Marriage on Command

by Lindsay Armstrong

  ‘I didn’t live two different lives,’ he grated. ‘I worked when I wasn’t with you.’

  ‘You also socialised—’

  ‘Which you refused to do on the occasions I couldn’t get out of.’

  ‘And you had Julia Blake-Whitney stand in for me,’ she said huskily, her throat working. ‘Who is still in love with you.’

  He frowned. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘I saw a picture in a magazine of the two of you at the Law Society Ball…’

  For the first time there was a slight softening of those harsh lines beside his mouth. ‘Is that why you ran away?’ he said incredulously.

  Lee hesitated and shrank further into her chair as he moved forward, but it was only her glass that he reached for. He poured them both a drink and sat down opposite her. He studied the contents of his glass for a long moment, then his dark lashes swept up and the hard glare had gone from his eyes. ‘Is it, Lee?’

  ‘Yes… One of the reasons.’

  He sighed, but she got the curious feeling it was a sigh of relief. Then he said, ‘She’s a member of the Law Society too. I didn’t go with her and it wasn’t my doing that I ended up at the same table. I didn’t go with anyone—the only reason I went at all is because I’m president this year. As to whether she’s still in love with me, I have no idea. It makes no difference, though. But, yes, I’m guilty…of never understanding quite what it is I feel for you, Lee. And I’m guilty of not wanting to get too deeply involved in our marriage.’

  Her lips parted.

  ‘Or I was,’ he said, looking down at his glass again, then suddenly up into her eyes. ‘It was Ella who pointed out what had been lacking between Julia and me, and every other woman I’ve ever known. It was these two weeks that proved it once and for all.’ He took a long draught of his drink. ‘Especially this morning, when I discovered I’d missed you by a couple of hours.’

  ‘What is it?’ Lee asked, her eyes wide and very green with unshed tears.

  He grimaced. ‘You may not like it. I’ve barely slept…’ He stopped, and for a moment looked utterly exhausted.

  Lee sat forward at last, trembling all over but with a completely new sensation—hope. ‘Do you love me or do you feel responsible for…me loving you?’ she asked shakily.

  ‘I can’t bear the thought of any other man having you.’

  ‘Damien—’

  He smiled tiredly. ‘You fascinate me, you make me feel incredibly good, you…’ He paused, ‘You arouse an instinct in me no other woman ever has. A protective instinct—I would slay dragons for you, Lee.’

  She got up and went to kneel in front of him. ‘Why…why wouldn’t I like that, Damien?’

  He went to touch her, then stopped himself. ‘I got the feeling you were all the protection you thought you needed.’

  ‘Damien,’ she said softly, after a long moment, ‘you mean my tiger mode?’

  He nodded.

  ‘That may have been how I dealt with the kind of person I thought Cyril Delaney was,’ she said with a rueful little smile, ‘but I have no protection against you and what you do to me. That was why I couldn’t accept the… half-measure of our life together. It hurt too much.’

  ‘Do you really mean that, Lee?’

  ‘I thought you knew.’

  ‘After Vanuatu, yes, but—’

  ‘I fell in love with you long before Vanuatu, Damien,’ she broke in. ‘I fell in love with you right from the start.’

  He blinked. ‘How…?’

  ‘How did I hide it? It wasn’t easy,’ she said sombrely. ‘But I guess it helped to believe I wasn’t the right one for you.’

  He grimaced. ‘You’re more right than you could ever know—or I ever knew. These past few months haven’t been easy for me either, Lee, but I’ve always had the greatest reservations about tearing you away from Plover Park. I’ve…never doubted your dedication to your career. I did doubt how I would measure up to it.’

  She smiled through her tears and put her hand on his knee—their first contact. ‘If I knew you loved me as much as I love you, there would never be any contest.’

  He cupped her face and said barely audibly, ‘Contrary to what I said when I stormed in here, I’d spend the rest of my life trying to get you back.’ He shook his head and smiled, as if the joke was on him, ‘I’ve gone from a bloke who couldn’t really see the advantages of marriage to a staunch advocate of it—courtesy of you, Lee. A girl who reminded me of a one-woman SWAT team but turned out to be pure gold. What can I do to make you believe it?’

