Newlyweds of Convenience

CHAPTER SIX

AFTER two weeks of isolation, Inverness seemed incredibly busy. Mallory blinked at the traffic. Here were the people, the cars, the shops and all the signs of a thriving city that she had missed so much at Kincaillie, but instead of feeling at home she felt like a stranger arriving in a different country.

Perhaps it was just because she was English?

They checked in at the hotel first. Torr had booked separate rooms without asking her, and Mallory told herself that she was relieved.

‘Didn’t they think it was a bit odd?’ she whispered as they waited for their key. ‘A married couple asking for separate rooms?’

Torr only shrugged. ‘Who cares what they think?’ he said, sounding disconcertingly like the ruthless businessman he had been before Kincaillie. ‘We’re paying good money for two rooms. That’s all that matters.’

‘I’m sure they must be wondering about us,’ said Mallory uncomfortably.

‘Tell them I refuse to sleep in the same room as the dog or something, if it makes you feel better.’

‘I could tell them that you snore,’ she retorted, rather nettled by his dismissive attitude.

‘Tell them what you like.’ Torr bent to pick up both overnight bags as Mallory had Charlie on the lead. ‘Tell them the truth if you want.’

‘The truth?’

‘That you don’t like sleeping with your husband.’

A tinge of colour crept into her cheeks. ‘I’m not the one who booked separate rooms,’ she pointed out. ‘Perhaps they’ll think you don’t like sleeping with me!’

Torr looked at her. Her hair was dark and soft and shining, and her deep brown eyes were bright, animating the lovely face that had for so long been blank with misery. In her sea-green jacket and turquoise scarf, she was a slim, vibrant figure in the old-fashioned lobby.

‘I don’t think that’s very likely,’ he said softly, and as Mallory’s gaze met his navy blue ones the air seemed to thicken around them, muffling the sounds of breakfast being served in the restaurant, blurring the receptionist and the tourists checking out, until there was just the two of them, standing there, looking at each other.

Mallory’s throat was dry, her heart thudding. She wanted to tear her eyes away and step back, but she was trapped by that deep, dark blue gaze. All she could do was stare back at him and wonder with some strange, detached part of her mind why she had never noticed how thick and dark his lashes were before. Had Torr always had that dark rim around the iris, those creases at the edge of his eyes?

The blue gaze seemed to be reaching deep inside her, as if he could see behind her own eyes to where she was torn and confused about how she felt, to the secret part of her that wondered, wondered, wondered every night what would happen if she turned and touched him.

The mere possibility that he might be able to guess was enough to make Mallory panic, and gave her the strength to jerk her eyes away. She swallowed. ‘I’d better take Charlie for a quick walk,’ she said unsteadily.

‘OK.’ Torr checked his watch. ‘Let’s have breakfast in half an hour. I’ll meet you down here then.’

He sounded so normal that Mallory wanted to hit him, and had to turn on her heel and stalk out with Charlie instead. She was outraged that he could have been so unmoved by that meeting of their eyes when she was so shaken, and furious at how wobbly her voice had been. Even her knees felt weak!

She was completely thrown by her reaction to him-to Torr. To her husband. It didn’t make sense.

Poor Charlie had to trot to keep up with her as she strode along, too wound up to give him time for any really satisfactory sniffs. She wished Torr wasn’t so hard to read. When he said that it was unlikely that the hotel staff would imagine that he didn’t want her, did that imply that he did? But if he did want her, why not say so? More importantly, did she want him to want her?

Mallory just didn’t know. She was so used to longing for Steve that she wasn’t sure what she wanted any more. Until she did, she resolved, she wasn’t going to risk making a fool of herself by gazing into Torr’s eyes like that any more.

By the time she returned to the hotel and settled Charlie in her room, she had armoured herself with such an air of cool sophistication that no one watching her walk into the restaurant to meet Torr would have guessed that she was ridiculously nervous. Mallory just hoped that Torr wouldn’t guess either.

