Newlyweds of Convenience

by Jessica Hart

  ‘It’s down here.’ Torr set off towards a doorway in the far corner of the hall, and Mallory whistled nervously for Charlie. This was no time to get separated.

  Charlie came bounding in to join them, and followed, happily sniffing, as Torr led the way down a dank passageway with a low, vaulted ceiling and all sorts of turns and unexpected steps that made Mallory stumble, although Torr never did.

  He strode on for what seemed like miles, bending his head occasionally when the ceiling dipped but otherwise apparently oblivious to the potential horrors that might lurk around every twist in the passage.

  Mallory’s earlier bravado had disappeared the moment Torr headed into the passageway, and her heart was thumping. Charlie was unperturbed by the darkness or fear of the unknown, and she wished passionately that she had his lack of imagination. As it was, she had to hurry to keep up with Torr, and when he paused briefly at a fork in the passageway, she threw pride to the winds and took hold of his jacket.

  Torr glanced down at her. ‘Frightened?’

  ‘Of course I’m frightened!’ she snapped. ‘I’m stuck in a haunted castle in the pitch-dark, miles from anywhere, and the way my luck is going at the moment I’m heading straight for the dungeons!’

  ‘No, the dungeons are the other way,’ said Torr, but to Mallory’s secret relief he took her hand. ‘We’re almost there,’ he told her. ‘It just seems further in the dark when you don’t know where you’re going.’

  His clasp was warm and firm and extraordinarily reassuring. Mallory immediately felt better, and tried not to clutch at him, although there was no way she was letting his hand go. ‘There aren’t really dungeons, are there?’ she said nervously.

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised. This is a medieval castle, after all.’

  ‘Great. They’re probably full of skeletons, too.’ Mallory shuddered. ‘This whole place is probably choc-a-bloc with ghosts!’

  Torr tsked. ‘There’s no such thing as ghosts.’

  ‘That’s what they always say at the beginning of a horror movie when they start exploring a ruined castle in the middle of nowhere!’

  ‘I always thought you were a sensible woman,’ said Torr disapprovingly. ‘Certainly not the kind to believe in that kind of nonsense.’

  ‘I didn’t used to be-but that was before I started hearing the sound of chains being rattled in the darkness!’

  ‘You won’t hear ghosts from the dungeons here, Mallory. This wing is modern.’

  She stared at him. ‘Modern? In which csentury?’

  ‘The nineteenth,’ he conceded. ‘Long past the age of dungeons, anyway.’

  ‘Pity it wasn’t in the age of electricity!’

  ‘Electricity we have,’ Torr announced. ‘If you just give me a minute…Ah, here we are! Hold this a moment,’ he said, handing Mallory the torch.

  Pushing open a door, he felt round for a switch inside and a couple of naked light bulbs wavered into life. The light they offered was pretty feeble, but after the pitch-blackness of the passage, Mallory blinked as if dazzled by searchlights.

  ‘This is the kitchen,’ he said.

  She looked around the huge, stone-flagged room. At least this one had a ceiling that appeared to be intact, and at first glance there were no weeds or suits of armour, but otherwise it was dank and dirty and depressing.

  ‘Is that better?’ Torr asked her.

  A little puzzled by his tone, Mallory glanced at him, only to see that he was looking down to where she was still clutching his hand. She dropped it as if scalded, appalled to feel a faint blush stealing up her cheeks.

  ‘I thought you said the dungeons were the other way,’ she said to cover her confusion, and Torr clicked his tongue.

  ‘You’ve got everything you need,’ he said, waving in the direction of an array of old-fashioned ranges. ‘Somewhere to cook. A sink. Even a fridge and freezer,’ he added, pointing at a grimy model of the kind she had once seen in a museum of everyday living. ‘All the mod cons.’

  Mallory sighed. ‘I’ll have to get used to the fact that when you use the word “modern” you’re talking about a hundred and fifty years ago! Personally, I’ve never seen any cons less mod!’

  ‘Oh, come on. It’s not that bad. You’ve got electricity-and masses of storage space,’ Torr added, with a comprehensive sweep of his arm.

