The Marriage Trap

by Anne McAllister

  Aidan leaned forward, grasped her arms, and bent his head. He licked his lips, then touched them briefly to hers. His hands trembled violently against her. Abruptly he turned away. He looked angry. In pain.

  She shouldn’t be surprised. There was no love in this for him. No joy. It was a responsibility, one he had felt obliged, probably because of the incident with the jaguar, to take on. And one which, without a doubt, brought him far more painful memories than hers. He was probably thinking of Shanna now, of the vows he had taken and meant, and the farce they turned out to be.

  And these vows? These could only be worse for they were a farce to begin with, weren’t they?

  But she had no time to think further, for her mother was hugging her, her father was beaming, slapping Aidan on the back, telling everyone that they made a wonderful couple, that the wedding was all it should be.

  ‘Don’t you think so, my dear?’ He turned to Courtney.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, not looking at her husband.

  What else, after all, could she say?

  She went through the afternoon the same way, outwardly smiling, accepting the heartfelt congratulations of Jacinta and her family, the shyly envious looks of one or two of the younger, unmarried women, the genuine approval of the men. And she watched Aidan do the same.

  No one would have known that it was painful for him. No one would have guessed that the minute they left here, he would be asking her for an annulment. But he would be, and she knew it. The thought, painful though it was, nagged at the back of her mind.

  ‘We can always get it annulled,’ she remembered him saying again, and again the words cut her to the bone. Yet they were only what she should have expected, she told herself. He had never pretended love, only lust. And neither of them would want a marriage based on that. Still, it had hurt to have one’s worst fears confirmed. And it hurt again now when her mother paused beside her, in the process of serving the community celebration meal, and said, ‘Such a wonderful wedding. What more could anyone ask?’

  A groom who loved her, perhaps? But Courtney knew that wasn’t a possibility now. It was enough that her father had his wedding, which he had done a wonderful job on, she had to admit. And it was enough that she had avoided making him happy and herself and Robert miserable by agreeing to the marriage he had planned for them. Smile, she told herself firmly. So she did just that. But the reception seemed to last for hours.

  When it finally wound down at dusk, she began helping Jacinta clear things away, relieved that it was over, tired of being a spectacle and thinking only of the refuge the night would bring.

  ‘Here, here,’ her mother said, taking the bowl out of her hands. ‘You don’t need to do this.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ Courtney said and meant it.

  But her mother wouldn’t believe that. She shook her head, half laughing. ‘Perhaps not, but I’m sure Aidan does.’

  ‘What’s he got to do with it?’

  ‘He’s your husband, and he’s waiting for you. To go to bed,’ her mother added in a stentorian whisper that nailed Courtney where she stood.

  ‘Mother!’

  Her mother patted her cheek. ‘Don’t be a prude, dear. How do you think I managed to have you?’

  Courtney hadn’t given it much thought, although given her father’s paramount devotion to the duties of his vocation, an immaculate conception didn’t seem totally beyond the realm of possibility. ‘I—well, I—’

  Her mother handed Jacinta the bowl and put her hands on Courtney’s shoulders, spinning her daughter around so that she was facing Aidan, who was standing with a group of men who were all laughing and talking across the compound. When he saw her looking at him, the grin faded from his face. His eyes met hers.

  ‘If he was looking at me like that, I wouldn’t be wasting time doing the dishes, love,’ her mother said, giving her a shove. ‘Go on.’

  Unable to think of a way out of obeying, Courtney went. The men Aidan was standing with all turned to watch her approach. One of them grinned and said something. The rest laughed and the tallest one punched Aidan lightly in the shoulder. He coloured, then frowned.

  ‘She come to take you away now,’ one of them said in Portuguese. ‘You go, Aidan. Have a goooood time.’ And they all cackled together.

  Aidan scowled fiercely, then reached out and grabbed her hand, hauling her with him into the hut he had been using, out of sight of the men, but not out of sound. One of them continued to speak on the subject, Courtney was certain, for they all laughed and made sounds of passion that turned her a darker red than the man who was now her husband.

