Marriage on Command

by Lindsay Armstrong

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact it is.’

  ‘That makes me feel really comfortable,’ Lee remarked. ‘Is there no way I can persuade you to turn this car around and drive off?’

  ‘No. Look, I can’t leave her to read about it in the papers. And perhaps I could stiffen your resolve somewhat. Just think of Cosmo Delaney.’

  ‘Your fiancée!’

  Evelyn Moore tottered to a chair and sat down with her hand to her heart.

  Lee drew an embarrassed breath and looked around. The room they were in was straight out of another era. There were heavy garnet velvet curtains at the mullioned windows, a patterned carpet, plenty of mahogany and walnut around, even palms in brass pots that resembled spittoons. There were sepia prints of Brisbane in its infancy; there were parchment vellum shades with garnet velvet trim on the lamps.

  She guessed it had been preserved as a living testament to the history of the house, because no one in their right mind would furnish a room this way today—even assuming they could get their hands on the uncomfortable horsehair-stuffed sofas and all the other memorabilia.

  Which made her wonder if Damien’s mother was a history buff or just a little eccentric—because this room deserved a tasselled rope at the door and a discreet notice not to enter it. It was not a room you entertained guests in.

  She switched her gaze back to Evelyn Moore. As tall as her son, she looked to be in her sixties. She had beautifully styled smooth grey hair and his fine dark eyes. She was big-boned, with a regal if not to say autocratic bearing. She wore navy linen trousers and a peacock-blue cotton shirt tucked into them. A sapphire the size of a small pigeon egg adorned her left hand. You could just picture her in a black gown and wig, presiding over the court in a stylish but definitely no-nonsense manner.

  This news, however, appeared to have knocked the stuffing out of Justice Moore.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ she said faintly. ‘Who is she and when did this happen? What about Julia?’

  Lee flashed Damien a told-you-so look from beneath her lashes.

  But his reply to his mother startled her.

  ‘Why are we in here?’ he asked coolly. ‘Isn’t this the room we all laugh about and call the torture chamber?’

  His mother looked about her dazedly. ‘You know your father insisted we preserve it.’

  ‘Granted, but when do we ever entertain in it?’

  ‘I…’ Evelyn gestured and appeared to force herself to look at Lee. ‘I think I must have had some premonition this was going to be difficult,’ she said slowly.

  ‘Mrs Moore.’ Lee spoke for the first time since being introduced. ‘It’s only to be a marriage of convenience. To be honest, I was in two minds about it myself, but if you’d let Damien explain it might set your mind to rest.’

  Evelyn Moore’s dark eyes drifted down Lee, taking in the low neckline of her dress, the shortness of her skirt, the bareness of her legs and the height of her heels, the rhinestones. She then appeared to shudder faintly. ‘All right, come into the morning room—but this had better be good, Damien!’ she warned.

  The morning room was chintzy and comfortable and had a bay window looking out over the garden.

  Lee sat on a cushion on the window seat and studied the garden as Damien took his mother through the events that had led up to their forthcoming marriage.

  ‘But why on earth would he make such a bequest?’ she protested at the end. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘My sentiments entirely,’ Lee murmured.

  ‘I notice you didn’t knock it back! And why did you agree to marry Damien?’ Evelyn replied acidly.

  ‘I made the suggestion we do that,’ Damien drawled. ‘Would it be too much to ask for a cup of coffee?’

  ‘Yes! But you may pour me a gin and tonic, or something. I certainly need a drink!’

  ‘Beloved, your wish is my command,’ her son replied, and left the room.

  ‘There has got to be more to it than a deranged bequest in a will!’ Evelyn said passionately to Lee. ‘You don’t look to be his kind of girl at all! Well, not the kind of girl he’d marry.’ Once again Evelyn took in Lee’s décolletage, the coltish grace of her long legs, the luxurious splendour of her hair.

  ‘Thank you,’ Lee said politely. ‘I won’t bore you with the details, but I don’t normally go about dressed like this at ten o’clock in the morning. However, you’re right. I’m not the kind of girl your son would marry.’

  ‘So?’ Evelyn gazed at her imperiously.

