Second-Best Husband

by Penny Jordan

  To think of stopping now, to think of being denied the satisfaction her body craved.

  She moved her hips and arched her back, moaning frantically as she felt the tormenting thrust of his tongue within her mouth, wanting, needing with all of her body and her soul to have that deeper, more powerful, more intimate thrust of his flesh within hers, so much so that when he finally moved her, caressed her, covered her with the heat and weight of his body, and then finally entered her, she cried out with frantic need, arching to meet his careful controlled movements, wrapping her body around his, raking her nails against his back, overwhelming him so much with the sheer intensity of her need that he cried out to her that he was afraid he might hurt her and that he could no longer control his reaction to her.

  She had read enough, heard enough to know what she might expect to feel, but the actual intensity of her own experience, her own fulfillment was so overwhelming that she cried out almost in panic at the sheer awe-inspiring power of it, her body trembling so much in its aftermath that she felt as physically incapable of movement as though she had lost complete control of her nervous system.

  She was, she discovered with shock, crying, or at least not crying so much as having tears simply seep from her eyes, and she wouldn’t even have realised it if it hadn’t been for the fact that Stuart was tenderly licking them away, as he held her and soothed her, praising her, comforting her, making her realise on a small forlorn surge of depression that for him this was a familiar experience…that this was not for him, as it was for her, something so new, so fresh, so powerful that at the height of it she had actually felt as though she had become immortal. Now, with the immediacy of her passion spent, she felt embarrassed, insecure…ashamed of the wanton way in which she had behaved.

  She tried to pull away from him, but Stuart was holding her too tightly.

  A lassitude, a physical and emotional exhaustion unlike anything she had ever experienced before crept over her, easing her inexorably towards sleep.

  She tried to fight it, to will herself to stay awake, but it was impossible. Her last awareness before she lost her fight to stay awake was of Stuart gently cupping her face, and kissing her, not with passion or desire, but with tenderness and a whole host of other emotions her confused senses could only register impossibly as a mixture of warmth, pleasure, intimacy and understanding, the whole of which somehow went to make up the single word that encompassed them all, and which shimmered dangerously, luring her into hazard and danger; and that word was ‘love’.

  But Stuart didn’t love her. Stuart loved someone else. Stuart…

  She drew a deep uneven breath and, before she had time to release it, had fallen asleep.

  The morning sun woke her, slanting across the bed, warming her closed eyelids, making her move drowsily and languorously, the narcotic of sleep still anaesthetising her senses until she opened her eyes and realised where she was.

  She sat bolt upright in horror and stared towards the window. Not her own bedroom window at home, but Stuart’s bedroom window. Soon to be their bedroom window. Her throat felt tight with shock and disbelief.

  She must have slept very deeply, she realised, because she was wrapped like a mummy in a quilt. There was also only one pillow on the bed, and only one imprint on it—her own. Which meant that either Stuart had sensitively and caringly realised how self-conscious, how diffident, how confused she would feel if she woke up and found him lying there next to her, or he had simply not wanted to stay with her. She shivered a little.

  Someone—and it could only have been Stuart—had folded her clothes neatly for her and placed them on a chair. There was, she discovered, a flask on the table beside the bed, and a note propped up against it.

  She picked it up nervously and read it.

  Coffee in flask. Telephoned your mother last night to tell her that, having shared a bottle of wine over our supper, neither of us felt it would be wise to drive and that you were spending the night here.

  There was nothing else, no message of love…no mention of the intimacies they had shared…but at least he had taken the trouble to telephone her parents, although really there was no reason why he should not have woken her up and sent her home, except…

  Except that had he done so her sense of rejection would have been so intense…so painful…

  Had he known that? Had he guessed that…?

