Marriage And Miracles

Her spirits sinking with each step, she followed the others down the wide tiled corridor to find herself eventually standing in an archway that overlooked a huge sunken living area full of laughing, talking, drinking, smoking partygoers. Music played in the background though only one couple was dancing. Lively conversation and thin cigarette haze filled the air.

The first person Gemma spotted was Lenore, who was standing, arm in arm with her leading man, surrounded by a rather large group of people. Everyone was drinking champagne and generally looking very happy and excited. When Lenore spotted Gemma too, her first reaction was a worried frown and a darting glance down the other end of the room. Gemma’s eyes followed, and what she saw made her breath catch in her throat and her insides flip right over.

Nathan was sitting on a large padded leather sofa. And the beautiful blonde curled up next to him was hardly acting like a platonic acquaintance. She was all over him like a rash and Nathan wasn’t warding her off.

Gemma’s mouth went dry as she watched her husband bend forward to pick up a drink from the table in front of them, laughing and smiling with his companion as they shared the glass. When he brushed his companion’s hair with his lips Gemma was almost sick on the spot. Suddenly, he looked up over the blonde’s head, straight at the archway then straight into Gemma’s appalled face. Without acknowledging her, he looked away and started talking to the couple seated on an adjacent sofa, his arm still firmly around the blonde’s shoulder.

‘Who the hell is that with Nathan?’ Celeste snapped from where she was standing between Gemma and Byron.

‘Her name is Jody Something-or-other,’ Byron grated out. ‘She’s one of the understudies.’

‘I’d hoped I got the wrong idea earlier,’ Cliff muttered on the other side of Byron. ‘Clearly I hadn’t.’

‘Gemma, darling,’ Celeste said abruptly, grabbing her daughter by the shoulders and dragging her back out of sight. ‘Why don’t I take you home? You can see for yourself Nathan doesn’t want a reconciliation. Don’t belittle yourself by trying. Please.’

Having snapped out of her shocked reaction, Gemma’s logical brain jolted into gear. What she’d seen with her eyes didn’t make sense. Nathan loved her, not some strange woman. In that case, what was he doing, draped all over her like that and doing something as intimate as sharing a drink, not to mention kissing her hair?

Every instinct told her to flee. But she’d run away once before when things looked bad and look what had happened!

‘I...I have to talk to him.’

‘Not in there, for pity’s sake,’ Celeste said, nodding towards the crowded and quite noisy room. She turned to her host, her voice assertive. ‘Cliff, you must have a quiet room near by where Gemma could speak privately with Nathan.’

‘Yes, of course!’

Gemma was ushered back down the corridor and through a door into a darkly furnished study-cum-library, where she waited with Celeste while Byron went to get Nathan. A lingering nausea continued to swim in her stomach as she tried desperately to get a grasp on the situation. But it was beyond her.

Nathan came in the room alone, looking elegantly cool in his black dinner suit, not the slightest bit perturbed at having to face his estranged wife.

‘You wanted to see me, Gemma?’ he drawled with an indifference that stunned her.

‘You unfeeling bastard,’ Celeste bit out. ‘We saw you just now with that little tramp.’

Icy grey eyes turned her way. ‘Watch your mouth, Celeste. Jody is no tramp. And I should know. I’ve seen plenty of the real thing. I’m looking at one right now.’

‘Nathan!’ Gemma gasped, appalled by such open rudeness.

‘It’s all right, Gemma,’ Celeste said sharply. ‘I can take care of myself. Now you listen to me, you creep! For some weird and wonderful reason which eludes me, Gemma here still loves you, and believes you still love her. Or she did till she saw that lovely little scenario out there with that blonde! But you and I know what you are, don’t we? You’re not fit to be the husband of a lovely young girl like this. Why don’t you do her a favour? Get the hell out of her life and stay out of it!’

‘Celeste, please,’ Gemma groaned, clasping her hands to the sides of her head.

‘I’d like to do exactly that, Celeste,’ Nathan snarled. ‘Your precious daughter just isn’t getting the message. Why in God’s name you allowed her to come here tonight is beyond me. I don’t want her back. I want a divorce. What more is there to be said?’

‘There’s plenty more to be said!’ Gemma suddenly burst out. ‘And I want it said to me! I’m here in this room, Nathan. Don’t talk around me.’

