A Convenient Wedding

CHAPTER TEN

‘THE fête’s going to be spoiled,’ the vicar’s wife sighed. ‘The weather’s cloudy and Lady Larne isn’t coming, after she promised!’

Her husband tried to soothe her. ‘Lord Larne said she was detained by urgent family affairs, but he’s very kindly agreed to take her place. And I believe that just possibly-’ his tone suggested some astounding concession ‘-the Honourable Sarah Ashton will be accompanying him.’

If Mrs Rogers was overwhelmed at the prospect of this treat she managed to conceal it admirably.

People had been arriving for the fête for the last half-hour. Lord Larne was there, smiling but ill at ease. The Honourable Sarah had also deigned to grace them with her presence and walked about, her arm tucked proprietarily into Jarvis’s, like one whose moment had arrived. Ferdy had come to watch the fun.

The vicar sighed and looked up at the dark sky.

‘Well, she’s not going to descend out of the clouds, is she?’ his wife snapped.

‘I suppose not. Let’s get on with the opening.’

The crowd had gathered in front of a small raised platform. The vicar took up his position, looking fixedly cheerful. Jarvis did the same, although he felt far from cheerful. A dead weight seemed to have settled in his chest, making everything an effort. Even now that the moment had arrived he found it hard to believe that Meryl had actually let them all down this way.

Sarah’s compassion had been hard to bear. Without actually saying that she’d always predicted this she showed that she regarded him as an object of pity. Which was to say that he’d been a fool. And so he had. When Sarah had promised to accompany him to the fête he hadn’t wished to hurt his old friend by saying that she was no substitute for Meryl, the woman who’d duped and betrayed him. But no woman was a substitute for her.

How eager he’d been to believe her! How nearly he’d yielded! The reality was bitter, and it was only now that he admitted to himself how deeply he’d longed to be convinced.

Bought and paid for emotionally as well as financially.

But hell would freeze over before he allowed anyone to suspect. So he adjusted his smile, assumed an air of attention, and wished he was dead.

‘Good afternoon, ladies and gentleman,’ the vicar said brightly.

He got no further. A buzzing was making itself heard overhead, causing everyone to look up. But whatever was making the noise was coming from above the clouds.

The vicar raised his voice. ‘Once again St Luke’s fête is-’

Suddenly the clouds parted, revealing that the noise was coming from a helicopter. In the same instant the sun came out, streaming down so that the helicopter appeared to be descending directly on a beam of light.

The crowd scattered, leaving the pilot space to land, but nobody went further than necessary. No one was going to miss this.

At last there was a perfect landing, with a blast of propellers that ruined more than one hairdo. The owners never noticed. They were too busy watching the door open and the vision appear.

‘Hello, everyone,’ Meryl called.

A cheer went up, growing louder as she stepped down from the machine. The pilot waved and lifted off, revealing Meryl in all the glory of a scarlet trouser suit and huge hat with scarlet streamers. She raised both hands in the air and turned around so that her smile fell on everyone, then bounded to the platform to shake the vicar by the hand.

‘Bet you thought I wasn’t coming!’ she sang out.

‘I explained that you were unavoidably detained,’ Jarvis said. ‘But we all hoped until the last moment.’

‘You should have known I wouldn’t let you down,’ Meryl said, speaking to both of them, but mostly to him.

The crowd was applauding now, crowding around the platform. Meryl went to the front and launched into the speech she’d been working on for most of the journey. Ferdy sidled up to his sister. ‘You’re supposed to look pleased,’ he murmured.

‘Shut up!’

In a burst of inspiration Meryl made a funny story of her journey and the final mad dash to hire a helicopter, ‘Because I wouldn’t have missed this for anything. And all the time I was in the air one thought kept me going-When I land somebody’s going to give me a lovely cup of English tea. Ladies and gentlemen, I declare this fête well and truly open and-and good luck to all who sail in her.’

Roars of laughter. Applause, cheering. She had been a triumphant success.

She was plied with tea, which she drank with genuine relief. The vicar’s two little girls bounced onto her and Meryl scored another bullseye by remembering their names. Then she was swept off to do a grand tour of the stalls. Many contained home-made items, and each one was a potential trap for giving offence. Meryl sized up the situation fast, and discovered a snag.

‘Where’s Jarvis?’ she muttered in Ferdy’s ear. ‘Tell him it’s life and death.’

Jarvis was nearby. He hadn’t taken his eyes off his wife. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘I haven’t got any cash. I want to buy something from every stall, and I haven’t changed my dollars.’

‘How did you pay for the helicopter?’

Her lips twitched as she looked him in the face. ‘Told them to send the bill to you.’

‘That was very enterprising of you.’

‘Come on, I need money urgently.’ She flapped her hands. ‘Money, money, money!’

Luckily he’d come amply provided with cash for the same purpose. It gave him a strange feeling to be thrusting notes into her eager hands, but then all other thoughts vanished in the pleasure of seeing her again.

She went around, stall by stall, exclaiming with pleasure and buying liberally. Jarvis had to admit she did it beautifully. Whatever she bought she had an idea for using the article at Larne- ‘This would look wonderful on that little table in the library’ -a subtle piece of flattery that won her golden opinions.

