The Wedding-Night Affair

Wealthy Sydney businessmen had once built summer houses up in the Blue Mountains or down in the southern highlands to escape the heat and the rat-race of the city. Now they were more inclined to build air-conditioned palaces on five to twenty-five acres out Kenthurst or Dural way, and live there most of the time.

Philip’s father had done just that, though he’d also owned a huge Double Bay apartment where he’d stayed overnight when business kept him late in town, or when he’d taken his wife to the theatre or the opera. It was an enormous place, covering the whole floor of a solid pre-war three-storeyed building, lavishly furnished with antiques, and with a four-poster bed in the main bedroom which had belonged to a French countess. Fiona knew this for a fact because she’d slept in it.

Well... not exactly slept.

She wondered if Philip had ever ‘slept’ with his bride-to-be in that same bed, if he’d taken her to the same mindless raptures he’d taken her own silly self.

Now, now, don’t go getting all bitter and twisted, she lectured herself sharply. Waste of time, honey. Concentrate on the job at hand, which is getting to Kathryn’s house by eleven.

Fiona didn’t want to be late. She didn’t want to give the woman the slightest excuse for looking down her nose at her again.

Gritting her teeth, Fiona bent her head to concentrate on the directory. Once the various street turnings were memorised, she angled her freshly washed and polished Audi away from the kerb and back onto the highway.

A small wry smile lifted the corner of her mouth as she drove on. The car wasn’t the only thing that had been washed and polished to perfection that morning, mocking her claim that she would not get up early on a Sunday for the likes of Kathryn Forsythe.

Pride had had her up at six. By nine there hadn’t been an inch of her body which wasn’t attended to, from the top of her sleekly groomed head to her perfectly pedicured toenails. Fiona had told herself that even if there was only the remotest chance of having to remove her shoes and stockings—or any other part of her clothing—she was going to be as perfect underneath as she was on the surface.

Oddly enough, it had been the surface clothes which had ended up causing her the most trouble. Downright perverse, in Fiona’s opinion, when she had a wardrobe chock-full of the best clothes money could buy.

The fact that it was winter should have made the choice of outfit easier. But it hadn’t. The black suits she favoured for work had seemed too funereal, her grey outfits a little washed out, now that her summer tan had long faded. Chocolate-brown and camel were last year’s colours. She certainly wasn’t going to show up in them! Which had left cream or taupe. Fiona never wore loud colours. Or white.

Certainly not white, had come the bitter thought.

She had dithered till a decision had simply had to be made. Time was beginning to run out.

In desperation, she’d settled on a three-piece trouser-suit in a lightweight cream wool. It had straightleg trousers, a V-necked waistcoat and a long-sleeved lapelled jacket. The buttons on the waistcoat were covered, but rimmed in gold, so a necklace would have been overdone for daytime.

But she had slipped eighteen carat gold earrings into her pierced ears and a classically styled gold watch onto her wrist—both gifts from one-time admirers. Her shoes and bag were tan, and made of the softest leather. They’d cost a small fortune. Make-up had been kept to a minimum, her mouth and nails a subtle brown. Her perfume was another gift from an admirer, who’d said it was as exotic and sensual as she was.

Finally, she’d been fairly satisfied with her appearance, and just before ten had left her flat, ready to face the woman who’d almost destroyed her.

‘But I rose again, Kathryn,’ Fiona said aloud as she turned off the highway and headed for Kenthurst. ‘Just like the phoenix.’

Fiona laughed, well aware that the likes of Noni w ould not even have known what the phoenix was. ‘You’ve come a long way, honey,’ she complimented herself. ‘A long, long way. Worth a few nerves to show Philip’s darling mama just how far!’

The sun broke through the clouds at that point, bouncing off the shiny polished surfaces of the silver car and into her eyes. Fiona reached for the designer sunglasses which she kept tucked in the car door pocket, slipped them on, and smiled.

Fifteen minutes later she was driving slowly past the Forsythe place, her confident smile long replaced by a puzzled frown.

It had changed in ten years. And she wasn’t talking about the high brick wall which now surrounded the property. Somehow, it looked smaller than she remembered, and less intimidating. Yet it was still a mansion; still very stately, with its imitation Georgian facade; still perched up on a hill high enough to have an uninterrupted three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the surrounding countryside.

Fiona stopped the car, stared hard at the house, then slowly nodded up and down. Of course! How silly of her! It wasn’t the house which had changed but herself, and her perceptions. After all, she was no stranger to mansions these days, and no longer overawed by the evidence of wealth.

Her confident smile restored, Fiona swung the Audi around and returned to the driveway, where the iron gates were already open, despite the security camera on top of the gatepost and an intercom system built into the cement postbox.

It seemed careless to leave the gates open, but perhaps Kathryn had opened them in readiness for her arrival. Her watch did show two minutes to eleven. Fiona drove on through, a glance in the rear-vision mirror revealing that the gates remained open behind her.