  ‘Take me home,’ she whispered. ‘I love you.’

  ‘Poor Hank,’ Lee said, a lot later. ‘He’s been dragged away from the concert, then back to it. He won’t know if he’s on his head or his heels.’

  ‘I’m sure he’s used to it, but in fact I feel some sympathy for him.’

  Lee moved in his arms. The closest to home they’d been able to get was to remove to his suite, after they’d ordered a bottle of champagne for Hank and Ella, and left a note saying that all was well propped against it. ‘Not sure if you’re on your head or your heels?’ she asked.

  He pulled her hard against him. ‘Not sure this isn’t a dream after all the nightmares. I may never be able to let you out of my sight. You know you told me you fell in love with me long before Vanuatu?’

  Lee nodded wryly.

  ‘I never could—really—understand why I decided to marry you. I’m not normally prone to quixotic gestures like that, so it’s probably fair to say, Lee, that the same thing happened to me. Only I was too proud, too dumb, too arrogant—’

  She stopped him by standing on her toes and kissing him. She felt him relax against her, then he slid his hands beneath her tracksuit top and murmured into her hair, ‘You don’t know how much I’ve missed doing this.’

  ‘Taking my clothes off?’

  ‘Precisely,’ he agreed with a sudden wicked little glint in his eyes.

  ‘I was…the same.’

  ‘You once invited me to damn the consequences of this kind of intimacy—may I take it the invitation is still open, my lady?’ he asked.

  Lee smiled a little shyly up into his eyes. ‘I did have something to prove then, remember?’

  ‘So you did. And you proved it beautifully—I haven’t been the same since. Is there anything you need to prove now?’

  She took a deep breath. ‘Only this. I had one other problem I didn’t tell you about—I didn’t even let myself dwell on it. But I’d love to have a baby—our baby.’

  ‘To add to our collection of dogs, chooks, horses and guinea fowl?’ he said humorously.

  She looked suddenly anxious. ‘Perhaps that’s why I’ve got so many of them. I mean, I know I’ve had my grandparents, and they’re wonderful, but sometimes I’ve felt such a loner in life, Damien, and—’

  It was his turn to stop her by kissing her. ‘I can think of nothing nicer, Lee.’ He paused and looked around at the luxurious suite. ‘Would this be a suitable place to set about…setting that in train?’

  She looked around too and her lips quivered. ‘I hope the Regent doesn’t object, but so long as you’re there a haystack, a paddock—anywhere you are—is fine with me.’

  He laughed softly. ‘You’re right. I hope the walls don’t have ears. OK, let’s see what I can do.’ He began to undress her, inflicting the kind of rapture on her she’d thought she might never experience again.

  And all the pent-up hurt and sadness left her as he made love to her with the finesse that brought back so many memories: Erakor, Tamanu, Plover Park… But it was his reaction that overjoyed her. She felt, as they shuddered in each other’s arms, that there had been a new hunger in him, almost desperate, and that had to be the result of two desperate weeks for him. And that kind of hunger had found an answering need in her, leaving her in no doubt that wherever they lived, whatever adjustments they made to their lives, the only two people in the world for them were each other.

  He got
up eventually, and brought her a glass of champagne. ‘All right?’

  She sipped the chilled drink and breathed deeply. ‘Never better. Would you like me to prove it?’

  He stared down at the gorgeous disarray of her hair, the lovely slender lines of her body, the faint blue shadows beneath her eyes that he was responsible for, the clear green depths of those eyes. ‘Yes.’

  She took another sip, and cleared her throat. Then she began to sing the first line of the ‘The Lonely Goatherd’ in a soft soprano, and she yodelled perfectly.

  ‘Lee—’ He started to laugh and then she was in his arms, regardless of her champagne which spilt all over them. ‘I adore you!’

  A few years later, she stood on the terrace of Plover Park holding a dark-haired little boy by the hand as they watched a helicopter hover over the paddock and then land.

