Bride by Contract

by Margaret Rome

  Feeling immeasurably cheapened, she jumped to her feet to choke the accusation. 'Troy had no right… no right at all to betray such confidences, to discuss my background with a total stranger!'

  'Oh, my dear!' In spite of her distress, Morva was struck by Bunty's agonised expression when she rushed to console her. 'Please forgive my clumsy approach! For weeks now, ever since Troy sought me out, I've been rehearsing the opening to our conversation, wondering how best to gain your confidence and eventually—if I should be so blessed— your love. But I cannot allow you to think badly of Troy,' she gasped, brushing away tears that had doused every glint of happiness from frightened grey eyes. 'I simply could not live with the thought of having caused you further pain, of destroying your life for the second time around. Believe me,' she gulped, 'Troy has never once mentioned your childhood to me!' She grasped Morva by the shoulders and shook her urgently. 'He didn't need to, my darling—I'm your mother!'

  Instinctively, Morva recoiled from the presence of the woman who since early childhood had been depicted in her mind as the evil stepmother or the wicked witch in every lurid fairy tale. Hail battering on the windowpanes filled the darkened room with an ominous drumming, fast as her heartbeats, as she stood frozen with horror, staring at the mother who had been reduced to a weeping trembling wreck by an expression on her daughter's face she had judged to be loathing.

  'I'm sorry you dislike me so much, Morva,' she sobbed, turning her tear-drenched face aside. 'Obviously our meeting is a dreadful mistake. But Troy seemed so certain of its success…' Her voice trailed into silence as she stumbled back to her chair and sat with head bowed, fighting to control an ague of trembling.

  'What has Troy to do with us?' Morva demanded stonily. 'I understood that a business arrangement between himself and your husband had made this visit necessary.'

  When Bunty shook her head and lifted her shoulders in a dejected shrug Morva jerked, recognising one of her brother's mannerisms, realising why she had felt such instant affinity with a woman she had met as a stranger but who was actually her own flesh and blood.

  'Our husbands did not meet until very recently. Troy has visited us only once before, on the day he was led here after weeks of enquiry about the whereabouts of your mother.

  'It was he who managed to convince me,' she swallowed hard, 'that a reconciliation was essential, that you needed my love even more than I needed yours. That was the only argument,' she stated simply, 'that managed to change my mind about staying out of your life even though, on the day I was persuaded that for your own good I must never see you again, my heart was torn in two and a half of it left in your keeping.'

  'You were persuaded?' Morva queried, shaken in spite of misgivings, by her mother's sincerity. 'By whom…?'

  'My dear,' she sighed, 'do you really need to ask? By your grandmother, who else…?'

  Looking utterly worn out, Bunty leant back until her brown hair, tinted a shade or two redder than Morva's, was spread against a chair cushion, then she closed her eyes and confessed in a dull, expressionless monotone.

  'I've been a very bad mother to my only daughter.

  Percy, I'm certain, will remember me with affection, because for the first twenty years of my marriage to your father I tried my utmost to be a good wife and mother, to make the best of a marriage whose hasty beginning was followed by years of bitter repentance. But by the time you made an appearance, my darling—the daughter I had always yearned for, whose love and companionship were to make twenty years of hell seem worthwhile,' she murmured, held rapt by memories so absorbing she did not register the sound of Morva's weak-kneed collapse into a chair, 'the war your grandmother had been waging to regain complete domination over your father had been won.'

  Restlessly, she stirred. 'I can't bear to go into details,' she decided, firming a mouth that quivered with pain, 'but a brief synopsis of your father's existence would probably read: A schoolboy repressed by a dominating mother. A teenager made prematurely staid by responsibilities inherited upon the death of his father. A young man bemused by his first taste of freedom, let loose among the devil-take-tomorrow youth of wartime Britain with disastrous and far reaching results. A middle-aged man,' she concluded bitterly, 'who chose to live the life of a recluse rather than face a battery of maternal reproaches and a wife and son whose presence was a permanent thorn pricking his conscience!'

