Marrying William

by Trisha David

  Oh, help. Where did she go from here?

  Back to bed with William?

  He wouldn't understand that she didn't want to. That she couldn't.

  Jenni walked and walked, and it was only with reluctance that she finally turned to retrace her steps along the beach.

  Beth would be home at five, and there were the accounts to be done and the dinner...

  William and Beth would cook dinner. There'd be laughter and...

  To her dismay, Jenni felt her eyes well with tears. Damn him, damn him, damn him! She kicked sand out in a spray before her.

  Why was she so angry?

  'He hasn't deceived me,' she told herself. 'He's saved the farm for me. I should be grateful.'

  She wasn't angry at him, she decided. She was angry at herself.

  'Because I'm a naive dingbat who's fallen for the first personable man who's drifted into my orbit,' she told herself crossly. 'So you can stop acting like a sex-starved spinster, Jenni Hartley. Jenni Brand. Whoever you are. Jenni Hartley. I'm still Jenni Hartley. So, Ms Hartley, you can get yourself under control, march him off to another bed tonight and take your life back to yourself again.'

  Easy resolution.

  She looked along the beach and William was walking toward her—and her knees turned to jelly.

  Easy resolution. How on earth to keep it?

  'Jenni?'

  William came right up to her before he spoke. He'd obviously come to meet her.

  Now what? How was she supposed to react now? she asked herself wildly. He was looking at her as if he didn't understand what on earth was going on.

  Which he wouldn't, Jenni knew, and she understood why. He couldn't understand because William hadn't fallen in love. William had just taken what had been offered.

  'I started to worry,' William told her. 'The Pride family has arrived. I showed them into Mannagum. I hope that was where you wanted them. The beds haven't been made up but I told 'em we'd make them up later.'

  Oh, help. The Prides. She'd forgotten they were expected.

  She'd forgotten everything except the tumult around her heart.

  'Jenni, why does the fact that I've been married before upset you?' William asked. Jenni hadn't paused as he'd reached her. She'd kept walking, and William had turned and fallen in beside her.

  'It doesn't.'

  'Liar.'

  'It was just...Ronald scared me, that's all.' Jenni took a deep breath. 'And I can't help thinking,' she managed. 'Finding out about your wife made me realise... William, we're going about this all the wrong way. First we get married. Then we make love. Then we get to know each other. Only we still don't. Not at all.'

  'I know you.'

  'Well, I don't know you,' she burst out. 'And it's that that scares me stupid. Not Ronald.'

  'You really do think I might have skeletons buried in my cellars?' His eyes twinkled down at her but there was concern behind the laughter. He really wanted to know what the trouble was. He really didn't see.

  'No. Of course not.' How to explain? How to say that she loved him to distraction and the thought of there being parts of him other people knew and she didn't was unbearable. 'But...'

  'Maybe I should have told you about Julia,' he said slowly. 'I just...'

  'You thought it was none of my business. You're right. It's not.'

  'It was all over a long time ago.'

  Silence. They walked a hundred yards or more before Jenni spoke again.

  'Is that why...when you met me you said you never wanted to marry? That not getting married was priority number one?' She caught her breath and then squared her shoulders. Forced herself to ask. 'Do you still love her?'

  'What, Julia?' William gave a mirthless grin. 'Heck, no. No way.'

  'Why not?'

  'I don't think I loved her when we were married,' William told her, thinking it through as he spoke. 'Maybe I did, or maybe I just thought I did. I was infatuated, more like. I was twenty-six and I'd just made my first million. Until then I hadn't raised my head from survival mode. Suddenly the world was at my feet and Julia was, too. She belonged to a crowd I thought had everything. Money. Looks. Power. Only Julia didn't have money. Daddy had just gone bankrupt. So she made a play for me. I bankrolled Daddy, and Julia married me.'

  He grimaced. 'So there. It's not such a different deal than the one we've made, is it, Jenni? The only thing was, I didn't understand that it was a deal. I was too young, too naive or maybe just too plain stupid. Julia was playing me for all she could get.'

