‘Two weeks,’ Francesca said, feeling as though she had stepped onto the roller coaster once again. ‘But we don’t need to move so fast,’ she protested faintly.
‘Yes, we do. If we don’t you’ll change your mind every other day and in the long run nothing will be sorted out at all.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t treat me like an idiot child!’ she told him with a burst of energy, and he laughed shortly.
‘But that’s what you are, isn’t it, Francesa? A child who wanted to grow up at the hands of a man she was temporarily attracted to. A child who’s finding it difficult to realise that there’s such a thing as cause and effect.’ He shot her an odd look and then he was gone, and she lay back on the sofa with a sigh of relief.
She wanted to cry again, but what would be the point? So she let her mind go blank and tried to distance herself from the painful thought that Oliver Kemp could give her everything—a ring on her finger, a united family for the baby; he could give her everything but the one thing she wanted. He couldn’t give her love.
CHAPTER EIGHT
FRANCESCA hadn’t had a great deal of time to think about whether she was doing the right thing or not in getting married. Oliver had come round on Monday evening to her flat and told her that they were going out to dinner.
‘What for?’ was the first thing she’d asked. He had still been in his business suit—an expensively tailored dark grey double-breasted suit which made him look over-poweringly masculine.
‘To have a meal, of course,’ he’d said drily. ‘Isn’t that what most people do when they go out to a restaurant? We need to discuss a few things and we need to eat. It seems a simple enough equation.’
So here they were now, in a cosy French restaurant in Hampstead.
‘Have you spoken to your father again about it?’ he asked, sipping from a glass of white wine while she toyed with her extremely dull glass of orange juice.
Francesca nodded. ‘A lot,’ she admitted, contemplating the glass. ‘I spent last night there and we talked for hours. I told him that we would be married in a register office, which he wasn’t too thrilled about, but he’s been fine mostly.’
‘He loves you,’ Oliver said gently. ‘You worked yourself up into a lather wondering what his reaction would be without realising that love can forgive and forget almost anything.’
She didn’t want to talk about love. She didn’t want to remind herself that that was an emotion which she would have to learn to live without, so she said hurriedly, looking away from those light, penetrating eyes, ‘I’m still not sure, though, that we’re doing the right thing.’
Their meal came—a fishy affair with lots of creamy sauce—and she fiddled with the attractive array of vegetables, concentrating on her plate rather than on the man sitting opposite her.
‘Eat up,’ he said, eyeing her lack of enthusiasm for the food, and she glared at him, which made him laugh under his breath.
‘I hope you don’t intend to order me around when we’re married,’ she muttered, and he laughed again.
‘It would take a brave man to do that, Francesca,’ he murmured.
‘And what does that mean?’
‘It means that you have the sting of a viper.’
‘I’m not sure I like that,’ she said, frowning, but not feeling as nettled by his remark as she knew she should have—perhaps because there had been a smile in his eyes when he’d said it, and that smile had made her feel warm and foolishly happy.
She began eating, and discovered after a few mouthfuls that she was hungrier than she had thought.
‘I’ve made all the arrangements for the wedding,’ he said casually when she had closed her knife and fork on a plate that had been scraped clean. ‘Day after tomorrow.’
‘Day after tomorrow?’ She looked at him, astounded at the speed with which he had moved, and his eyes narrowed.
‘No arguments,’ he said. ‘You can invite a few friends, but the smaller the better, as far as I’m concerned. Then there’s the question of our honeymoon.’
‘Honeymoon?’ Francesca’s eyes widened in horror at the thought of that. Honeymoons, she thought, were for lovers, not for two people propelled into marriage by circumstance. ‘We don’t need a honeymoon,’ she said quickly. ‘Can’t we just get the wedding over and done with and then carry on as normal?’
‘You mean as if nothing major had happened?’ There was a thread of anger in his voice which puzzled her. ‘I realise that you wish you could forget what’s happened. It’s not a pretty thought to live with, is it—that you jumped into bed with a man purely for physical reasons, and that that one simple, natural action has led to a series of events which you’d like to pretend haven’t changed both our lives dramatically?
‘But that’s what’s happened. We’re getting married, and we’re going to go on a honeymoon. For starters, what do you imagine your father would think if we didn’t? He’s a conventional man and you’ve already probably shaken him to his foundations.’
‘Oh, so you’ve decided that we need a honeymoon so that we can continue the charade that everything between us is all roses and light.’
‘Stop being so damned argumentative,’ he rasped. ‘You could do with a break abroad somewhere, anyway.’
‘I’d prefer—’
‘You’ve already told me what you’d prefer,’ he cut in harshly, ignoring the waiter who was hovering at a respectful distance with the dessert menus in his hand. The waiter sidled off and Oliver leaned towards her, his face dark and disturbing.
‘We’ll spend a week abroad somewhere sunny. The Caribbean, perhaps, or the Far East. Which would you prefer?’
‘Oh, the Caribbean, I suppose,’ she said with bad grace, and he shot her a dry look.
‘Most women would hardly need persuading to take a holiday in the sun and get away from this filthy British weather that’s trying to pass itself off as summer.’
