Newlyweds of Convenience

CHAPTER NINE

‘I’M TAKING Charlie to the vet.’ Mallory found Torr about to climb the scaffolding to the roofers a couple of days later.

Ever since Sheena’s visit they had been frigidly polite to each other. Mallory had been huffy all that evening, and when they’d gone to bed she had firmly turned her back to him and pretended to sleep, telling herself she would do something about another room first thing in the morning.

When you’ve gone. Torr’s words circled endlessly round her brain.

She was the one who had suggested that she only stay a year, Mallory kept reminding herself. It had been her idea to earn her divorce. So why did Torr’s casual acceptance of the fact that she would be leaving in a matter of months hurt so much?

Mallory couldn’t shake the humiliated feeling. She had been happy recently. She had let herself believe that she could live in the present and not worry about the future, and she had let down her guard. She had forgotten the reality of her marriage to Torr.

Torr hadn’t forgotten. He hadn’t lost sight of the truth. They didn’t have a relationship, they had a deal.

That was what she had wanted, wasn’t it?

Mallory didn’t know any more. All she knew was that the warmth of the last few weeks had evaporated, and they were back to the cold formality of the early months of their marriage.

And that she wanted to weep.

Unable to think of anything else to do, Mallory had gone back to her digging. Charlie lay in his usual place in the grass, but he’d been listless again, and when he’d turned away from his breakfast three days running she started to worry in earnest.

‘Do you want me to come with you?’ Torr asked now, when she told him about her decision to take the dog to the vet, but she shook her head.

‘No. I’m sure it’s nothing serious,’ she said, refusing to admit to her own fears. ‘I just wanted to let you know I was taking the car.’

The stilted politeness was awful. Only a few days ago he would have smiled at her, or taken the opportunity to touch her. He might have run a hand down her arm, or smoothed her breeze-blown hair back into place. She might have leant carelessly against him. Their eyes might have met in unspoken anticipation of the night to come.

Now they barely looked at each other.

They couldn’t carry on like this for the rest of the year, Mallory realised. The tension was unbearable. She would have to find a way of sorting it out-but first she had to get Charlie better.

Torr was in the kitchen, about to order materials to be delivered by the builder’s merchant, when Mallory and Charlie came back, but after one glance he put the phone down.

‘What is it?’ he asked sharply.

Mallory’s expression was stony, her eyes stark. She put her bag very carefully on the table. ‘The vet thinks Charlie has a tumour,’ she said, in a voice held so tight it hurt to hear it. ‘He says he can feel it. But he might be wrong, mightn’t he?’

‘What if he isn’t?’ said Torr carefully. ‘Is there anything he can do?’

‘No,’ she said bleakly. ‘Nothing.’ She drew a breath and steadied the treacherous wobble that threatened her voice. ‘So I’m going to believe that he’s wrong, and even if he isn’t that doesn’t mean Charlie is going to die now. There’s no reason to think the worst. He might have a couple of years yet.’

Part of Mallory knew that she was denying Charlie’s illness in the same way that she had denied Steve’s betrayal, but she couldn’t bear to face up to losing her beloved dog. She watched him closely, and told herself and Torr that he seemed better.

Torr never disagreed with her, although it was obvious that Charlie was weaker. He still wagged his tail when a walk was mentioned, but he had lost his bounce and the bright eyes were duller now. Whenever she looked at him, Mallory felt as if there were a cruel iron fist gripping her heart. Not Charlie, she prayed. Please don’t let this be real. Make him better, make the vet wrong. Please don’t let me lose him.

For two weeks she clung to the belief that Charlie wasn’t really that ill, but he grew steadily weaker until he was sleeping most of the time. When she called him, he would struggle to his feet and come over to shove his nose in her hand, but he was very thin and his back legs were unsteady. Still, he would wag his tail feebly, and the look in his eyes told her that he would try and do whatever she asked of him.

Don’t die, Mallory wanted to say to him. That’s all I ask.

She looked up one day from caressing his head to find Torr watching her. ‘He doesn’t seem to be in pain, does he?’ she asked, pleading for him to agree.

‘He’s a brave dog’ was all he said, deliberately not answering her directly, and Mallory’s eyes filled with tears.