  'Oh, William...'

  'Oh, don't feel sorry for me,' he said harshly. 'I learned soon enough. Keep the money coming, don't ask questions and Julia was happy. And don't get me wrong. The giving wasn't all one way. Julia gave me status. People came to my hotels who otherwise wouldn't. I became socially acceptable. And when Julia killed herself on the ski slopes— she was staying there with another man, by the way—I got sympathy from people I'd only ever read of in society pages.

  Doors opened for me all over the place. So, you see, Julia's been useful.'

  'As you've been useful to me,' Jenni said carefully.

  'Well, maybe that's what marriage is for.' William smiled again then, and the self-mockery left his voice. He took Jenni's hand and held it up, as if inspecting her paint-spattered fingers. 'I made a vow then—to never leave myself open to humiliation again. Marriage can be useful, but if you manage to have fun along the way...as we're doing...'

  He pulled her in close, as if to kiss her—but Jenni pulled back before his mouth touched hers. Her eyes were still troubled. She didn't understand this game. She was way out of her depth here, and once he started kissing her she couldn't think.

  'No.'

  'Jenni...'

  'No,' she said again, and she found the strength to pull right back. 'William, I don't want this...'

  His face stilled as he looked down at her. His hands still gripped her shoulders.

  'Why?' he asked. 'Because of Julia? For heaven's sake, Jenni, that's crazy. Julia was years ago.'

  'And I'm this year. And next year it will be someone else.'

  'But we're married for this year.'

  'That was the agreement,' Jenni said slowly. 'And I made it with my eyes open. And...I still need you, William. I still need to be your wife for a year.'

  'So what's the problem?'

  'The problem is the after,' Jenni said miserably. 'You see, I can't do this. I can't compartmentalise my life. Last year, this year and next year. For you, they're all separate. But for me they run into one another.'

  'So...'

  'So... if I'm not careful here, then I'll fall headlong in love with you,' she said.

  Impossible to tell him she already had!

  'And then... If I'm in love with you, then at the end of the year I won't let you walk away, William,' she managed bleakly. 'I'd cling like a limpet. I'd cling like I'd drown if you let me go. I can feel that already.'

  She took a deep breath and looked up into his face. And his face told her what she needed to know.

  'You don't want that,' she said softly. The thought appalled him. She could see it in his eyes. 'You want your life back after a year, so you can move on to the next thing. The next woman. The next business venture or the next country or the next...the next I don't know what.

  'So unless you want me to be there, William, sharing your business, moving from country to country with you and fighting every other woman off with every weapon I possess, then we shouldn't take this any further. We went from being married to being lovers, to being acquaintances who knew nothing of each other. Let's just go back to being married. And that's all there is. Only a marriage.'

  CHAPTER NINE

  How to take the lover out of the equation and be left with a husband? How to stay living so close and yet separate? It was impossible.

  What was worse, William didn't understand.

  'Jenni, I don't see the difference,' he told her as she carted her things from the room they'd been sle
eping in together. 'If I'd known it was important then I would have told you I'd been married.'

  'It shouldn't have made any difference at all,' Jenni said crossly, hauling a heap of nightgear together. 'That's just the problem. It shouldn't, but it does. So for now I'll sleep in Rachel's bedroom. Tomorrow I'll start cleaning out the masts' bedroom so you can use that for the rest of the year. It has to be cleaned out anyway. Then I can come back here.'

  'Come back to being a spinster.'

  'That's right,' she snapped. 'I'm going to be one again at the end of the year so I might as well get used to it now.'

  'Jenni, you didn't even want to get married,' he said, exasperated. 'Are you saying now that you don't want it to end at the end of the year?' His face softened a little and he walked across the room to confront her. 'Jenni, it doesn't have to. Not completely. We can still be friends.' He touched her chin, raising her face to his. 'Friends for life, Jenni. I hope we will be.'

  Friends. Friends!

  The man was so obtuse he was blinder than Beth, Jenni thought wildly. Friends. Ha!

