Lucy Gordon - A Convenient Wedding

Jarvis was about to protest when he realised that this was exactly what was happening. He had decided that he would not marry Meryl Winters. But she had decided that he would. And soon they would be married, all to suit the convenience of this insolent sponger who showed no appreciation of the woman who loved him, or the sacrifice she was making for him.

His dislike of Benedict was so strong that he could almost taste it, and it drove the next words out of his mouth.

‘Since you’re going to be here for a while, Mr Steen, why don’t you invite your wife to join you?’

Benedict’s eyes, so brilliant a moment before, went dead.

‘You’re very kind,’ he said in a flat voice, ‘but I’m afraid that won’t be possible.’

‘Why not? She’d be very welcome. Call her.’

If he’d doubted the other man’s intentions he knew better now. At this mention of an inconvenient wife Benedict gave him a look of sheer malevolence. ‘Mrs Steen is busy arranging our divorce,’ he said flatly. ‘How about a top-up?’

He held out his glass and Jarvis filled it. And filled it. And filled it.

‘Your friend drank himself legless,’ he observed to Meryl next morning. ‘I had to help him to bed.’

‘Poor Benedict, he doesn’t hold his drink well. Never did. Still, there’s nothing like booze for a little male bonding. I expect you two understand each other perfectly now.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Jarvis said grimly. ‘We do that all right.’

Soon everyone knew that things had changed. Hannah hired an army of domestics to prepare the castle for guests. Workmen flooded in, armed with hammers and nails. It was a makeshift job for the moment. The major repairs would have to wait until after the wedding.

Inch by inch Larne Castle resumed some of its former glory. Floors and furniture gleamed with polish, doors and windows no longer rattled. As Jarvis saw his home beginning to look loved again he found that he could relax, and even begin to think of happiness as something possible.

A package arrived from New York which he guessed was from Larry. Knowing she was upstairs, he took it up to her. Her bedroom door was slightly ajar and he ventured to look in without knocking. The next moment he wished he hadn’t.

Meryl stood by the window dressed only in wispy bra and panties. In the first stunned moment Jarvis took in every detail, the delicate lace of her matching underwear, and how little of it there seemed to be. He saw too the sweet curves of her slim, nearly naked figure, and how exactly it matched his haunting memories. But most of all he observed, with displeasure, that Benedict Steen was standing with his arms about her waist, carefully adjusting a tape measure.

They looked up at him, neither of them surprised or disconcerted. Meryl smiled. ‘Benedict’s just taking final measurements for my dress,’ she said.

‘Perhaps, when you’re free, we could talk,’ Jarvis said frostily.

‘You’d better go, honey,’ Meryl said.

‘Are you going to be all right?’ Benedict asked, watching Jarvis’s face warily.

‘Don’t be silly, of course I’ll be all right,’ she said cheerfully.

Benedict got out fast. The other two regarded each other, condemnation on one face, ironic defiance on the other.

‘I gather I’m not supposed to mind,’ he said.

‘Mind what? What is there to mind?’

‘That’s a very cool question. Do you make a habit of letting men into your bedroom when you’re naked?’

‘I’m not naked.’

‘As near as dammit!’

‘Benedict makes my clothes. He sees me wearing less than anyone else, and neither of us thinks anything of it.’ She gestured down at herself. ‘This isn’t naked-not naked as in “naked”. It’s not the same thing at all.’

But it was exactly the same thing, he thought, watching the urgent rise and fall of her breasts, barely enclosed in the flimsy lace. He knew how they looked without even that faint protection, and the knowledge tormented him.

‘The distinction is hidden from me,’ he said curtly.

‘Benedict doesn’t see me as a woman. We’re like brother and sister. Surely you’ve seen that?’

He hadn’t. To Jarvis it was inconceivable that any man could look on Meryl’s beauty and not be half mad with the longing to possess her.

The full bitterness of his position burst on him. In the eyes of the world he was a lucky man, privileged to gather this rich harvest. Only he knew that he must stand by with his nose pressed against the window while another man was free to enter her room, touching her at will. Brother and sister?

‘What you do after our divorce is no concern of mine-’ he said stiffly.

‘Isn’t it a little soon to be looking forward to our divorce?’

‘It’s never too soon to be practical. We both know why you’re doing this. If you’re fool enough to go to these lengths for him, that’s up to you-’

‘For heaven’s sake-’ Half-indignant, half-amused, Meryl threw up her hands and turned away, but Jarvis grasped her arm firmly and pulled her back to him.

