Marriage on Command

by Lindsay Armstrong

  He kissed her. ‘So do I.’

  Her eyes widened, but he said no more.

  After they’d showered together he left her to get dressed at her leisure and said he’d meet her on the deck for dinner in half an hour. He didn’t say why.

  Lee took her time. She’d found a French boutique in Vila and updated her wardrobe in a small way. And in the duty-free shops at Brisbane airport she’d treated herself to some luxury cosmetics. They made her feel luxurious now, as she smoothed delicately perfumed moisturiser all over her body and made up her face lightly. Then she pulled one of the two dresses she’d bought over her head. It was long, light and silky, with a halter top, in a delicate shade of topaz with tiny jade sprigs.

  Coincidentally, it was not a dress you wore a bra with, she thought as she brushed her hair vigorously and watched it settle in a shining auburn cloud to her shoulders. Then again, coincidentally, she mused as she laid her brush down, she’d had the deepest misgivings about coming to Vanuatu with Damien. But here she was, loving every minute of it—and more in love with him than ever.

  She studied her reflection in the mirror. Her tan had deepened to pale gold; her eyes were strikingly green. She looked well, better than she’d ever looked in her life, she thought. But how long would she be able to keep at bay the misgivings that lay just below the surface of her mind? Precisely, where would they go from here?

  She swallowed, then forced herself to relax. She sprayed some French perfume on, and went to meet Damien.

  Tables were set out on the deck over the water, and braziers flamed and smoked gently along the perimeter. Two waitresses in pretty smocks were moving amongst the diners— Vanuatan women had a traditional dress, V-necked with puff sleeves, generally in floral cotton, loose and tiered, and often trimmed with ribbon streamers, and the Erakor ladies wore yellow and pink floral, trimmed with yellow.

  The tables were lit with little paraffin lamps and decked with hibiscus blooms. If you were seated beside the rail of the deck you could see the fish swimming below, and the resident eel that made nightly forays amongst the clouds of little fish. Palm trees and causurinas fringed the deck and cast twisted shadows on it.

  Damien was nowhere to be seen. Lee hesitated and was about to turn towards the main dining room, a traditional, palm-thatched structure with open sides and cyclone shutters propped up on bamboo poles, when a hand slipped into hers.

  ‘Going my way, Mrs Moore?’

  She looked up into Damien’s dark eyes. ‘I—think so.’

  He studied her comprehensively for a long moment, taking in the cool, simple but chic dress, the sheen of her skin and lips, the wonderful hair—and the suddenly uncertain look in her eyes. ‘What’s wrong?’

  She shook her head. ‘Nothing. I couldn’t see you, that’s all.’

  His fingers tightened on hers for a moment. Then he said lightly, ‘We have our same table. I hope you’re hungry.’ And he led her towards it.

  The head waiter immediately descended on them with the wine list and the menu board. Lee chose the reef and beef kebabs—the beef on Vanuatu was the tenderest, tastiest beef she’d had for years, and the reef component was barbecued prawns, which she adored.

  Damien ordered the same, but it wasn’t until their bottle of wine was opened and tasted that he said, ‘It’s all arranged.’

  She looked at him enquiringly over the rim of her wine glass.

  ‘Another favourite spot of mine is the Tamanu Beach Club. I’ve changed our flights and booked us in there for two nights. It’s different from Erakor, on an unprotected surf beach, but in its own way just as nice.’

  She gazed at him, surprised into speechlessness.

  ‘You don’t approve?’ There was just a hint of his former arrogance in his voice, and his eyes were unreadable.

  She looked away, down at the fish in the lit, clear pale aqua water below the deck, and her voice was husky as she spoke. ‘I’m sure I would approve, but why didn’t you ask me first?’

  ‘What’s to ask?’ he countered. ‘You seem to have fallen in love with Vanuatu.’

  She gestured and sipped some more wine. ‘I have. My grandparents are expecting me back tomorrow, though.’

  ‘No, they’re not. I’ve just spoken to them. I have their permission to keep you away for a week.’ He looked quizzical. ‘It won’t be that long, but, trust me, you’ll love Tamanu.’

