A Whirlwind Marriage

by Helen Brooks

‘Now, isn’t that strange.’ Zeke glanced from her to her brother. ‘I thought you might just click on when you saw us come in. And you, Claude? You also do not understand?’

  ‘Zeke…’ Claude’s voice trailed away, but the one word was enough to make Marianne’s eyes open wider. She knew that voice.

  ‘Yes?’ Zeke had fixed Claude’s eyes with his own and the Frenchman was wilting.

  ‘Zeke, this was not of my doing. You must understand that. I did not want to be a party to it—’

  ‘Shut up!’ Liliana’s voice was malignant. She said something in French to her brother that was clearly not complimentary.

  ‘Go on.’ Zeke hadn’t taken his eyes off the Frenchman when his sister had spoken. ‘You did not want to be a party to what, exactly?’

  ‘You know what.’ Claude had gone ashen. ‘I tell her. I tell her that this is not good, that it will end badly. I tell her but she won’t listen.’

  ‘Elucidate,’ Zeke bit out savagely.

  Claude darted a glance to the left and right of him, clearly terrified. ‘She wouldn’t listen,’ he whined nervously. ‘She said if I still wanted money I had to do it. She said you would never find out.’

  ‘You made the phone call.’ Marianne had half risen in her seat, one hand gripping hold of her father’s arm and the other pointing at the big florid Frenchman in front of her. ‘You said that you were Liliana’s lover, that she was having an affair with Zeke.’

  ‘Of course he did.’ Zeke’s voice was full of contempt. ‘I have known Claude for years, and he does whatever his sister tells him to do. That is so, isn’t it, Liliana? Claude has a little problem, an expensive little problem, and big sister provides the cash for his habit in return for his absolute devotion to the cause of promoting Liliana de Giraud at all times and giving her exactly what she wants. He would murder his own grandmother if Liliana required it.’

  ‘A slight exaggeration.’ Liliana’s head was up and she was far from beaten.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ For the first time Zeke glanced the redhead’s way and there was a dangerous glitter in his eyes. ‘You tried to set me up that day when you said you had an appointment in Stoke, didn’t you, Liliana? And no one—no one—does that to me and gets away with it. By the time I’ve finished with you you will be lucky to get a job anywhere in England, let alone London. But you made a mistake in using Claude. I keep my ear to the ground and I knew damn well you hadn’t got a lover at that moment; the rest, as they say, is history.’

  She had thought Zeke looked at her strangely last night when she had mentioned Liliana’s ex phoning her, Marianne thought numbly. He had guessed then; she was sure of it. And so he had organised what the redhead and her brother had thought was a nice cosy meal for just the three of them. And that meant… The numbness was beginning to wear off. That meant their affair was purely in Liliana’s dirty little mind.

  ‘I could say we’re having an affair anyway.’ Liliana’s red-painted mouth was white round the edges with rage and furious resentment at the position Zeke had placed her in.

  But now it was Josh who spoke, and he sounded very much the doctor as he said quietly, ‘Why humiliate yourself any further, Miss de Giraud? It seems to me it is not only your brother who needs help.’

  ‘Zeke does love me. He does. We should never have parted; he knows that at heart. I’m far better suited for him than her!’

  Marianne didn’t wilt beneath the savage enmity of Liliana’s eyes as they flashed her way, but inside her spirit shrank at what was almost madness in the other woman’s gaze. She was unbalanced, Marianne thought sickly. She had to be.

  And then Zeke challenged the thought as he said softly, ‘She doesn’t need help, Josh, not in the way you mean anyway. She is obsessed, all right, but not with me, not really. Liliana always comes first with Liliana, and when I finished our relationship some years ago she couldn’t accept that a man had actually chosen to walk away from her. It was the first time it had happened, you see; before me it had always been Liliana who ended the affairs. She wants what she can’t have, like a spoilt child in a toy shop, and when she gets the toys she wants she takes delight in breaking them. I knew that by the time I left her, but she fooled me inasmuch as I thought she’d accepted how things were between us and ceased to care. I’d never have offered her the job otherwise.’

