The Australian's Marriage Demand

by MELANIE MILBURNE

  ‘But I want you to know that even if I had found out in time I would still have wanted to marry you.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why did you want to marry me?’

  His eyes shifted away from hers. ‘I wanted to settle down.’

  ‘With me?’

  ‘Why not you?’

  ‘I’m hardly perfect wife material.’

  ‘I don’t know about that and, besides, I’m not the perfect catch either, so what’s the problem?’

  ‘The problem is I’m not who you think I am.’

  ‘I know you’re not the wayward rebel people have made you out to be.’

  ‘I don’t mean that.’ She chanced a quick glance at his face. ‘I mean I’m not really a bishop’s daughter.’

  His dark eyes meshed with hers.

  ‘Whose daughter are you?’

  She lowered her gaze. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘No, you don’t see,’ she said, not caring that they’d each recycled each other’s words several times in the space of a few minutes. ‘I’m not my parents’ daughter.’

  ‘Do you have any idea whose daughter you might be?’

  She couldn’t meet his eyes.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she answered raggedly. ‘I don’t know.’

  She heard him move across the room and the chink of a bottle against a glass as he topped up his brandy.

  ‘I take it Elias and Frances didn’t enlighten you?’

  She felt almost grateful he hadn’t referred to them as her parents.

  ‘No,’ she said hollowly. ‘They didn’t enlighten me.’

  ‘And Sam, Caitlin, Bianca—do they know about this?’

  She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.

  ‘I see,’ he said again.

  She seriously questioned that; how could he possibly know what she was going through?

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she found herself confessing. ‘I’ve always suspected something wasn’t quite right in my family but I could never put my finger on exactly what.’

  ‘They should’ve told you.’

  She bit her lip as she thought about her parents’ dilemma.

  ‘They did what they thought was best, I see that now.’

  ‘You’re very gracious.’

  ‘You wouldn’t say that if you heard what I said to them a few hours ago.’

  ‘It’s been such a shock,’ he said. ‘It’s understandable.’

  She sat down on the nearest sofa with a heavy sigh. ‘I feel like an alien.’

  ‘You don’t have green skin, if that’s any consolation.’

  She couldn’t stop her smile in time.

  ‘Trust you to find something to laugh about in all of this,’ she said.

  He took a sip of his brandy. ‘It’s not really a laughing matter, though, is it?’

  ‘No.’ She met his dark eyes. ‘It’s not.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘Do?’ She frowned at him. ‘What can I do?’

  He put his glass down and folded his arms across his chest as he leant back against the drinks cabinet.

  ‘For a start you could go and speak to Roy Holden.’

  ‘Roy Holden?’ Jasmine gaped at him. ‘Why? What has he got to do with any of this?’

  Connor met and held her startled gaze across the room.

  ‘Because Roy Holden is your father.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  JASMINE genuinely thought she was going to faint. The room spun around her, the sofa opposite intermingling with the tall figure of Connor as he stood watching her reaction to his bombshell.

  ’My father?’ she gasped. ’He’s my father?’

  Connor nodded.

  ‘How do you know?’ She grasped the nearest surface to anchor herself. ‘How can you possibly know that?’

  ‘I found out some time ago.’

  She sucked in a painful breath and sat down heavily on the sofa behind her.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘I can’t believe it.’

  She felt Connor move across the room to join her on the sofa.

  ‘Does he know?’ she asked, turning to look at him.

  He nodded. ‘Yes. He’s known from the start.’

  Jasmine buried her head in her lap. She felt the gentle stroke of his hand on her hair and had to fight even harder against the sobs that threatened to consume her.

  ‘I felt a connection with him when I had him as my teacher.’ She lifted her tear-stained face towards him. ‘I must have known subconsciously at least.’

  ‘Yes.’ He threaded his fingers through her hair. ‘You must have sensed something.’

  ‘Do you know who my mother was?’

  He didn’t see any point in denying it now. ‘Yes, I do.’

  She swallowed deeply, her hands like two tight knots in her lap.

  ‘Who?’

  His eyes held hers.

  ‘Your mother was Vanessa Byrne—your aunt.’

  Jasmine’s jaw dropped.

  ’My aunt?’

  He nodded. ‘It seems she had a bit of a rebellious streak and went somewhat off the rails. She was disowned by the family. Her brother, your adopted father Elias, insisted she never darken the doorstep again. When she fell pregnant she was under a lot of family pressure; she finally decided, once you were born, to give you up.’

  Jasmine’s brow was deeply furrowed as she took it all in. After a long silence she lifted her pained expression to his.

  ‘I found some photographs.’ She rummaged in her bag and handed them to him. ‘They were in the old Bible at the house.’

  He gave the photographs a cursory glance and put them aside. Something in his manner alerted her to the possibility that it wasn’t the first time he’d seen them.

  ‘You don’t seem very surprised,’ she said.

  He turned back to face her.

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘You knew my aunt lived in that house, didn’t you?’ She stared at him.

  He gave a single nod without speaking.

  ‘I…I found a diary as well.’ She handed it to him, her voice cracking slightly.

  He flipped through the pages, smiling wryly when he came to the lock of hair she’d tucked inside.

