Wife in the Making

by Lindsay Armstrong

  ‘I…’ She stopped helplessly.

  ‘I thought we could do with some Dutch courage,’ he said and came in. ‘You look beautiful—but then you always do,’ he added, with his gaze lingering on the shine of her hair, the sheen of her lips and the satin gloss of her neck and bare shoulders. He came up to her to hand her a glass.

  She hesitated then took it and turned away.

  ‘I never did get you another chair.’

  Fleur took refuge in her drink and discovered it was a brandy and soda. She waited for a moment after the first sip then turned back to him, avoiding his eyes. ‘I really don’t need one.’

  He studied her bent head then touched the flower in her hair. ‘Is it too late to say that I just—don’t know what to say?’

  She looked up fleetingly. ‘Perhaps that says it all? So there’s no need to—’

  ‘There’s every need.’ He slipped his fingers beneath her chin and made her look up again. ‘What would you like to say?’

  Her eyes were very blue with just a hint of the sheen of tears. And her voice was low—but level. ‘You quoted John Donne this morning. “Go and catch a falling star” is another line from that song. If that’s what happened this morning, it slipped through our fingers because it’s not the right time, or place, or we’re not the right people for each other. That’s all.’

  His fingers were hard on her chin for a brief moment, and then his hand dropped. ‘Very poetic,’ he commented drily.

  She shrugged, a delicate disclaimer of the charge. ‘You started it.’

  ‘Can’t you forget him?’

  Fleur’s eyes widened, then she veiled them with her lashes. ‘Perhaps no more than you can forget her.’

  ‘If you mean Stella—’

  ‘No, Bryn,’ she said. ‘I mean the one person that…you can never get out of your heart whether she deserves to be there or not, whether she was taken from you in other circumstances—however. I mean Tom’s mother.’

  He froze.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said huskily. ‘But I do understand. Should we,’ she raised her glass, ‘finish these and join the party?’

  But the party came to them in the form of Eric. ‘Bryn,’ he called, ‘Julene needs a hand, mate.’

  ‘Tell her…’ Bryn said roughly and took a breath. ‘Tell her I’ll be five minutes, pal.’

  Eric could be heard departing.

  ‘Tom’s mother,’ Bryn said to Fleur, ‘hasn’t got anything to do with this. Well, she has but—’

  ‘Fleur, Bryn, people are arriving!’ It was Tom this time calling from below the veranda.

  His father said, ‘Damn!’ And drained his drink.

  ‘I think you should refrain from swearing in front of your son,’ Fleur murmured.

  ‘Two points,’ he retorted coldly although less audibly. ‘He is not my son, and what the hell has it got to do with you?’

  Fleur’s mouth fell open and her eyes widened.

  He smiled unpleasantly. ‘Take that to the party with you to mull over, Ms Millar. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the matter—once we get this…luau out of the way, of course. Coming, Tom!’ he called and left the cabin.

  The evening passed in something of a daze for Fleur.

  She did more than what was ‘designated’ for her. She circulated amongst the guests and tried to project a party spirit, she danced with Tom but was not asked to dance with Bryn Wallis. While he was a model of ‘mine host’ bonhomie throughout the evening, it took some accumulated knowledge of Bryn to know that just below the surface of all this good humour there prowled Julene’s tiger.

  Julene even commented on it halfway through the evening as she watched Bryn discreetly and fanned herself. ‘So that’s the way the wind blows,’ she commented. ‘Didn’t take kindly to the ultimatum?’

  ‘No, I mean, I didn’t… Why didn’t you tell me?’ Fleur asked with some difficulty.

  ‘What, love?’

  ‘That Tom is not his son…’

  Julene pursed her lips. ‘He is officially. Bryn adopted him.’

  ‘But he’s the living image of Bryn!’

  ‘With good reason. Didn’t he tell you any more?’

  ‘No!’ Fleur said frustratedly.

  ‘Well, I think I’ll leave him to explain— Oh, no. Here comes trouble!’

  Fleur looked around but didn’t see anything untoward at first. Just a happy throng of guests who had eaten well and were dancing it off beneath the fairy lights in the trees or wandering along the beach that was lit by romantic braziers. Then she saw her—Stella, also wearing a sarong and flowers in her hair, weaving her way through the dancers towards Bryn.