She stood in the doorway and looked around the room for him, and was horrified to discover that the sight of him at a table by the window was enough to tangle her entrails into knots. His dark head was bent over a menu, but, as if sensing her, he looked up and saw her hesitating.

Their eyes met across the room and Mallory’s heart promptly lurched into overdrive. Why had it suddenly started doing that? After all she had had to say to herself too!

Still, she managed to walk over to him with a creditable show of unconcern, and even summoned a cool smile as she sat down.

‘I was just about to order,’ said Torr. ‘What do you want?’

I want to stop feeling like this, Mallory nearly said. I want you to go back to being a stranger. At least when she had been miserable she had known where she was.

‘I’ll just have some coffee,’ she said.

‘Have something to eat, too.’ Torr handed her the menu. ‘We’ve got a long day ahead, and we might not get a chance for lunch. It depends how long we’re with Sheena.’

‘Sheena?’ Instantly and inexplicably alert at the sound of another woman’s name, Mallory looked up sharply from the menu.

‘Sheena Irvine, the architect.’ Torr signalled for the waitress, and Mallory found herself hoping that she wouldn’t respond immediately. She did, of course.

Mallory ordered scrambled eggs and smoked salmon, and let Torr pour her a cup of coffee.

‘What’s she like, this Sheena?’ she asked him, feeling peevish for some reason.

‘She’s got an excellent reputation,’ said Torr. ‘Her designs have won a number of awards.’

‘Yes, but what’s she like?’ said Mallory with a touch of impatience, and Torr shot her a curious look, as if wondering why it mattered.

It didn’t, of course, she told herself, but why didn’t he just answer the question?

‘She’s a very nice woman,’ he said eventually, and Mallory promptly wished she hadn’t asked. ‘Intelligent, talented, stylish. It turns out that she’s a climber, too, and we’ve done a lot of the same climbs. What else do you want to know?’

‘Attractive?’

‘Very,’ said Torr. ‘You’ll like her.’

Mallory shook out her napkin with a decided flick. Somehow she doubted that.

She was right. She didn’t like Sheena at all, and she was fairly sure the feeling was mutual.

Sheena was unmistakably a Scot. She had beautiful pale skin, and hair that Mallory would have loved to describe as carroty, but was instead a rich, glorious red-gold. She was stylishly dressed, Mallory acknowledged a little grudgingly-Torr had been right about that at least-but she managed to keep a wholesome air about her too. Next to her, Mallory felt like a hothouse flower, and about as out of place.

There were the inevitable few minutes of small talk while they settled themselves and waited for Sheena’s secretary to bring coffee. Torr and Sheena were talking about climbing, and, as Mallory rarely climbed more than stairs unless she had to, she had the opportunity to observe them both.

Sheena hadn’t been expecting Torr to produce a wife, that much was obvious, and it was equally obvious that she was disappointed. Torr must have kept very quiet about her before, Mallory thought, and she couldn’t help feeling miffed. OK, so their relationship wasn’t a conventional one, but he could at least have mentioned that he was married.

She could tell that Sheena found Torr attractive. The other woman wasn’t exactly batting her eyelashes at him, but she was mirroring his body language, and there was an awful lot of looking into his eyes and touching her mouth.

Of course it might be unconscious, Mallory admitted somewhat grudgingly, but she didn’t think so.

For the first time she looked at her husband through another woman’s eyes. Torr’s features were too stern and craggy to be classically handsome, but he was tall and broad and solid. His expression was forbidding, but there was something intriguing about his mouth now she came to think of it. In repose, it was stern, but in the kind of way that had you wondering what he would look like when he smiled, whether it would transform him.

As it did. Mallory remembered how startled she had been the first time she had really noticed his smile. Sheena would undoubtedly have noticed too.

Sheena was chatting vivaciously to Torr about some mountain she had climbed in Morocco, and with absolutely nothing to contribute to the conversation Mallory resumed her covert study. There was an air of assurance about Torr that was not unattractive, she supposed. He was short on the easy charm that Steve had had in spades, and he clearly wasn’t a man you would want to cross, but there was something reassuring about him too. Torr might have no aptitude for wild, romantic gestures, but you would want someone like him in a crisis. With Torr by your side you might not feel a million dollars, but you would feel safe.