  A wave of remorse lifted Morva to her feet and carried her towards the crumpled, white-faced woman who appeared to have aged twenty years in as many minutes. Noiselessly she slid down on to her knees to stare into the face of a mother who was oblivious to her close proximity. Suspecting that the picture her grandmother had painted might have been deliberately distorted, she eyed her kindly, freed of all the bitterness she had felt, all the doubts she had nurtured—except one.

  'Mother!' she shook her gently. 'How could any mother be persuaded to desert her infant daughter?'

  Lids lifted slowly over eyes glowing with wonder, and also a lingering shadow of doubt about whether she had misheard the forgiving form of address. Tentatively, timidly, her hands reached out to cup Morva's face between her palms.

  'Because I was judged the guilty party when the divorce suit was heard, your father was granted custody of his daughter, whereas I was allowed access to visit just once a month. Because for the first three years of your life you and I had been inseparable, you became more and more agitated at the end of each visit, consequently, I had to force myself to accept, even before the solicitor's letter and the doctor's report arrived, that only a complete separation would lessen your heartbreak. But although I had to stop visiting, I never stopped loving my baby,' she almost crooned. 'Never has a child been so loved, never has a daughter so occupied her mother's thoughts. Right up until this present year,' she confided with a laugh that lodged halfway in her throat, 'I've bought you a present each Christmas and every birthday. There's a room upstairs reserved exclusively for my daughter's possessions,' she urged shakenly, 'would you like to see it?'

  The question hung in the air between them, the words prosaic, yet the meaning behind them of terrific importance to the woman who was waiting to be told whether she was to be accepted as a mother, and to the lonely, rejected girl who had thought herself unloved and was having great difficulty coming to terms with the notion of being a loved, adored, only daughter. Even the storm outdoors seemed momentarily to abate, ceased rattling hail against the windowpanes as if anxious to overhear Morva's shyly whispered acceptance.

  'Yes, please, Mother, I should love to see my room.'

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Morva fell blissfully in love with the dainty, feminine appeal of the room that was such a marked contrast to the hateful Chinese bridal suite, and to the bedroom she had occupied previous to her marriage that had contained less comfort than cheerless Victorian servants' quarters.

  It became obvious the moment she stepped inside that her mother had expiated a burden of grief and frustration by creating a spring-fresh, flowered-chintz shrine to her lost daughter, the passing of each lonely year marked by objects appropriate to her age—from soft, cuddly toys, up to and including roller skates, a tennis racket, and even a beginner's kit of make-up— that were crammed on to windowseats, ranged around walls, and lovingly positioned on top of a peach-frilled, kidney-shaped dressing table.

  In an absolute tizzy of excitement her mother pulled open drawers and cupboards, unearthing a positive treasure trove of carefully chosen presents.

  'I bought this fan in Madrid for your fifteenth birthday.' She flicked her wrist and posed with a spread of white hand-painted silk held close to her face so that laughing eyes were peeping over a rim of ivory spokes tipped with tiny diamonds.

  'This mantilla I spotted in Rome a year later is a perfect match for the fan, don't you think?' She draped a fall of white, exquisitely worked lace over Morva's head and together they bent down to admire the result in the dressing-table mirror. Smiling expressions changed to looks of wonder as the
y stared at their twin reflections, noting remarkable similarities of bone structure, hairline, and the identical shape and colour of brown eyes made soulful even as they glowed by shadows of past pain captured in their depths.

  'I wish I could have seen you on your wedding day, my darling.' Her mother's lips quivered while their glances held. 'I've spent hours mooning over how you must have looked as a bride, how sweet and innocently appealing.'

  She jerked upright, abruptly breaking the spell. 'At least there is one gift that can be presented at an appropriate time. Well almost…!' she qualified, hastening to open the door of a fitted wardrobe that filled the entire length of one wall. 'All these are yours,' she assured her bemused, wide-eyed daughter, swishing a hand across a colourful burst of silk, taffeta, cotton, organza, satin and lace spilling from hangers suspended from a centre rail, 'but hopefully, you will consider this the piece de resistance, a dainty addition to your wedding trousseau.'