  He was talking to a couple but Stella went right up to him, put her hands around his face and drew his head down so she could kiss him. Surprise, Fleur mused, could have accounted for his lack of resistance to this—he’d had his back to her as she’d approached. Surprise could not account for what followed, she reasoned.

  Stella then positioned Bryn’s hands on her hips, put hers round his neck and danced him onto the floor. Where she swayed in his arms provocatively, said something to him that drew an, admittedly, reluctant smile from him, but then he shrugged, kissed her hair, and they began to dance together with evident enjoyment.

  Fleur turned away, held up a hand as Julene went to say something and murmured, ‘Don’t. There’s just too much to cope with in relation to Bryn Wallis. I’m going to bed.’

  She had no idea how long she’d been asleep or what woke her up, but as her eyelids fluttered open her first thought was that she’d left the light on. Then the flickering shadows on the walls, seen through the mosquito net that veiled the bed, told her it was the oil lamp not the electric light, which she had not even lit let alone left on.

  She sat up and looked around to see Bryn sitting in the only chair. Her lips parted incredulously. ‘What are you doing here?’

  He seemed to rouse himself from a reverie. ‘I was thinking that you looked like a princess, untouchable beneath that veil, even composed and reserved as you sleep.’

  Fleur cast aside the net and was about to cast aside the sheet then remembered that all she wore was a short ivory silk nightgown with shoestring straps. But she did say tautly, ‘Don’t start that nonsense with me again, Bryn Wallis! And don’t ever come in here again without my permission!’

  ‘More and more like a princess,’ he remarked wryly. ‘Do you know you have the most elegant and fastidious nose, Fleur? I must say it lends itself beautifully to your regal air.’

  ‘You…’ Fleur paused and frowned suddenly. ‘What…what on earth has happened to you?’

  ‘Ah, you noticed!’ He looked gratified and raised a hand to touch his right eye, which was darkened and half-closed, gingerly. Then he looked down at his dirty shirt, his grazed knuckles and the tear in his jeans. ‘I got on the receiving end of a rather punishing left hook; I don’t know if you know what that means—’

  ‘Of course I do—you got punched!’ Fleur broke in disbelievingly. ‘Don’t tell me Stella punched you!’

  ‘Stella did not. What happened was, the guest I gave such a colourful come-uppance to last night—as you had tutored me in the art so expertly—returned tonight, nursing a definite grievance.’

  Fleur’s jaw dropped.

  ‘As you say,’ Bryn commented. ‘Fortunately, everyone else was gone, Tom was in bed, so were Julene and Eric. I was just checking that all the braziers were out when he arrived unheralded and took me by surprise.’

  Fleur closed her mouth and her lips quivered. ‘What,’ she said in a strangled kind of way, ‘did you do to him?’

  ‘Well, I took a little bit of purely defensive action, not being sure whether the guy had come to murder me or not,’ he gestured as if to claim innocence of any real aggression, ‘when I gathered, from his comments, that the one thing he could not forgive was being made to look a fool in front of his wife. Now that hit home. We men have—’

  ‘Don’t tell me, I
know all about it,’ Fleur broke in. ‘Go on, what happened then?’

  ‘I stopped—purely defending myself, of course—and offered him a drink.’

  ‘Purely defending yourself, of course!’ Fleur agreed gravely then could help herself no longer. She started to laugh. And she said unsteadily, ‘Did he accept your offer?’

  ‘He did. And we thrashed the whole matter out verbally and came to the conclusion that we were equally at fault, so we shook hands and parted on most cordial terms.’

  ‘I see.’ Fleur’s voice was still unsteady. ‘How many drinks did it take to thrash it all out verbally?’

  ‘If you think I’m drunk, I’m not. Not precisely,’ he corrected himself. ‘It could even be that I’m only reeling from a particularly difficult evening on all fronts as well as the effects of some solid blows to the head.’

  She eyed him suspiciously. ‘So—were you hoping I would leap up and get a piece of steak to apply to your eye as well offering to bathe your cuts and grazes?’ she enquired. ‘I mean—is that why you came here, invading my privacy, and, what’s worse, while I was asleep?’