  Josh looked straight at Zeke now, as he continued to grip his daughter’s hand beneath the table, and said drily, ‘It seems to me you shouldn’t have offered it to her anyway. Not one of your best decisions, Zeke.’

  Zeke looked back into the older man’s calm eyes and then nodded slowly. ‘No, it wasn’t,’ he agreed expressionlessly.

  Liliana had clearly had enough of being discussed as though she was not present. She rose in one fluid, sinuous movement of black silk and glared at them all as she spat, ‘You’ll pay for this; you see if you won’t. I won’t be treated like this.’

  ‘Sit down.’ Zeke didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to; he was quite terrifying enough as it was.

  Marianne had always known he could be a formidable opponent—he must have been to get from where he’d started to where he was now—but she was seeing the cold, hard side of him in action for the first time and he was frightening.

  His eyes were like piercing steel as they skewered Liliana’s, and his voice was glacial, penetrating the thought process like liquid ice.

  Liliana sat. The devil himself would have sat.

  ‘I can make you wish you were dead, Liliana,’ he said, softly but clearly, ‘in a hundred different ways you haven’t even thought of. I can strip you of your reputation, make sure you never work again, arrange it that you never get invited to another show, another first night, another exclusive party. And I would do it without any compunction after what you’ve done. You understand that?’

  Liliana opened her mouth twice to speak, but all she could manage was a nod of her carefully coiffured head.

  ‘No one touches me and mine, and you give Marianne the respect due to her as my wife when you address her. Okay? She is worth a hundred of you and you know it; that’s what really eats you up. The contract is cancelled as from now and you’ll get out of London if you know what’s good for you. One word, one whisper against me and mine, and I’ll make sure you suffer the torments of the damned.’

  ‘Zeke—Zeke, I didn’t mean it.’

  ‘Yes, you did, and we both know it. You would have wrecked my marriage on a pack of lies without a grain of truth in them. I don’t want to hear that you’re back in town for a very long time, Liliana, and just be thankful I’m holding my hand and you can still work in Paris and Milan and New York.’

  The waiter chose that moment to arrive with their cocktails, and he placed each one in front of them hurriedly, his antennae picking up that this was not a good time.

  Liliana watched him depart and then she picked up the fluted glass of deep, almost black liquid and drained it, replacing it on the table with a flourish that wasn’t lost on the rest of them before she rose gracefully to her feet.

  She might be a lying, venomous little snake, without a moral to her name, Marianne thought, but one thing was undeniable. Liliana had class.

  ‘Goodbye.’ The opaque eyes swept over each one of them as Claude shuffled to his feet beside his sister. ‘I will be sure to be in Paris by the end of the week. Will that suffice?’ Liliana asked Zeke, her voice cool and even but her cheeks flushed with high, angry colour.

  He nodded dismissively and then turned to Josh and Marianne. ‘Another cocktail?’ he enquired pleasantly. ‘And I think we’ll have a bottle of Bollinger with our meal…to celebrate.’

  There was a moment’s silence as Liliana continued to stand there, unable to believe she had been dismissed in such a cursory fashion, and then she swept out of the restaurant with a muttered oath, Claude trailing behind her.

  ‘Whew.’ Josh leant back in his seat on a long sigh. ‘You sure know how to keep an evening buzzing, Zeke.’

&n
bsp; ‘Are you all right?’ Zeke ignored Josh, reaching across to touch Marianne’s arm.

  She was trying hard to conceal her emotions—she wasn’t even sure what half of them were. Relief, overwhelming, blinding relief was there, along with stunned amazement, incredulity, confusion, wonder, shock, and a certain puzzling panic that at the moment was vague and indeterminate. ‘Yes, I’m all right,’ she said slowly, ‘although it’s hard to imagine someone that can be so devious.’

  ‘Devious, manipulative, selfish, downright evil…’ Zeke included Josh in the turn of his head. ‘You’re right, Josh. Not one of my best decisions.’

  ‘I’m…I’m sorry, Zeke.’ Marianne raised her head and looked directly into the smoky grey eyes as she spoke. ‘I should have known you weren’t having an affair with her.’