  What had she been thinking about when she had considered the night to come as a refuge? A false wedding night would be even worse than a false wedding day.

  Aidan seemed to think so too. He kicked out a stool for her to sit on and motioned her on to it. Then he got out his rapidly vanishing bottle of cachaga and poured them each a glass. He handed one to her, then regarded her solemnly over the rim.

  He lifted the glass in an ironic toast, but said nothing. What was there to say? To us, perhaps? Hardly. To annulments? Perhaps.

  ‘To getting through the night,’ he said harshly and, tipping his head back, drained the cup in one long swallow.

  Courtney nodded. She could drink to that. She took a healthy swallow herself and felt the heat all the way to her toes.

  Aidan poured himself another cup and held out the bottle to her. She shook her head. He shrugged and sank down on the hammock, cradling his cup in his hands, contemplating the dark liquid. At last he lifted his eyes to meet hers. The vivid jade colour always astonished her, so intense were they in the dark tan of his face, and even more so now in the dim light of the hut. He pressed his lips together for a moment, then expelled a long breath.

  ‘Your mother moved your stuff over here.’

  Nonplussed, Courtney stared at him, then followed his gaze to the far side of the hut where she saw her duffel bag leaning against a low table. ‘What about my hammock?’

  His mouth twisted. ‘She didn’t bring that.’

  ‘I’ll go and get it.’

  ‘Sure, and then what will they think?’

  ‘Well, where else am I…’ But she didn’t even need to finish the question. It was all too clear where everyone expected her to sleep, where any bride would sleep—with her husband.

  She gulped the last of her cachaga, then took the bottle from the floor where he had set it and poured herself some more. But even the second cupful didn’t do a lot towards restoring her equanimity.

  Sleep with Aidan Sawyer?

  That was what she had been avoiding for days.

  ‘You said you wanted an annulment.’ She glared at him accusingly.

  He glared back. ‘I do.’

  ‘Well, you won’t get one if we… we…’ She gave a vague wave of her hand. It was the cachaga that was making her burn, she told herself, not the idea of sharing a hammock with Aidan Sawyer.

  ‘We won’t,’ he growled. He lurched to his feet and began pacing around the inside of the small hut like a caged animal. ‘But they can’t know that.’

  ‘No,’ Courtney agreed promptly.

  ‘We’ll just have to make it look good.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He scowled at her. ‘Pity you weren’t so accommodating a week ago, we wouldn’t be in this mess.’

  ‘I didn’t make you marry me!’

  He snorted, not even bothering to answer that. He strode across the room and rooted through his own duffel bag. ‘I’m going down to the river for a wash and a swim. You’d better come along, too.’

  ‘But, I—’

  ‘Objecting already? I knew it was too good to last. Come on,’ he commanded. ‘A newly married woman wouldn’t miss the chance of a bath with her husband.’

  ‘I’m missing it.’

  He yanked her duffel bag up on to the table and searched through it, pulling out a towel and her toilet kit. Tossing them to her, he said, ‘Suit yourself.
Sit on the bank for all I care. But you’re coming with me.’

  His was not a temper to argue with. She went with him.

  After all, if he wanted to strip naked in front of her, who was she to complain? Remembering her earlier peeping, she ought to be pleased.

  He stopped long enough to say something to the men who were now sitting on the ground in a circle, smoking and talking, passing a bottle of cachaga among themselves. Whatever he said to them, they beamed and nodded, and when Courtney followed him, head high, down the path to the river, they stared after her and whistled.

  ‘You take your time,’ the one who spoke Portuguese shouted after them.

  It didn’t take a genius to figure out that they thought more than bathing was going to take place.

  Nothing more than bathing did, though.

  Just bathing—or rather, watching Aidan bathe—was bad enough, Courtney discovered. All her good intentions went for naught. Her ability to keep her eyes averted was nil. Aidan had scarcely stripped off and dived into the water when she found her gaze turning towards him.