So, yes, she could see what Sheena saw in him. And she could see what Torr saw in Sheena, too. Mallory was piqued to realise that he was talking more animatedly to the other woman than she had ever seen him. They both seemed to have forgotten that he was married to her.

Perhaps it was time to remind them.

When all the coffee and the preliminary chit-chat was over, they all got up to look at the plans spread out on a big table. Mallory made sure that she stood close to Torr. She leant very obviously against him as they bent to inspect the plans. She patted his shoulder. She let her hand-the one with the wedding ring plainly in view-rest very deliberately on his, and ignored the way he stiffened at her touch, smiling brilliantly at Sheena instead. She even dropped in the occasional ‘darling’, in case Sheena hadn’t got the point.

‘What was all that about?’ demanded Torr the moment they found themselves on the pavement outside Sheena’s office.

Mallory turned up the collar of her jacket against the cold, all innocence. ‘All what?’

‘You know quite well what,’ said Torr curtly, turning to stride off down the street so that Mallory practically had to run to catch up with him. Now she knew how Charlie had felt earlier. ‘You can’t bear me to touch you, and yet suddenly you can’t keep your hands off me! And since when have I been your darling?’ he asked with a sardonic look.

‘I thought I would just jog your memory, as you’d obviously forgotten that you were married to me.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he snapped.

‘I can’t think why you bothered to take me along,’ she said a little breathlessly. ‘I can’t bore on about how many mountains I’ve climbed, and I haven’t spent hours swotting up on Scottish history just to impress you.’

‘Frankly, Mallory, I’d be amazed if you ever tried to impress me!’ Torr retorted. ‘I think you’ll find that Sheena researched Kincaillie’s history as part of the design process, and I thought the results were very impressive. What did you think? Or were you too busy fretting about Sheena?’

‘Actually, I thought the designs were very good, and I wasn’t fretting,’ said Mallory coldly. ‘I just objected to being treated as if I wasn’t there at all.’

‘You could have joined in the conversation instead of glaring at Sheena.’

‘I wouldn’t have been able to get a word in edgeways.’ She wished that he would slow down. Her shoes weren’t up to jogging along pavements. ‘Why didn’t you tell her you were married when you met her before?’

‘It was a business meeting. The question never came up.’

‘Is Sheena married?’

‘She’s divorced,’ said Torr reluctantly.

‘Oh, so that came up?’ Mallory needled. ‘Surprise, surprise! I could have told you that anyway, by the way she was looking at you. I would have thought an architect with her supposedly great reputation would have been a bit more professional!’

Goaded at last, Torr stopped and swung round to face her. ‘Don’t you think you’re being a bit dog in the manger, darling?’ he asked ‘You don’t want me yourself, but you don’t want Sheena to show any interest in me either.’

‘It’s a question of courtesy,’ said Mallory, standing her ground, and grateful to have a moment to catch her breath. ‘It was humiliating for me to sit there while you two drooled over each other. I might as well not have been there at all!’

‘Why, Mallory, could it be that you’re jealous?’

She gave a dismissive puff of laughter. ‘Jealous? Jealous? Of course not! If ginger hair and freckles are your thing, go for it. Just don’t take me along and expect me to watch.’

Torr lifted his brows. ‘Are you saying that you don’t mind if I have an affair?’

The question brought Mallory up short. There was a pause while she tried to work out how to tell him that any affair he embarked on would be over her dead body without admitting that she was jealous after all.

‘There wouldn’t be much point in us being married then, would there?’ she replied eventually.

‘There’s not much point in a wife who won’t sleep with me either,’ Torr countered, and Mallory flushed.

‘Marriage was your idea,’ she pointed out. ‘You were the one who suggested we include no sex in the terms of our deal.’

Dark blue eyes examined her face, as if searching for something. ‘You’re right, I did,’ he said at last. He started walking again.