  That what? What was there, after all, for him to guess, to know, other than that where he was concerned she seemed to have a disastrous tendency to lose all self-control, to become so overwhelmed by desire, by need…? She blushed a little, remembering the previous night. Her body felt different—not in the classical sense, there was no discomfort, nothing of that order—but there was a difference: a languorousness, a ripeness almost, as though against her will, against her shock at its wantonness, it clung secretly and sensuously to its memories of the previous night, to its knowledge that it was after all just as much a finely tuned and receptive instrument of passion as anybody else’s, even women of Anna’s ilk. That she was not incapable of experiencing desire…nor, it seemed, of arousing it.

  Whatever fears and apprehensions marriage to Stuart might hold, a lack of sexual compatibility between them could no longer be one of them.

  Was that why he had done it? Was that why? Had she perhaps misinterpreted his response to her after all? Could it have been a deliberate ploy to soothe her fears? Was it possible for a man to pretend…to fake?

  Shakily she extracted herself from the duvet, acknowledging that there was no point in looking for flaws…for doubts. That if she must dwell on what had happened then she would be far better employed in dwelling on something which she could not doubt nor question. Such as her own pleasure.

  She gave a tiny shiver as she opened the door to the bathroom.

  The small room had been panelled in keeping with the bedroom, the plain traditional white suite replacing the tawdry sanitaryware which had been there previously. Coil matting covered the floor, prickling her bare feet slightly. The room had a new, slightly harsh smell about it.

  She closed her eyes, trembling as she remembered how last night she had breathed in the scent of Stuart’s skin, how she had stroked and kissed it, tasting its texture, its heat…its scent with her tongue.

  Her body went hot, a small ache starting up inside her. Angrily she ignored it, turning on the shower, and trying not to wince as she stepped under its icy sting.

  Half an hour later she was downstairs in the study, trying to work.

  She hadn’t wanted any breakfast. She had rung her parents and spoken to her mother, who seemed to think there was nothing out of the ordinary in her having spent the night under Stuart’s roof.

  ‘I’m just on my way out,’ her mother told her. ‘I want to have a word with Gwen Roberts, to check the flowers for the church.’

  Sara replaced the receiver. She had the house to herself. Before coming down, she had studied the bed, her fingers drifting gently over its carving. Her wedding gift. The kind of gift that a man might make for a woman whom he greatly loved. She smiled bitterly to herself. The love was there, self-evident in the workmanship, but it was not love for her; it could not be…rather it must be love for the house. The bed wasn’t so much a gift for her as a gift for the manor. She tried not to imagine how she might feel if Stuart had actually felt that kind of emotion for her, that depth of love, that intensity of commitment.

  She was not going to cry, she told herself fiercely. After all, what was there to cry for? She was marrying a man with whom she had every chance of building a safe, secure life; she knew him well enough now to know that he would make her a loyal and caring husband, that he would be a loving father to their children, that he would share his life with her. That he would… Love her? Hardly… But then why should she want him to when…? She froze as she heard a car drawing up outside, and hurried into the kitchen, automatically assuming that it must be Stuart, hesitating only when she reached the kitchen, worrying at her botto
m lip as she acknowledged that he might not be best pleased to find her standing here in the kitchen waiting for him.

  She was just walking into the study when the kitchen door opened and a totally unexpected but very familiar male voice called her name.

  It wasn’t the voice she had expected. It wasn’t Stuart’s voice.

  She turned round, scarcely able to believe her ears, her hand going to her throat, her whole body registering her shock.

  ‘Ian…’

  ‘So you haven’t forgotten me?’

  It was all there, the confidence, the self-assurance, the vanity and the self-love, and as he walked towards her she could only wonder that she had never noticed them so intensely before, but had simply accepted them…accepted them humbly and with worshipful adoration.

  Now it was different. Now it was as though the proverbial scales had fallen from her eyes; as though she were a completely different person, and where she had previously felt acceptance she now felt revulsion…revulsion and irritation.