‘He’s dying, isn’t he?’

Torr nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said gently, giving her the honesty she needed then. ‘Yes, he is.’

At least Charlie’s illness had broken down that awful formality between them. Mallory couldn’t even remember now why she had been so upset about Sheena. What did Sheena matter compared to Charlie? Why had she been so angry with Torr?

They hadn’t made love since then, but Torr had been there, a strong, steady presence, giving her the space and the quietness she needed, treating her with a gentleness that Mallory wouldn’t have known that he was capable of before.

‘All you can do for Charlie now is to decide when he’s had enough,’ he told her quietly.

Mallory looked down at Charlie, who had lain down with his head on her feet, and thought that her heart would break. ‘How will I know?’

‘You’ll know when you’d rather lose him than see him suffer,’ said Torr. He hesitated. ‘I know what it’s like, Mallory. I know how hard it is. When Basher fell ill, my father told me that he was my dog, and that made him my responsibility, so I would have to decide whether to have him put to sleep or not. I was only sixteen.’

Mallory tried to imagine Torr as a boy. He would have been lanky, probably, with features that were too big for a young face. ‘That was a hard decision for a boy to make,’ she said softly.

‘The hardest I’ve ever made,’ he agreed. ‘I wanted to keep Basher with me as long as possible, so I kept putting off the decision, but there was a day when I looked at him and realised that I was being selfish. I knew I had to say goodbye.’

He looked back at Mallory. ‘That was the worst day of my life,’ he told her, ‘but I knew I’d done the right thing. I missed him so much I’ve never had a dog since.’

It was a bright, sunny morning when Mallory opened the door to the garden and called Charlie, as she always did. She would dig a little and keep him company as he lay in his favourite place in the long grass under the apple tree.

She waited for him to get up and sniff the air, the way he always did, but Charlie didn’t move from his rug. ‘Charlie,’ she called, her voice breaking, and his tail thumped feebly at the sound of her voice. Struggling, he managed to lift his head to look at her, but the effort was clearly too much and after a moment he simply laid it back down on the rug.

The claw around Mallory’s heart squeezed so hard that for a moment she couldn’t breathe. Torr had told her that she would know when the time had come-and sure enough, here it was. Dropping to her knees beside him, she stroked his wiry head.

‘You’ve had enough, haven’t you, Charlie?’ Her voice was cracked and painfully constricted.

Behind her, Torr dropped a hand on her shoulder. ‘I’ll ring the vet,’ he said.

He drove her to the vet’s surgery in Carraig. Mallory sat in the back, with Charlie’s head in her lap, and didn’t say a word. When they got there, it was Torr who lifted the dog out of the car, carried him into the surgery and explained, but then he stood back so that Mallory could stroke Charlie as he lay on the table. She talked to him brokenly, her voice wobbling up and down, as the vet gently shaved a small patch on his leg, and she stayed there, holding her dog and still murmuring softly, long after Charlie had fallen completely still.

She was hardly aware of Torr talking in low voices with the vet. They went out together, leaving her alone, and it was only afterwards that she realised that he must have paid the bill. At the time, though, all she could think about was the familiar feel of Charlie’s soft bristles beneath her hand. He was still warm, and it was impossible to believe that he would never again come rushing to greet her, never bound into the sea, barking with excitement, never again rest his head against her knee and close his eyes ecstatically as she pulled his ears.

Then Torr was there, taking her gently by the elbow. ‘It’s time to go, Mallory,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ll take Charlie for you.’

Mallory sat in frozen silence as Torr drove her back to Kincaillie. When they got there, Torr went without a word to find a spade, and dug a deep hole in Charlie’s favourite patch of the kitchen garden. Very gently, he laid the dog in it, still wrapped in a blanket.

‘Wait,’ said Mallory suddenly, as Torr began to fill in the hole. Running into the kitchen, she found Charlie’s bowl and dropped it into the grave with him. She watched numbly as Torr finished filling in and then manoeuvred a large, flattish stone on top.

When Torr straightened at last, he looked at Mallory, standing rigidly, her face empty of all expression and her dark eyes stark. ‘Come on,’ he said, thrusting the spade into the earth. ‘I’ll make you some tea.’

