Substitute Bride

‘Well, we’re very different people, aren’t we?’ she said coolly. ‘I don’t suppose I can expect you to understand anything I do. If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go to bed now.’

As she moved towards the door he put out his hand to stop her. To her surprise, the antagonism in his voice was suddenly softened by something else. A glimmer of respect, perhaps? Or even a wary friendliness. Laura had the impression that he was struggling to be fair.

‘Listen,’ he muttered. ‘I’m not necessarily opposed to you, Beatrice. You’ve obviously got a lot more character and intelligence than I was led to expect. But there are two things in life I hate. One is deceit, the other is disloyalty. At least you seem to be honest and genuine, but I can’t help worrying about whether you’ll be loyal to Sam in the long run. So I’m warning you, think again about whether you want to go through with this marriage.’

Laura woke the next morning with a feeling of intense misgiving, mingled with a ridiculous fluttery sense of excitement. As she showered and dressed she tried to focus her thoughts. There was no doubt that she had landed herself in serious trouble. In one way she was tempted to phone for a hire car and flee northwards to the ferry, but a few moments’ reflection convinced her that she couldn’t leave without an explanation.

James still believed that she was Bea and he would be expecting her to stay, so it would be the height of rudeness to vanish without telling him why. He might be opposed to Bea’s forthcoming marriage, but he didn’t deserve anything as dreadful as that! Besides, there were practical difficulties—he might call the police and put out a missing person’s report on her if she simply left without a word. Yet she shrank from trying to explain their idiotic masquerade to him. Let Bea do that when she arrived!

The trouble was that with every extra minute she spent in his company, she felt as if she were sinking deeper and deeper into quicksand. Even though they had quarrelled last night, she still couldn’t deny the treacherous attraction she felt towards him. But there could be no future for them. Not when she suspected him of trying to seduce her simply for entertainment. And not when he found out about all the lies she had told him…

Well, he would have to know before the wedding, and her stomach contracted in morbid dread at the thought of the scene that would ensue when he did find out. Had she really been crazy enough to think that it would be quite exciting to have James shouting and storming at her? The truth was likely to be utterly different! She could just picture the cold look of contempt that would come over his face when he discovered how she and Bea had tricked him.

Would he refuse to take part in the wedding? At the moment he was supposed to be giving Bea away, since she didn’t have a father to do it, but who could blame him if he refused to take part? He didn’t seem like the kind of man who would grin and shrug his shoulders if somebody made a fool of him. Laura suspected that a formidable temper smouldered beneath his urbane exterior. He wasn’t in the least bit long-suffering, like Raymond.

Raymond! Oh, heavens, she had forgotten all about Raymond…She’d been supposed to give him an answer to his proposal yesterday, so what on earth would he think of her? She had never failed to keep a promise before! Even as the thought crossed her mind she knew what her answer was going to be and knew that it didn’t matter that she had broken her promise. After the whirlwind emotions which James had roused in her during the last twenty-four hours, there was no possible way that she could marry Raymond. All the same, he deserved an answer.

Feeling as if she were ringing up the dentist to make an appointment for a wisdom tooth extraction, Laura picked up the phone.

‘Ray?’

‘Laura! I was halfway through shaving! What on earth happened? I thought you were supposed to get in touch with me yesterday. You didn’t show up to work and your secretary said you’d taken a day’s leave without any real explanation.’

His tone was faintly querulous and Laura felt a niggling sense of exasperation, followed by an urge to get the ordeal over.

‘Yes, I’m sorry,’ she said shortly. ‘There was a sudden hitch to do with Bea’s wedding and I had to fly down to Tasmania unexpectedly. Now that I’m here I’ll be staying for a few days, but never mind that. What I really rang to tell you is that…I can’t marry you.’

‘That’s a bit abrupt,’ protested Ray mildly. She thought she heard a faint scraping sound in the background. Was he continuing to shave while he talked? ‘Can’t you give me some reasons?’

‘There’s only one reason, Ray. I don’t love you.’

He laughed indulgently, the same sort of laugh she had heard once when she had told him the petty cash tin was short of fifteen cents, although even then he had kept going through the books relentlessly until he found the error.

‘Love!’ he snorted. ‘We’re both mature adults, Laura. Do we need to make such a fuss about terminology?’

Laura felt a pang of irrational antagonism so fierce that if Ray had been in the room, she would have picked up the phone and thrown it at him. Terminology, indeed! And if you got rid of love, what did you do? Spend the rest of your life having dry little conversations about a few missing cents in the petty cash tin? No, thanks! There had to be more to the universe than that!

‘Well, I do,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, Ray, but I guess that’s the end of it.’

‘Laura, are you sick or something? You don’t sound at all like yourself. Look, don’t rush into a decision. Wait until Beatrice’s wedding is over and talk to me about it then. By the way, did I tell you I got the Simmons and Waterman contract? Quite a coup, really.’

‘Good for you,’ retorted Laura coldly, and hung up.

As she moved away from the phone it occurred to her that the whole conversation had resembled a business discussion about some minor appointment which could be cancelled without too much difficulty. The realisation made her feel surer than ever that she was doing the right thing. After all, a decision to get married was a pretty important event, and ought to be accompanied by some very powerful feelings. Even if a proposal was refused, she felt that it ought to be more than just a passing disturbance in somebody’s day. Raymond hadn’t sounded upset, merely aggrieved. And, if she was going to be honest, her own reaction was mainly one of relief, which was crazy. If she had just refused a proposal of marriage from James Fraser, she was certain that she would have felt shaken to the core by the experience.

