The Last-Minute Marriage

CHAPTER SIX

HE TOOK her to Central Park.

Robert dropped them at the Grand Army Plaza as a carriage drew up, a magnificent horse-drawn coach with wonderful greys snorting in their traces. The driver raised his hand in salute to the bridal couple and Marcus beckoned the man closer.

‘You looking for a fare?’

The man beamed. ‘Do you and your lady want a ride?’

‘We surely do.’

‘How far?’

‘We’d like to see the whole of Central Park-as long as it takes.’

‘Well now.’ The driver grinned some more and scratched his head. A crowd was gathering, taking in the sight of this lovely bridal couple.

‘Well now,’ the driver said again. ‘Step aboard.’ He turned to his horses. ‘Come on, boys. Let’s give these folks an afternoon to remember. And, seeing as they’re just married, we might even give them a rate!’

For Peta the next few hours passed in a whirl. She’d been transported into a make-believe world where anything was possible. Where she was beautiful, desirable, loved. Where the sheer slog of daily grind was replaced by magical clothes, a matched pair of greys, the sights of Central Park, people waving at the bridal pair. The sights…

They climbed down occasionally so Marcus could show her things he enjoyed. When her ankle held her back he simply lifted and carried her, to the delight of the bystanders and ignoring her indignant squeaks. She stood on the mosaic that said Imagine while a hundred tourists took photographs. She checked the animals in the children’s zoo and more cameras clicked. She stood on the little bridges and the rocks in the Rambles and Marcus laughed and said why didn’t he have shares in digital cameras?

And then he grinned and remembered that he did.

Through all, their patient coachman waited, smiling benignly. They’d told Robert to leave them for two hours but it was almost three before Marcus was sure his bride had had her fill. Marcus phoned Robert and told him not to wait. At the end he had their coachman drop them off near a little place he knew…

The little place was a restaurant with food to die for. Still in their wedding regalia, they were ushered to the best table in the house. Peta drank wine and ate food that she’d never imagined existed.

She was tired, but wonderfully so. She hardly spoke. All afternoon she’d hardly spoken. She simply soaked it in, as if this was happening to someone else. Not to her.

This couldn’t possibly be happening to her.

But it was. She ate her food, dazed, while Marcus watched her with a tiny smile playing at the corners of his mouth. He was playing fantasy, too, she decided and she could hardly object.

She didn’t want to object.

And then, as the waiter poured coffee and she thought this surely must end, a four-piece band started up. Soft music. Simple. Lovely. And Marcus was rising, still with that queer half smile, quizzing her with his eyes. He knew her secret. He was sharing this make-believe.

‘Would you like to dance?’

Would she like to dance? The prospect was almost overwhelming. Would she?

‘I don’t… I can’t… My ankle.’

‘Trust me,’ he said. ‘You can. I’ll take your weight. Lean on me. Tonight we can do anything.’

She rose. There was nothing else for it. Her lovely skirts swished against the floor, swirling around her. Marcus pulled her into his arms, lifting the weight from her ankle so she could hardly feel it. The band took one look at this lone couple on the dance floor and struck up the bridal waltz.

It needed only that. Peta choked on laughter and buried her face in Marcus’s shoulder.

‘Laughter?’ He swung her expertly around the dance floor and somehow her feet followed. As if they knew the way all by themselves. Peta, who’d never had the time or the opportunity to be on a dance floor before this night, seemed to know how without any teaching.

Of course she did. On this night anything was possible.

‘We’re such frauds,’ she whispered into his shoulder and she felt him stiffen. Just a little. And then she felt him chuckle in return, a low, lovely rumble.

‘As long as we both know it.’

‘What time does Robert turn into a mouse?’

He looked startled at that-but he caught the analogy and grinned.

‘He’s fine until at least midnight. But can I just ask if you’ll leave a forwarding address if you do any casting of slippers.’

‘My address is Rosella Farm, Yooralaa, Australia.’ She smiled. ‘Just so you don’t have to do any unnecessary fitting. There’s a lot of women between Yooralaa and New York to be trying on glass slippers on all of them.’

‘And maybe the fairytale wouldn’t hold. Maybe someone would have a smaller foot.’

She stilled and looked down to where her right foot peeked out from under her dress. Her ankle was bandaged. The bridal salon had solved her problem by giving her a right sandal three sizes larger than the left.

‘I must remember to drop the left one,’ she murmured. ‘Otherwise I’m doomed. Or you’re doomed. You might end up with a bride who’s two hundred pounds.’