Oh, well. She shrugged. Kathryn Forsythe’s security wasn’t her problem, but it seemed silly to go to the trouble and expense of having all that put in without using it. Such rich remote properties would be a target for break-ins and burglaries. Maybe even kidnappings. You couldn’t be too careful these days.

Admittedly, Philip’s branch of the family wasn’t as high-profile as his two uncles’. His uncle Harold was a captain of industry, owning several food and manufacturing companies as well as a string of racehorses, whilst his uncle Arnold was a major player in the media and hotels, along with expensive hobbies such as polo and wine.

Philip’s father, Malcolm, had been the youngest of the three Forsythe boys and had gone into corporate law, the law firm he’d established handling all the legal transactions for his older brothers’ business dealings. Philip had once told her that his father was probably richer than his two brothers, because he didn’t waste money on gambling and other women.

All three Forsythe brothers had married beautiful girls from well-to-do society families, thereby increasing their wealth and securing a good gene pool for their children. Harold had sired a mixed brood of five children, and Arnold three strapping sons. Malcolm had only had the one child, Philip.

Surprisingly, none of the brothers had ever divorced, despite rumours of serious philandering by Harold and Arnold. All three Forsythe wives were regularly photographed by the Sunday papers and gossip magazines, showing off their tooth-capped smiles along with their latest face-lifts. They seemed to spend half their lives at fashion shows, charity balls and racing carnivals.

Fiona had once been impressed by it all.

Not any more, however.

Her brown eyes were cool as they swept over the groomed lawns and perfectly positioned trees, her pulse not beating one jot faster as she drew closer to the house. A little different from the first time she’d come up this driveway, her heart pounding like a jackhammer, her stomach in sickening knots. Back then she’d been as nervous as the heroine in Rebecca, driving up to Manderley with her wealthy new husband at her side.

Fiona could well understand that poor young bride’s feelings of inadequacy and insecurity. She’d felt exactly the same way back then. Ironic that on her unexpected return to Manderley she was now the first wife.

The house grew larger on approach. But of course it was large. Wide, white and two-storeyed, with a huge pitched grey slate roof and long, tall, symmetrically placed windows. It looked English in design, and somewhat in setting, with its clumps of English trees and ordered gardens. Nothing, however, could disguise the Australian-ness of the bright clear blue sky, or the mountains in the distance, also blue with the haze from the millions of eucalypti which covered them.

The tarred and winding driveway finally gave way to a more formal circular section, with a red gravel surface and a Versailles-like fountain in the middle. The Audi crunched to a halt in front of the white-columned portico and almost immediately the front door opened and the lady of the house stepped out into the sunshine.

Fiona frowned as she stared over at Philip’s mother.

Kathryn was still as superbly groomed as she remembered. And just as elegant, in a royal blue woollen dress, with pearls at her throat and not a blonde hair out of place.

But she looked older. Much older. Probably even around her real age.

She had to be coming up for sixty, Fiona supposed. Ten years ago she’d been in her late forties, though she’d looked no more than thirty-five.

She appeared frail as well now, as though the stuffing had been knocked out of her. There was a slight stoop about her shoulders and a sadness in her face which struck an annoyingly sympathetic chord in Fiona.

Her whole insides revolted at this unlikely response. Sympathy for Kathryn Forsythe? Never!

Steeling herself against such a heresy, Fiona pulled the keys out of the ignition, practically threw them in her handbag, climbed out and swung the door shut. Sweeping off her sunglasses, she turned to face her one-time enemy, waiting coolly to be appraised and not recognised.

Kathryn’s lovely but faded blue eyes did sweep slowly over her from head to toe, but, as Fiona had predicted to Owen, there was not a hint of recognition, let alone rejection. Nothing but acceptance and approval. One could even go so far as to say...admiration.

Oddly, this did not give Fiona the satisfaction she’d hoped for. She didn’t feel triumphant at all. Suddenly, she felt mean and underhand.

‘You must be Fiona,’ Kathryn said in a softly gentle voice, smiling warmly as she came forward and held out a welcoming hand.

Fiona found herself totally disarmed, smiling stiffly back and taking the offered hand while her mind fairly whirled. She’s only being nice to you because you look the way you do, she warned herself. Don’t ever think this woman has really changed, not down deep, where it matters. She’s still a terrible snob. If she ever found out who you really were, she’d cut you dead, and, yes, she’d be furious. Make no mistake about that. So put on a good act here, darling heart, make your abject apologies and get the hell out of Manderley!

‘And you must be Mrs Forsythe,’ she returned in her now well-educated voice, a far cry from the rough Aussie drawl she’d once used, with slang and the odd swear-word thrown in for good measure.

‘Not to you, my dear. You must call me Kathryn.’ Philip’s mother actually linked arms with her, gathering her to her side and giving her a little squeeze.

Fiona froze. The Kathryn Forsythe of ten years before would never have done such a thing, not even to her friends and relatives. Philip’s mother had been a reserved and distant woman with an aversion to touching.

‘After all,’ Kathryn went on, before Fiona could recover from her shock to form a single word, ‘we’re going to be spending a lot of time together over the next few weeks, aren’t we?’