  'Mother, please stop,' Morva protested weakly, 'I'm completely overwhelmed! The gifts are all beautiful,' she swept an encompassing hand around the bedroom, 'and I can't tell you how much I appreciate your generosity, but there's far too much—I would need to live to be a hundred to wear all those clothes! And in any case,' she concluded gently, 'I need time to appreciate the greatest gift of all. The mother I thought had been lost forever…'

  With a sob of gratitude that made words superfluous, her mother consigned a diaphanous confection of cream satin nightwear to the floor and ran to enfold Morva within a loving hug.

  'I can hardly believe my luck.' She blinked back tears of happiness. 'Not every mother is blessed with a daughter who is loving and forgiving. And wise too.' Then briskly she pulled herself together. Flinging an arm around Morva's shoulders, she guided her out of the bedroom, hesitating on the threshold to cast a backward glance and to assure a trifle ruefully. 'I've gained a great deal of pleasure and comfort from this room, but I suppose its contents could be construed as bribery, a planned attempt to buy an estranged daughter's affection. That is far from the case, but if you should have any doubts Alan will no doubt tell you—as he has often told me in the past—that I'm apt to swamp those I love with floods of affection. To me, loving is inextricably bound up with giving so I'm afraid, dear child, you've no option but to learn to float with the tide.'

  They heard the muffled sound of thunder rumbling overhead as they went in search of their husbands and found them standing in front of the sitting-room window eyeing the theatrical effects of lightning silhouetting surrounding pine forests, and a deluge of rain turning flower beds into ponds and paths into sloping torrents.

  'Alan, dear,' Bunty reproved as she and Morva fumbled their way across the darkened room, 'it's so gloomy in here, please turn on the lights.'

  Immediately both men turned to offer assistance.

  'It's no use,' Alan explained, 'the storm has brought down the power lines and we've been temporarily cut off. Even the phone is out of order.'

  'Oh, good!' she exclaimed, making no attempt to hide her delight. 'That means Morva and Troy will have to stay the night.'

  Immediately, Morva's eyes sought for Troy's reaction, but shadows had made his features unreadable. His tone, however, was calmly confident, 'I've driven through worse storms than this back home. I'm certain we'll make it back to Ravenscrag.'

  'I don't doubt that you have,' Alan cautioned, 'but you must bear in mind that roads in Canada, and especially in the Rockies, have been designed to cope with a variety of weather conditions, where as here in Britain, where the erratic climate can run the gamut of four seasons within the space of one day, roads can be rendered impassable in hours by flooded dips and fords!'

  'Then the argument is settled!' Bunty forestalled the protest she sensed might be imminent. 'I just love the idea of Morva's bedroom being brought into use. I'll just slip and tell Cook there'll be two extra for dinner, mercifully, we cook by gas and not electricity.'

  'But I've no change of clothing,' Troy's attempt to forestall her held a hint of desperation.

  'As if that matters! You are family, dear boy. I don't care what you're wearing, it's your company I want at dinner.'

  'If you're worried about pyjamas, I've plenty of spare sets.' Alan's grin conveyed the sympathy of a man who had learned to surrender with good grace to his wife's determined pressure.

  'Troy doesn't wear pyjamas,' Morva responded absently, her mind absorbed with the problem of how to fit a man of his size into a chintz, toy, and bric-a-brac filled bedroom without courting some giant-sized disaster.

  The appealing naiveté of her remark was forcibly rammed home by a concerted chorus of laughter. Even Troy was grinning, amused by the mortification that caused her to blush and stammer.

  'What I really meant to say was I've never actually seen him wearing- '

  'No need to elaborate, honey bunch,' Troy drawled a warning, strolling to increase her confusion by dropping a tender kiss on to her woebegone mouth. She responded to his cue by offering no resistance when he pulled her into his arms, realising that his fond action was a ploy to enable him to whisper urgently into her ear.

  'I guess we'll have to stay. Do you mind…?'

  Somehow she forced herself to respond with a negative shake of her head before he released her to address their smiling audience.

  'You win, Bunty. Your daughter and I accept with pleasure your kind invitation to stay overnight.'