  ‘Heavens above, no, Fleur!’ he marvelled. ‘That’d be like asking a leopard to change its spots.’

  ‘Just what do you mean by that?’ She looked at him dangerously.

  ‘Like asking you to come down from your lonely mountain peak of—’

  ‘Shut up, Bryn,’ she commanded. ‘Oh, all right! Stay here.’ She got up swiftly, reached for her terry-towelling robe and padded out of the bungalow.

  Ten minutes later she came back with a pot of strong coffee and the first-aid kit.

  She filled a bowl with water and Dettol and reached for the cotton wool then stopped to study him. ‘Your hair is full of sand, you’re grubby, bloody and probably sweaty—what you really need is a shower before I do this!’

  ‘Are you asking me to totter back to my bungalow, survive a shower and totter back here?’

  ‘A shower would probably sober you up— Oh, have it here! I’ll go and get you some clothes.’

  ‘Pyjamas would be appropriate,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll get whatever I deem appropriate,’ she retorted.

  He grinned crookedly and replied meekly, ‘Whatever you say, ma’am.’ He hauled himself up out of the chair and stepped unsteadily towards the bathroom.

  Fleur bit her lip, suddenly wondering if he was suffering from a concussion more than alcohol.

  While she was getting his clothes she checked on Tom, to find him sleeping peacefully. But she gazed down at him for a few moments, completely baffled. If he wasn’t Bryn’s child, whose was he? And how come he was so like Bryn?

  She shook her head and stole out, to run back across the sand to her bungalow. Bryn was already out of the shower, he’d poured the coffee and was sipping his, and all he wore was a towel tied around his waist.

  ‘Here,’ she thrust the bundle of clothes at him, shorts and T-shirt, ‘get dressed then I’ll fix you up.’

  Sheer amusement glinted in his hazel eyes as he regarded her over the cup. ‘I hesitate to contradict you in this forceful mood, Fleur, but there are places you would be unable to reach if I was dressed. You’re not—shy, surely?’

  Oh, yes, I am…

  The thought flew across her mind, taking her by surprise but was nevertheless true, she knew, as her nerve ends tingled beneath the impact of his big, bronzed body even though it was slightly battered and he had a black eye. None of that altered the grandeur of his physique or made any difference to her memories of what had happened between them on the beach. None of it stilled her leaping senses as she remembered what he’d done to her and the sensations he’d brought alive in her…

  She looked away and cleared her throat. ‘All right. Turn around and I’ll start on the back of you. However, anything that’s under the towel you do yourself.’

  ‘Of course,’ he agreed as he obliged. ‘That would definitely be above and beyond the call of—duty,’ he added over his shoulder.

  Fleur gritted her teeth and didn’t respond. She found a cut on his shoulder blade, a scrape down his side and a graze on his elbow. She swabbed them carefully then dabbed on iodine.

  ‘Turn around.’

  He turned slowly. There was a long scratch down his upper arm, an angry bruise on his chest below his shoulder and the knuckles of his right hand were grazed. Without looking into his eyes, she dealt with his grazed knuckles. Then she looked at the scratch on his upper arm and, abruptly, she turned away from the clean, pure man scent of him and the urgent desire to put her arms around him and press herself against all that splendid physique.

  ‘Fleur?’

  ‘I think you can manage the rest,’ she said barely audibly and reached for her coffee. ‘I didn’t get a piece of steak; you’d probably be better off with an ice bag for your eye anyway.’

  He watched her narrowly as she inhaled the coffee aroma then sipped some with the kind of concentration one devoted to a lifeline…

  Nor did he comment until he’d dealt with the scratch himself and paid another visit to her bathroom to change into the shorts and T-shirt she’d brought for him. Then he poured himself another cup of coffee and retired to the chair. She was sitting on the bed.

  He said, ‘Let’s start at the bottom.’

  Her lashes lifted and she sent him a startled little look.

  ‘I mean,’ he explained, ‘on a scale of what’s least important. Stella came to say goodbye tonight. She’s leaving for her new post tomorrow, and she wanted there to be no hard feelings.’

  Fleur said nothing but she couldn’t mask the sceptical expression that lit her eyes briefly.

