Newlyweds Of Convenience

‘I told you, we’re moving to Kincaillie.’

Mallory drew a breath. ‘You’re not serious about that, are you?’

‘Of course I’m serious.’

‘But it’s a ruin,’ she said, looking down at the photograph again.

‘It needs a bit of work, agreed,’ Torr replied, ‘but you were the one who wanted something to do.’

‘A bit of work? You only need to look at this picture to see that it’s a major restoration project! It’ll take for ever.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Torr, ‘but staying in Ellsborough isn’t an option. I’ve sold all my businesses, and I got a good deal on the house, which was confirmed today.’

Mallory was still trying to assimilate the news that he had sold his companies when his last words registered belatedly. ‘Which house?’ she asked with a sense of foreboding.

‘This one, of course.’

‘You’ve sold the house?’ she repeated very slowly, an unfamiliar feeling stirring inside her.

Anger.

How strange to feel angry again, she thought with a detached part of her brain. Strange to feel anything after all these months of feeling nothing at all. But that was definitely rage flickering along her veins, warming the iciness inside her.

Torr was watching her face with sardonic amusement. ‘I didn’t even have to advertise,’ he said. ‘There were so many buyers who’d expressed an interest if the house ever went on the market that it went straight to auction. Of course, the fact that the interior had been designed by Mallory Hunter just upped the price, as I’m sure you’ll be glad to know!’

Mallory surged to her feet, startling Charlie, who sat up and studied her worriedly. He had never seen her like this before, her face bright with fury, her hands clenching and unclenching.

Mallory had never felt like this before. The anger was crackling through her. She had once seen a film of a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, and she had marvelled at the way it slowly spread its crumpled wings. That was how it was for her. The unfamiliar anger was filling her up, warming her, pushing into cracks and crevices until everything that had been weak and crumpled and collapsed about her was smooth and whole again, until she was Mallory Hunter, grown woman of thirty-two and successful interior designer, instead of the broken, beaten shell Steve had left behind.

‘Without even discussing it with me?’ she demanded of Torr, who regarded her with a kind of speculative interest, noting how the dark brown eyes, dull for so long, were suddenly flashing.

‘Why should I?’

‘I’m your wife!’

‘Only when it suits you,’ he said brutally. ‘Like when you needed me to pay off all your debts, for instance.’

Mallory flushed, but stood her ground. ‘We had an agreement,’ she reminded him. ‘You said you needed a hostess, someone to help you with entertaining who wouldn’t make any emotional demands on you. I needed somewhere to live where I could have Charlie with me, and, yes, you would settle my debts. But that was the deal,’ she said fiercely. ‘The house was part of that, and now you’re telling me that you’ve sold it out from under me without even mentioning the possibility!’

‘I’m providing another home,’ said Torr indifferently. ‘And one Charlie will like a lot more than this one.’

Hugging her arms together against the sick, panicky feeling, Mallory turned away. The anger was already fading, leaving her feeling trapped and suffocated. There had to be some way out of this. All she had to do was keep calm.

She drew a deep breath. ‘Look, can we talk about this? I know how much I owe you, and that I haven’t been very… forthcoming,’ she said, and moistened her lips. ‘You’re right, I haven’t made much of an effort to make our marriage work so far, but I will,’ she promised. ‘I’ve realised that I have to find a way of moving on from Steve.’

Torr’s expression was far from encouraging, but Mallory gritted her teeth and ploughed on. ‘We got off to a bad start,’ she tried again.

‘That’s one way of putting it,’ he said, with a short, unamused laugh.

There was an unpleasant silence, and for Mallory it was as if they were both back in that expensive, awful hotel room, at the moment when she had realised, much, much too late, what a terrible mistake she had made.

‘Don’t do it,’ her friend Louise had said, appalled. ‘You can’t marry a man you don’t love. You’ll be miserable.’

But Mallory hadn’t listened. She’d already been miserable, and nothing could change that. Torr knew that she didn’t love him, she had reasoned, and it didn’t bother him. He had had enough fake emotion from his ex-wife, he had told her.

‘I don’t expect you to pretend that you’re in love me,’ he had said when he’d asked her to marry him. ‘I know how you feel about Steve.’

Theirs would be a purely practical arrangement, they had agreed. There would be no pretence, no sentimental rubbish about love, and at the time it had made sense. More than that, marriage to Torr had seemed to Mallory her only option at the time.

She had thought that she would be able to go through with it. She had even anticipated how difficult the wedding night would be, but had told herself that it would be all right. Arranged marriages were common in some parts of the world, and had been here in the past. If other women could deal with it, so could she.

She made sure that she kept taking the Pill, though. A loveless relationship might be the only option for her, but there was no way she would make a child part of it. Mallory had thought she was prepared.

But when Torr had reached for her that night she had been unable to prevent a flinch at his touch, and she had put her hands over her face.

‘I’m sorry,’ she had whispered. ‘I can’t. I just can’t. I can’t bear anyone but Steve to touch me.’

Mallory didn’t blame Torr for being angry. His cold contempt had lashed at her, and the memory of what he had said still stung, but it was no more than she thought she deserved.

‘You can divorce me,’ she had offered at last, but Torr wouldn’t hear of it.

‘And admit that I’m a failure to the whole of Ellsborough?’ he had snarled. ‘I don’t think so. No. Do what you like when you’re alone, Mallory. If you want to waste your life pining for that lying, cheating, cheap thief Steve Brewer, be my guest, but as far as everyone else is concerned our marriage going to be a success,’ he’d finished, practically spitting out the word.

So, between Torr’s refusal to admit that he could be associated with anything less than total success, and the unspoken reminder of just how much money he had paid out on her behalf, the hollow sham of their marriage had continued. As long as Mallory kept up appearances as the perfect corporate wife, Torr left her alone.

Mallory should have been grateful, but it was a bleak and bitter way to live, and she had been wondering recently how she could try and put things between them on better footing somehow. But Torr showed no interest in meeting her halfway, and in the face of his continued icy withdrawal, her fragile confidence had faltered.

Now she would have to try again.

‘I feel like a train that’s been derailed,’ she tried to explain. ‘Ever since Steve left, it’s as if I’ve been stuck on my side, wheels spinning but going nowhere. I haven’t been able to do anything but go through the motions of getting through every day. But I know it’s time I got myself back on track somehow.’

Torr’s expression was as unresponsive as ever, and desperation curdled in her stomach as she saw her last support being cut out from beneath her. ‘That’s why I’ve started applying for jobs,’ she said, hating the way her voice quavered. ‘I need to work again, to start seeing my friends again. We could make a go of our marriage if we stayed here,’ she promised, but Torr was unimpressed.

‘No reason why we shouldn’t make a go of it in Scotland,’ he said.

Mallory threw pride to the winds. She couldn’t face being wrenched away from everything familiar just when she needed it most and dumped in the wilds of Scotland. ‘If you want me to beg, I will,’ she said desperately, ‘but please don’t make me go. This is my home.’

‘You’ll have a new home,’ said Torr.

‘A ruin?’ Mallory laughed wildly. ‘Oh, yes, I can see myself settling there!’

Torr only shrugged. ‘Home is what you make it.’

Mallory felt very cold. She stood right in front of the fire, clutching her arms together, but she couldn’t get warm. As her momentary hysteria faded, she raised her head and looked at her husband with stark brown eyes.

‘You’re doing this to punish me, aren’t you?’

Something flickered in his expression. ‘Why would I want to punish you, Mallory?’