  Bunty spent the next couple of hours excitedly hogging the conversation, outlining in detail the happiness inspired by the recent reunion and the many plans she had drawn up for future occasions. Looking totally relaxed, both men sat with legs stretched out towards a roaring log fire, listening patiently, contributing little to the conversation but an occasional grunt or nod, stirring only to set a flaring match to the bowl of a fragrant briar.

  .Morva, too, sat silent with her feet curled up beneath her and her head resting in the hollow of a winged armchair, trying once again to analyse the exciting, nerve-tingling, pulse racing sensations that had been aroused from their shallow resting place by Troy's perfunctory kiss.

  'Troy,' vaguely, Morva's mind registered her mother's note of pleading, 'please describe to me exactly how Morva looked on her wedding day!' Then was startled to attention by his lazy drawl.

  'Like a ghostly replica of her grandmother as she looked on her wedding day, I should imagine. A prudish Edwardian maiden primed to submit meekly to her husband's physical demands, but kept tightly buttoned, laced, and corseted, as if to ensure that his patience would evaporate long before his passion. Also, the white lace wings she wore swept back from her face reminded me of a sight commonly seen in continental market places where limp young doves are laid in rows, each one plucked, trussed and dressed to titillate the appetite of some insensitive gourmet.'

  'I was not corseted!' Morva flashed, incensed by the scornful sketch he had drawn.

  'Well, perhaps not,' he conceded with a teasing grin, 'but I assure you, the effect was the same as if you had been.'

  A rumble of amusement disturbed Alan's inert frame. 'Nothing much can go wrong with a marriage between two people who share the same sense of humour,' he assured his completely hoodwinked wife.

  She nodded happily. 'You're such a tease, Troy, I don't believe a word you say. My daughter is a child of today, I'm sure, far too sensible in her outlook to pander to the Victorian myth that all husbands are brutes and all wives submissive slaves. These days, girls go into marriage knowing their partners are human, beset by the same uncertainties as they are themselves. Modern man has no time for the passive, dependent, sexually repressed females of yesteryear. He expects his partner to be a buddy, a true equal who is prepared to share all responsibilities, including taking the initiative whenever she should feel like making love.'

  This novel and rather daring aspect of marriage occupied Morva's thoughts during the hour she spent acceding to her mother's coaxing to dress for dinner in one of the many new gowns that had been carefu
lly chosen to suit the stature and colouring of a girl whose childish build and features had indicated a definite tendency to develop along the same lines as her slim, attractive mother. Troy had been busy having a wash and tidy up in the bathroom that had been put at his disposal when she had chased her mother from the room, insisting she would manage without her assistance so that she, too, might enjoy an element of surprise when she judged the final results.

  But when the time came to choose, Morva stood in front of the bulging wardrobe feeling bewildered as an urchin who had suddenly been called upon to step into the shoes of a spoiled princess. Hesitantly, she reached towards an off-the-shoulder ballgown in sequins and silk chiffon then drew back, deciding that it was much too elegant for such an informal occasion. She turned her attention to a slinky white sheaf of sequinned jersey but was frightened off by a plunging neckline that looked as if it might expose her navel, then dithered between a bright red, full-skirted dress with a romantic heart-shaped bodice and the blue printed silk which she eventually pounced upon when a glance at the clock told her that dinner was almost due to be served and any further delay might cause the impact of her transformation to be marred by Troy's hungry impatience.

  It did not occur to her to wonder why she should be thinking only of his reaction to her changed appearance when she trembled into a dress that seemed to heave a sensuous sigh as it slithered over her head to writhe and cling around every curve until it reached the arched insteps of slender feet strapped into pearlised leather sandals with spiky heels that held her teetering at least three inches above the floor. The cut-away bodice swept over one shoulder, leaving the other completely bare. A broad, frivolous ruffle, so light it rose at the slightest movement, was positioned like a sash across one shoulder while the rest of the dress was left plain to display a design of clear bubbles printed on a background of celestial blue that seemed to become activated as she walked, creating the illusion of an enticing, glossy-haired sprite raising a naked arm and shoulder from a froth of sea foam.