braver tonight than any girl I know. Relax, kid…’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘RELAX, kid…’

  Sidonie drifted awake with his words on her mind, and there was sunlight streaming through the port-holes. She sighed—and started to remember as Mike’s hand tightened on her waist, then his grip loosened.

  She remembered falling asleep against him, and the warmth it had brought her. But she’d woken a couple of hours later and been attacked by anxiety, as if they were still trying to find their way around Middle Percy in a dark, stormy sea, and he’d cradled her to him and stroked her hair. She’d slept again, for hours, she judged from the angle of the sun, and was still lying softly against him.

  ‘Sid?’ he said drowsily.

  ‘Yes, Mike?’ She tried to breathe deeply to calm her suddenly racing heart.

  But he muttered, ‘Sweet Sid,’ and pulled her closer, burying his face in the curve of her neck and shoulder. ‘How do you feel now?’

  ‘Fine.’ She lifted a hand tentatively and rested it on his shoulder. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Fine.’ There was a pause then he lift
ed his head and said with an effort, ‘A little too fine in point of fact.’ He stared into her eyes with a frown in his own. ‘I don’t suppose you know what I mean, so–—’

  ‘Mike——’ she swallowed ‘—I’m not that naïve or whatever. Am I?’

  His hand moved again on her waist and something flickered in the blue of his eyes that she couldn’t decipher. ‘All the same, this is——’

  ‘Lovely,’ she said very quietly and seriously.

  His gaze wandered from her mouth to her eyes and he closed his own briefly. ‘What I was going to say was—it’s also when things get out of hand and one tends to lose one’s head.’

  She smiled faintly. ‘I kept my head last night, and I don’t mean during all that drama but…after you kissed me I thought, No, if this isn’t meant to be, it’s foolish to pretend otherwise—now I can’t help wondering if I was wrong.’ She moved her palm on his bare shoulder. ‘When…if it happens between two people who move each other emotionally, even if there’s no future for it, might it not have a kind of grace of its own?’

  His lips moved but it was a moment before he spoke. ‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘I think it might even have a rather unique kind of grace with you, but it—’

  ‘I know, you’re worried it will induce all sorts of trauma in me and that I’ll start to dream…all sorts of impossible dreams. I can’t say that I won’t but then the time for that not to happen to me to some degree is already past—and that’s not your fault, Mike, it’s just one of those things. There is one thing you might not understand about me, though. I couldn’t bear to see you unhappy—that’s why I was so upset about Karen, because of the darkness it brought to you. And so, when the time comes, I could no more try to tie you down than I could fly myself. Perhaps other women have said this to you.’ She looked at him steadily. ‘I can only mean it.’

  ‘Oh, God.’ He took a tortured breath. ‘Sid, I’m not proof against much more of this.’

  ‘Well, that’s what I wondered, and hoped,’ she whispered, her grey eyes suddenly soft, ‘because neither am I…’

  ‘You told me once you hadn’t got to the stage of picturing yourself going to bed with me, Sid,’ he said very gently. ‘Only last night you said something similar.’

  ‘Things can change,’ she said in a suddenly shaky voice, because she got the awful feeling she was about to be repulsed, however gently, but then she discovered herself feeling stubborn. ‘And if I were really honest, I suppose it’s been there in my subconscious…But last night, when you said I wouldn’t know how to be sexy and come-hither, I didn’t really appreciate what you meant, so if you were trying to say——’

  ‘Sid, I wasn’t trying to say that you aren’t——’

  ‘That I’m not…desirable?’

  ‘Let’s not get bogged down in semantics,’ he said with a wry little smile. ‘Those things, that kind of innocence is very desirable—and that’s one of the reasons why I’m…in this rather unenviable situation—but——’ he stilled the movement she made ‘—whatever other faults I have, and you know them now as well as anyone, seducing virgins is something I don’t—I shouldn’t be doing.’

  Sidonie looked into his eyes. ‘Or is it that you really do think I’m a bit of a freak, Mike?’

  He ran his hands through her hair with a grimace. ‘Of course not—what do you mean anyway?’

  ‘I may be a virgin but I’m quite capable of some things,’ she said very quietly. ‘I may have clamped down on some thoughts but I can’t help thinking them now. I love being in your arms, for example. I get quite breathless sometimes just to watch you and I now long to feel your hands on my body—when you kissed me last night, it was like a revelation—so I’m a very normal girl in those respects even if I don’t come across as one.’

  ‘Sid_______’

  ‘No, Mike,’ she said softly but with determination, ‘don’t treat me like a fool. This—if you were to make love to me it wouldn’t be seducing a virgin, it would be what I want, even in the full knowledge that it can have no future and although it’s the first time it’s ever happened to me. Do you really think—’ she brought her hands up rather shyly and placed them flat on his chest ‘—I’m such a child in all respects? I know I haven’t told you this but after Peter, as well as suffering from a bit of a dent to my self-esteem, I became much more aware, and I sometimes yearned to experience what he had; I felt that there was this lack in me—’

  ‘You also told me it wasn’t the lack of a man in your life you worried about,’ he said gently.