  But how should she have known? she asked herself in the next instant, barely aware of Zeke murmuring some soothing reply before Josh engaged him in conversation. Their whirlwind courtship and swift marriage had meant she’d barely been familiar with even the basics of what made Zeke tick when she’d married him. Those few golden weeks had been a haze of romantic dinners and thrilling excursions into London for shows and parties. They had talked of a big house in the country and of filling it with children and cats and dogs, of holidays abroad, the wedding, their honeymoon. But when had they talked about themselves, bared their souls and got to know each other? They hadn’t.

  She sat sipping at her frothy pink cocktail, more disturbed than she had ever been.

  And when they had come home from their honeymoon—a time spent almost exclusively in bed as the sensuous hunger of their love had obliterated everything else—Zeke had picked up his old life again almost as though he didn’t have a wife, and she had found herself imprisoned in a beautiful, cold, empty shell of a home.

  The babies hadn’t happened and so the house hadn’t happened; he hadn’t made time for something that wasn’t necessary just because she kept asking for it, needing it. When she had talked of finding a job he had been gently dismissive at first—‘You don’t need to work, darling, and I want to look after you. It’s so wonderful to know you’re here waiting for me when I come home.’ And then the gentleness had faded and he’d become curt, cold, if she expressed a wish to work outside the home. And she, mindful of his childhood and all he’d never had, had fallen in with his demands, wanting to remove all memory of past hurts and slights.

  Not that she had been actively unhappy, not at first. They had had a busy social life—all Zeke’s friends and business contacts, of course—and had enjoyed their evenings at home together, which had always finished in one way. They were perfectly suited in bed, desire flaming between them if they so much as touched one another.

  But after a few months she had become frustrated, bored and restless, and it was then she had felt the pressure from Zeke to change, to conform to what he wanted in a wife. And because she loved him so much she had done just that—which had been bad for both of them, she thought now.

  He had changed from the Zeke she had first loved and she had become someone she didn’t recognise, losing her confidence, her belief in herself, everything that made her her. Zeke hadn’t wanted a real wife—he’d demanded a pretty little doll he could dress up and keep in an elegant doll’s house. And she’d fallen in line.

  ‘Marianne?’ The waiter was in front of her, holding out an embossed menu as Zeke’s voice carefully prodded her back into the present. ‘How about caviare to begin with? You enjoy the way they do it here.’

  She glanced at him, seeing the dark good looks, the quiet, controlled arrogance and the devastatingly magnetic sexual attraction, and her stomach turned right over. She loved this man, and she was probably going to lose him altogether, but she couldn’t go back to the way things had been. She couldn’t follow him mindlessly through life; she had her own goals to aim for and dreams to realise. She was a person as well as a wife, and if she had to choose between Zeke or losing her identity…

  ‘No, I don’t really like caviare, Zeke,’ she said clearly. ‘I don’t think I ever have. I just tried to, for you.’

  ‘For me?’ He stared at her, puzzled but still smiling, and she nearly chickened out. Nearly.

  ‘Yes, for you,’ she said quietly. ‘But it’s probably just as well I don’t care for it because I certainly won’t be able to afford it in the future, on a student’s budget.’ Then she raised her eyes to the young waiter as she said, ‘I’ll have the Parmesan and bacon salad, please, followed by the salmon in lemon and white wine.’ And as the ponytail dipped and dived about her hot cheeks she finished the last of the pink cocktail.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  WHEN Marianne awoke the next morning the room was filled with a strange light hue and it was quiet, very quiet. Unusually quiet. She glanced at the monstrous plastic wall clock some previous occupant had fixed on the wall over the fire. Six o’clock. Early, but not so early that the hum of London traffic shouldn’t be making itself known in the background.

  She stuck her nose out of the covers and took a deep breath before diving for her dressing gown. Having lived with central heating all her life she couldn’t believe how cold the room got during the night.

  ‘Oh, gorgeous…’ When she pulled back the curtains the thick, white, starry flakes of snow falling from a laden sky brought her eyes opening wide. It had been ages since it snowed; the last two years they hadn’t seen any in London, and it was so beautiful.

  For a moment she forgot all her troubles and remained staring out of the window like a child spying its presents on Christmas morning.