  She couldn’t argue with that. There were not one but two huge pine dressers, an enormous kitchen table, worn from years of use, and old-fashioned cupboards running almost the length of the long room, and that was before she even started opening various doors to find larders and the like.

  ‘Shame that we haven’t got anything to store, then, isn’t it?’ she said to him a little tartly.

  Almost everything had gone into storage, and they had only brought with them what could fit in the car and its tarpaulin-covered trailer. ‘We won’t need much to begin with,’ Torr had said. ‘Just bring the essentials.’

  The ‘essentials’ would fill one cupboard if they were lucky.

  ‘Better to have too much space than too little,’ he pointed out.

  There was certainly space. The ground floor of Mallory’s house in Ellsborough would have fitted easily into the room. At one end there was an enormous fireplace, with a couple of cracked and battered leather armchairs in front of it which made a separate living area.

  ‘My great-uncle pretty much lived in this room on his own for the last few years, before his son moved him to a nursing home,’ Torr said when Mallory commented on it. ‘He couldn’t afford to keep up the castle, but he refused to leave until he was in his nineties and they couldn’t find anyone prepared to come in and care for him here.’

  ‘I can’t imagine why,’ Mallory murmured, with an ironic glance around the kitchen.

  ‘They put a bathroom in one of the old sculleries for him.’ Torr opened a couple of doors. ‘Yes, here it is.’

  He stood back to let Mallory peer in. There was a rudimentary bath, half filled with droppings, dust and cobwebs, a grimy sink and an absolutely disgusting lavatory.

  So much for her fantasy of a hot bath before falling into bed.

  Charlie, who had been sniffing interestedly round the kitchen, put his paws on the loo seat and began slurping noisily at the water, obviously feeling right at home.

  Look on the bright side, Mallory told herself. It can’t get any worse than this.

  ‘Where did your great-uncle sleep?’ she asked wearily.

  ‘I’ll show you.’

  There was a short passage leading out of the kitchen, and Torr threw open another door. ‘I think this used to be a sitting room for the upper servants,’ he told Mallory, who had finally managed to drag Charlie out of the bathroom. ‘But, as you can see, it makes a perfectly adequate bedroom.’

  That was a matter of opinion, thought Mallory.

  ‘It’s got a ceiling, I’ll give it that,’ she conceded.

  ‘And a bed,’ Torr pointed out, indicating a rusty iron bedstead complete with lumpy mattress. ‘And a wardrobe and a chest of drawers. What more do you want?’

  Mallory thought of her comfortable bedroom back in Ellsborough, with its dressing table and the pretty little sofa. The curtains were swagged and trimmed, the colour and pattern of the fabric picking up the tones in the bedspread and upholstery perfectly so that the whole effect was one of freshness and tranquillity.

  She sighed. ‘I wouldn’t know where to start,’ she said.

  Still, she was so tired that she thought she would sleep anywhere that night-until a thought occurred to her.

  ‘Where are you sleeping?’ she asked cautiously.

  ‘Right here,’ said Torr. ‘With you. There’s no need to look like that,’ he added roughly. ‘I’m well aware of how you feel. You made it clear enough on our wedding night, and frankly I’ve no desire to repeat the experience myself. It was like being in bed with a marble statue, which isn’t my idea of a turn-on,’ he added with a caustic look. ‘I won’t have any problem keeping my hands
off you.’

  Mallory stiffened at the asperity in his voice and lifted her chin, the appalling conditions momentarily forgotten. ‘If you feel like that, I’m surprised you want to share a bed with me,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t particularly,’ Torr told her, ‘but I don’t have much choice. These are the only habitable rooms at the moment, and one bed is all we’ve got. It’s too damp and cold to sleep on the floor, so we might as well be practical about it. If nothing else, we can keep each other warm,’ he went on as he led the way back to the kitchen.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me about all this before we came?’ demanded Mallory, hating the fact that she always ended up trotting after him, but lacking the courage to be left on her own. ‘You must have known that we would end up sharing a bed.’

  ‘Would it have made a difference?’

  She thought about how few options she had if she wanted to keep Charlie. ‘Probably not,’ she admitted grudgingly, ‘but at least I would have been prepared.’