  ‘My poor sweet. How you must have suffered. But that’s all over now…I’ve realised my mistake, and I’m here to eat humble pie, although you must admit that Anna was an alluringly tempting little morsel. Small wonder that I was momentarily dazzled. But that’s all over now.’

  He had followed her into the study, and her nose wrinkled in distaste at the strong smell of his aftershave, far too overpowering in such a small space.

  He was, she realised with some dislike, standing far too close to her as well, invading her personal space to a degree that was not merely impolite, but which also bordered on the sexually intimidating.

  She moved away from him immediately, impelled to do so by her need to put some distance between them, and wished she had not as he followed her closely, pushing the door to behind him.

  As he came towards her, she had to remind herself that this was Ian… Ian whom she had loved for almost all of her adult life. Ian who…

  Ian…who had rejected, spurned her…who had used her, if not sexually then certainly emotionally and mentally, even if he had done so with her acceptance, her connivance almost. Another man, a better man, knowing he could not return her love, would have firmly severed the connection between them immediately he had guessed her feelings. A man like…a man like Stuart, for instance. She swallowed hard, confused and bewildered by her thoughts, trying to tell herself that she ought to be feeling joy, happiness, delirium almost. Ian was here. Ian wanted her… Ian was telling her that it was over between him and Anna, that he wanted her to return to London with him immediately, that he wanted…

  She took a deep breath and interrupted his assured, almost mocking flood of meaningless assurances.

  ‘Ian, I can’t come back to London with you. I’m getting married.’

  ‘Married?’ He raised a taunting eyebrow. ‘Oh, yes, your father did say something of the sort. Something or other about you marrying some bucolic type who lives locally. But honestly, my dear, can you really and truly see yourself living here? You’re a city creature. You’re like me. You and I—’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ she told him shakily. ‘I’m not like you at all, Ian.’

  He looked at her; he was growing irritated now, annoyed with her for refusing to succumb to his charm, his needs. She wondered cynically why it was he wanted her back—to soothe his ego, or to sort out the mess in the office?

  ‘All right, so I made a mistake,’ he was saying now, his voice losing its polish, its allure, sharpening…hardening…grating on her, she recognised with a small stab of guilt. She didn’t want to listen to him, didn’t want to hear what he had to say. Didn’t even want him here at all, she admitted.

  In fact what she wanted…what she wanted most of all was to close her eyes and discover when she opened them again that Ian had gone and that Stuart had taken his place.

  The shock of her own admission threw her. She wanted Stuart…preferred Stuart…needed Stuart… Loved Stuart. But no…how could that be? How could she?

  ‘All right, Sara,’ Ian was saying snappily, ‘So you want your pound of flesh; you want to see me grovelling. Well, I can’t blame you for that, I suppose, although I had rather hoped you’d be above that sort of thing. You of all people know how vulnerable I am, how much I need—’

  ‘To have your ego massaged,’ she supplied drily for him.

  She watched as the blue eyes turned cold and merciless. ‘Anna was right about you,’ he told her venomously. ‘You are a cold, sexless creature. A woman who isn’t really a woman at all. You’re getting married, you say? Why, I wonder? You can’t possibly love him.’

  ‘Can’t I? Why not? Because I was once foolish enough to love you? That’s over, Ian. I think it was over the day Anna told me that you’d known all along how I felt about you. I knew then that I’d loved not a man but a mirage. Stuart is worth a hundred of you.’

  ‘And you love him? You’re lying, Sara. I know you. I know your type. You love me. You always have done and you always will—’

  ‘No!’ she interrupted him vehemently. ‘I don’t love you, Ian.’