‘Well, I’m not most women!’
‘No, that you most certainly are not,’ he said, looking at her from under his lashes, and she wondered whether this was another little dig, but she decided not to make a point of it. She might as well learn to be civil to him, and to stop cross-examining every little word, every little gesture.
She knew why she did it. She did it because although she didn’t regret having given in to that strong, physical impulse to sleep with him, she couldn’t forgive herself for her stupidity in having fallen in love with him. For him it was all so much simpler. The woman he was in love with—had been planning to marry—had walked into the sunset with another man, and she, Francesca, had been available—in the right place at the right time.
You could change lots of things in your life, she thought, but the one thing you could never change was your past.
Francesca spent the following day coming to terms with what had happened and what now presented itself on the horizon—a wedding, a honeymoon, a baby in a little over seven months’ time. This was reality, and reality had drained her of her youthful optimism and showed her what an utter fool she had been when she had thought that she could hold life in the palm of her hand.
The wedding, in the end, was something of an anticlimax. One minute she was Francesca Wade and the next minute she was Francesca Kemp, and there was ring on her finger, announcing the fact to the world at large.
They had jointly asked a few friends, although her father had made up for the lack by inviting a good few of his own—people who would, he assured her, be devastated if they knew that his only little gem had got married and omitted to include them in the happy event—and after the brief ceremony they went back to her father’s house, where, frustrated by the lack of a grand affair, he had laid on an elaborate buffet.
Amongst the guests were Imogen and Rupert, and Francesca did her best to avoid looking at Imogen, because every time she did she wondered what was going on in Oliver’s head when he looked at the woman he had lost to someone else.
She didn’t want to surprise any u
nguarded looks of longing for what might have been if things had turned out differently. But the effort of averting her eyes and pretending that she was happy made her feel stiff and miserable.
‘Cheer up,’ Oliver ordered sotto voce, with his arm around her, and she replied without looking at him.
‘I’m smiling as hard as I can.’
‘I know. I can tell.’
‘No one else has noticed anything,’ she pointed out. There was a lot of laughing going on, and easy conversation, and her father was having a great time strutting around proudly.
‘No,’ he said under his breath, ‘but I’m learning to pick up signals from you.’ He kept his arm around her, and it was only when the party was beginning to disperse that she found herself face to face with Imogen.
‘I’ve hardly had a chance to talk to you,’ the other woman said, drawing her to one side and sitting her down. There was a warm smile on her lips and Francesca tried to respond in kind. She felt tired and sleepy. Pregnancy seemed to have made her feel permanently tired. What she would really have liked was to be able to sleep for the next few months and awaken only when the baby was due to be born, conveniently skipping the intervening period which threatened to be to a slow version of the Chinese water torture.
‘I’ve been rushed off my feet,’ Francesca said vaguely. Apart from her father no one as yet knew that she was pregnant. She still had her slim, coltish figure, and maternity dresses seemed a long way away as yet.
‘It all happened so quickly, didn’t it?’ Imogen agreed, smiling. ‘Bit like Rupert and myself. We’re planning on getting married later on this year, and I shall be giving up my job to start a family and to help Rupert run the estate.
‘I’ve already warned him that he’s got to get used to staying in, because when a screaming baby comes along yours truly isn’t going to be cooped up in his rambling manor looking after it all by herself!’ She laughed and Francesca joined in, feeling a pang of envy at the thought of the blissful family life that awaited the other girl.
‘I’m happy for Oliver as well,’ Imogen said confidentially, her face sobering. ‘We were so close, and I hated to think that what happened between us might have jaded his faith in the opposite sex.’
‘Don’t you feel a little bit…?’ Francesca sought around for the right words to convey her curiosity.
Imogen helpfully said, ‘Aggrieved? Not desperately. For a while I had felt that it would be something of a mistake to marry Oliver, but I couldn’t put my finger on it so I drifted along with the idea. I only realised what was missing when I fell in love with Rupert.
‘It’s a bit like my career, I suppose. I always did very well academically, and I had a great deal of luck along the way. I got a good job from the start and found myself being promoted until I’d reached the pinnacle of success.’ She shrugged. ‘I shan’t be too sorry to give it all up.’
Francesca looked at her thoughtfully, and then said, ‘Would you and Oliver have had children, do you think, if you had married?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Rupert was beckoning to her from across the room, holding up his wrist and pointing to his watch theatrically.
She stood up and then said casually, laughing, ‘Oliver’s always wanted a family. I think he would have done anything to have had a child straight away. He didn’t want to wait until he was too old. I think it affected him more than he liked to admit—the fact that both his parents died when he was relatively young. He wanted to make sure that he was around to see his children into middle age.’ She laughed again. ‘Not that there’s ever any certainty about that!’
The guests were beginning to depart, and Francesca did her duty and waved them off with a smile on her face, but she understood better now why Oliver had propelled her into marriage. He moved across to her and put his arm around her. The happy couple, she thought; at least to the outside world. No one would ever guess in a million years that all of this was an elaborate charade, performed because of what lay inside her.
