The Constantin Marriage

The Constantin Marriage
Lindsay Armstrong

Alex Constantin agreed to a marriage of convenience to Tatiana Beaufort because this inexperienced young woman intrigued him. But on their wedding night she asked for a year's grace before making theirs a "real" marriage–insisting on single beds!A year on, Tattie is both alarmed and tempted when her husband suggests they become lovers at last. But she is just as determined that she will not become his proper wife until Alex says, "I love you."

“My suggestion is that we stop fooling around and get this marriage off the ground.”

Tattie’s mouth fell open as she sorted through this. “Fooling…?” she asked incredulously.

He lifted a dark eyebrow at her. “You led me to understand you knew what you were getting into, Tattie. And, for what it’s worth, your suggestion of a year’s grace was a good one. At least we know we can get along pretty well.” His mouth quirked. “We don’t appear to have any habits that drive each other up the wall.” He looked at her with a question in his eyes.

“Lovers could be a different matter.”

“My dear Tattie,” he murmured with his hands resting lightly on her shoulders and his gaze summing her up from head to toe, “I feel quite sure that it could only enhance our relationship to become lovers. Trust me.”

The Constantin Marriage

Lindsay Armstrong

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER ONE

ALEX CONSTANTIN rifled a hand through his dark hair and glanced at his watch. It was his first wedding anniversary and the time for the celebrations was approaching fast.

He pushed his chair back and swivelled it so that he could watch the sun set over Darwin and the Timor Sea as he thought about the evening ahead. His wife, uncharacteristically, had been more than happy to allow his parents carte blanche in organising the festivities—she was only now due to fly into Darwin.

His mother, not uncharacteristically, had been delighted to take on the task and the family home, one of them, would be polished to within an inch of its life and glowing with flowers. Mountains of delicious food would be in the last stages of preparation for the buffet supper and the long veranda would be cleared for dancing.

So far so good, he thought drily. What his mother had not dreamt, and what he’d only become aware of when she’d blithely dropped by the invitation list earlier in the day, was that she’d invited his ex-mistress, whose name was known to his wife, to be amongst the hundred or so people celebrating his first wedding anniversary…

A discreet knock on the door interrupted his reflections and his devoted secretary, Paula Gibbs, came in with the last of the dictation he had given her—and the slim, colourful gift box he’d asked her to get out of the safe before she left for the day.

‘Thanks, Paula,’ Alex said, and motioned her to sit down while he signed the letters. He pushed them back across the desk to her and his hand hovered over the present. ‘Would you like to see it?’

‘I’d love to!’

Alex opened the box, studied the contents for a moment, then with a shrug pushed it across towards Paula.

She picked up the box and let out a little gasp. ‘It’s beautiful! I knew it would be pearls, but diamonds as well! And Argyle pinks if I’m not mistaken.’

‘You’re not,’ Alex said wryly, and added in answer to the query in his secretary’s eye, ‘Giving her Constantin pearls would be a bit like giving coals to Newcastle. At least she’ll know I had to buy the diamonds.’

Paula closed the box after a last lingering look at the pearl necklace with its beautiful diamond clasp. Then she said firmly, ‘But Mrs Constantin isn’t like that, I’m sure.’

He replied, after a moment’s thought and with a fleeting smile, ‘No, Mrs Constantin is not like that at all, Paula.’ But he was suddenly and insanely tempted to add—Would the real Mrs Constantin please stand up?

He stood up himself instead, because Paula was an ardent fan of his wife, and, anyway, his problems were his alone. But the question was still on his mind as he drove the short few blocks home to the apartment that faced Bicentennial Park and Lameroo Beach. It had been a cause of some amusement for his wife that the Sultan of Brunei was reputed to own the penthouse in the same building. ‘Are you in the same class wealth-wise as the Sultan of Brunei, Alex?’ she’d asked with a gleam of sparkling fun in her blue eyes.

He’d denied the charge in all honesty, adding that the Constantin family fortune, added to the Beaufort fortune which she herself had inherited, would probably be less than small change to the Sultan of Brunei and, indeed, the Paspaley family which had pioneered cultured-pearl farming in the Northern Territory and the Kimberley region of Western Australia.

‘But you’ve also done very nicely out of pearls, thank you, haven’t you, Alex?’ she’d remarked, and added, ‘Plus the cattle stations, cruise boats et al?’

He’d agreed, but pointed out that she had also done very well out of her family’s fortune.

‘True.’ She’d glanced at him with a question in those stunning blue eyes.

‘I only make the point because you seem to hold my family fortune in a certain sort of low esteem,’ he’d said.

‘Is it because I’m only a first-generation Australian of Greek descent whereas the Beauforts go back to the pioneering roots of this part of the country?’

‘Darling,’ his wife had said, ‘I never make those kind of judgements. The Beauforts may have been around these parts for a long time but your family is a model of propriety compared to some of my ancestors.’

‘So why do you look condescending at times?’

She’d shrugged. ‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to. But perhaps some of your Greek family’s customs don’t entirely impress me. I’ll leave you to work out which one in particular.’ And she’d flitted away before he’d had the chance to remind her that her own mother, who had Russian blood in her, had actively participated in the custom she was referring to…

All this was still on his mind as he took the lift to their apartment, and all the illuminated rooms told him that his wife had arrived back from Perth on schedule. In fact, as her bedroom door was open and Sibelius was pouring out Finlandia from her CD player, he was able to observe Tatiana Constantin née Beaufort unseen and at his leisure.

She was dressed and applying her make-up. Her dress was long, strapless, and clung to her figure. It was the same cornflower-blue as her eyes and her dark hair was in a loose, shining bob to her shoulders. At five feet two, she was petite with a delicate figure and smooth, pale skin.

But his wife always had an air of vitality about her, often even suppressed excitement. He’d taken it for a girlish attribute at first—she was only twenty-one now—with not a great deal of substance behind it.

Then again, he’d taken a lot about Tatiana Beaufort on face value when he’d allowed his parents and her mother to manoeuvre them into an arranged marriage. So it had come as something of a surprise when she’d told him unemotionally on their wedding night that she was aware of its orchestration. She was even aware that he had a mistress, she even knew her name. And he’d had to revise his opinions of his wife further when she’d suggested that a year’s grace for them both might be a good idea. A year, at least, for her to make up her mind whether to make it a real marriage.

He had agreed and, a year later, was still revising his opinions. Yes, there was something irrepressible about Tatiana Beaufort, there probably always would be, but he’d been wrong about the lack of substance. Just how to quantify it was not so simple, however.

There was no doubt she’d made the best of this first year of their ‘marriage in name only’ or marriage by contract, as she’d called it. She’d relished the role of mistress of his several homes, breathing life and comfort and colour into them. She’d entertained with charm and originality. She’d travelled extensively with him and given the appearance of being a proper wife to the outside world, and she’d been genuinely interested in the process of cultivating pearls.

She had also added stature to the Constantin family by means of her charity work. She was a born social worker and she spent a lot of time working unpaid in a legal aid office. The only thing she hadn’t done to date to completely fulfil his parents’ expectations was to present them with a grandchild. Which, of course, was what it had all been about in the first place.