  ‘Do you know who gave the photographs and my hair to my aunt?’ she asked after a pause.

  ‘I have a fair idea.’

  ‘But you’re not going to tell me?’

  His eyes came back to hers, his expression regretful.

  ‘It’s not my place to tell you.’

  ‘My mother was watching me,’ she said after a long silence. ‘All those years she was so close and I didn’t know.’

  ‘Yes, your intuition was right after all. She was watching you whenever you came past, desperate for a glance at the daughter she’d been forced to give up.’

  ‘I can’t believe it.’ She sank to the sofa once more. ‘It’s all so bizarre.’

  ‘Yes, it is certainly that,’ he agreed.

  ‘It’s so weird.’ She lifted her gaze to his. ‘Do you know I never realised it till this minute that I’ve never seen a photograph of my mother?’

  ‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ he said. ‘You were the spitting image of her when she was young. Your parents wouldn’t have been able to explain away the likeness, especially as your three sisters are all so alike. From the first, Roy Holden saw it, but assumed it was one of those coincidences. You know, someone having a double somewhere in the world. After a while he stumbled across the truth, but he could do nothing about it. He was married with a child. How could he tell them of a child he hadn’t known he’d had? After the scandal he couldn’t even clear his own name, let alone yours, without inadvertently revealing the truth.’

  Jasmine stared at her hands as she recalled the way it had all blown up in her face. Her favourite teacher blighted by scandal when all the time he was actually her father! He’d done nothing wrong other than listen to a lonely,
confused girl who’d felt drawn to his quiet empathetic nature.

  When a staff member had interrupted them one afternoon it had all been blown out of proportion. The teacher’s aide had scurried off to inform the principal that Jasmine had been in Roy Holden’s arms but it hadn’t been like that at all. She’d stayed back after class to discuss her English paper with him, only to find herself confessing how unhappy she was over an argument she’d had with her parents that morning. He’d listened as she had off-loaded her frustration, reaching out when the first tears fell to take her hand in his.

  The door had opened and they’d sprung apart with unnecessary guilt but it had been too late. It was all over the staffroom by lunchtime and all over the school by the time the home bell sounded. The heightened awareness of inappropriate student-teacher relationships at the time had made it very difficult to stop the hint of a scandal spreading. The climate of suspicion had been too intense to circumvent. Jasmine had watched in mute desperation as exaggerated lie after lie hit the headlines, her total bewilderment leaving deep emotional scars with each fire and brimstone lecture her father had delivered, her devastated mother’s distress almost matching her own.

  She’d left the school in disgrace and had blamed herself ever since for the damage she’d inadvertently done to Roy Holden’s career.

  ‘Does his wife know?’ she asked.

  ‘No, he couldn’t tell her either without compromising you or your adoptive parents.’

  ‘Secrets everywhere.’ Jasmine sighed. ‘So many secrets.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘Do?’ She looked at him blankly.

  ‘Now that you know the truth, you do have some options.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Such as seeing Roy Holden. You could also insist on finding out more about Vanessa from Elias and Frances.’

  ‘But what about my sisters?’

  ‘What about them?’ he asked. ‘They need to know the truth as well. I don’t think it will harm them all that much. Maybe it will knock a bit of sense into them. Besides, the only one who makes any effort to be worthy of the title sister is Sam.’

  ‘Yes, I know what you mean.’ Her tone was wry.

  Connor stood up and, draining his brandy, put the empty glass aside.

  ‘You look tired; you should go up to bed. It’s been a heck of a day.’

  ‘Yes.’ She lowered her gaze from the all-seeing intensity of his. There was still so much she wanted to ask him, like how he knew so much about her family, and things she wanted to tell him but she didn’t know where to start.

  ‘I’ll sleep in the guest room for the time being,’ he said into the telling silence.

  ‘I understand.’ She turned away.

  ‘Jasmine?’

  She stopped in her tracks and turned back to face him uncertainly.

  ‘I realise this is difficult for you but there are still things we need to discuss,’ he said.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘The future of our marriage.’

  ‘Where were you the last few nights?’ she asked, giving him a pointed look.

  ‘I was staying with a friend.’

  ‘Was the friend a woman?’

  ‘Yes, but it was—’

  She gave him a chilling glance.

  ‘Our marriage doesn’t have a future, Connor.’

  His eyes darkened with some indefinable emotion as he took in her simple statement.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I’m going to bed.’ She swung away, frightened he’d see the betraying moisture in her eyes. ‘Goodnight.’

  He didn’t answer but she felt his dark, brooding gaze on her back as she left the room.

  The next week passed in a blur of high emotion and recriminations, finally coming to a head when Jasmine confronted Elias and Frances once more. She demanded to see a photograph of her mother and, when they refused, she threatened to go to the press and tell them the whole story.

  Elias was under no illusion as to whether or not she meant it. ‘I should have known you’d be trouble from the first day we took you in,’ he said through clenched teeth, beads of perspiration sprouting on his receding brow.

  ‘Elias!’ Frances gasped.

  He gave his wife a dismissive glance before turning back to Jasmine.