‘It’s a shame you don’t like Sheena,’ he said, as if the last exchange had never happened, as if he had never suggested that their marriage was pointless. ‘She’s going to be coming to Kincaillie regularly once the work starts,’ he said, glancing indifferently down at Mallory. ‘She could have been a friend for you. You’re always complaining that you don’t have any friends there.’

‘I’m not always complaining,’ said Mallory in a frosty voice. ‘And I certainly don’t need the kind of friend who’s prepared to flirt with another woman’s husband, thank you very much. I’ll stick with Charlie.’

‘Suit yourself.’ Torr stopped at a junction and looked up and down the main road, trying to orientate himself. ‘Now, we’ve got a lot to do today, so can we please forget Sheena Irvine for the moment and get on with it? What’s first on the list?’

Mallory’s feet were agony by the time they got back to hotel late that afternoon. In her time she had been something of a shopaholic, but she had always gone with a friend, and they had built in various stops for coffee and lunch. There were no such frivolities shopping with Torr, who had worked his way relentlessly through the list they had drawn up before they left and never seemed to think it might be nice to take the weight off his feet for a minute or two.

In other ways it was a successful afternoon, as they found almost everything they needed and arranged to pick most of it up the next morning. Mallory felt as if she had walked twenty miles at least around stores and along pavements, and the shoes which had started out the day as perfect for a little shopping in town had ended up as instruments of torture.

Torr frowned as she hobbled into the hotel. ‘I’d better take Charlie out for you,’ he said brusquely. ‘At least I’ve got sensible shoes on.’

Mallory was too grateful for the offer to object to his tone. She took her shoes off as soon as they were inside, and limped beside him down the corridor to her room, where they were greeted by an ecstatic Charlie. He wriggled and writhed with delight, and ran around searching for something to bring Mallory, deciding eventually on one of the towelling mules provided by the hotel.

‘Sensible dog,’ said Torr austerely, as she took it from him with a grimace. ‘You’d have been much better off in those. Even Charlie knows it’s stupid to go out for the day in heels!’

As soon as they had gone, Mallory ran herself a deep bath and sank down under the bubbles, also courtesy of the hotel, with a long sigh of relief, grimacing a little as she wiggled her painful feet.

The warm, scented water was blissful, and so comforting that she was still there when Torr brought Charlie back. ‘Just a minute!’ she called guiltily at his characteristically peremptory knock.

Scrambling out of the bath, she reached for a towel and wrapped it round her, snatching up a smaller one to dab at her wet hair as she hurried to open the door.

‘Sorry,’ she said breathlessly, and then had to grab at her towel as Charlie leapt at her in excitement. ‘Charlie, get down!’ She bent to pat him, in the hope of calming him down, but it was difficult when her towels were slipping all over the place.

‘Charlie, down!’ thundered Torr, and Charlie dropped instantly to the floor.

Mallory couldn’t help laughing at his surprised expression. Still smiling, she looked up at Torr as she straightened. ‘Thank you!’ she said.

Torr had been smiling too, but as their eyes met their smiles faded at the same time. It was just like in hotel lobby that morning-only this time she was practically naked, which made it ten times worse. Thanks to Charlie, the towel barely covered her breasts, and although she pulled it up hastily, she was still suddenly intensely aware of every curve of her body, every dip and swell, every nerve-ending tingling beneath Torr’s gaze.

Deep inside Mallory something was pulsing insistently, pushing the breath from her lungs. The silence swelled and stretched until it twanged. Water was dripping from her wet hair onto her shoulders, and trickling into her cleavage. Torr’s eyes travelled slowly over her bare skin, pink and glowing and still damp from bath, from her forehead down to her toes. Mallory would never have believed that a simple look was enough to make her feel that she had been stroked all over.

‘Um…thank you for walking Charlie,’ she managed at last, struggling for some semblance of normality.

‘No problem.’ Torr’s eyes dropped to her toes once more. ‘You won’t want to walk far on those feet,’ he said, his voice strained. ‘Shall we eat in the restaurant here? It’s supposed to be quite good. Why don’t you knock on my door when you’re ready, and we’ll have a drink before dinner?’