  He shrugged. ‘You’re right. She also proposed that we not lose touch and that there was no reason not to…take up where we left off from time to time.’

  This time Fleur’s expression was cynical.

  ‘You disapprove?’ he suggested.

  ‘Not at all. It has nothing to do with me.’

  ‘It has plenty to do with you,’ he replied with irony. ‘But we’ll leave that for the moment. Tom,’ he said, ‘is my sister’s son.’

  Fleur gasped.

  He grimaced and went on. ‘Like you, Alana was gorgeous. The moment I saw you I was reminded of her; she had the same colour hair, same style, blue eyes.’ He paused. ‘But now that I’ve had time to think about it, I realize it’s not so much a physical resemblance, it’s that certain air that comes from deportment classes, acting classes, elocution and all the rest of it. She went through them all like you. She modelled, she dabbled in acting.’

  ‘So,’ Fleur said confusedly, ‘the reason you took one look at me and decided you didn’t like me was because I reminded you of your sister? I don’t understand…’ She shook her head.

  ‘Let me finish. She also dabbled in life in the fast lane. She attracted men like bees to a honey pot, but what none of us realized was that her sophistication was only a veneer. When I did realize it, it was too late; not that I was home a lot but when I began to see the road she was going down I felt…responsible. Not a damn thing I did was any help, though. That’s why,’ his eyes were utterly compelling, ‘when I sensed another girl going through something similar in you, Fleur, I thought it was what I needed like a hole in the head.’

  Fleur was stunned for a moment, then there was genuine concern in her expression. ‘What happened to her?’ she asked quietly.

  Bryn noted the concern and thought for a moment before he continued. ‘When she discovered she was pregnant to a man who dropped her like a hot cake, she spent most of her pregnancy having psychiatric counselling. But when Tom was born she abandoned him to my mother and fled overseas, where she still is, seeking—’ he stopped and sighed ‘—spiritual solace in another religion.’

  ‘But,’ Fleur whispered, ‘he’s such a darling…’

  Bryn sat forward and stared at the floor. ‘I know, and I still live in the hope that one day she will come back and be able to love him and let him love her,
but it doesn’t seem likely. She didn’t even return when my mother died, although I have to say in her defence it was so sudden that she couldn’t have got here in time. That’s when I adopted Tom and came to live here. He was only three and, although my father loves him dearly, he would have had to rely on nannies et cetera to care for him.’

  ‘And that’s why Tom always calls you Bryn—I thought it was just a cute habit,’ she said helplessly. ‘Does he know all this?’

  ‘Some of it. He knows he’s different because he doesn’t have a mother but until now it hasn’t seemed to bother him. He is only six and he’s had plenty of love and care. From here on, though, now he’s started school particularly, I’m sure the anomaly of his situation is going to loom larger. He demonstrated that only this morning. But until he gets really anxious about it, well,’ he shrugged, ‘to be honest I don’t quite know how to handle it, but the way he’s taken to you…’ He stopped and shrugged.

  Fleur swallowed.

  ‘By the way,’ he said with a faint smile, ‘you were right. I should not swear in front of children.’

  Fleur echoed his smile but distractedly. ‘And I reminded you of all this that first day?’

  ‘Fleur, a girl like you wanting to bury herself on an island as an accounts clerk, which is virtually what the job is— Yes, you did. The only difference is, Alana chose religion. She dropped right out, in other words, but I knew you were also dropping out.’

  ‘I see,’ she said slowly. Then, ‘But you dropped out yourself, Bryn.’

  ‘That’s the other problem I have,’ he said and paused. And there was something very sombre in his eyes when he raised them to her at last. ‘I hope to heaven I have never been responsible for the kind of misery Alana went through—’

  ‘You must know whether you have or not,’ she broke in.

  ‘Do I? Sure, I know I haven’t sent anyone into retreat, I know I haven’t fathered any fatherless kids but,’ he gestured with some frustration, ‘I’ve never come across the one woman I knew I could spend the rest of my life with. And it came home to me very recently that, yes, I may have dropped out. Yes, I turned my back on the fast lane that I thought had been so disastrous for Alana, but I was still…looking for the kind of woman who was as little into the lifelong commitment as I was—Stella, for example,’ he said drily.