  Several emotions gathered within Lee. The most disturbing was the urge to tell him that that was the problem—she had no doubt she’d love the place, if he liked it so much, but how much further would it enhance the enchantment of being with him and how much harder would it make it when the time came to go their separate ways?

  ‘Lee,’ he said abruptly, ‘tell me what’s going on behind those wonderful eyes. Is it just pique because I didn’t consult you? I thought it would be a pleasant surprise.’

  It came to her then, out of the blue, that she’d made her own bed—in a more than apt manner of speaking. She’d offered herself to Damien Moore because she hadn’t been able to resist him. But that was her problem, not his, and it was her responsibility to handle whatever came in the future, not his. Not that this knowledge would make it any easier, she knew, but it brought her a curious sense of peace…

  Accordingly, she wrinkled her nose playfully at him and said, ‘I guess we each have our crosses to bear. You can be insufferably right about things at times. I can be—well, not keen on having all decisions taken out of my hands. However, I have now abandoned “pique”, and look forward to the…joys of Tamanu tomorrow.’

  It had come out well, she thought as she stopped speaking. Just a slight hesitation over the word ‘joys’, but otherwise not bad.

  His expression didn’t change for a long moment, though, and she was beginning to revise her judgement of her own insouciance and powers of masking her true feelings—then his lips twisted and he started to laugh.

  She breathed a hidden sigh of relief, and they enjoyed their dinner companionably.

  ‘You know, I should have realised it before,’ Lee said, ‘but this is where James Michener based Tales of the South Pacific, one of my all-time favourite musicals. Not on this island, Erakor, but Santo. In the days when Vanuatu was known as the New Hebrides, during the Second World War, when the Americans had a huge base up there.’

  ‘You’ve been doing your homework,’ Damien replied. ‘Actually, that’s another place I’d like to show you— Bokissa, just off Santo. And, yes, I have seen Ambae Island, which Michener thought was the most beautiful island in the South Pacific and the island he based Bali Hi on. Legend has it that all the beautiful young women were sent to Ambae during the war to keep them away from the GIs. You like musicals?’ he asked.

  Lee looked a bit embarrassed. ‘I’d hate to tell you how many times I’ve watched The Sound of Music.’

  He grinned. ‘Come to think of it, I’ve heard you whistling, humming and singing while you work—and yodelling when you’re particularly happy about something.’

  “‘The Lonely Goatherd”,’ Lee acknowledged ruefully. ‘I wish you hadn’t brought that up. Once I start, it gets on my brain.’

  He looked alarmed. ‘So I shouldn’t be too surprised if, in moments of high passion, a bit of yodelling emerges?’

  Lee bit her lip, then started to smile. ‘If you can make me yodel in bed, Damien, I won’t know whether to die of shame or award you a medal! And I don’t think— What I mean to say is, your heights are high enough as it is.’ She stopped and could have shot herself as the colour rushed into her cheeks beneath the extremely speculative dark gaze beaming her way.

  ‘Don’t take that… That wasn’t a challenge,’ she said disjointedly. ‘And don’t forget that a lot of people hate yodelling, even if it’s Julie Andrews, so it could spoil things—I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with you!’ She put her napkin on the table and pushed her plate away.

  ‘I doubt if we could spoil things between us, Lee,’ he said slowly, al
l the amusement suddenly leached from his expression.

  She was still smarting, however, and she looked at him broodingly. ‘Right now I feel like an act out of a sideshow.’

  ‘Come with me and I’ll prove to you you’re not.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. We’ll take the rest of the wine with us.’ He stood up.

  Lee breathed uncertainly. She didn’t know how to handle this, she thought confusedly. She had sensed a change in him at last—a change she didn’t understand. And as he stood straight, tall and divine but unsmiling, in his khaki trousers and a black T-shirt, she was suddenly afraid that she didn’t understand him at all.

  But she followed him down the path to their bungalow and stood on the veranda while he poured the wine.

  He handed her her glass.