‘We usually have a stall with knitted clothes,’ the vicar said, ‘but not this year. All the ladies are busy working on something else. Your doing, I understand.’

She confessed it and a few minutes later Jarvis drew her aside, ‘You didn’t!’ he accused.

‘I did.’

‘I told you what I thought of that idea.’

‘And I told you where you could put your objections-oh, heavens!’

She darted away out of sight behind a tent, from which floated back sounds of anguish and a stomach subjected to too much strain. Jarvis, following at a cautious distance, found her kneeling on the grass.

‘Are you all right?’ he demanded, putting an arm around her shoulders.

‘I am now,’ she gasped. ‘Turbulence-all through the flight-and then the helicopter bounced me around even more. Oof! I shouldn’t have had that last cream cake.’

‘Poor thing,’ he said kindly. ‘Shall I take you straight home?’

‘No way. There’s the children’s fancy dress contest yet.’

‘You’re looking very queasy,’ he said, helping her to her feet.

‘I’ve got a headache. Could you get me something for it?’

He hurried back with aspirin and tea a few moments later to find Meryl no longer there. She’d returned to the fray and was laughing over the antics of a mongrel in the dog obedience trials.

‘These are for her,’ he told Sarah who appeared by his side. ‘She’s not feeling too good, but you wouldn’t know it to look at her.’

‘I’ve never denied that she has spirit,’ Sarah said, boxing clever.

‘Guts,’ Ferdy said firmly. ‘It’s what drove the pioneers.’

‘Pioneering spirit,’ Sarah conceded with ponderous graciousness. ‘But this is hardly pioneering country.’

‘It is to her,’ Jarvis said reprovingly, and went off to ply his wife with tea, aspirin and husbandly concern.

‘Pity you had to ruin the effect at the last minute,’ Ferdy observed to his fulminating sister, then glided away before she could reply.

Meryl scored another triumph with the children’s fancy dress, talking to each of the eight contestants, letting them tell her who they were meant to be. There could be only one winner, but after Meryl’s tour de force nobody felt left out.

Jarvis would gladly have whisked her home at any moment, but she insisted on enduring tea at the vicarage and talking to everybody who dropped in, in the hope of seeing her. It was a masterly performance, but it lasted for hours and he noticed that she touched very little food and looked pale and drawn.

At last he said in her ear, ‘We’re going. No argument.’ And won a look of gratitude.

They just made it over the causeway as the night tide was rising. As soon as they arrived Jarvis said, ‘Put her to bed, Hannah.’

Meryl was asleep almost as soon as her head touched the pillow. She awoke after a few hours to find the room almost dark, but with just enough light for her to discern the man standing looking out of the window. She slipped out of bed and came to him, resting her head on his back, her arms about him. He didn’t move at first, except to touch her hands on his chest.

‘How long have you been here?’ she whispered.

‘All night. I hoped you’d awaken. Meryl-’

‘Don’t say anything now. I’m here. And I’m awake.’

He turned silently, his arms went about her, and in the kiss he gave her she could sense his smile, just as she could sense the delight in his whole self as he gathered her to him.

They loved in darkness, as always, but this time she knew he was really there. Jarvis, the man, the person, was there with her as he’d never been before. Beyond the intense physical pleasure there was the pleasure of the heart. At the moment of greatest passion she thought she heard him whisper her name.

She longed to tell him that she loved him, but she would force herself to be patient. Too much was at stake to risk by rushing things. She ventured to murmur his name back, and drew his head against her quickly before he could react.

Afterwards there was silence. He seemed to have fallen asleep, as she’d always hoped. But after a few minutes she felt him rise and slip away. No matter. It had still been a better homecoming than she’d dared to hope for.

The next morning they went riding together, travelling for miles, enjoying the fresh air of early summer, content in the new peace that reigned between them. There was still a lot to be said, but for the moment they could stop by a stream, lounging on the ground while the horses drank, and look at each other, smiling.

‘I’ve been away for such a short time, yet it all looks different now,’ she observed.

‘I know. We’ve brought the cattle out of their winter quarters into the fields.’

‘And the mowing. I thought harvest wasn’t until August.’

‘We harvest the grain in August. In May we mow the grass so that it can be stored for winter feeding.’

‘I’ll learn.’

His eyes flickered to her, but he said nothing.

‘I wish you’d stayed with me last night,’ she said impulsively.

After a long pause he said, ‘I hate that room.’ He threw a pebble into the water. ‘My mother used to sleep there.’

‘You told me about her death-how they didn’t tell you until you came home-’

‘I knew she wasn’t strong. When she wasn’t on the step to greet me I thought she must be in bed so I ran upstairs to her room. I burst in, longing to see her-’

‘Oh, no,’ she whispered, torn with pity for the eager little boy running towards heartbreak.

‘The room had been stripped. No bedclothes, just a bare mattress. That was how I discovered she was dead. Now I never go there, except once when I thought there was an intruder-’ He gave her a brief smile, inviting her to remember that night. ‘At other times, I prefer it without light.’

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.’