The Faithful Wife

by Diana Hamilton

  She hadn’t been able to hide her pleasure so she’d dressed it up as relief at the return of her so-called missing sister. And then, and only then, had she thrown herself into the anxiety act, begging him to contact the police, safe in the knowledge that he wouldn’t be going anywhere.

  Not tonight, at least. Tomorrow he’d be out of here, even if he walked the soles clean off his shoes! Although she’d said she’d go with him, he recognised that as sheer bravado. She could stay here and play the reconciliation scene to an empty house!

  He turned, put two cups of tea on the central table. She was standing where he’d left her. Not weeping now, not doing anything. Her ashen face and the anguished twist of her mouth wrenched at his guts.

  His mouth went dry, his throat muscles clenching. Had she wanted a reconciliation that badly? Badly enough to make her dream up this last-ditch farce?

  Not allowing himself to even think of that, he said tersely, ‘Drink this; you look as if you need it.’ He went to the work surface where the bottles were lined up like an invitation to a week-long bacchanalia. He selected a brandy, noting the expense she had been prepared to go to, and poured two generous measures into glasses that he unearthed from one of the cupboards.

  Bella watched him from heavy eyes. The hard, lean body was full of grace, despite all that sharply honed power. She knew that body as well as she knew her own. Better. She had never tired of watching him, of drowning in the effect he had on her—an effect that was threatening to swamp her all over again with its full and shattering force.

  Her stomach twisted with unwanted excitement, her pulses going into overdrive, blood throbbing thickly through her veins. She whimpered, angry with herself, with the wretched body that couldn’t accept that their marriage, their love—everything—was over.

  She wanted to walk out of this room but couldn’t move. There was potent chemistry here, keeping her immobile, a subtle kind of magic holding her against her will. She watched him turn. He was holding what looked like two huge doses of brandy in his elegant, capable hands.

  ‘Sit,’ he commanded tersely. ‘Tea and then a shot of brandy could help.’

  ‘I don’t want it.’ She dragged her eyes from the heart-stopping wonder of him, fixing them on the floor, not caring if she looked and sounded like a sulky child.

  She was no longer his wife, not in any real sense, so she didn’t have to let him pull her strings, tell her what to do and when to do it. Not any more.

  Besottedly in love with him, she’d never made a fuss when things hadn’t worked out the way she wanted them to. She’d taken it for granted that, because he loved her, the decisions he made regarding the present and the future were the best for them. She’d believed he had some grand plan, the details of which had been a mystery to her.

  Love had made her turn herself into a doormat She now knew he had never loved her—couldn’t have done—so was it any wonder he’d thought nothing at all of walking all over her?

  Thrusting the disturbing revelation aside, she lifted her head and gave him a defiant look. ‘I’m going to bed. I’ve had as much of today as I can stomach.’ She was doing the dictating now, and in some perverse way was almost enjoying it. ‘You said you’d be making tracks in the morning. Don’t go without me.’ She stared at him from glass-clear, challenging eyes. ‘My sense of direction is nil, as you might remember. So take it as self-preservation on my part, not a warped desire for your company.’

  Let him chew that over! Engineered this unlikely set-up, had she? Conceited brute!

  She was at the foot of the wooden staircase when his terse voice stopped her in her tracks.

  ‘Have you eaten today? You won’t get far on what will probably turn out to be a ten-mile hike to get to anything remotely approaching civilisation on a diet of vinegary spleen.’ His tone wasn’t remotely humorous, nor even a touch compassionate. It was totally judgemental. ‘Was losing weight part of your job requirements? Stick insects still high fashion, are they?’

  She ignored the lash of anger in his voice. What did he care, anyway? She could get thin enough to disappear with the bathwater and he wouldn’t blink an eye. It would save him the trouble of divorcing her.

  But he was right about one thing—she should at least try to eat something. The walk out of here tomorrow would be exhausting, and the single slice of toast she’d had at breakfast was nothing more than a distant memory.