Moving like an automaton, she followed him inside and sat on the edge of one of the armchairs. Unthinkingly, her eyes went to the rug where Charlie always lay, and the grief gripped her so hard she had to bend over to stop from crying out.

Torr hesitated, then put down the kettle he was filling and went over to Mallory instead. Taking her by the hand, he pulled her to her feet so that he could sit down, and then he took her on his lap as if she were a little girl.

‘You can cry this time,’ he said, as she tensed. ‘There’s no shame in crying for Charlie.’

For a moment more Mallory resisted, holding herself rigidly, but Torr’s arms were safe and strong around her, and all at once something broke inside her and she succumbed to the terrible temptation of letting herself be held while she cried and cried and cried for the dog who had been such a loyal and loving companion for so long.

It was a long time before she was able to speak, but when she could she rested her face into Torr’s throat with a juddering sigh. ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly. ‘Thank you for everything you did today.’

‘I know how hard it is,’ he said, ‘but you did the best thing for Charlie.’

Mallory’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I hope so. I just…I’m going to miss him so much,’ she said unsteadily, and Torr tightened his arms around her.

‘I’m going to miss him too. He was a great dog. There’ll never be another just like him, but one day you will find a dog who’ll be just as much a part of your life as Charlie has been.’

‘You never did,’ said Mallory, remembering what he had told her about the dog he had had as a boy. ‘You never found another Basher.’

‘I didn’t let myself try,’ said Torr. ‘Maybe that was my mistake.’

They were quiet for a while. Mallory sighed and settled herself more comfortably. Her face was still turned into his neck and she could smell his skin, tantalisingly close to her lips-so close, in fact, that they seemed drawn to his throat by some irresistible force.

Torr stiffened at the whisper-light touch of her mouth, but he didn’t pull away, and that tiny, tentative kiss had felt so good that Mallory tried another one, and then another, and another, until she was blizzarding soft kisses up his throat to his ear, and then along his jaw.

‘Are you sure you’re ready for this?’ he asked unevenly.

‘I want to forget,’ she whispered. ‘I want to forget everything. Help me to forget, Torr.’

He turned his head so that they could look deep into each other’s eyes. ‘Is this what you need?’ he asked, and slid one hand behind her head to tangle in her hair and pull her towards him until their lips could meet.

‘Yes,’ she sighed against his mouth. ‘Oh, yes.’

It began very gently, but gradually the soft, sweet kisses became harder, hungrier, more demanding, and their breathing grew ragged. His hands tightened around her and she pressed closer, closer, closer still, wanting to lose herself in the need that consumed her.

Desire was beating in her like a drum, pulsing insistently along her veins and wiping all thought from her mind, until there was nothing but the taste of Torr’s mouth, the heat of his hands, the feel of his body. Mallory’s fingers fumbled at the buttons of his shirt, pulling it open. She was frantic to touch him, and when she felt his hold slacken she clutched at him and mumbled a protest.

Torr tipped her off his lap, but kept a firm hold of her as he stood up and looked down at her. Her hair was tumbled about her flushed face, and her eyes were dark and dilated with desire. ‘Let’s go to bed,’ he said. ‘I think it’s what we both need.’

Afterwards, Mallory lay against Torr’s side, her face pressed into his shoulder and her fingers absently stroking the inside of his arm. Torr had fallen asleep.

Sated, still glowing, she let her eyes rest on her husband’s face. In sleep, he looked younger, the austerity wiped from his features and the sternness from his mouth. She rarely had a chance to study him like this, Mallory realised with a touch of sadness. They might be physically intimate, but there was still too much unspoken between them, still a distance that made it impossible to look at each other properly when both were awake. Instead, she was reduced to sneaking glances or waiting until Torr was asleep.

So much had changed between them since they’d come to Kincaillie. Then, the sight of his mouth hadn’t been enough to catch in her throat. The touch of his hands hadn’t tangled her entrails into a knot of longing. She hadn’t known him at all. The dour businessman had become the man who loved the freedom of the hills, a man who was honest and thoughtful and compassionate. Look how kind he had been that morning.