  ‘I can’t see that it would have helped,’ said Torr indifferently as he retrieved the torch and clicked it back on. ‘You weren’t going to like anything about Kincaillie, so there was no point in giving you something else to feel miserable about. You were just going to have to accept it anyway.’

  ‘Because I can hardly walk out if I don’t like it, can I?’ said Mallory bitterly. She glanced up and caught a glimpse of Torr’s answering smile.

  ‘It would be a very long walk,’ he agreed.

  Unpacking the car seemed to take a very long time. The wind shrieked and clutched at them as they toiled backwards and forwards, and by the time they had finished Mallory’s hands were numb with cold and the icy rain had plastered her hair to her head. She was wearing the waterproof jacket that she used when she walked Charlie, but the hood was worse than useless in this wind, and she had given up trying to keep it on her head. As a result the sleet had found its way around her neck and seeped horribly down her back. It wasn’t too bad as long as she kept moving, but the moment she stopped, she shivered with the clammy cold.

  Torr had decreed that they could leave it until morning to unpack the trailer, but they still ended up with a pile of boxes in the middle of the kitchen floor. Mallory was ready to drop with exhaustion, but Charlie still had to be fed. It was long past his supper time, and he had been patiently accompanying them in and out to car in the hope that his bowl would materialise.

  Peeling off her jacket with a grimace, she hung it over the back of a chair and began looking through boxes for the dog food. Torr had brought a portable gas ring with him, and connected it to the canister. His movements were quick and competent, and Mallory found herself watching him from under her lashes as she spooned food into Charlie’s bowl. She had never really noticed that about him before now. She had seen him as the brusque, successful businessman that he was, but she had never thought of him doing anything apart from making money. He seemed to know exactly what he was doing.

  She put the bowl down on the floor and Charlie waited, quivering with anticipation, for her signal that he could eat. Mallory smiled at his expression. ‘OK,’ she said, and the dog leapt for the bowl, wolfing down his meal in matter of seconds and then deriving a lot of enjoyment from pushing the bowl around as he licked it clean. The stainless steel rang on the stone floor, and Mallory made a mental note to find his plastic mat for next time.

  Hunger satisfied, Charlie slurped water noisily, and then threw himself down on the tattered rug in front of the fireplace and rested his head on his paws with a sigh of contentment.

  Torr glanced at him. ‘Must be a nice being a dog sometimes,’ he commented dryly, setting a kettle on the gas ring and lighting the flame.

  ‘I know. A bowl of dog food and somewhere to stretch out and he’s perfectly happy,’ said Mallory, swaying with tiredness. ‘I’ll pass on the dog food, but I wouldn’t mind somewhere to lie down myself. Did you bring in the bedding?’

  ‘I put it in the bedroom.’

  ‘I’ll make the bed, then.’

  She might as well face up to it, Mallory had decided. Sharing a bed was obviously part of Torr’s punishment, and she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of making any more fuss about it. No doubt he was expecting her to insist on sleeping on her own somewhere, but she was so tired she had to lie down, and it looked as if the bed was her only option. It would take more than Torr to stop her sleeping tonight, in any case.

  The little bedroom was freezing, and Mallory shivered as she covered the lumpy mattress with a blanket and then made the bed, layering it up with a duvet and three more blankets on top. Even in the meagre light of the single naked bulb it looked positively inviting.

  To Charlie’s delight, Torr had laid a small fire, and the flames were just starting to take hold when she went back into the kitchen. The fire was dwarfed by the enormous fireplace, but it was surprising how welcoming it looked, and at least it gave the illusion of warmth, even if not the reality.

  ‘I’ve made some tea,’ said Torr. He nodded at the sagging armchairs in front of the fire. ‘Sit down.’

  He had thrown a travelling rug over the chair, presumably in lieu of a good clean, but Mallory was beyond caring. She dropped gratefully into one of the chairs and took the mug of steaming tea that Torr handed her with a murmur of thanks, cradling her hands around it for warmth.

  ‘I’ll get the range going in the morning,’ said Torr, bringing his own mug over to sit in the other chair. ‘That’ll warm the place up.’