  Much as she now hated to do anything he suggested—a backlash from the days when she’d practically turned herself inside out to please him—she turned back, and would have rooted around for the bread and some cheese and taken it through to eat by the probably dying fire, but he got in before her.

  ‘I’ll fix something. There appears to be enough food laid on to provision a garrison so it shouldn’t be difficult. Why don’t you drink that tea?’

  No anger now, merely a smooth, impersonal politeness. It reminded her of her former attempts to be adult about the situation. So she’d play it his way—forget being bolshie, drink her tea like the man said.

  It was tepid, but she got through half of it and ignored the brandy. He was sipping his as he moved around. Her eyes narrowed as she watched him. He was good in a kitchen, and she’d never known it.

  She’d always been there, waiting for him to fit in a visit home between his tight work schedules. So pleased to see him, so eager for the time he could spare her—had condescended to spare her!—that she’d practically fallen over herself to make their time together as smoothly memorable as possible. After all, she’d had little else to do until she’d taken the initiative and gone back to work. He’d hated that!

  The helping of grilled Cumberland sausages and tomato halves he quickly and efficiently produced was enormous enough to make her groan inwardly, and the mug of milky cocoa made her eyes go wide.

  Had he secretly yearned for nursery food while she’d dished up sophisticated delicacies—potted shrimps, navarin of lamb, home-made sorbets so delicious they brought tears to the eye? All exquisitely served on the finest bone china—accompanied by superb wines, of course.

  All the effort and dedicated planning that had gone into every meal she had ever produced for him, when all the time he might well have preferred a plate of sausages and a mug of cocoa!

  Now she would never know. She most certainly wouldn’t ask.

  The forced intimacy of the situation frayed her nerve-endings, while the heart-clenching nearness of him on the opposite side of the small table brought the sensations she’d been battling to forget for a whole year burgeoning back to life. Which didn’t help her appetite.

  And she couldn’t make an attempt at light, relaxing conversation. Relaxation didn’t get a look in while he was around. And they didn’t have a single thing to say to each other that didn’t reek of contention.

  Even the small sound of cutlery on earthenware platters became too much to bear. She stood up, pushing back her chair more sharply and clumsily than she’d intended.

  ‘Thank you.’ She meant for the food she had barely touched, the cocoa she hadn’t touched at all. ‘But I think I’ll turn in. One way or another, it’s been an extremely unpleasant day.’

  She made it to the stairs before he had time to respond. She truly hadn’t meant to snap, but hadn’t been able to keep the acid out of her voice.

  Her hair prickling on the back of her neck, she bounded up the staircase. She felt like a rabbit with a fox on its heels. Jacob Charles Fox by name, and foxy by nature, she thought half-hysterically as she breathlessly gained the room she’d earmarked for herself long hours ago when she’d innocently believed she’d be sharing the isolated cottage with Evie.

  But he didn’t follow her, as she feared he might, to drag her down and force her to eat the food he’d cooked. Of course he didn’t.

  Why the heck should he want to bother? she reminded herself tiredly as she sagged back against the door, one hand at her breast as if to still the wild beating of her heart. Secure in her room, with no
sound of following footsteps or angry commands from below, she couldn’t imagine why she’d panicked.

  He had done what he would have considered to be his duty. Reminded her that she had to eat, produced the food. It was up to her whether she ate it or not. He couldn’t care either way. So the absence of a lock on the door was no problem either, was it? He wouldn’t try to claim his conjugal rights.

  He didn’t want his rights. He couldn’t care less.

  Jake heard her thumping up the stairs, his mouth quirking with a reluctant smile. Her languid grace had always been part of her fabled mystique, and now she was clumping around like an ill-disciplined hoyden in hobnailed boots. She who had always been so poised, so amiably cooperative, had developed a will of her own—if his hijacking was anything to go on—not to mention a sharp little tongue.

  She must have been desperate to try and work things out between them to have pulled a stunt like this.