‘I’ll do that,’ said Mallory unevenly.

She closed the door and leant back against it, closing her eyes. Her knees felt weak and her pulse was booming in her ears. What was wrong with her today? This was Torr. He might be her husband, but he had made it clear that he wasn’t interested in sleeping with her, and only today had as good as admitted that he found Sheena Irvine more attractive.

She really must pull herself together.

For the first time ever Mallory had to force herself to think about Steve. How strange. After months of dominating her thoughts and dreams, Steve’s image had receded to the extent that she had to make herself imagine him.

It wasn’t that she had forgotten him, but the picture of him had blurred slightly without her quite realising it, so although she could remember the golden good looks and the winning smile, it was a bit like remembering someone in a film. She couldn’t remember how it had felt to be with him. All she could remember was how desolate life had seemed when he had gone.

And now she found herself in Inverness, dressing as carefully for dinner with her husband as for a first date. She even had butterflies in her stomach as she shut Charlie in with a biscuit and knocked on Torr’s door.

‘Are you ready?’ she called.

Torr opened the door. He had obviously showered, and was wearing a jacket and tie, but otherwise there was nothing special about him. He looked exactly as he always did, but for some reason the breath clogged in Mallory’s throat and she felt abruptly as naked as she had done wearing only the towel.

There was a moment’s silence as they regarded each other. Mallory was wearing loose black silk trousers with a camisole and short jacket in fuchsia pink. Her dark silky hair was loosely twisted back, and she had made up her eyes so that they looked darker and more dramatic than ever, while her lipstick picked up the bright colour of the jacket.

Torr cleared his throat. ‘You look…nice.’

‘Thank you.’ Mallory lifted her arms and cast a self-deprecating look downwards. ‘You don’t get a chance to wear outfits like this much in the Kincaillie kitchen!’

‘No, I suppose not.’ He closed the door behind him and tucked the key card into his jacket pocket. ‘Shall we go down?’

The silence was constrained as they headed for the stairs. ‘Are you comfortable in your room?’ Torr asked stiltedly after a moment.

‘Very, thank you.’

‘I thought you might appreciate a room of your own tonight for a change,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you’ll need me to keep you warm, anyway. My room is so stuffy I had to open the window.’

‘My room seemed hot, too,’ said Mallory, not wanting to admit that the room had seemed too big and a little lonely on her own. ‘Maybe we’re acclimatising to Kincaillie?’

He glanced at her. ‘Maybe we are.’

The hotel was obviously a popular place to eat, and the bar was lively without being over-crowded when they went in. We must look just like them, Mallory thought as Torr went to order their drinks at the bar. Just an ordinary couple in town for the weekend. There were several other couples there, and she watched them from under her lashes. How many of them were sleeping in separate rooms?

They found a table and sat down with their drinks, their conversation so stilted at first that it felt like a first date. Worse, really, as they had no excuse to feel that awkward when they had been married over six months. Mallory was excruciatingly aware of Torr sitting opposite, of his broad shoulders, of the hard line of his jaw, of his fingers curling around his glass. She felt jittery and self-conscious, and her attempts to make conversation kept coming out in a rush and then drying up completely.

All in all, it was a relief when they went in to eat. At least then they had the menu to talk about, but once they had ordered, and Torr had perused the wine list, the silences grew longer again. Mallory even began to wish that they were back in the kitchen at Kincaillie, where they didn’t seem to have this problem, and who would ever have imagined she would wish that?

‘Well,’ said Torr at last, sitting back in his chair and studying her across the table. ‘Are you enjoying being back in the bright lights?’

Mallory put on a bright smile. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, but to be honest she wasn’t that sure. She had felt too unsettled to enjoy anything much today, and she was fairly certain Torr was responsible for that, not Inverness.

‘It’s nice to have other people about again.’ She looked around the restaurant at the other diners, who seemed to be enjoying themselves in an uncomplicated way, who were talking and laughing and not making stilted conversation with their own husbands and wives.