  ‘Warm? What’s warm?’ Mallory huddled in her chair and watched disbelievingly as Charlie heaved a sigh of contentment and rolled onto his side, stretching out his paws towards the fire as if he were perfectly comfortable. ‘I can’t even remember what it feels like!’

  Staring into the flames, she thought longingly of her little centrally heated house, which had been repossessed along with everything else when Steve disappeared. All she had been left with was humiliation and a huge debt.

  And a husband who despised her.

  She sighed.

  ‘You’ll like it better in daylight,’ said Torr, almost roughly.

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ she said, reflecting that it could hardly seem worse. She glanced at him. ‘What is there to like?’

  ‘The hills, the sea, the peace,’ he said promptly. ‘The smell of the air. The sound of the birds. The space. There are no beeping phones, no e-mail, no deadlines, no hassle.’

  Mallory looked at him in surprise, momentarily diverted from her shivering. ‘I thought you thrived on all that,’ she said. ‘Don’t you need the adrenalin rush of wheeling and dealing?’

  ‘I prefer the adrenalin rush I get from a difficult climb,’ said Torr. ‘That’s not to say I haven’t got a kick out of building up my businesses, but my original plan was just to earn enough to buy a place in the country. Not as big as this, of course, but a farm, or somewhere I could live off the land. The trouble with success, though, is that it brings along responsibilities,’ he went on. ‘Once you start to employ lots of people, you realise they’re depending on you for their livelihoods, and it becomes harder and harder to contemplate selling up.’

  Mallory’s expression must have been more sceptical than she’d intended, because he stopped then. ‘That makes it sound as if I was just making money for the sake of my employees, which of course wasn’t the case,’ he acknowledged. ‘And I did get a buzz out of pushing through a difficult deal, or winning a big contract. It’s easy to get sucked into feeling that if you can just do one more deal, make one more million, the time will be right to give it up. But then there’s another deal, another million to be made…Who knows how long I’d have gone on if the letter telling me that Kincaillie was mine hadn’t arrived?’

  Torr leant forward to add another log to the fire, and the flickering light threw his stern features into relief. Watching him over the rim of her mug, Mallory reflected that she had learnt more about him in the last minute or so than she had in the fiv
e months of their marriage. He hadn’t really told her anything about himself before.

  And she had never asked.

  She wriggled her shoulders, as if to dislodge the uncomfortable thought.

  ‘That letter stopped me in my tracks,’ Torr went on, unaware of her mental interruption. ‘It made me realise that I was a long way down a road I had never intended to take for more than a little way, and I had to make a choice. I could carry on making money, or I could give it all up and come back to Kincaillie.’

  ‘Come back? I thought you only came here once?’

  ‘I did, but Kincaillie is a big part of our family mythology. My father used to talk about it a lot, and he heard about it from his father, who grew up here. He was a younger son, so he left to make his own way in the world, but he never forgot Kincaillie, and my father was brought up on stories of the place.’

  Torr stirred a log with his foot. ‘I never expected to own Kincaillie, but I was always aware of a connection. It’s a special place. I felt it when my father brought me here as a kid, and then again when I came to see it a month ago. I still can’t really believe that it belongs to me,’ he confessed. He looked around him. ‘It’s like a fantasy coming true just when you least expect it. I can’t believe I’m sitting here at last and it’s all mine.’

  Mallory followed his gaze around the grim kitchen, comparing it with the stunning Georgian townhouse they had left behind. That house had been the last word in style and elegance, its spectacular kitchen bristling with state-of-the-art technology and cutting-edge design. Torr had given all that up for this?

  ‘How does it feel?’ she asked him, and his eyes came back to hers.

  ‘It feels like coming home,’ he said.

  Mallory had the strangest feeling that all the air had been suddenly sucked out of the room. Worse, her eyes seemed to have snagged on his, and she couldn’t look away from his gaze. ‘I can’t say it’s my fantasy,’ she managed a little unsteadily after a moment, and something closed in his face.

  ‘There’s no need to tell me that,’ he said curtly.

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought you were a man who went in for dreams and fantasies much yourself.’ Mallory had been hoping to lighten the atmosphere, but instead her words came out almost accusingly.