  ‘Oh, yes, you do, and on your wedding night when you’re lying cold and unresponsive beside your farmer, it will be me you’ll want…me—’

  ‘No,’ she told him again, and then lifted her head, and said something she could never in a thousand lifetimes have ever imagined herself saying to anyone, never mind to Ian. ‘You’re quite wrong, Ian, and do you know how I know you’re wrong? Last night Stuart and I were lovers. I’d been so afraid, more afraid of anything than I’ve been in my whole life. And do you know why I was afraid? I was afraid because of you. Not because I once loved you, but because of the way you’d hurt me…derided me, allowed Anna to hurt me so cruelly and so fundamentally that I was terrified that she was right; that I was incapable of arousing desire within any man. But then Stuart touched me…showed me…’ She took a deep breath, her voice trembling as she continued bravely, ‘Stuart gave me a pleasure I’d never dreamed could exist for anyone, never mind for me, and he gave me that pleasure generously and freely.’

  She felt tears sting her eyes and dashed them away with the back of her hand.

  ‘And because of that…because of that, even if I didn’t love him, even if I still loved you—which I do not—I would still stay with him, marry him, because you see, Ian, when it comes down to it, Stuart is the most complete, the most whole, the most stable human being I’ve ever known. Beside him you’re nothing but a tawdry, gimcrack imitation of all that a man should be.’

  ‘My God, you do love him, don’t you? All that after one night of sex. He must be good. Tell you what, old girl, if I were you I’d be wondering how he got to be so good. If he’s got that kind of taste for women…for sex, ask yourself. How long is he going to be satisfied with you? He might marry you, but my bet is he won’t be faithful to you. Are you sure you don’t want to change your mind?’

  She had turned her back on him. ‘No, Ian, I won’t change my mind.’

  She didn’t move until she actually heard his car driving away, and then when she tried to move she discovered she was so tense that all she could do was stand there and shake.

  She felt sick, her head was starting to pound, she felt weaker than she had ever felt before in her life and at the same time she felt stronger.

  She loved Stuart. It amazed her that until she had actually framed the words, said them, she had really not known, and yet last night, and even before last night, some deep inner core of her must have known, must have known and must have kept the knowledge hidden from her. Her tremors increased.

  She couldn’t marry Stuart now, of course. It wouldn’t be fair, to either of them. It had worried her enough when she had simply thought she desired him more than he desired her, but now that she knew the truth…

  She gnawed on her bottom lip. How was she going to tell him…convince him? And then she realised that Ian’s visit provided her with the perfect excuse.

  There was no need for Stuart to k
now the truth, for her to embarrass them both by revealing it; she could simply tell him that Ian’s engagement was over, that he wanted her back, that he realised… Her throat closed against the revulsion that filled her body at the thought of even implying that she still loved Ian. She had clung to her delusions for so long that she was actually beginning to wonder if perhaps she had in fact stopped loving him a long time ago, but had simply never allowed herself to admit it. That would certainly explain her lack of physical desire for him, her belief that sexually she was not the type of woman to feel intense desire; a fiction which her reaction to Stuart had very quickly revealed as such.

  She didn’t have long to wait for Stuart’s return. The Land Rover came clattering into the yard just, as luck would have it, as she was making some coffee.

  She watched, her throat taut with pain, her heart aching, as Stuart strode across the yard towards the door. How would he take it? Would he be angry or would he just incline his head in that way he had and listen to her, calmly letting her go?

  She discovered as she picked up her mug that her hands were trembling too much for her to hold it.

  He came into the kitchen and looked across the room towards her.

  ‘Stuart… Stuart, there’s something I have to tell you.’

  He waited in silence, not helping her, but not hindering her either.

  ‘It’s… It’s… I can’t marry you after all,’ she told him shakily, not daring to look at him.

  ‘I see.’ There was a short pause. She tensed as he kicked off his Wellingtons and came across the kitchen, but before he reached her he stopped beside the table, pulling out a chair and sitting down.

  ‘Do you mind if we talk this over sitting down?’ he asked her, flexing his back with a small wince. ‘My back’s killing me. The bed in the spare room isn’t the most comfortable one I’ve ever slept on, and I’ve been transplanting some saplings all morning. This sudden change of heart—of mind should I say?—it wouldn’t have anything to do with last night, would it?’