Claiming His Bride

But neither did she want a distant one who didn’t mind what she did so long as she kept his home to a certain standard, entertained his business associates adequately, and provided him in due course with the requisite number and gender of children to continue the family name and business and prove his virility.

She had seen that kind of marriage among her parents’ friends and associates. Seen desperate, unhappy women trying to fill their lives with empty activity while their husbands were immersed in business, scarcely noticing their wives. Or couples who seemed virtually strangers, going through the motions of social interaction with others when they had nothing to say to each other, and nothing to hold them together once their children left home, except habit and a desire to keep up appearances.

The prospect of following the pattern, entering an emotionally sterile marriage, terrified her.

Sometimes she’d thought it couldn’t come to that, with her and Blaize. He surely felt something for her, if only a lifelong fondness. But the closer their wedding had approached, the more distance there seemed to be between them. When he kissed her and held her she could forget her fears and doubts, persuade herself he truly loved her. But there was less and less opportunity for that as the preparations seemed to take up all her time—choosing her gown and the bridesmaids’ dresses, consulting over the guest list and the form of the ceremony, fittings, showers, rehearsals, helping her mother with details like music, flowers, the design of the invitations.

She’d been exhausted long before the day, a bundle of jumping nerves and increasing doubts. Only the fact that it was Blaize, whom she’d known all her life and loved ever since she could remember, whom she was marrying, had kept her from running away from it all much earlier.

And disastrously, she had wrecked everything in the end. Blaize was no longer her fiancé, or even her friend.

Standing under a cool shower, Sorrel shut her eyes and tried to wash away the memories, but behind her closed lids disturbing pictures played of the old Blaize who had regarded her with lazy warmth in his smile and fondness in his eyes, and of the new Blaize whose smile was almost cruel, and whose eyes were hard as granite when he looked at her.

Blaize was right about the inevitability of their meeting again. They had always moved in the same circle, shared friends and interests—it was one of the reasons that everyone had thought them so well suited. And it had been a major cause of Sorrel’s staying away so long.

The Friday following Elena’s wedding, Sorrel attended the opening of an exhibition of Pacific design at a gallery owned by a family friend. She was studying a draped length of screen-printed natural silk featuring a modern interpretation of a traditional Cook Islands pattern, when she became conscious of a tall male figure beside her. Some sixth sense warned her before she turned her head and saw Blaize looking down at her, one hand negligently in his pocket.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.

His brows rose a fraction. ‘Studying the exhibits,’ he drawled, his leisurely gaze slipping over her sleeveless cream dress, perfectly plain but for a gold chain belt, and lingering on the slit neckline. ‘It’s an interesting show.’

Until now she’d thought the dress quite modest. But he was standing close, and with his height she had no doubt he could see a good deal more cleavage than her mirror had shown.

She took a deep breath, hoping it would dispel an incipient blush, but his eyes mercilessly took note of the rise and fall of her breasts and, when his gaze returned to her face, held a glint of heartless amusement.

‘Where’s Cherie?’ she asked.

The amusement sharpened into something else. ‘She may be along later. She had another engagement.’

Engagement. The word struck like a knell in her mind. Stupid. Even if Blaize and Cherie were engaged it shouldn’t make any difference to her.

She turned away from him, taking the few steps to the next piece in the show, a smoothly carved free-form shape in some light wood.

Blaize was at her elbow again. ‘Are you alone?’

‘Yes.’ She didn’t look at him. ‘My parents had a dinner invitation tonight.’

‘I suppose you’ve lost touch with your old friends.’

She shrugged. ‘Not all of them. I still have friends if I need them.’

A small boy darted away from his parents and reached up to touch the wood sculpture. His mother swooped on him, and Blaize moved aside to give her room, his sleeve brushing Sorrel’s bare arm. She smelled the wool of his lightweight suit, and lemon-wood aftershave—the same one he’d always worn—and was swept by an unexpected wave of longing.

‘Sorry!’ the young woman gasped, struggling with her protesting offspring.

‘No problem.’ Blaize briefly laid a hand on Sorrel’s waist and moved them out of the way, steering her towards a glass case protecting a jade pendant on a fine gold chain.

The polished green stone gleamed under a carefully placed spotlight. ‘The colour of your eyes,’ Blaize said softly.

She looked up at him, startled at the comment, but it was a moment before he met her gaze. Then he blinked as if he had to clear his head. ‘You wouldn’t think it would be hard enough to use for weapons.’

In pre-European times Maori craftsmen using stone tools had formed the green stone they called pounamu into adzes and short, sharp-edged battle clubs, some delicately decorated with carved patterns.

‘It took patience,’ Sorrel said. Sometimes years of work went into fashioning a lethal patu, or an ornament to be hung from an ear or strung on a cord about the neck. ‘And skill.’

‘Didn’t the women add the final finish by rubbing the greenstone against their thighs? Dedicated helpmeets.’

Sorrel gave a thin smile. ‘These days women have better things to do.’

He laughed. ‘By the way, how’s the job-hunting going?’

‘I haven’t decided yet if I’m staying.’ She returned her attention to the intricate whorls of the jade pendant.

‘Are you in a relationship over there?’ Blaize asked. ‘Let me guess—you’re having second thoughts and it would be simpler to just not return. You could write him a letter instead.’

Sorrel flared at him. ‘I’m not in a relationship! And don’t jump to conclusions about what I’d do.’

She moved away but he followed. ‘You told me at Elena and Cam’s wedding that you weren’t free,’ he reminded her. ‘And as for what you’d do if you wanted out, your track record speaks for itself.’

‘I said I wasn’t available,’ she argued. ‘It’s not the same thing.’

For a moment he said nothing, staring at an intricate Maori carving with glowing paua shell insets that hung against a white wall. ‘So…no boyfriend?’

‘I don’t need a man.’

He turned to her then, eyes glimmering with sudden speculation. ‘You’re not telling me you’ve lived like a nun all these years?’

She faced him squarely. ‘I’m not telling you anything. How I live my life is my own affair and certainly nothing to do with you!’

A flicker of expression crossed his face, his mouth momentarily drawing into a narrow line. Then he shrugged. ‘Fair enough.’

Another couple paused nearby and Blaize took Sorrel’s arm again until they stood before a trickling waterfall where several pieces of statuary and pottery had been arranged on slabs of stone.

A tall, gaunt-looking woman with grey hair floating about the shoulders of a flowing lime-green chiffon dress accosted them. ‘Sorrel! My dear girl, how long have you been back? And Blaize too! Are you two together again? How nice—I always thought you belonged with each other.’ She had the carrying voice of an ageing and slightly deaf stage actress.

‘No, we’re not!’ Sorrel said quickly. ‘We just happened to bump into each other here. I came home for my cousin Elena’s wedding.’

‘Elena…oh, yes, the little dark girl. But she’s a child, surely!’

Sorrel smiled. ‘Not any more.’

‘Oh, the wings of time!’ Augusta Dollimore clasped her hands dramatically, then said briskly, ‘Well, sometime we must catch up, dear, and you can tell me all about Australia. I won’t interrupt your little tête-à-tête.’ She patted Sorrel’s arm and gave Blaize a roguish look. ‘Don’t let her slip away from you this time!’

Sorrel protested, ‘We’re not having a—’

But she was gone, wafting away to buttonhole someone else.

Sorrel let fly a forceful word under her breath, but Blaize’s mouth wore a reluctant grin. ‘You know Gus never listens to a word anyone says, and she’s incurably romantic. That’s probably why the country is littered with her ex-husbands.’