  She looked at the golden liquid, then raised her eyes to his abruptly. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing.’ He looked across the dark water to the lights twinkling on the mainland. ‘Nothing. But maybe we should save ourselves for Tamanu.’

  Her fingers tightened around the glass. She understood his mood even less.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said softly then, ‘we should listen to the BBC World Service, which is all I can coax out of the radio, and talk.’

  There was a comfortable cane couch on the veranda and she sank down onto it while he fiddled with the radio inside. All he could get was a learned discussion of Afghanistan and the Taliban, so he switched it off and came to join her on the couch, where he put his arm around her and she laid her head on his shoulder.

  ‘Shoes, ships and ceiling wax, then?’ Lee said. ‘Is that what we need to talk about?’

  He pulled her closer and kissed the top of her head. ‘No. In the normal course of events this is when I would be asking you to marry me, Lee, but since that has already happened— What’s wrong?’ he asked as she moved restlessly.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘I’D PREFER cabbages and kings, that’s all, Damien,’ she said eventually, and forced herself to go on. ‘This is all so romantic, and I have no doubt Tamanu will be also, but I don’t think it’s conducive to good decision-making.’

  ‘You don’t know what I’m about to propose.’

  ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘But it would be fair to say that although you haven’t made me yodel in bed yet, you have…kind of…got me all at sixes and sevens at the moment. In the nicest possible way,’ she added. ‘So don’t feel I’m being critical—’

  ‘Lee, shut up for a moment, will you?’ he ordered.

  ‘My lips are sealed,’ she murmured, then laughed and tilted her face to brush her lips against his. ‘By the way, I applaud your decision to practise some restraint tonight—’

  He stopped her from uttering anything further by trapping her chin in his hand and kissing her thoroughly. So thoroughly, and pleasurably, that the idea of restraint began to be unthinkable, and she was, for once, speechless as she lay trembling against him, licking her bruised lips.

  Then she heard him sigh. ‘Perhaps you’re right. Have I made you nervous, though?’

  She blinked at him.

  He shrugged wryly. ‘You do tend to babble when you’re nervous, I’ve learnt.’

  It was her turn to sigh. ‘I know,’ she said sadly. ‘It’s always a sure sign that I don’t know if I’m on my head or my heels.’

  He laughed briefly, then held her close with unmistakable affection and tenderness. But love? she wondered. Like the real, everlasting love that she knew she would always feel for him. The knowledge that no one could ever be so important to her. That magic attraction and depth of feeling for someone…

  His mobile phone rang.

  He swore, then moved her away from him, kissed her swiftly, and went inside to answer it. After a few minutes of terse conversation he came back to tell her, with a lurking smile in his eyes, that fate had intervened.

  ‘You have to go somewhere?’ she hazarded.

  ‘Back into town for a couple of hours, but this will be the last time,’ he promised.

  She smiled. ‘That’s OK. I’ll be here.’

  She was, but by the time he got back she was fast asleep.

  She’d left a lamp on and he stood beside the bed for a long moment, watching her sleep peacefully with one hand tucked beneath her cheek and her lovely hair spread across the pillow.

  Nor did she stir as he sat down on the bed and took off his shoes.

  It crossed his mind to wake her and take her, but then all sorts of strange ideas had been crossing his mind lately in relation to Lee Westwood, he reflected rather grimly. Ideas that made him wonder if this sometimes exasperating girl had got into his blood.

  There was, for example, the way she’d handled the time he’d had to spend apart from her over the last few days. She hadn’t appeared to mind being left to her own devices at all. Instead, she’d endeared herself to the staff and she’d thoroughly enjoyed Erakor.

  And there was the kind of lover she was. A delight to put it plainly, he thought as he watched her sleep. Silken, sensitive, delicious, generous, but sometimes supremely vulnerable to the pleasure he inflicted on her—and that aroused an instinct that was new to him. Something that was protective, something that didn’t like the idea of that vulnerability falling into another man’s hands and being exploited…

  He chewed his lip and she stirred, but only to rearrange her gorgeous legs, say something inaudible then fall back into serene sleep.