  ‘You’re on the same path to destruction your poor deluded mother took. I did everything in my power to make her see reason, but she refused to listen.’

  ‘At least she wasn’t a hypocrite!’ Jasmine threw at him.

  ‘You know nothing of what she put my family through. My parents, your grandparents were never the same again; she destroyed them with her scandalous behaviour.’

  ‘Elias, please.’ Frances’s voice cracked with a growing anger. ‘Vanessa wasn’t all that bad.’

  He gave her a quelling look but she stood her ground with uncharacteristic defiance.

  ‘You were too hard on her, you know you were,’ she continued. ‘She wasn’t an angel but neither was she the demon you made her out to be.’

  ‘You sent her the photographs, didn’t you?’ Elias’s frown was suddenly accusing.

  ‘Yes,’ Frances said with an element of pride in her tone. ‘She had the right to see her child, a right you should never have denied her. I also organised for her to stay at the old house so she could at least be close whenever Jasmine went to stay next door.’

  ‘You went behind my back,’ Elias said as if he still couldn’t quite believe it. ‘You deliberately disobeyed my instructions and broke your vow of wifely obedience.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Elias!’ Frances got to her feet in agitation. ‘I had to do something to heal the hurt before she died.’ She turned to Jasmine, her expression softening. ‘Darling, your…mother loved you very dearly. I know she did.’

  Jasmine could barely make out Frances’s features from behind the blur of tears.

  ‘She had an addiction problem she never quite got over. She tried so hard but her kidneys were permanently damaged. She thought you’d be happier in the long run with us, but maybe…’ Her words trailed off as she choked on a sob.

  ‘It’s all right.’ Jasmine touched her on the arm. ‘I understand.’

  ‘It was God’s will,’ Elias put in gravely. ‘All things work together for good.’

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Elias, shut up!’ Frances said.

  Jasmine couldn’t help smiling at the shocked bewilderment on her adoptive father’s face. It was certainly a novelty to hear her mother blaspheme but she didn’t want to hang around to hear any more. She had more important things to do.

  ‘I have to go,’ she said. ‘I need to speak to Connor.’

  She left after giving them both an awkward hug, knowing it would take much more than a brief show of affection to heal the hurt and misunderstandings that had grown between them. But somehow in that quick embrace she felt something had shifted and settled inside her.

  When she returned to Connor’s house there was no sign of him having been there recently. She even pushed open the bathroom door to check the floor for towels but the floor was clear. She felt like crying and, just for the heck of it, tore one neatly folded towel from the rail and dropped it to the floor.

  She considered asking the housekeeper where he was but changed her mind when she thought about what sort of conclusions Maria would draw, notwithstanding her limited understanding of English.

  She wandered aimlessly around the house for a couple of hours when all of a sudden it came to her. She snatched up the keys to the second car and, without even stopping to throw a few things in a bag, rushed out to the garage.

  The Friday evening traffic had begun to thin out by the time she hit the freeway and it wasn’t all that much after nine p.m. when she pulled up in front of the old house and parked behind Connor’s black Maserati.

  There were a couple of lights on downstairs and she made her way to the front door with trepidation in her breast, suddenly uncertain now that she was actually here.
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  The door was unlocked. She closed it softly behind her and made her way to the nearest door, where a thin beam of light was shining beneath.

  The door opened and Connor stood looking down at her, his brows drawn together in a frown.

  ‘What brings you here at this late hour, Jasmine?’

  She stepped past him to enter the room, trying not to be too intimidated by his less than enthusiastic greeting.

  ‘I wanted to talk to you about something.’ She turned to face him. ‘I think you owe me that.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ He moved across to the brandy bottle and poured himself a generous measure.

  ‘Yes.’

  He took a sip of brandy, holding it in his mouth for a short while before swallowing.

  She wasn’t sure what to make of his mood.

  ‘I want to know how you came to know Roy Holden was my father.’

  He took another sip of brandy before responding.

  ‘Your real mother, Vanessa, told me.’

  She stared at him. ‘You met my…mother?’

  ‘I met her about three years ago.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘She was staying at Beryl Hopper’s house in the Blue Mountains.’

  Jasmine felt her legs weaken and reached for the sofa.

  ‘I was going through a rough time of my own,’ he continued. ‘I’d just come out of a relationship which had cut me deeply. I landed on Beryl’s doorstep as I had done on various occasions in the past. Vanessa was there and we got talking. I can’t remember the details exactly but I think I might have mentioned Finn and Sam’s relationship. Once she heard the Byrne name she told me of her past, how she had given up her daughter. It didn’t take me too long to figure out just which of the Byrne girls she was referring to.’

  ‘You should have told me.’

  ‘How could I?’

  ‘How did you know my mother, I mean Frances, sent the photographs?’ she asked.

  ‘Vanessa told me. She also told me Frances had organised for you to have access to the shack at Pelican Head whenever you wanted it.’

  Jasmine’s mind ran back to all the occasions she’d called her mother’s friend to ask if she could use the property. She couldn’t recall a single time when it hadn’t been immediately available to her.

  ‘I still don’t understand.’ She lifted her troubled gaze to his. ‘Where do you fit in with all this?’