Mallory’s mind veered quickly away from Charlie. She wasn’t ready to think about what life was going to be like without him yet. Better to think about Torr, about the man she had married and the man she knew him to be now. How could she have guessed that behind that stern façade lay warmth and dry humour? He had a capacity for loving that she had never suspected. Whether it was his childhood dog or Kincaillie or the unknown woman who had hold of his heart, his love was unwavering, as strong and steady as he was himself.

Mallory’s stroking stilled for a moment as the realisation hit her that she was more than a little in love with him. Quite a bit more than a little, in fact. But this wasn’t the blind adoration she had felt for Steve, with the heady rush of passion and the starry-eyed belief that all she needed was to be with him. What she felt for Torr was very different.

Bitter experience had taught Mallory to be clear-sighted about the risk of falling in love, especially with a man who had been very honest about his enduring love for someone else, a man who was deeply committed to a place where Mallory could see no future for herself. It would be very unwise to let her feelings for Torr deepen any more, she knew. She had been badly hurt already by a man who didn’t love her the way she loved him, and she couldn’t face that kind of pain again.

No, best to leave things as they were. Their physical relationship was more than satisfying, and that would be enough. There was no point in thinking about the future in any case-especially not now, when she would have to face it without Charlie. Mallory’s heart twisted at the memory. She had survived Steve’s betrayal, but only with Charlie’s help. This time she would have to grieve alone.

Beside her, Torr stirred and turned for her instinctively, resting his head on her breast and settling back into sleep with a sigh. Mallory kissed his hair and wrapped her arms round him. Perhaps she wouldn’t be quite alone.

She couldn’t afford to fall too deeply in love, she warned herself. It would be dangerous to get too dependent on Torr. Their marriage had only ever been a practical arrangement, after all, and starting to think about it as something else would just lead to more heartache. Torr had been open about his feelings for someone else, and even if he were the kind of man to change his mind, which Mallory knew that he wasn’t, she thought he would be better off without her in the long run.

She didn’t belong at Kincaillie. That was why she had been so ratty about Sheena Irvine, so jealous of the fact that the other woman would make Torr a much more suitable wife. If anyone could make Torr forget his lost love it would be Sheena, who was so much more suitable for him in every way, Mallory thought dully. She might be married to him, but she was never going to be the right wife for him.

When she went back to Ellsborough, Torr was going to need someone for support and comfort and company. For love. He deserved that, at least. How much better for him to have someone like Sheena, who shared his interests and his enthusiasms. If Mallory cared for Torr at all she should be promoting a relationship that would make life easier for him when she had gone, not being childish and petulant whenever Sheena was around.

Mallory was ashamed of the way she had behaved with Sheena. It was time to start acting like the grown-up she was. She would make it clear to Torr that from now on she would stick to the terms they had agreed. It wasn’t fair to keep trying to change things. If she wanted to leave at the end of the year-and how could she not?-she would have to make it as easy as possible on him as well as on herself.

Torr himself had never given any indication that love might have entered the equation. Quite the opposite, in fact. Their marriage wasn’t about love, he had reminded her the night of the ceilidh. The heart he kept so closely guarded was given to someone else.

There was no point in fooling herself with the hope that he might change his mind and fall in love with her, Mallory thought, even as she smoothed Torr’s tousled hair with a loving hand. That wasn’t the kind of man Torr was, and even if he were, even if he did come to love her, what would that mean? Did she really want to spend the next few years living in discomfort, far from her friends and her family and any chance of restarting her career?

No, things were better as they were. Mallory felt the weight of Torr’s head on her breast and remembered the shattering pleasure of their lovemaking. For now, she told herself, that was enough.

Mallory missed Charlie terribly. He had been part of her life for so long now that she felt somehow unbalanced, and desperately lonely without him. She couldn’t stop looking for him, and the slightest glimpse of greyish brown out of the corner of her eye would make her heart leap, only to plummet with the realisation that it was just a rug or a rock.

She threw herself into gardening, in an attempt to wear herself out with sheer hard work, but it wasn’t the same without Charlie snuffling happily around beside her. Once or twice she tried going for a walk on her own, but that was unbearable, and eventually she asked Torr if she could help him. He was working his way methodically from room to room, clearing out any furniture, stripping off peeling wallpaper and crumbling plaster and readying the room as far as possible for the electricians, who would come in when the roofers had finished.