He grinned. ‘But maybe we need to rewrite the fairytale,’ he suggested. ‘In fact, I’m sure we do. We need to rein up a few more mice and order a bigger pumpkin. Because, instead of fleeing alone, you get to take your Prince Charming along. I’m coming home with you.’

For heaven’s sake. As he swung her once more around the dance floor she thought she detected the faintest trace of satisfaction in his voice. What had she got herself into?

‘Hey!’ She pulled back. ‘Let’s not get carried away here.’ She focused then. Really focused, hauling the fairydust out of her head. ‘This isn’t real. I mean, even after midnight, after the two weeks. None of this is real.’

‘No.’ But he didn’t stop dancing. Another turn. He was holding her tight to take her weight, half dancing, half carrying. His head was resting on her curls. Which was sensible. Wasn’t it? He had to hold her to take the weight of her injured ankle. There was no other reason for it, though, she thought wildly. No other reason she was curved into him, her body moving as one with him.

‘Maybe we should go home,’ she whispered.

‘Home?’

‘I mean, to your apartment. I mean… You to your club.’ That was the sensible thing to do. Wasn’t it?

‘I don’t think we can do it tonight,’ he told her. ‘We’re married.’

‘So?’

‘So we have the society pages watching. Do we want them to know we slept apart on the night of our wedding?’

‘Yes!’

‘I’m sure you don’t mean that.’

She thought about it for a bit. Which was really hard. The way her body was feeling… All she was doing was feeling. She had no room for anything else.

‘You mean…because of Charles?’

‘What else could I mean?’

Of course. What else could he mean? Silly girl.

If only she could think straight. If only he wasn’t so near.

‘So…’ She caught herself. ‘You’re saying we need to…to stay in the same place?’

‘We need to stay in the same place.’

‘But…’

‘I have a settee in the sitting room that turns into a bed. You needn’t worry.’

‘I’m not worried.’ It was true. It was impossible to be worried when she was feeling as she was feeling. As if she was floating.

‘So…you think we should go home?’

‘One more turn around the dance floor,’ she whispered and he held her closer and she felt him smile.

‘How about six?’

The fairytale ended at the front door.

Robert brought them home. Marcus helped his bride alight from the car; she stumbled on her bad ankle and he refused to listen to her protests. He swept her into his arms and carried her into his apartment and the door slammed behind them.

They were left alone. The lights were dim. He was standing in the hallway holding a girl in his arms-his bride-and she was gazing up at him with eyes that were luminescent, trembling, sweetly innocent.

She was so desirable. And she was his wife! He could kiss her right now…

‘Cut it out,’ she told him, jerking her face back from his and jiggling in his arms. ‘Marcus Benson, put me down. Right now.’

‘I thought-’

‘I know what you thought. I can read it in your eyes.’

‘Peta…’

‘I knew you’d want something.’ She bounced and wriggled some more and he was forced to set her down.

‘I don’t want anything.’

She fixed him with an old-fashioned look. ‘You’re saying you don’t want to take me to bed?’

There was nothing he’d like better. She read his expression and he couldn’t get his face under control fast enough. ‘Ha!’

‘I didn’t marry you,’ he said softly, ‘to get you into my bed.’

‘No. You married me as a favour. But now we’re married…’

‘It’d be a bonus,’ he admitted, and smiled. ‘You’re saying you don’t think so?’

‘I don’t want to go to bed with you.’

‘No?’

‘No!’

‘There’s a definite physical attraction…’

‘Between man and woman,’ she snapped. ‘And tom cats and lady cats. And ducks and drakes and pigs and sows. You dress up in that gorgeous suit and you treat me like you have today and of course there’d be an attraction. But there’s no way in the wide world I’m going to bed with you.’

‘Why not?’

It was a reasonable question, he thought, but Peta had other ideas on what was reasonable.

‘If I fall in love with you I’m stuffed.’

‘Why?’

‘Work it out, smart boy,’ she said and kicked off her bridal sandals. ‘Cinderella had no life at all. I’m going to bed. Do I sleep on the settee or do you?’

‘You can take the bed.’

‘Right, then,’ she told him and walked into the bedroom with scarcely a limp. And closed the door behind her. Leaving him…flabbergasted.

What followed was a night of no sleep.

How could she sleep? Peta lay in Marcus’s too-big bed and watched the moonlight play over her bridal gown, which was draped carefully over the bedside chair. The dress seemed to shimmer in the moonlight, as if it had a life of its own.