‘I’ve missed that at Kincaillie,’ she said. ‘I’ve always lived in a town, somewhere you can pop down to the shops for a pint of milk, or walk to meet a friend for a drink. You can distract yourself in a city. You can’t do that at Kincaillie. You can’t get away from yourself.’

She hadn’t meant to reveal that much about herself, but somehow the words were out before she could stop them. Letting her gaze slip away from his, she fiddled with her fork.

‘Get away from yourself, or from me?’ asked Torr.

‘From myself, mostly,’ she said. ‘From feeling as if nothing matters and that every day is just time to be got through before you can go to bed and sleep again.’

‘Is that what it’s been like for you?’ The harshness had faded from his voice and Mallory nodded, grateful for his understanding.

‘For a long time I wouldn’t admit how much Steve had hurt me,’ she told him. ‘I’d keep trying to think up excuses for him, some reason to explain why he behaved the way he did, because that was easier than facing up to the fact that he’d used me and betrayed me and abandoned me.’

The hardest thing to accept had been the fact that Steve had probably never really loved her at all.

‘It felt as if there was a great tangled knot of barbed wire inside me, and I was all caught up on it,’ she tried to explain to Torr. ‘If I let myself think about Steve and what he had done, it was like trying to tear myself free. The more I did that, the more it ripped at me, and it hurt so much I couldn’t bear it.’

Her voice cracked at the memory, and she drew a breath to steady it. ‘So I chose to keep very still instead. If I didn’t think, didn’t feel, I was still trapped, but at least the barbed wire didn’t pull at me.’

Abandoning the fork, she lifted eyes to Torr’s with a painful smile. ‘I suppose you think I’m a coward?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘We have to deal with these things the best way we can.’ He paused. ‘I understand now why you seemed so…lifeless in Ellsborough.’

‘It was like being dead inside,’ Mallory agreed. ‘Friends kept telling me I should be angry, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t really feel anything. At least when I was in Ellsborough I could try and distract myself by going out and trying to do things, but when I got to Kincaillie there was nothing, nobody. There were just those bleak mountains and the sea, and knowing that I didn’t belong.’

Torr was watching her face. ‘Is that why you cried that day?’ he asked, and she sighed at the memory.

‘Yes. I realised then that I couldn’t avoid facing the fact that Steve didn’t love me any longer, and it was just as painful as I thought it would be.’

There was a tiny pause. Torr straightened his cutlery.

‘Do you think you’ll ever get over him?’ he asked abruptly, glancing up at her. ‘Steve,’ he added, as if there could be anyone else.

Mallory didn’t answer immediately. ‘Have you ever been in love, Torr?’ she replied at last.

It was Torr’s turn to look away. ‘Yes.’

‘How did it end?’

He hesitated. ‘To be honest, it never really began,’ he said eventually. ‘It’s what you might call an unrequited passion,’ he explained, with a derisive smile.

He was mocking himself, but Mallory could tell that it was more important to him than he was prepared to admit. She wasn’t entirely surprised. She had suspected that some heartache lay behind that forbidding exterior.

‘Is that why you married me?’ she asked him.

For a moment she thought Torr wouldn’t answer. He was turning his glass between restless fingers, but after a moment he looked up and met her dark brown gaze very directly. ‘Yes,’ he admitted.

‘Has marrying me meant that you’ve stopped loving her?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘Do you think you’ll ever get over her?’

Torr’s smile twisted. ‘It would be a lot easier if I could, but, no, I don’t think I will. My trouble is that I never give up.’

‘So what makes you think I’ll be able to get over Steve?’

‘Because he’s a slimeball who has hurt you and humiliated you?’ Torr suggested.

Mallory sighed. ‘The trouble is that it’s not that easy to stop loving someone, even when you know that you should. You must know that.’

‘Yes,’ he said after a moment.

She mustered a smile. ‘At least we’re in the same boat,’ she said, and his dark brows contracted.

‘What do you mean?’

‘We’re both in love with someone who doesn’t love us back.’

‘Yes,’ he said in an expressionless voice, ‘I suppose we are.’