  He still didn’t want to think about the ramifications, but knew he had to. And, let’s face it, he hadn’t made it easy for her to approach him in a more conventional manner—out of the country far more than he was in it, deliberately avoiding her and anyone who knew her.

  He finished the remains of his brandy and leaned back in the chair, long fingers toying with the stern of the glass, his mind absorbed.

  Over the past year he’d avoided all contact and allowed her none. His solicitor had paid her allowance into her bank account each month, and those of his staff who knew his movements had been instructed to be politely noncommittal if his estranged wife had ever shown any desire to know his whereabouts.

  As far as he knew, she never had. It had appeared that she, too, had written their three years of marriage off as experience—one, in his case, never to be repeated—and was getting on with her life, with the resumption both of her modelling career and her steamy, hole-and-corner affair with the much-married Maclaine.

  His mouth tightened. He could never forgive that ugly betrayal, her cold-blooded deceit. Never!

  He pushed the empty glass across the table, picked up her untouched one, swallowed the contents in one long draught and snapped to his feet.

  However long and loudly she protested he couldn’t believe she was an innocent victim of sibling mischief. For one thing, his sister knew better than to take it into her head to meddle with his life. She knew he refused to have Bella’s name mentioned in his presence.

  He was sure Bella had set the whole thing up, somehow convincing Kitty that deceiving him into coming here was in his best interests. Not too difficult a task to accomplish, given the way she’d pulled the wool over his eyes through three years of marriage!

  Well, she’d wanted him here and now she’d got him here, so they might as well have things out in the open. And whatever her reasons, and however desperate those reasons were, he had one answer only.

  There was no going back. It was over. If she had any doubts at all it was time they were knocked on the head. And there was no time like the present...

  He squared his shoulders and strode to the stairs.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  BELLA was too strung up to sleep. In any case, it was hours before her normal bedtime. The paperback she’d brought along to read wasn’t making any sense. The words slid past her eyes. She was taking nothing in. She closed the book and shivered.

  The room was cold, and to make matters worse she’d discovered that Evie—rot her socks!—had performed yet another major interfering act. Her devious little sister must have sneaked into her room at home while Bella had been in the shower and replaced the old, cosy pyjamas she’d packed herself with slivers of sheer silk and lace—the sort of seductive nonsense she hadn’t worn since she and Jake had been living together.

  Her first defiant thought had been to go to bed in the leggings and woolly sweater she was wearing. Every last thing she’d bundled into the canvas bag the previous evening had been replaced.

  No serviceable jeans and cosy sweaters to be found, just fabulous designer gear, almost forgotten leftovers from her time as Jake’s wife. They had been languishing, unworn, at the back of a cupboard at the flat she shared with that devious, double-dealing sister of hers!

  She couldn’t trek out of here, heading for Aberwhatever-it-was, wearing a long slinky shirt or flowing silk trousers!

  Nearly spitting with rage she’d stripped off the comfy leggings and sweater, reserving them for the morning, and hugged into a clinging dream of white satin-sheen silk, the tantalisingly revealing lace top supported by the narrowest, flimsiest of shoestring threads.

  What had those two she-devils had in mind? A flaunting, a seduction, a reconciliation followed by Happy-Ever-After? What did they have between their ears? Fluff, or rocks?

  Her eyes savage with bottled-up temper, she dug her head into the pillow and dragged the duvet up over her ears to shut out the sound of the howling wind. And heard instead the squeak of the door hinges, followed one second later by Jake’s incisive voice.

  ‘It’s time we talked.’

  ‘Get out of here!’

  Bella shot up against the pillows, regardless of the next-to-nothing she was wearing, her eyes narrowed with temper. She had never been this angry in the whole of her life, and now she had someone to vent it on!

  Her formative years had been spent in a restless round of moving from one place to another, the family being dragged by her feckless father to wherever the grass was supposedly greener but never was. She’d become adept at keeping her head down, quiet as a mouse, in case she got noticed and hauled into her parents’ blistering, roof-raising rows.