They left soon after for the airport, and in the car Francesca lay back with her eyes closed, not saying anything, thinking.
When Oliver had made love to her that night it had been because he had wanted her. And he had needed the warmth of another body next to his. Whatever he said, the more she heard, the more she realised that if Rupert had never come along Imogen would still have been the woman with his ring on her finger.
Doubtless, for all her silly hopes at the time, his desire would have waned rapidly, because essentially what he had wanted had not been her but simply an attractive woman to tide him through a difficult period. They weren’t on the same wavelength. That had always been what he’d thought, and he still thought that.
But the pregnancy had changed everything. It had transformed an ill-fated night of passion into a lifelong obligation.
She glanced across at his profile and knew that she would never have guessed how strong his desire for a child was if his ex-girlfriend hadn’t obligingly provided the information. Everyone, she supposed, had their own peculiar vulnerability.
She closed her eyes, and the next time she opened them they were at the airport and he was shaking her gently by the shoulder to make her wake up, which she did, with a wide yawn and as effective a stretch as she could manage within the confines of a car.
‘Ready?’ he asked, with a grin in his voice. ‘Or shall I carry the suitcases and put you on the trolley so that you can continue your nap?’
‘It’s not my fault,’ she answered irritably, yawning again. ‘It’s the hormones.’ At which he laughed outright and raised his eyebrows in a dry question.
‘And how long will these hormones be responsible for whatever you do?’ he asked, and she stole a sideways look at him. He looked relaxed and sexy. Very sexy. He had changed out of his charcoal suit into a pair of dark green trousers and an oatmeal-coloured shirt which made him look alarmingly handsome.
‘Months,’ she said, clicking open the door and throwing over her shoulder, ‘Maybe years.’
He was still grinning when he emerged from the driver’s seat.
The airport was crowded but not unduly so. They were travelling out of the peak period.
Oliver handled everything with the self-assurance of someone who was accustomed to going abroad, and he was treated with the exaggerated respect paid to first-class travellers.
Francesca simply skulked in the background, watching the toing and froing of everyone else, and wondering whether she was the only one in the airport who wasn’t overjoyed at the thought of leaving the country.
It was an eight-hour flight and she was dreading it, but in the end she slept through most of it, and when she was awake she found herself reluctantly beginning to enjoy the prospect of a week in the sun.
They stepped off the plane into blazing sunshine. It was some time since Francesca had been to the Caribbean. She had forgotten how vivid the colours were. Everything had an unreal brightness about it. The greens of the trees were somehow greener, the flowers brighter, the sky flawlessly blue. And the heat was of a kind rarely experienced in England. It made you feel lazy and peaceful.
She had worn light clothes, but by the time they made it to the hotel she was perspiring and dying for a shower.
It was only when they were shown to their room that she remembered, with a jolt of alarm, that this was a honeymoon and that they would be sharing a bed. She had half forgotten that she was married, just as she had half forgotten what marriage from now on would entail.
She eyed the double bed warily from the door and Oliver said drily, stripping off his shirt, ‘Stop hovering. You look as though you’re about to be eaten.’ He disappeared into the bathroom without bothering to shut the door, and she hurriedly began unpacking her stuff and ignoring the bed.
When he emerged he was naked except for a towel loosely draped over his waist, and she snapped awkwardly, ‘Couldn’t you have dressed?’
He stopped where he was and gave her a long look, then he moved very slowly to
wards her.
‘Has it slipped your mind that we’re married now, Francesca?’ he asked with icy politeness. The relaxed charm that had been on his face less than an hour ago had vanished.
‘In name only,’ she retorted, and his dark eyebrows met in an angry frown.
‘Is that what you think?’
‘What else should I think? We both know that the only reason we’re here is because of the baby, and now that there’s no one else around I don’t see why we have to continue pretending.’
The colour had risen to her cheeks, partly because she was as heated as he was, but mostly because he was standing so close to her. If she stretched her hand out only a little she would touch that hard, powerful torso. Not knowing what stupid impulse she might give in to, she stuck her hands behind her back and looked up at him.
‘What do you suggest we do?’ he asked softly, but there was a dangerous silkiness in his voice that made her shiver.
‘We could go our separate ways,’ she suggested nervously, looking away.
‘And occasionally meet in passing in the restaurant?’
She didn’t answer, and he reached out and caught her arm in his fingers.
‘Now you listen to me,’ he said in a very controlled voice. ‘We’re married. You can analyse the reasons behind it until you go blue in the face but that doesn’t change a thing, and, believe me, I have no intention of not coming near you whenever there’s no one around looking.’
‘Wh-what do you mean?’ she stammered.
‘I mean, this is going to be a marriage in every sense of the word.’ He paused, giving her time for that to sink in, and she looked at him with dismay.
‘You can’t mean that,’ she said.
‘Every word. If you think marriage between us is going to mean sharing the same roof while I go my own way with other women, then you’re wrong.’
‘So you’re going to be faithful, are you, Oliver?’ she asked tightly. ‘To a woman whom you don’t love? You expect me to believe that?’
To Tame a Proud Heart Page 13