‘Of course,’ said Torr when she suggested it. ‘I’d be glad of the help,’ he confessed. ‘It’s not very exciting at this stage, though.’

‘I don’t mind,’ said Mallory.

It wasn’t so lonely when he was there, and it was easier to keep the conversation to practicalities. At nights they could lose themselves in each other, but with mornings a hint of constraint would creep back into atmosphere.

It was her fault, Mallory knew. That was what happened when you had to guard yourself against revealing too much, against falling any deeper in love. The only way she could think of protecting her poor damaged heart was to wrap it up and withdraw as far as possible behind a show of carefully detached composure, but it was a fragile defence in truth.

Again and again, she had to remind herself of all the reasons why it made sense to stick to the deal they had made. The work was hard and dirty, which helped. It was impossible to imagine that they would ever get through it. The longer they laboured just to clear Kincaillie of rubbish and start the restoration with a clean site, the more unrealistic a project it seemed.

And yet once stripped bare it was possible to see each room’s potential, and in spite of her strictures about not getting too involved, Mallory couldn’t help planning design schemes in her mind. Whenever she caught herself doing that she would remind herself that she would be gone long before the electricians had finished, let alone before they were in any position to start decorating.

‘I’m going to Inverness on Friday,’ Torr said very casually-too casually?-one evening as they cooked supper together. ‘I’m planning a day trip, so I won’t have a lot of time, but if you need anything I can get it on my way home.’

Well, that was one way of telling her that he didn’t want her to go with him. Mallory inhaled slowly and reminded herself of how cool and adult she had resolved to be. Still, she was allowed to show some interest, surely?

‘Are you seeing Sheena?’

‘Among other things.’ Torr looked wary, and Mallory wasn’t surprised after the way she had carried on the last time Sheena’s name had come up. Here was her opportunity to show him that she wasn’t going to be silly any more.

‘Has she revised the plans?’ she asked, in what she hoped was a neutral tone-the kind of tone you would use when you were making polite conversation, perhaps, and didn’t care at all about what was being discussed-but if anything the suspicion only deepened in Torr’s expression.

‘I hope so,’ he said cautiously.

‘I’ll be interested to hear what she suggests about the great hall,’ Mallory persevered as she chopped tomatoes. ‘I thought her idea for a glass atrium was quite innovative,’ she went on doggedly. ‘A contrast between the very old and very new can be very effective.’

Now she was worried that she sounded too interested. Torr might think that she was lobbying for an invitation to go with him.

‘You’ll have a lot to discuss, anyway,’ she rushed on, before he had a chance to speak. ‘Why don’t you stay the night?’

‘That would mean leaving you here on your own,’ he said, sounding surprised.

‘I don’t mind,’ she lied, and Torr raised an eyebrow in the way he had that always left Mallory feeling slightly ruffled.

‘That’s not what you said before,’ he pointed out dryly. ‘When we first arrived, you flatly refused to consider being here alone.’

Mallory scraped the tomatoes from the board into the pot and avoided his eyes. ‘I’ve changed since then,’ she said.

Torr regarded her thoughtfully for a moment. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘I think a day trip will be enough.’

Determinedly cool, Mallory drew up a shopping list and did her best not to let Torr get so much as an inkling of how much she hated the idea of him going off to see Sheena and effectively excluding her from his plans for Kincaillie.

But why should she care? she asked herself. She wouldn’t be here. She would be back in Ellsborough, living in a warm, convenient house, with friends and shops and bars on her doorstep, getting on with a new life.

Torr left early that Friday. ‘Are you sure you’ll be OK?’ he asked, frowning slightly as he drank a quick coffee in lieu of breakfast.

‘Of course,’ said Mallory brightly. Too brightly.

‘You could come with me if you’d rather,’ he said, but to Mallory’s sensitive ears his offer sounded reluctant, and she put up her chin.

‘No, thanks. I’ve got things I’d like to do here,’ she said. ‘I’d be glad of some time on my own, to be honest. And it’s not as if I’ll be on my own for long. Dougal and the other roofers will be here all day.’