‘Understand me, Meryl, I won’t be made a fool of. I won’t have people laughing at me and saying my wife is so infatuated with another man that she can’t behave herself properly. While you’re Lady Larne you’ll behave as Lady Larne.’

‘Oh, really!’ Meryl said, her temper beginning to rise. ‘And what would she do? Refuse to let her dressmaker near her?’

‘She’d refuse to let any man near her while she was like this-except me.’

‘Except you,’ she whispered. ‘Except you-’

Her anger faded. With her body pressed against his she could feel him trembling. Meeting his eyes, she saw in them the look she’d most wanted to see. It said that he wanted her-against his will, his reason, his reserve, even against his survival instinct. Everything in him was fighting her, but he was losing the battle. Just as she was.

Her body was growing warm under his gaze. She could sense her own colour rising and wondered if he saw and understood. His fingers burned her arm and she could feel his lips again, kissing her everywhere as she wished he would.

‘You-ought to let me go,’ she said slowly.

‘Yes.’ He spoke like a man who didn’t know what he was saying, and his fingers moved, but only to tighten their grasp on her arm.

‘Is this what Lord Larne does,’ she whispered, ‘when he visits Lady Larne?’

‘I think he doesn’t visit her at all.’

‘Not until after the wedding?’

‘Not even then. He’s too sensible for that.’

‘Oh, Jarvis,’ she breathed, ‘don’t you ever take a holiday from being sensible?’

‘Never,’ he said bitterly. ‘It’s too late for me.’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘I can’t change now. Even you can’t do that for me.’

He released her arm and raised his hand just enough for his fingers to brush against her cheek, her lips.

‘We have a business arrangement,’ he murmured. ‘I think perhaps we should keep it that way. Let’s both be-sensible.’

She didn’t believe him. At any moment he would kiss her, as she was aching for him to do. But he didn’t. Instead he pulled quickly away and hurried out of the room, leaving her desolate.

THE night before the wedding every guest room in the castle was filled. Some, but not as many as Jarvis had expected, were taken by Meryl’s friends who’d arrived from America in the previous few days. Most were taken up by local people, Jarvis’s tenants and neighbours, whom Meryl had insisted on inviting to stay that night and the next one, so that they would have no trouble with the tides.

It was the kind of thoughtful gesture Jarvis was coming to expect from her, and it increased his eerie feeling of watching two people. She was the warm-hearted woman who reached out to the people of Larne, eagerly seeking their acceptance. Or she was the temptress hunting his scalp before vanishing with a triumphant laugh. He would watch her, wondering which woman was the true one, and whether she knew the difference herself. Sometimes she seemed to change from one to the other with a smile, the turn of her head.

Dinner on the last night was a cheerful meal, with everyone in good spirits. Meryl’s particular friends, Brenda and Everett Hamlin, a married couple who bred horses, were over from Long Island, and struck up an immediate bond with Sarah. Meryl found herself next to Harry, whom she’d been anxious to meet.

Harry was the local historian, a retired university professor, who knew more about the Larne family than any man alive, including Jarvis. He was elderly and small, with a bald, bullet head and sharp, twinkling eyes.

‘You’re not a sentimentalist, I gather,’ he said when they’d talked for a while.

‘You mean, do I regard myself as the reincarnation of Marguerite?’ she said. ‘Not at all. Ferdy was going to have that ballad sung at the wedding breakfast but I’ve forbidden him on pain of having his toes stamped on. Jarvis would hate all that stuff about a “rich man’s daughter”.’

‘Quite right,’ Harry said approvingly. ‘I’m afraid that prickly sensibility has taken too firm a hold on him to be quite abandoned now.’

‘But it’s strange. I thought British titles often made this kind of marriage.’

‘You’re right. It’s certainly been the norm in the past, but the Larnes have always had a possessive streak, and in him it seems to be doubled. When he was nineteen he became infatuated with the daughter of one of the tenants, a feckless character who was always behind with his rent. Her name was Gina. Pretty girl, very good-natured, but with a laugh that could cut glass. Mallory Larne tolerated the relationship as long as he thought Jarvis was just fooling.’

‘Droit de seigneur?’ Meryl asked mischievously.

Harry laughed. ‘Well, it’s true that you’ll see the Larne face all over the estate, but they come down from the past. I don’t think Jarvis has ever made a contribution. He’s got strict notions of what’s right and proper, and sometimes they get in the way of what’s sensible. He took it into his head to marry this girl, which caused a family bust up. Mallory took action and the girl vanished.’