Lucy Gordon - A Convenient Wedding

She touched his face. ‘No wonder you don’t trust anyone. But don’t mistrust me, Jarvis. Don’t hide from me.’

‘That’s easy to say. A sensible man keeps himself hidden.’

‘That wouldn’t be a sensible man. It would be a stunted one. If he keeps himself a prisoner how can he ever reach out to anyone?’

‘I can’t argue with you. I don’t know how. You’re too good with words.’

‘And you think there’s nothing to me but words?’

After a moment he said quietly. ‘You know better than that.’ And for once it was the voice that spoke to her in the night. And suddenly the night was there with them, despite the sunshine. Memory was stronger. His eyes, too, were defenceless.

‘I thought you weren’t coming back,’ he said quietly.

‘I was always going to come back.’

‘Are you here to stay now?’

She hesitated. ‘I have to return once more, because I left in such a hurry-’

‘Yeah, sure. Well, just let me know when. Time we were going.’

The moment was over. Like a hunted creature that sees the glint on the gun barrel and darts away, he’d spotted danger and retreated into his prickly shell.

But she’d advanced a step into his confidence. The battle was winnable, she thought as they returned home.

Sometimes she asked herself why she bothered. She had a good life waiting for her on the other side of the Atlantic, people who admired her and things she had planned to do when she had control of her fortune. Why not just draw a line under Jarvis, go off and enjoy her life?

Because nothing was the same any more.

Life meant being here, with the man who’d seized painful hold of her heart and wouldn’t let it go.

What did he have to recommend him to her? His title? It meant nothing. His great estate? She could buy all the land she wanted.

His castle? She could probably buy one of those too, somewhere.

What then?

And here her inner arguments fell silent in the face of the truth. By floundering around, not really knowing what she was doing, she had somehow stumbled on the one man who could give her what she didn’t already have. His need.

She could add to that the need of his people, hundreds of them, all unwittingly giving her something that she needed, the satisfaction of knowing that she was making a difference for good. But it was Jarvis’s need, dumb, heart-wrenching, beyond his power to express, that ached within her, drawing her back here when common sense would have told her to go.

Their fragile peace held for a while. One day Jarvis came home to find workmen crawling all over the castle with instruments.

‘They’re giving me an estimate for the central heating,’ Meryl explained. When he frowned doubtfully she engaged him eyeball to ball, saying, ‘I am Lady Larne. I am mistress of this castle, and I want central heating.’

‘You’re probably right,’ he agreed meekly.

He didn’t complain when the turnip mattress mysteriously morphed into the latest fully sprung wonder, not even when Meryl said, ‘I didn’t actually throw the turnips away. I mean, they’re part of England’s heritage, aren’t they? You can give them to the nation, and say, “Queen Elizabeth I slept on these”.’

He grinned. ‘No, she slept on cabbages in the West Wing.’

But the following week their truce began to fray when he said, ‘I’ve had Ned Race and his cronies onto me, complaining that you’re filling their wives’s and daughters’s heads with nonsense.’

‘Cheek!’ Meryl exploded.

‘These men run family farms that need everyone’s help. Now the women are spending all their time knitting.’

‘I know Ned Race. He leaves the bulk of the work to his womenfolk, does as little as possible himself, and spends too much time in the pub.’

‘Nonsense, I’ve known him for years.’

‘But what do you know?’ Meryl demanded indignantly. ‘What he wants you to know. You should try talking to Clarrie Race and you’d hear a few things that would surprise you. Ned’s bellyaching because he’s got to shift his fat backside for a change.’

‘Meryl, I know you think you know what you’re talking about, but believe me, you don’t, and it isn’t kind of you to encourage these women to neglect reality and chase shadows. What was that?’ Meryl had made a noise.

‘I said a very rude word,’ she said crossly. ‘One of the best in my repertoire. It needed saying. It applies to Ned Race in bucketfuls and I’m beginning to think it applies to you, too. But since you’re my husband I’ll just call you a blinkered dinosaur with the discernment and farsightedness of a newt.’

‘That doesn’t make any sense.’

‘It does where I’m standing,’ she said dangerously.

The subject was dropped, but there were others that only just avoided being quarrels. Sometimes his own defences failed him and she sensed the ardour that he couldn’t entirely deny. At other times she felt as though he was almost trying to drive her away, willing her to live down to his worst fears so that he could kill his hopes and have done with it. But that was to imagine that he had hopes, which she hardly dared believe.