  ‘Look,’ Lee responded evenly, ‘I’m only doing it so I can rescue my grandparents from penury.’ She explained what had happened in more detail.

  ‘You must have been mad to think Cyril Delaney would do that,’ Evelyn said incredulously.

  ‘Yes, well, we haven’t got to the bottom of that little mystery yet,’ Lee replied dryly.

  ‘What exactly are you?’ Evelyn enquired with unmistakable hauteur.

  Lee looked ruefully down at her dress. ‘I’m not some sort of good-time girl. I’m a landscape gardener, in fact. Incidentally, it’s not too late to prune your Strelitzia, or bird of paradise, right back. You’d still get a much better showing in a few months. And are you aware that some people are allergic to the spores of the tree fern? I think you have a few much too close to the house. They’re so fine, the spores. They blow everywhere and create a lot of dust, don’t they?’

  Evelyn closed her mouth, which had progressively dropped open during Lee’s lecture, just as Damien returned to the room bearing a silver tray.

  ‘I take it you two have locked horns,’ he said with a wicked glint in his eye. ‘I must warn you, Mother, it is extremely difficult to win an argument with Lee.’

  Evelyn shook her head distractedly and took the glass he offered her. She sipped, then said strongly, ‘Damien, how can you possibly expect me to give you my blessing on this?’

  His dark glance on his mother was suddenly tinged with impatience. But he said evenly, ‘It’s not exactly a “blessing” event. It’s a business transaction. But for what it’s worth, I believe you knew Cyril—and he, so he said, admired you.’

  Evelyn stared at him open-mouthed. Then she coloured faintly and said disjointedly, ‘Yes, I did know him. He…I believe he had a bit of a…’ She ran out of words.

  ‘A bit of a crush on you?’ her son suggested. And when his mother looked embarrassed, added, ‘He obviously had excellent taste.’

  Evelyn Moore looked even more embarrassed, then faintly gratified.

  ‘Would you say, ethically, he was above reproach?’ Damien asked then.

  ‘Well, yes. I mean he did have a quirky sense of humour at times, but—’

  ‘But you wouldn’t have suspected him of making deranged bequests in his will?’

  ‘No.’ Evelyn said this definitely, then saw the trap. ‘That is to say…’ She stopped frustratedly.

  ‘For some reason,’ Damien said, ‘he wanted us—more probably Lee than myself—to have Plover Park. He felt she needed someone to give her a helping hand. He may even have envisaged the will being contested—incidentally, do you know Cosmo Delaney?’

  ‘Never heard of him,’ Evelyn responded promptly. ‘But I wouldn’t discount Cyril wanting you in the will as much as…Lee,’ she added. ‘You are my son and…and Cyril never married.’ She fiddled with her sapphire, staring down at it intently.

  For a moment Lee found herself transported outside the boundaries of this difficult interview as she contemplated Cyril Delaney holding a lifelong torch for Damien’s mother. She moved suddenly in a gesture of relief, because if that were so, as Evelyn had implied, it made more sense of Cyril’s will…

  Damien stared at his mother for a long moment, then was silent, looking into the distance for a time. Finally he shrugged. ‘Anyway, that is what I will be doing. After the twelve months is up, Lee will be in the clear and we’ll dissolve the marriage.’

  ‘And, to completely set your mind at rest, Mrs Moore,’ Lee said, ‘your son is
quite safe from me.’ She cast Damien a dark little glance.

  ‘Well,’ Evelyn said, ‘I suppose in that case…’ She shrugged so eloquently she might as well have shouted…that doesn’t mean to say I have to like the idea at all…

  ‘The other point to consider,’ Damien reflected, ‘is this. Lee has gone from being virtually penniless to a person of quite some substance.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Lee asked.

  He looked her over critically, then smiled suddenly. ‘I have no objection to sharing Plover Park with you, Lee. But I have no intention of coping with men on the make who could complicate our partnership considerably.’

  Lee gasped. ‘You mean—?’

  ‘I mean the best interests of Plover Park could become—muddled—if you suddenly got a man in your life who didn’t see eye to eye with me.’