‘That’s true,’ said Torr, clearly relieved at the thought. He finished his coffee and put the mug in the sink. ‘I’d better get on my way, then.’

But he hesitated at the door and looked back at Mallory. ‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’

‘Look, I’m perfectly capable of managing by myself,’ snapped Mallory, afraid that if he carried on like that she would end up admitting that she did mind and begging him to take her with him. ‘I ran a successful business all alone for several years. I don’t need you to get me through the day!’

‘I’m aware of that,’ said Torr evenly. ‘But I’ll be back tonight in any case.’

‘As I said, you can stay the night if you want.’ Mallory’s carefully cool detachment slipped a little as a trace of pettishness crept into her voice. Hunching a shoulder, she busied herself wiping down the worktop so she didn’t have to look at him. ‘I don’t care.’

‘I’m aware of that too,’ he said.

Mallory didn’t see him go out, or close the door quietly behind him, but she was aware of the moment he had gone. Something had gone from the air with his presence, a warmth, a reverberation that left a flatness behind it, and for some reason tears pricked behind her eyes.

She blinked them fiercely away. What on earth was she crying for? Torr had only gone to Inverness for the day. It wasn’t as if they had just said goodbye for ever.

She hadn’t said goodbye at all.

On an impulse, she ran out along the corridor and through the cavernous great hall, but when she burst, panting, through the huge wooden door, the car was already disappearing round the bend in the track, and she couldn’t be sure that Torr had seen her wave.

Deflated, Mallory turned back inside. She wished she had said goodbye.

Kincaillie felt very empty all day. She worked off her feelings with a strenuous digging session in the kitchen garden. It was a bright morning, at least, but a strong wind was picking up, and by afternoon it had blown in rafts of rain clouds. The roofers knocked off early.

‘Looks like a storm’s blowing up,’ said Dougal, eying the sky. ‘Will you be all right now?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ said Mallory, who had been too busy imagining Torr and Sheena together to care much about the weather. ‘Torr will be back later.’

But Torr didn’t come back. The wind grew wilder, splattering rain against the windows and thrashing the trees beyond the kitchen garden wall as the hands on the kitchen clock inched round. Mallory made supper, but still he didn’t come.

Had he thought she meant it when she said she didn’t care if he came home or not? Surely he would have rung, though? He had said he would be back, and Torr always did what he said he would do.

Heedless of the storm outside, Mallory fretted all evening. Perhaps he had stayed to have dinner with Sheena? But then why not ring? And even if he had left at eight, he should have been back by eleven.

Unless he had decided to spend the night there?

The thought made Mallory go cold. Why hadn’t she been nicer to him that morning?

She could ring his mobile, she realised. Neither of their phones worked at Kincaillie, but Torr might have his with him in Inverness. She could call and see where he was. But what if he was with Sheena? What would he think if she started chasing him up like a jealous wife?

No, she definitely couldn’t ring.

Then she had another, worse, thought. What if Torr had been in an accident? He might not have been able to ring. Oh, God, what if he were lying in hospital right now? Mallory wrung her hands and paced up and down the kitchen. Perhaps she should ring the police?

What could she say, though? I argued with my husband and now he’s gone off for the night and hasn’t come home, and, yes, he might be with another woman.

No, she couldn’t ring the police. Not yet.

Round and round Mallory’s thoughts churned, feverishly inventing ever more disastrous scenarios, until eventually she had worked herself into such a state that she was ready to risk the humiliation of calling Torr’s mobile. Too bad if she woke him up. At least she would know that he was alive.

It was only then that she discovered that the line was dead.

Mallory felt sick. With no phone and no car, how would she find out what had happened to Torr? The roofers wouldn’t be back until Monday. He could be lying in hospital, thinking that she didn’t care. Or perhaps he was unconscious. What if even now some nurse was desperately trying to get hold of his next of kin? She would rather he was having an affair with Sheena than think of him dead or badly injured.

At three o’clock, for want of anything better to do, she went to bed. But she was too tense to sleep. She lay staring at the ceiling instead, gripped by a fear greater than she had ever known, and wishing desperately that she could rewind time so that she could have told Torr how she felt about him, while a single thought circled endlessly and dully round her brain.

She hadn’t even said goodbye.