  ‘Daddy!’ William Moore said excitedly. As he grew his vocabulary was starting to expand, but his first word had been ‘Daddy’ and his supreme hero went by the same name. ‘Can I go, please? Please?’

  Lee waited for a moment more, until the rotors had stopped and Damien had stepped out of the helicopter, then she released her son and watched him, with Paddy and Peach, run down towards the landing pad, scattering chickens and guinea fowl as they went.

  And as she watched Damien sweep William up into his arms her thoughts moved backwards to that night at the Regent. Of course she couldn’t be precisely sure, but she always liked to think she’d fallen pregnant that night. If not it had been very soon afterwards. The discovery of it had not only been momentous as an affirmation of their love, it had helped to sort out their lives for them.

  Damien had suggested that they lease out the nursery, freeing her from the running of it but providing her with a source of plants so she could continue designing gardens. He’d also suggested that they move into the Ascot house, so she would have a garden, and his mother had been happy to move into his apartment.

  But it was his acquisition of a helicopter, thereby considerably shortening the travel time it took to get from Brisbane, that had seen them able to spend a lot of time at Plover Park—most weekends, in fact, and often longer—and it brought her so much happiness to know that he loved the place as much as she did.

  It was Ella Patroni who had suggested the means whereby Lee could be happy and fulfilled when she was away from Plover Park. She’d got Lee to redesign her roof garden and more commissions than Lee had dreamt possible had flowed from it. Not only roof gardens and terraces, even a commission to redesign a city park had come her way.

  She’d moved into Damien’s life more easily than she’d ever believed she could. Not only Ella had helped with that, but Evelyn Moore had finally overcome all her reservations and was now a firm ally.

  But most of all Lee’s transition from the girl who’d never thought she was the right one for Damien Moore to his wife, in every meaning of the word, had been accomplished by Damien himself.

  She watched with her heart overflowing with love as her husband and her son approached—William talking nineteen to the dozen but Damien with his dark eyes fixed firmly on her. She and William had been on the farm for a week on their own while Damien had been to a conference in Sydney, but the short separations they often had to endure no longer bothered her.

  She had William, and he adored the farm. His great-grandparents adored him, and his doting grandmother on his father’s side was already talking about Lee not leaving it too long before she had another baby.

  And Damien always came back to her with that hunger she’d sensed in him the night of their reunion.

  But, as always, they restrained their passion until their son was asleep.

  It was Damien who put him to bed that evening. Lee waited for him on the terrace, with a bottle of champagne in a silver frosted bucket, soft music playing and the flame of a candle moving like a genie in the soft night air—it was a special night tonight.

  He dropped down into a chair beside her and reached for the champagne.

  ‘Asleep?’ she asked quietly as he removed the foil and popped the cork.

  ‘I’ve never seen anyone avoid sleep as strenuously as he does,’ he said wryly. ‘But he just couldn’t keep his eyes open a second longer.’

  Lee laughed. ‘It’s you. His hero. My hero too.’

  Damien poured the lovely bubbly liquid and handed her a glass.

  ‘So, our wedding anniversary.’

  ‘Mmm…what did you have in mind, Mr Moore?’

  ‘Taking you to bed in a little while, undressing you very slowly, celebrating every gorgeous inch of you and making love to you in a celebration of this marriage. What do you think?’

  Lee cast him a laughing look, but said honestly, ‘I’m going hot and cold at the thought of it.’

  ‘Then perhaps we shouldn’t delay…things too long?’

  ‘No,’ she agreed, her voice suddenly husky as his dark gaze dwelt on her. Every nerve-ending she possessed tingled with sensation and desire swept through her like a flame. She swallowed. ‘No. So I’ll go first.’

  She stood up and held her glass aloft to the night sky in the ritual they always practised on their wedding anniversary. ‘To Cyril.’

  ‘To Cyril,’ Damien agreed, rising as well.

  They drank, put their glasses down, and with love and laughter moved into each other’s arms.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-8313-2

  MARRIAGE ON COMMAND

  First North American Publication 2002.

  Copyright © 2002 by Lindsay Armstrong.

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