  He got up, pulled his clothes off, and slid in beside her. Even in sleep she melted against him, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

  Sleep did not come easily to him, however, as he held her slim body and breathed in her perfume. In fact he started to feel irritated.

  She obviously didn’t want to talk about the future, yet she could lie in his arms like this, with complete trust and serenity. She had been nervous when he’d brought the subject up, he reminded himself.

  But the fact of the matter was, it now didn’t seem like a bad idea to stay married to Lee Westwood—yet he had no idea what her thinking on the subject was. Strike that, he thought grimly, because he very much suspected she’d have all sorts of objections.

  So… Well, there was always Tamanu, he told himself, and buried his face in her hair. There was always Tamanu…

  ‘What do you think?’ Damien Moore asked his wife-by-dissent the next morning.

  Lee drew a deep breath. ‘As if I can see for ever on a day like today. All the way to New Zealand!’

  She was standing on the veranda of their bungalow at the Tamanu Beach Club, looking out to sea.

  The beach was pale gold and the breaking surf was dazzlingly white against the different blues of the ocean—indigo towards the horizon, turquoise towards the beach. The air was salty and filled with the murmur of the waves. The pale blue sky was huge. The sand was fringed with pandanus palms—not lush and leafy as she’d seen on Erakor, but spindly and misshapen like a Chinese painting—possibly from the power of the onshore winds—although still bearing at the heart of each cluster of leaves a fruit like a giant pineapple.

  The feeling of space and peace was incredible—and then there was the bungalow. She turned to look inside again.

  It was built of white coral, with three French doors opening on to the veranda and wooden shutters at the windows; the floor was white-tiled. The double bed beneath a blue Aztec spread had a mosquito net draped from the ceiling, and there was a couch and chairs covered in the same Aztec print. Grouped on the coffee table, on the bed and studded along a lovely piece of driftwood were frilled red hibiscus blooms, their long stamens dusted with yellow tendrils. There was a garden bathroom, at the rear. It was quite private and quite delightful.

  ‘A wonderful place to spend a honeymoon,’ she said unthinkingly.

  He looked down at her enigmatically, but said, ‘Should we have a swim before lunch?’

  ‘Why not?’ she answered, but heard the uncertainty in her voice. Uncertainty
because she had the distinct feeling she might have been brought to Tamanu for just that reason—a honeymoon…

  He broke into her thoughts. ‘We’ll go to Fred’s Hole. This beach is better at high tide. So bring your hat and don’t forget your reef shoes!’

  Lee stood to attention and saluted.

  He laughed and kissed her. ‘No cheek, either, Mrs Moore. The beach is littered with coral—pretty, but deadly underfoot.’

  The beach was littered with coral—bleached white by the sun—and some marvellous shells as they walked south. The heat was tangible and she was glad of her hat and the T-shirt she’d put on to protect her from the sun’s rays. Some rocky outcrops jutted into the water, and between two of them they found the cove called Fred’s Hole. The water was clear and placid, because the mouth of the cove was protected by a reef, the bottom was sandy and it looked incredibly inviting.

  Lee shed her shirt and hat and ran in, with Damien hot on her heels.

  ‘Oh, what bliss!’ she called, and dived beneath the surface.

  They swam for about half an hour, then walked back to lunch, and things were so friendly, peaceful, and sometimes playful between them so that her concerns about being on a honeymoon receded. Mind you, she thought, it was hard to have any concerns in a place like this. The dining area was beneath a canopy, open on three sides, and the beach was right there in front of them.

  She ordered a Tempura seafood and vegetable dish and it was superb. They shared a bottle of wine.

  ‘This is pure decadence,’ she told him. ‘All I’ll be good for is a sleep now!’

  He raised his glass to her. ‘I’ve got a better idea. There’s a golf course close by.’

  Lee groaned. ‘You wouldn’t!’

  ‘I would. Come with me. The walk will do you good. I might even be able to instruct you in the finer points of the game. Then we could have another swim. I didn’t think you were the kind of person who napped, incidentally.’

  ‘I’m not.’ She grimaced. ‘But then I don’t usually indulge in fine food and wine in the middle of the day—what time did you get back last night, by the way?’