  'Look, leave it, William,' she said crossly. 'And don't try to make me explain. Because I can't even explain what's going on in my head to myself! You can call me neurotic if you like. Explain it that way. You can call me anything you like, but I'm going back to being me. Not a part of you.' She heaved a pile of bedlinen into her arms and headed around him and out of the door.

  'And tomorrow morning I'm going into town and I'm buying myself some blue jeans,' she flung over her shoulder at him. 'From now on I'm going back to being your wife in name only. And don't you dare try to act any different. Or...I'll even give Ronald his blasted farm.'

  That night was a long night for Jenni, sleeping alone in Rachel's bedroom.

  It was an even longer night for William.

  He lay awake and stared at the ceiling and tried to figure out just where he was in all this.

  He wasn't obtuse. He knew damned well what was happening here. Jenni hadn't come right out and said she loved him, but he could see what was written in her eyes. She'd described herself as naive. Well, she was. She couldn't hide what she was feeling.

  So where did that leave him?

  Playing the role of seducer?

  He'd hardly made love to her against her will, he told himself harshly, and he knew it was true. She'd come to him gladly. She was ripe for loving.

  The thought of Jenni's body, curled deliciously into his, yielding with delight to his touch, made him stir uneasily in bed, and he turned to stare at the wall between them.

  The walls in this place were paper-thin. He could put out a fist and shove a hole between them. Through one lean-to into the other. Through his lean-to and into Jenni's. He could punch a hole big enough so he could stride into her bedroom, lift her into his arms and claim her back as his wife.

  Only she wasn't his wife. Not really. She had the use of his name for a year, and that was all. If he claimed her now... If he claimed her now, then it would no longer be a bargain for a year. It would be a bargain for ever.

  They never should have made love, he told himself bleakly. Jenni was right. It had just complicated the whole equation. Made it damnably more difficult.

  But she was so lovely! And she was falling for him. She was falling in love, and she was afraid...

  If she was falling in love with him then she should be afraid. There was no future down that road.

  Because of Julia?

  No. Because of what was important to him. His financial empire. His life! His need to be on his own.

  Hell, why couldn't he sleep? Why couldn't he stop thinking? Why couldn't life just go back to being simple?

  Breakfast the next morning was about as strained as it could be. Even Beth and Sam noticed the tension and Sam kept nosing his way from Jenni to William and back again as if he was trying to forge a link. As if he knew...

  'So why did you sleep in Rachel's room last night?' Beth asked her sister as Jenni walked her out to the school bus. 'You two had a fight?'

  'I always sleep in Rachel's room,' Jenni told her, blushing. 'You know that's what we decided we'd do. Until the master bedroom's cleaned out...'

  'Are you kidding?' Beth turned to glare at her sister. 'It may be what we all agreed would happen but you two have been sleeping together for ever. Pull the other one, Jenni. You think I'm blind or something?'

  'Now why would I think that?' Jenni smiled, but Beth wasn't being sidetracked.

  'Me and Sam know what's going on in this place,' she said crossly. 'And you and William have been building a good thing between you. You're going to have to oil the bedsprings if you want to keep secrets from Sam and me.' Then, as Jenni's blush deepened, she went for broke, with typical fifteen-year-old candour: 'This was starting to feel like a real marriage,' she said. 'Until last night, that is. And I heard William tossing and turning, and I heard you howling your eyes out.'

  'You did not!'

  'I did, too. You don't survive blind if you don't grow big ears. And I use 'em. So what gives?'

  'Nothing.'

  'You mean...'

  'I mean nothing. Beth, here comes the bus.'

  'Well, fix things between you before I come home tonight,' Beth ordered. 'Make nothing something. Because me and Sam like the new order and we don't like it changing. We think William Brand is the best thing for you since sliced bread. So don't stuff it up, Jenni.'

  .And she gave her sister a quick hug and left her standing on the roadside, with Jenni wondering how on earth she could possibly obey that order.

  Don't stuff it up?

  What was there to stuff up?

  Nothing. There had been nothing from the start.