  Then there had been marriage to the man who could have given her everything but hadn’t. And the only legacy she had from their marriage was bitterness.

  She had tried to be everything he wanted her to be: glamorous, cool, acquiescent, the perfect wife, anxious—too anxious—to hold onto a will-o’-the-wisp, workaholic husband who was here today and gone tomorrow.

  Here today and gone for at least a month! she amended in her head. Well, the black-eyed devil had finally walked out for good, and now she didn’t have to subordinate herself to him or anyone else!

  ‘I said, get out,’ she repeated when he made no move.

  He was seemingly rooted to the spot in the open doorway, his straddle-legged stance familiarly dominant, thumbs hooked into the back pockets of his jeans, dark hair falling over one eye, the unintentional designer stubble adding to the aura of rakish danger that was coming off him in waves, filling the room...

  Tantrums suited her, he thought, hooded eyes appraising the wild black tumble of hair falling over naked creamy shoulders, the hectic flares of colour on those perfect cheekbones, the silver fire of her eyes, the tempting glimpse of pert, palm-sized breasts glimmering beneath the lace of that piece of seductive night wear he remembered so well. One out of many such pieces of sorcery, designed to send a man out of his mind...

  He hauled his unwise thought processes back on line. Sure, she could still fire him up, but it was only common or garden lust, not the rare and precious bloom of love. That had died when he’d moved heaven and earth to get back to her for what had been left of their third wedding anniversary—and found her wrapped around Maclaine.

  Bleak anger settled in his heart, turning it to stone. Had Maclaine dumped her? Was that what this was all about? Had she set this thing up—wasting his time, trying his patience to the limit—because she was conceited enough or stupid enough to believe that she only had to bat those fabulous lashes at him to get him to take her back, live with her and miraculously forget she was an adulterous bitch?

  Sure, she’d told him in no uncertain manner to get out of her room. But that was only for openers; the end game would be something else entirely.

  She’d made no attempt to cover herself—and what sensible woman packed such man-trap bait for a holiday in the winter wilds of Wales with her kid sister?

  Her protestations of innocence regarding her part in this wearisome far
ce would have held a darn sight more water if she’d been muffled in flannelette right up to her pretty pink ears!

  ‘Right.’ He cleared his throat. He tried to pull his eyes from her but couldn’t; they were stubbornly intent on drinking in all that sensual loveliness, and there didn’t seem to be a damn thing he could do about it. ‘Let’s get things sorted out.’

  His voice had husky undertones, Bella noted. Oh, he’d tried to make it crisp, but he’d dismally failed. She knew that tone, recognised the sultry gleam in those hooded eyes. He wanted her. He couldn’t disguise it. Not from her.

  Two years into their marriage, around the time she’d gone back to work with Guy, he’d stopped wanting her. He’d barely been at home at all, and had been exhausted when he was. The lust that had led him to marry her had finally been slaked. But it hadn’t completely died...

  The shock of it made her stomach twist, ignite with curling flames of fever that rampaged through her body. She sucked in a sharp breath and dragged the duvet up to her chin. The passion of her rage with Evie and Kitty for landing her in this mess had encompassed him, making her oblivious to what she was wearing.

  ‘Go away.’ She knew she sounded feeble now, hated herself for it. And, far from doing as she’d said, he took a few more paces into the room. Any closer and she’d weakly give in to the temptation to beg him to take her in his arms, hold her and make love to her again. Beg him to take them both back to the beginning, when she’d believed everything to be perfect and that he could give her everything she wanted.

  ‘I’ll go when you’ve explained why you were so desperate to get me here.’

  The delayed modesty, the wide, troubled eyes, didn’t fool him. It was all a cynical act. It took one to know one, he thought tiredly, wanting to get this sorted out, packed away and put behind him as he had assumed—wrongly, it would seem—it had been for the whole of the past twelve months.