At the end of June Sarah departed to visit the Hamlins on Long Island, and Meryl said, ‘I shall have to go back soon, myself.’

‘Is it really necessary?’ Jarvis asked politely.

‘There’s a load more things to be signed, stuff I don’t want to entrust to the mail. Besides, I want to see Benedict’s opening. He called me today-’

‘Then of course you must go,’ Jarvis interrupted her. ‘I expect you’ll be off tomorrow.’

‘Well, maybe. I only wanted to tell you-’

‘But, my dear, there’s no need for you to tell me anything. I wouldn’t dream of prying into your private affairs.’

‘Why do you do that?’ she asked, exasperated. ‘One minute we’re fine, and the next you set me at a distance.’

‘Perhaps it’s because I’m always aware of how easily you set Larne at a distance when your memory fails.’

‘The fête again. I thought we’d sorted that.’

‘It’s true that you retrieved the situation in fine style, but only because you managed to hire that helicopter. That’s not remembering. That’s forgetting and covering up.’

‘I didn’t forget Larne, or my promise. I just didn’t notice that the date had crept up on me. It could happen to anyone.’

‘No, it could only happen to a woman who was used to buying her way out of trouble. You forgot us.’

If she hadn’t been so agitated she would have noticed that ‘us’. Instead she demanded, ‘Then why didn’t you call and remind me? You weren’t secretly hoping I’d blot my copy book, were you?’

‘No way!’ He was genuinely shocked. ‘I’d never let other people be hurt in our private disputes.’

‘Then why not remind me?’

‘Because,’ he said reluctantly, ‘I admit that I forgot, too. I had a nasty shock when the vicar called me that very morning.’

‘Hah!’

‘You can hah! as much as you like. I wasn’t the one they were counting on. If you couldn’t have afforded that helicopter the truth would have been there for everyone to see.’

‘Why must my money always get in the way? If you’d been the one with money, you wouldn’t expect me to mind about it.’

A strange look passed over his face. ‘If I’d had money it would have been my pleasure to give you everything. As it is, every natural impulse I have is checked. How am I supposed to feel married to you when I have nothing to give?’

‘But accepting gladly is a kind of giving. If your acceptance makes the other person happy-don’t you see?’

‘How can I accept gladly when I know that this is all really for Benedict Steen?’ There was a new, dangerous edge on his voice. ‘Don’t you think it’s time we discussed your relationship with that man?’

‘You mean, am I in love with Benedict? You’ve been listening to Larry.’ In her earnestness she took Jarvis’s shoulders between her hands and shook him. ‘Now, listen you, and listen good. I am not in love with Benedict. OK, I made him a loan of ten million dollars and perhaps I’ll lose it. That might prove I need my head examined; it does not prove I’m in love with him. End of story. He’s married.’

‘And on the verge of divorce, apparently.’

‘Not if he can prevent it. He loves Amanda, and that’s fine by me.’

A doubt came into Jarvis’s eyes. ‘Honestly?’

She shook him again. ‘Yes, honestly. I’m going to New York to tie things up and make sure I hire the bookkeeper.’

‘And what happens then?’

She gave him a teasing look. ‘Depends how much you miss me.’

The next moment she was being crushed in a bear hug and his mouth was on hers in the most demanding kiss he had ever given her. Even in the secrecy of their nighttime selves he’d never spoken so clearly of ruthless desire and purpose.

She grew still in his arms, relishing the movements of his lips, savouring the long, long moments of passion that were sending messages scurrying through her. In another moment she would abandon the trip altogether.

When he released her he was breathless and there was a glow in his eyes that thrilled her.

‘That’s how much I’ll miss you,’ he gasped. ‘If you want to know more, you’ll have to come back to me.’

SHE told herself that it was good to be back in New York, where there were people who wanted her. Benedict’s gorgeous new premises on Fifth Avenue were almost ready to open for business, and he was about to launch his collection. She began spending her time there, enjoying the satisfaction of seeing the project come to fruition, just as she’d always hoped.

But as his professional dreams were being realised Benedict was still deeply unhappy, and at last Meryl decided it was time for decisive action. One evening she slipped into the darkened building and past the security guard, who recognised her but raised his eyebrows at the young woman with her. Meryl put her finger over her lips and passed on, accompanied by the other woman.