  Lee shut her mouth with a click at the same time as Evelyn said judiciously, ‘I suppose you have a point.’

  Lee found her voice at last. ‘You didn’t mention that yesterday.’

  ‘I didn’t think you’d appreciate it,’ he drawled.

  ‘I don’t! I’m not some impressionable kid—I can’t believe you thought that!’

  ‘It’s been known to happen,’ Evelyn Moore said dryly.

  ‘Oh! This is too much, really. First he steals my car keys from me, then you treat me like something the cat dragged in—’

  Damien forestalled the rest of her tirade by handing her a glass of gin and tonic, then he fished her car keys from his pocket and gave them to her. ‘There you go. You’re a free agent now.’

  ‘Would someone explain to me what you’re talking about?’ Evelyn requested in a martyred voice.

  Damien turned to his mother. ‘We had a slight tussle of wills this morning, that’s all. So, do you two think you could see eye to eye over gardens, if nothing else?’ He encompassed them both in his suddenly authoritative dark gaze. ‘This marriage has no choice but to proceed. I think I told you that my mother is a great admirer of Capability Brown,’ he added to Lee, ‘and a dedicated gardener despite being at fault over her Strelitzia and tree ferns.’

  It amused him to see the two women at present in his life exchange identical looks of feminine outrage. It amused him further to see the exact moment when the irony that they might be united over anything hit them. Then it struck him that these two women were exceptional in their own way.

  Instead of being further miffed, they both glanced at him, then glanced at each other. And when his mother asked Lee if she’d like a tour of the garden, Lee responded quietly that she would.

  ‘Well?’

  They were driving away from the Ascot house when Damien posed the one-word question.

  Lee raised an eyebrow at him.

  ‘What did you think of her?’

  ‘We…got along quite well.’ Lee replied primly. Evelyn had adroitly managed to get Lee on her own during their tour of the garden by requesting her son to remove the large wooden cover of the swimming pool filter plant which had got jammed—so jammed it had taken him half an hour of heavy exertion and the implementation of levers to move it, thus allowing Lee and Evelyn time for an in-depth chat.

  He said something inaudible, then, ‘If you think ganging up on me with my mother is going to get you anywhere, Lee, you’re mistaken.’

  She smiled fleetingly. ‘What gives you that idea?’

  ‘You both looked,’ he replied coolly, ‘like cats that had got the cream.’

  This time Lee grimaced. ‘I wouldn’t say we’ve ganged up. At least we know where we stand now, that’s all.’

  ‘Where exactly is that?’ he queried sardonically.

  She glanced at him. ‘You probably don’t want to know, Damien.’

  He engaged the gears and drove the Porsche up a hill with a roar.

  He also said dryly, ‘The only two people who need to know where we stand are you and I, Lee.’ He accelerated down the other side of the hill.

  Lee clutched the armrest. ‘I didn’t know you had a temper, Damien. Do you really want to get a speeding fine?’

  He slowed down, shook his head and looked at her ironically. ‘It’s just that women are incomprehensible at times—you and my mother included. What nonsense did you concoct between the two of you?’

  Lee took exception to his jibe, as well as the bit about nonsense—she was still smarting from discovering the reason for Damien deciding to marry her, anyway—and she said tartly, before she stopped to think, ‘Your mother thinks there’s a bit more to your decision to marry me. She filled me in on a bit of your life history. She feels your last affair, with Julia—who she approved of much more than she would ever approve of me, incidentally—must have ended disastrously, with you being unable to offer Julia the commitment she was seeking. And that I—along with Cyril’s bequest—popped into your life at a strategic moment whereby you could teach this girl a lesson.’

  The look Damien Moore cast her was one of sublime amazement, then he started to laugh.

  ‘If anyone should be a good authority on the subject, it’s your mother,’ Lee said stiffly.

  ‘How wrong you are,’ he drawled. ‘Is there more?’

  ‘Well…’ She hesitated. ‘We decided it was fortuitous that it should have been me to come into your life at this time.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Because I am…that is to say, I have no designs on you whatsoever.’