A bridal gown. She’d had a wedding.

There’d be photographs, she thought. There’d been so many cameras pointed at her this day. Maybe one day years from now she’d leaf through an ancient magazine and see this picture.

The picture of a fairytale. With Marcus. Her Prince Charming.

Did Prince Charming milk cows?

Maybe not. In fact, he’d made that a condition of marriage. The thought made her chuckle. She should sleep, she thought. Tomorrow was another huge day.

But Marcus was just through the wall. And he’d wanted to take her to his bed. It had been so hard to bounce herself out of the fantasy, she thought, and wondered how she’d ever done it.

He married me, she told herself. I’m his wife.

What, so you’d go to bed with him to repay the debt?

No, but…

You’d go to bed with him because he makes your toes curl. She winced and wriggled her toes, making them uncurl in the dark.

It’d be a disaster, she told the other part of her brain-the part that was screaming at her to swallow her principles, forget her sensible self and…and do what good girls didn’t do. We’re worlds apart. You owe him a lot but you don’t owe him your heart.

I have his bed, she told the dark. His bed and his name, without the man. Best of both worlds.

Maybe having a man in her bed would be no bad thing. Maybe having Marcus…

Go home, Peta, she told herself. Get yourself back to your dogs if you want company. Settle for reality.

Reality was good, she told herself. Reality was her future.

But for now… She lay in the moonlight and looked at her wedding dress. And thought about Marcus.

Reality seemed a long way away.

He wanted the fantasy.

Marcus lay in the dark and stared up at the ceiling. It was flat. Uninteresting. Boring.

He was flat, uninteresting, boring.

Today had been so different. Today he’d felt transformed. As if life somehow could be something of worth.

Stupid thought.

He lay back on his pillows and made himself remember all those weddings he’d been to as a child. His mother, starry-eyed in white, promising him the world.

‘This time he’s going to take us away from all this. We’re starting on a new life, Marcus,’ she’d said, over and over again.

Yeah, right. Pure fantasy. Each time, the new life had begun before the wedding cake was finished and it had been invariably bleak and dreadful.

So here he was, caught up in the same fantasy his mother had used to make life bearable. White weddings. The fairytale.

It was just as well Peta had sense for the both of them, he told himself. Otherwise he’d have her in his arms right now!

Which was a truly crazy thought. To marry her was fine. But to make love to her as his wife… No!

How on earth had he ever become caught up in this? A wife? Australia? The immediate future seemed ridiculous. He’d been caught by a pair of twinkling green eyes, hauled in as surely as his mother had, sucked in by promises.

But it had been Marcus who’d made the promises.

‘And I’m surely not dreaming of any happy ever after,’ he told the ceiling. ‘My life’s here.’

Alone with a ceiling?

Whatever.

He’d upgraded her ticket.

Peta wriggled down into the cocoon of her first-class seat-cum-bed and tried really hard to think indignant thoughts. How had he found out her flight was economy? How had he managed to change it, and what right did he have to do so?

But her knees weren’t under her chin. She was nestled into a full-length bed. There were fluffy blankets tucking her in, soft pillows under her head, soft music playing on her personal entertainment system.

She was on her way back to reality. Back to cows and hard grind. Maybe she could indulge in a little fantasy for now, she thought. And that was exactly what she was doing. Especially as her husband-her husband!-was lying right beside her. If she just reached out…

She didn’t want to reach out. Of course she didn’t. Peta O’Shannassy had a very tight grip on reality.

Sort of.

He could have used his own jet. But: ‘You know how she reacted with the clothes,’ Ruby had told him. ‘She’ll react exactly the same to a private jet.’

‘She agreed to your plans for a wedding dress.’

‘That was fantasy. A private jet, in Peta’s eyes, would be ridiculous.’

‘But hell-sitting round airports…’

‘Join the human race.’

‘I’ve been part of the human race,’ Marcus had said grimly. ‘I’ve moved on.’

‘Well, pretend for two weeks,’ Ruby had said bluntly, so here he was, on a commercial flight with the prospect of a five-hour stopover in Tokyo.

It was comfortable enough.

Who was he kidding? He was really comfortable. And Peta’s round-eyed astonishment had been a delight, even if he did have the feeling she was controlling indignation at his perceived waste of money.

Peta. His bride.

Fantasy… Reality.

The lines were becoming more blurred by the minute.