  It was nearly dark, but his skin, dark in the sunlight, seemed luminous now. His naked back gleamed under the silvery light of the moon, and she found that, once she had begun to look at him, she couldn’t look away.

  He was primally, essentially male, every inch of him. And the longer she sat there on the log, staring at him, the more conscious she was of it. It was not the best way to preserve the platonic relationship they both desired.

  It was odd, she thought, ironic in fact, that Aidan would have gladly gone to bed with her before he had married her. But now that he had become her husband, he vowed not to touch her.

  ‘So, how are we going to manage?’ she asked when they got back to the hut and were staring at each other in the dim light of the kerosene lantern that sat on the bookshelf near the door.

  Aidan shrugged. He considered her, considered the hammock, then slowly looked around the rest of the small room. The possibilities were not promising. One did not sleep on the ground in the jungle. If one did, there was no guessing what one might find oneself sleeping with by morning. And the tabletop, being barely three feet square, was no more promising.

  ‘I don’t see that we have much choice,’ he said grimly. His eyes lit on the hammock again.

  Courtney sighed. ‘Probably not.’ She could barely look at him. Memories of what he had looked like naked in the moonlight still haunted her. And it didn’t help that he said, ‘I don’t sleep in anything.’

  ‘You did in the jungle,’ she protested.

  ‘Outside, yeah. In here, no.’

  ‘You could tonight.’

  He gave her a long hard look, then sighed. ‘Yeah, and I’d probably better, too,’ he said, which had the effect of making her more nervous than ever.

  She had been sleeping in a light cotton shift since she had arrived at her parents’ village. It wasn’t much protection, but when she started towards the hammock still wearing her wedding dress, Aidan said sharply, ‘You’re not wearing that, for God’s sake.’ So she had ducked behind a screen and had changed.

  He didn’t look at her at all when she emerged in the pale blue shift. ‘You get in first. I’ll turn out the light.’ Apprehensively, she did as she was told. Aidan crossed the room and put out the light, plunging them into almost total blackness. A relief, Courtney decided, until a moment later he was slipping into the hammock next to her.

  There was no way not to touch him. Hammocks simply brought people together no matter what. And now this one was bringing the long hard length of Aidan’s body fully and warmly against hers. He had kept on the khakis and long-sleeved shirt he wore, but even those along with her thin cotton shift camouflaged nothing. They could as easily have been nude. His body was branding hers, burning hers. He shifted. She moved. He twitched. She writhed.

  ‘Christ, it’s hot,’ he muttered.

  ‘Boiling,’ she said.

  She felt his arm moved up against her, rustling around and she snapped, ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Unbuttoning my shirt.’

  ‘Oh.’

  They lay then in silence, listening to the tree frogs, to the skitter and screech of monkeys in the jungle beyond. But mostly they listened to one another’s breathing.

  ‘I’m suffocating,’ Aidan complained. He sat up and stripped off his shirt, then lay back down. The heat of his arm as it slipped around her raised Courtney’s temperature a few degrees as well. She wished she were sleeping in her clothes, then was glad she hadn’t. She was burning, and whether it was because of sharing the hammock or because of the heat of the night she didn’t want to guess.

  It was probably just because of Aidan. And she didn’t want to think about that either. She squirmed, trying to get comfortable, to get cool. It didn’t work.

  ‘For God’s sake, quit that,’ Aidan growled.

  ‘Quit what?’

  ‘Wriggling.’

  ‘I’m not!’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  He snorted in clear disagreement. She snorted to repudiate his snort. Then once more they lay in silence, their bodies touching from ear to knee, his arm under her head, his hip hard against hers.

  Married to each other. Wanting each other. Even Courtney could admit that to herself now. But neither daring to make a move. For more than wanting her, Aidan wanted an annulment. And no matter what Courtney wanted, she owed him that.

  The soft shuffling of feet passed their hut. She heard the low-pitched voice of one of the men saying something and the responding laugh of his wife. She felt Aidan’s arm tighten under her head. His body tensed. She turned her head slightly so that she could just make out his profile in the darkness.