  ‘Well, you just can’t—put a man in your life to order,can you? That doesn’t mean to say you don’t think about it or understand the lack. I may have a lot of faults but what I’m trying to say is, do you really believe I’m some sort of emotionally retarded girl who has no idea of what I might be getting into? You do me an injustice if that’s the case but it’s up to you.’

  ‘No,’ he said after a very long time, ‘God help me. Did you mean…like this?’ And he undid her pyjama-top and laid it aside, framing her breasts then cupping them in his hands.

  Sidonie trembled and was flooded with a sensation of pure pleasure.

  ‘And this?’ He slid her pyjama-bottoms down and caressed her waist and hips and said on a sudden breath, ‘So small and so sweet, I can’t help wondering if I would break you…’

  ‘I don’t think it’s ever been known to happen,’ she whispered.

  ‘No, of course not. All the same, we’ll need to take care and the way to do that is for you to tell me if I’m hurting you at all.’

  ‘I will,’ she promised. ‘Could you…could you kiss me again, Mike? It did such astonishing things to me last night, you see.’

  ‘Oh, Sid.’ He pulled her very close and she felt the tremor that ran through his big frame. Then he lifted his head and stared down into her eyes with a little glint in his own. ‘Of course. That’s an excellent way to begin.’

  And that’s how we became lovers, dear diary, Sidonie said to the diary in her mind, many days later when it seemed important to keep the record straight…It must be hard for you to believe that I would do a thing like that. But it wasn’t so hard to do at all, he made sure of that, although I guess you’re wondering more about my motivation. I suppose I have to confess there was this hope in my heart that it wouldn’t ever end, that I would be the one. There was also something else, though. And it was the thought that here was the only man I’d ever wanted to make love to me. I couldn’t stop myself knowing either that with Mike I could just be myself and that there’d be no awful need to be coy or pretend I was things I wasn’t…I thought, It will never be more perfect for me so perhaps it will help me, strengthen me and make me into a better, more grown-up person—it’s not that easy to say what I really thought, other than that…with Mike it just couldn’t be a bad or negative thing for me. I also thought, dear diary, it might help him, might lighten the load…

  ‘There’s always a problem about these things,’ Mike said as they prepared dinner that night, the night of the day they’d become lovers.

  ‘These?’ Sidonie looked up from the mushrooms she was peeling and chopping so carefully. All she wore was one of his shirts and a pair of panties.

  ‘No, these situations,’ he replied gravely.

  ‘Oh, you mean us! What’s that?’

  ‘Well——’ he took a sip of wine and regarded her with a wicked little glint in his eyes ‘—it’s hard to be abstemious.’

  Her lips curved although she said gravely, ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Would you have the same problem by any chance?’

  ‘If you mean would I rather be doing other things than chopping up mushrooms—’ she wrinkled her brow ‘—perhaps.’

  ‘Would you care to enlighten me?’ He glanced briefly over his shoulder at the veal he was sautéing and to which he would add a mushroom sauce.

  She stopped chopping. ‘I don’t think I’ve got the words for it,’ she said slowly. ‘Other than to say that the�
�ambience of your suggestion or what you implied, if I have it correct, has filled me with a feeling of delicious anticipation. How does that sound?’ she enquired with a mischievous twinkle.

  ‘Sounds like my essential Sid,’ he drawled. ‘Never really lost for a word. Or two. It also makes it even harder to concentrate on this meal, however.’ His gaze rested on the open V of his shirt where the skin between her breasts was pearly then tantalisingly shadowed as she moved slightly beneath his scrutiny. Then it roamed to her loose, riotiously curling hair and came to rest again on the tip of her tongue as she concentrated fiercely on the last mushroom, and his eyes softened.

  ‘There,’ she said triumphantly but as she looked up a delicate blush tinged her cheeks.

  ‘Sweet Sid,’ he said gently, ‘I shall have to try not to embarrass you.’

  ‘I might…I might get more used to it,’ she said, clasping her hands together urgently. ‘It’s all so new, you see.’

  ‘But not unpleasant, I hope? Now you’ve had time to reflect upon it?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said fervently. ‘It was—you were—I was right not to have too many preconceived ideas about it, I think. But then again it could just be that you’re—so good at it.’ She reached for her wine and sipped it thoughtfully.

  His lips twisted and he turned to the veal, turned it over and gazed absently down at it. ‘If that’s so, you have to take some of the credit for it. And before I wreck this meal——’ he turned back to her and eyed her humorously ‘—I think we should change the subject.’

  Sidonie agreed rather heartily that they should.

  But after dinner and after they’d done the dishes together he said softly, ‘Come here.’

  She went and curled up in his lap.