‘But if James proposed to me,’ she said aloud, ‘maybe I wouldn’t refuse anyway.’

She stopped suddenly in her tracks with a jolt of dismay as she realised what she had just said. A low groan escaped her.

Oh, Lord, she really had it badly, didn’t she? What did James have to do with anything? It was hardly likely that he was ever going to ask her to marry him. As a matter of fact, his main preoccupation at the moment seemed to be trying to talk her out of getting married, but was that really just because he thought that she…or Bea…was too young? Or could it possibly be that he was genuinely attracted to her himself and not merely playing games with her?

Shaking her head, she dismissed the thought as being too silly for words and began to get dressed. Not that she had many clothes to choose from. Believing that she would only be staying in Tasmania for one day, she hadn’t bothered to bring much with her, and only her habitual caution had made her pack any clothes at all. What she had brought was definitely in her style rather than Bea’s. A long viyella nightdress, plain underwear and sensible shoes, a dark blue knit suit with a little gold brooch to pin on the jacket and a severely cut black coat which she had bought in Florence on her holidays two years ago.

That should baffle James after the violently coloured long cardigan she had worn yesterday! And perhaps seeing her with her hair in a chignon would shake his smug notions about how young and irresponsible she was. An impish sense of mischief began to mingle with her guilt.

As she’d expected, James gave her a startled glance when she walked into the kitchen. He was standing at the stove, stirring something in a frying pan, and the appetising smell of bacon and tomatoes wafted across to meet her.

‘That was good timing,’ he announced, tilting the frying pan and dividing the food evenly onto two plates. Switching off the stove, he handed one of the plates to Laura and gestured at a table by the window which was already set with a checked red and white cloth, orange juice, butter, jam and all the other paraphernalia of breakfast. Laura gave him a worldly wise smile as he poured some juice for her and passed her the toast.

‘You look very nice,’ he said with approval, glancing at her dark suit. ‘That’s an extremely suitable outfit for seeing the vicar about the wedding.’

Laura choked on a mouthful of bacon.

‘What did you say?’ she gulped.

James leaned back in his chair and his eyes narrowed. There was an almost wolfish quality to his expression which made Laura’s blood run cold.

‘I said that’s a very suitable outfit for visiting the vicar about the wedding,’ he repeated, with a mildness that was almost sinister. ‘Didn’t I tell you that he phoned me yesterday and suggested that we should have a proper rehearsal for the ceremony? Unless you’ve changed your mind about whether there’s going to be a wedding?’

She stared at him with the stricken horror of a baby rabbit which had just noticed the swooping shadow of a hawk. Playing this masquerade to one person was bad enough, but if she was now going to be forced to convince the vicar that she was Bea, she would simply crack up.

Several courses of action occurred to her, all of them equally ridiculous. She could hide under the table and never come out, she could hitch-hike to the end of the island and then swim, or she could agree with James that the wedding ought to be cancelled. The last one was the solution that had most appeal, except that the choice was utterly farcical. She wasn’t the one getting married anyway.

‘You’re not really going to go ahead with this, are you?’ demanded James.

His voice was harsh, and to her astonishment his right hand suddenly shot out, seizing her wrist with such force that she cried out. His grip softened marginally, but he continued to gaze at her with an intensity that almost scorched her. She found that her heart was hammering with a wild exultation. He is attracted to me! she thought dizzily. It’s the same for him as it is for me. Then the absurdity of her situation struck her again and she shuddered.

‘There’s nothing I can do to stop this wedding now,’ she said jerkily, dropping her eyes and avoiding his gaze.

‘That’s rubbish! You’re just letting social pressure and embarrassment force you into it, Bea, because you can’t face the humiliation of crying off at the last moment. But you know you’re doing something very wrong, don’t you?’

‘You know you’re doing something very wrong, don’t you?’ The words seared her as if he had scorched them into her conscience with a branding iron, but of course James wasn’t aware of their double meaning.

‘Please let me go!’ she blurted out, wrenching away from him.

‘All right,’ he snapped, releasing her. ‘But don’t say I didn’t warn you. If you go ahead and marry Sam without really loving him and being sure that you’re ready for lifelong commitment, you’re going to regret it, and I’m sure the vicar will tell you the same thing. Why don’t you discuss it with him when you see him today?’

So he was back on that, was he? Laura stared at him in alarm.

‘What do you mean—when I see him today?’

‘I told you—he rang up and suggested a rehearsal. Some of the music is rather tricky and the organist wants to run through it. I’ve explained that Sam is still stranded on the mainland, but the vicar is very anxious for us to go ahead with it anyway. He likes to have all the details right and we’ve got you here as the bride, which is the most important thing.’

Laura felt as if she were trapped in the middle of a nightmare. Go through the wedding rehearsal and pretend she was the bride? This was getting worse and worse! Wishing the floor would open and swallow her up, she tried a desperate, last-minute tactic.

‘Oh, I don’t think we should have the rehearsal without the bridegroom! Can’t we just cancel it?’

‘No, we can’t,’ growled James, and the pupils of his eyes seemed to narrow into pitiless slits. ‘I’ll stand in for Sam as your husband. Maybe it will jolt you into thinking about the significance of what you’re doing.’