  He stopped at a traffic light, eyed her profile, which was in virtuous mode, and grinned suddenly. ‘Funny you should say that. I thought last night was touch and go for both of us.’

  Colour flooded her cheeks and she stared straight ahead.

  ‘Forget about that?’ he queried blandly.

  She swallowed. ‘In the light of today, it was an aberration.’

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ he said reflectively. ‘Mind you, you have ten months to prove your stance on this matter.’

  She couldn’t help herself. She swung her head to look at him, wide-eyed. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Ten months to prove that you are unmoved by me and have no designs on me.’

  ‘Damien,’ she warned, ‘don’t let this be what I think it is!’

  ‘What’s that?’ He turned the car into the driveway that led to the underground garage of his apartment block.

  ‘A challenge! A game men play with women! Your mother thought there could be a touch of that in this as well.’

  He drove through the automatic gate and brought the Porsche to a smooth stop beside her second-hand yellow Toyota with its several dents. He switched the engine off but made no move to get out.

  ‘My mother may be a judge,’ he said pensively, ‘but she’s the last person to judge my state of mind accurately. As for you, Lee Westwood…’ a faint smile touched his mouth ‘…you don’t even know where to begin.’

  There wasn’t much room in the Porsche. Far too little room to escape the full force of Damien Moore’s personality and physical presence. And whilst she might have given rise to the thought in others that she was a tart, kitted out as she was, he had gone to visit his mother all present and correctly attired for a Saturday morning. Jeans and a white polo shirt, both fresh from the laundry. A tidy head of hair and freshly shaved. No discernible aftershave but a faint aroma of soap.

  Though a stint in the sun wrestling with his mother’s pool filter cover had subtly altered the equation…

  The same clever dark eyes that could view you with inner amusement, speculation or scepticism, of course. The same lean lines and wide shoulders and those long nice hands. But his labours at the poolside had added a heady smidgen of pure man. His dark hair was awry, there were patches of sweat on his shirt—and it all made him infinitely more dangerous, she realised. It brought home his strength. It made you realise he was physically tough as well as mentally so.

  Perhaps it had something to do with the way she was dressed—it certainly didn’t help to have so much of her body on display benea
th that wandering gaze—but the vibes between them in the closed confines of the car were suddenly threaded with sensual tension.

  She moved restlessly. He looked at her from beneath half-closed lids and slid his arm along the back of the seat so he was able to rest his fingertips on the nape of her neck.

  Lee swallowed, but she couldn’t tear her eyes from his and she couldn’t control the tremor that ran through her from her scalp to her toes.

  ‘I gather I annoyed you earlier?’ he said softly, dropping his gaze to the heart-shaped edge of her bodice.

  She blinked and pressed her hands together as those wandering fingers slipped down the side of her throat towards the valley between her breasts. She tried valiantly to concentrate on what he was saying—but it was a vain effort and she could only stare at him bewilderedly.

  ‘When I intimated that you could fall prey to men on the make if you weren’t married to me,’ he said. ‘It’s not as impossible as you seem to think, Lee, with someone who knows what he’s doing.’

  Belated comprehension came to her. There she was, sitting like a stunned mullet while he explored her body more and more intimately—no, a stunned mullet was not a good analogy, because she was feeling quite the contrary. Alive with delicious anticipation and all sorts of wonderful sensations starting to course through her was a far more accurate description—but…oh, the unfairness of it! she thought bitterly.

  Here he was, trying to prove to her that she was a weak, impressionable female any experienced man could touch up, and the one explanation that she could offer in her defence was the last one she could ever use. No other man had a hope in hell of making her feel the way he did!

  She breathed raggedly, and did manage to inject a little glint of defiance into her gaze, but all it did was cause him to look amused. Then, just at the moment when she was gathering all her defences because she was sure he was going to kiss her, and she was consumed by dread that she wouldn’t be able to resist, he took his hand away and straightened.

  ‘Enough of this,’ he murmured, and opened his door.

  Surprise made her say incautiously, ‘What?’

  He looked back at her over his shoulder as he started to get out. ‘Smooching in cars is a bit passé—juvenile, whatever—but if you really want to—’