  Beth wasn't leaving things there. That night she probed Jenni relentlessly until she had all the information she could muster. Then she waited until Jenni was called out to one of the cottages—Mrs Fairhurst's open fire was smoking—and launched into an inquisition.

  She started tactfully. Gently. Like bull-in-a-china-shop gently.

  'So why aren't you sleeping with Jenni any more?' she demanded of William. 'And why are you hardly talking? Don't you love her any more?'

  William was mid-wash while Beth was wiping the dishes dry. He practically dropped the casserole dish he was scrubbing. Hell, he wasn't used to the directness of teenagers.

  'Is this...is this any of your business?' he managed, and started scrubbing again.

  'No,' Beth admitted. 'But I'm asking anyway. And you can't tell me to butt out. I'm blind.'

  'Now, what's the reasoning behind that?'

  'You're supposed to feel sorry for me and give me what I want. Like information.'

  'Says who?'

  'Says me.' She grinned. 'Otherwise I'll have Sam lick you until you scream for mercy.'

  'You see me petrified.'

  'So tell me.'

  'No.'

  'Jenni says you've been married before.'

  'Beth...'

  'To someone called Julia. Do you still love her?' Beth carefully accepted the casserole dish from William and started wiping. 'If she's been dead for six years you can hardly still love her.'

  'I don't.'

  'But she's still affecting you. Mind...' Beth sighed and stared into the middle distance '...I can imagine she would. Dying young... It's so romantic to die young.'

  'It wasn't romantic at all.'

  'No.' Beth caught herself, romance making way for reality. 'I guess not. When my mum and dad died it was dreadful. Empty. And then...well, I lost my sight in the same accident. I was only five but I still remember the feeling. Like everything was empty. Black and empty. Awful. There was just...just nothing.' She blinked. 'Was it like that with you? When you lost Julia?'

  William paused. He couldn't tell her to butt out now. With Beth's confession of devastation, the questioning had become much more intense...much more personal. But she wasn't prying. She was asking him to share a part of himself, as she was sharing.

  'I don't...'
/>   'Did you feel that?' Beth probed. 'That emptiness?'

  'I guess I did,' William said, finally letting himself think back to those days following Julia's death. The haunting images of Julia's shattered body. The searing hurt of the dream finally ended.

  'And do you still?'

  'No...'

  'You try not to think about it, but it's there,' Beth said softly. 'Isn't it? It never really goes away. The feeling that everything you have can be taken away.' She blinked and blinked again, and Sam came up behind her and licked her palm. He was a very sensitive dog.

  'I don't think it's fair to compare what I felt for Julia to what you felt for your parents.'

  'But you did love Julia?' She sighed. 'Of course you did. Even if you were fighting... Even if you were unhappy before she died, you were still married to her. When you marry someone...you marry a dream. I know. I get the romance novels from the Braille Library. And then reality sets in but the dream's still there. And then...you'd only been married for two years, Jenni said. No matter how she was killed...'

  'Beth...'

  'I'm sorry. I shouldn't stick my oar in like this,' Beth agreed. 'It's only...you see, Jenni hasn't had a dream. Ever. Since Mum and Dad died and I was so dreadfully injured... well, all Jenni's had has been duty. Me and Rachel. But then...' She looked earnestly at William, as though she could see him. Willing him to understand. 'But then you came along. And you've only been here for three weeks, but I know Jenni's now been given a dream. But you... If your dream's still your dead wife...'

  'It's not.'

  'But...because of Julia you're not dream-hunting,' Beth probed. 'You're not about to put someone in her place. Someone like Jenni.'

  'Beth, I'm being practical. Jenni doesn't want me as a long-term husband.'

  'Have you asked her?'

  'No, because...'

  'Because you don't want a long-term wife. Why not?'

  'Because...'

  'Because you're still hung up on Julia,' Beth said triumphantly. 'You are. Aren't you? So admit it.'

  'I'm not.'

  'Yeah? If you hadn't married Julia, would you be feeling the same way you are now? Like you never want another relationship? Isn't that because of Julia?'