  The dismal street had been transformed into a winter wonderland, ethereal and pure and white, and the snow was already several inches thick. She could see parked cars, like huge rectangular snowballs, completely covered by the feathery mass, and halfway down the street someone was already beginning to clear their vehicle preparatory to beginning the day.

  As she watched, a family saloon came down the street, very slowly, before disappearing round the far corner and leaving deep indentations in the snow.

  Thank goodness she hadn’t got to rely on a car or public transport to get to work. It was going to be chaotic on the roads this morning. She felt a brief glow of pleasure at her autonomy before she shivered convulsively and set to work restoring the bed back into a sofa. Soon the gas fire was blazing away, she had a steaming cup of coffee at her elbow, and she was snuggled on the sofa with her duvet wrapped around her as she sipped at the drink.

  Would Zeke be awake yet? Suddenly all the brief magic was gone. He had been angry last night, furiously angry, and when he had seen her home, after they had taken her father to pick up his car from the apartment car park where he’d left it, the atmosphere had been tense and electric.

  She had thought, once they were alone, that he would allude to her comment about becoming a student, but he hadn’t, and when she had tried to broach the matter he had been curt and hostile in his refusal to discuss it.

  Perhaps she shouldn’t have pushed it at that point? she asked herself as she placed the empty coffee cup on the floor before pulling the duvet’s thick folds more securely round her. The evening had been one of highly charged emotion as it was, and he’d obviously clicked on to the fact that she wasn’t going to fall into his arms and go home with him, in spite of what had come to light regarding Liliana.

  But when they had reached the bedsit and she’d become aware he intended to drive away without another word something had snapped. She’d screamed at him, she reflected miserably, positively screamed. ‘How can you say goodnight like that and just leave?’ she’d shouted. ‘What’s the matter with you anyway?’

  ‘Me?’ There had been savagery in his eyes as he’d swung round to face her in the car. ‘I said goodnight because it is perfectly obvious you don’t want to be in my company a second more than is necessary, that’s all.’

  ‘That is not all.’

  ‘Oh, yes, it is, Marianne. You heard Liliana and Claude, you
know there’s nothing between Liliana and I, but you don’t want to come home. End of story.’

  ‘End of story?’ She hadn’t been shouting then; her voice had been scarcely a whisper. ‘We haven’t talked anything out, Zeke,’ she’d said brokenly, ‘so how can it be end of story? This is our marriage you’re talking about. Our marriage.’

  ‘You think I don’t know that?’ he’d said in cold, clipped tones.

  ‘I’ve no idea what you know or don’t know,’ she’d said grimly. ‘How could I have? You never talk to me, not really, and you never listen either. Everything, everything, is on your terms, always. I’m expected to sit at home twiddling my thumbs all day and wait for you to return from the world of million-dollar deals and fast living, and then just be the sweet, docile wife with the dinner ready and the bedclothes laid back.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he’d said harshly. ‘It’s not like that.’

  ‘It’s exactly like that.’ She glanced at him, but he’d been staring ahead, his features rigid. ‘I know I shouldn’t have believed you were having an affair, but everything pointed to it, don’t you see? Liliana is in your world, and she’s vibrant and alive and interesting. And you needed her, needed her expertise and flair. Certainly more than you needed me,’ she’d added bitterly.

  ‘What?’ His eyes had flashed to her for a moment. ‘You can’t believe that.’

  ‘Well, I do.’ She’d taken a deep breath. ‘I’ve become someone else since I married you and I don’t like it; I don’t like her, the person I see in the mirror every morning. You wouldn’t talk about my getting a job or doing voluntary work. You didn’t like it if I saw Pat or any of my old friends. I’ve been in a strange sort of limbo and I can’t take it any more.’

  ‘So you’re walking out on me,’ he’d said brusquely, his face looking as though it was carved in stone.

  ‘I want…I want time—time to think,’ she’d said painfully, her heart thudding. She’d been able to smell the delicious scent of him, a mixture of expensive aftershave and musky male skin, and every fibre of her being had wanted to throw herself into his arms and agree to anything he wanted. But she couldn’t, not now, not after they had come this far.