  ‘What’d they say?’ she asked him.

  ‘Nothing.’ His tone was harsh.

  ‘It wasn’t nothing,’ she contradicted softly.

  He muttered an expletive under his breath.

  ‘I suppose I can guess,’ she said.

  ‘I suppose you can.’

  She smiled a little wryly. ‘Well, you must admit, what they expect is closer to what the average wedding night is all about than this is.’

  ‘What do you know about the average wedding night?’ He sounded bitter, and she remembered that he had already had one. The thought was oddly painful. Knowing what she did about his previous marriage, it shouldn’t have been. But the notion of him having been in love with Shanna then, of having spent the night making love to her, hurt more than she liked to admit.

  ‘I don’t know much, I guess.’ She tried to make her voice light, but some of the awkwardness she felt obviously crept through.

  He sighed heavily. ‘I’m sorry. I suppose it isn’t your ideal wedding night either, is it?’

  It would be, she thought, if he loved her. But she shook her head slightly. ‘No.’

  He sighed and went silent. For a time neither of them spoke. Then he turned his head slightly so that his lips almost brushed against her hair. ‘Did you have an ideal wedding in your mind?’

  She stared up at the dark thatch above her head. ‘An ideal wedding?’ she said a bit dreamily, letting her mind drift on the notion. ‘Yeah, I guess I must have.’

  ‘And today wasn’t it.’

  It wasn’t a question, but she felt obliged to defend what had happened today, sham though it might have been. ‘It might not have been my fairy-tale wedding, but it was beautiful in its own way.’

  Aidan didn’t agree or disagree with that. Probably because he didn’t want to hurt her feelings, she thought. Then eventually he said in a quiet voice, ‘Yes, it was.’ He rolled on to his side so that he was facing her. Her breast touched his arm. She tried to edge back but it wasn’t possible, the curve of the hammock’s net pressed them together.

  ‘Tell me how you would have planned it,’ he said. ‘What would you have liked.’

  ‘Besides a husband who loved me, you mean?’ She tried to make it sound facetious.

 
He went suddenly still. ‘Besides that.’

  ‘Well, I think I’d have liked a little country wedding. You know the sort. In a white clapboard church with a tall, narrow steeple, hills all around. Lots of grass and flowers. All my dearest friends from my whole life there to share the happiness with me.’ She paused. ‘Not too likely, I’m afraid. My dearest friends are a motley bunch and they’re spread all over the world.’

  ‘We’re just imagining,’ he said easily. ‘What else?’

  ‘A simple dress. White with broderie anglaise. Bouquets of daisies. I’ve always loved daisies.’ She rose up slightly on one elbow to look at him as best she could. ‘When you got married, did you have daisies?’

  ‘Daisies?’ He sounded incredulous. His voice was rough, too, as if it hurt to remember. ‘Hardly. We had roses. Red roses. Tons of ’em. And there was nothing simple about any of it. Pomp and circumstance. Silk and taffeta. It wasn’t the dress, but how much money it cost that mattered to Shanna.’ He flung himself over on to his back again, shaking the hammock so that they swung erratically.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Courtney said quickly. ‘I shouldn’t have brought it up.’

  She felt him shrug. ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s over. Forget it.’ He shifted again so that his back was to her this time. ‘Go to sleep.’

  And that, she thought grimly, was that.

  ‘I’ll try.’

  She tried. They both tried. But dawn came before sleep did. And when the first faint rays of morning light crept through the rough walls of the hut she shifted on to her back and found herself staring into Aidan’s bloodshot eyes and stubbled face. The nearness of him overwhelmed her, and she pulled back.

  ‘Did you sleep?’ she asked him.

  ‘Are you kidding?’

  The intimacy of their position irritating her now that it was light enough to see, she snapped, ‘Well, it’s not my fault.’

  ‘Of course not,’ he answered just as fractiously.