He turned slowly to face her, the cold fury in his eyes making her flinch away. ‘I have nothing more to say to you.’

Gemma almost crumbled at that point, but she knew if she walked out of here right now without asking him critical questions, she would never be able to live with herself, or the doubts that would remain. ‘But I have things I want to say to you, Nathan,’ she said with more steel than she was actually feeling.

His shrug was indifferent. ‘Please yourself.’

Gemma turned to her mother. ‘Celeste? Will you leave me alone with Nathan?’

Celeste grimaced. ‘I don’t like this, but I suppose I have no alternative. It is your life, after all. I’ll join Byron for a while. But I won’t be far away.’

Giving Nathan a warning glance, Celeste strode from the room, banging the door shut behind her. A strained silence descended, with Gemma eventually moving a little nervously away from Nathan.

‘You don’t have to do that,’ he snapped. ‘I’m not going to attack you again.’

‘Good God, Nathan,’ she groaned, ‘is that what all this is really about? Do you think that I can’t possibly have forgiven you for what you did that day? I can and I do, because I understand the pressures you were under when you did it.’

‘You misunderstand me, Gemma,’ he returned coldly. ‘I do not care if you forgive me or not. And it’s immaterial to me now whether you slept with Campbell or not.’

‘But I didn’t! I swear to you, I didn’t. I won’t deny that he fancied me and that he might have wanted something to develop between us. But nothing did. And now that he’s found out he’s my uncle, there’s no risk of that.’

Nathan’s laughter sent a chill running through her soul. ‘As if something as trivial as a little incest would stop a man like that. God, but you still haven’t grown up, have you? I would have thought some time spent in the bosom of the Campbells would have opened up those innocent eyes of yours.’

Gemma closed those eyes with a pained sigh before opening them again, her expression sad as she surveyed her cynical husband. ‘You always believe the worst of people, don’t you? Not everyone is wicked, Nathan.’

He laughed, then moved slowly towards her, making Gemma stiffen inside with an odd mixture of excitement and apprehension. When he reached out, to tip her chin upwards with a single finger, her eyes were wide and fearful.

‘If they aren’t, my darling,’ he said in a dark silky voice, ‘then it’s only a question of time and opportunity. Even the best person can be corrupted, given the right weapons. Just look at Byron. All he needed was a woman like Celeste to come into his life and his morals went right out of the window. With some people it’s sex. With others it’s drugs. Or money. Or power. Total innocents can be corrupted even against their will, if they fall into the wrong hands.’

The awfulness of Nathan’s words seemed to get lost under the spell of his physical closeness, and that finger which had slid under her chin and was even now tracing an erotic circle around her quivering mouth. Smoky grey eyes locked on to hers and Gemma found herself unable to tear her gaze away from his.

‘I could have really corrupted you if I’d wanted to,’ he murmured thickly.

Gemma moaned softly when that tantalising finger retreated from those tortuous circles. Dazed, she just stood there for a moment till she realised he was staring down at her braless breasts, which were at that moment rising and falling with a betrayingly increased heartbeat.

‘Maybe I already have,’ he rasped, startling her when he slipped his hands into the deep neckline and slid the dress off her shoulders, dragging the material down her arms, till her breasts were totally exposed.

‘Why else would you have dressed like this tonight?’ he taunted, his thumbs rubbing her rapidly hardening nipples. ‘Unless you wanted me to see that your breasts were within easy reach. Unless you wanted me to touch them like this, maybe touch you far more intimately...’

She whimpered as desire shot through her, her heart leaping when his eyes locked on to hers and she saw an answering desire flare madly within his glittering gaze.

‘If I did,’ she whispered breathlessly, ‘it’s because I love you. And because I know you still love me.’

Her words brought a stunned look to his face, quickly followed by a darkening fury.

‘Then you’re a bloody fool!’ he exclaimed, angrily yanking her dress back into place. ‘I do not love you and neither do you love me. God, there I was, thinking you might have grown up a little, that you might have learnt to call our feelings for each other by its correct name. It’s called lust, Gemma. L-U-S-T. Only romantic-minded little fools talk of love when they mean sex. Now get out of here before I do something we’re both going to regret afterwards.’

Gemma stared up at him with her mouth agape and her head whirling.

‘Didn’t you hear me, you silly little bitch?’ he snarled. ‘Get out! And take your naïveté with you. I have no patience with it any more. I should never have damned well married you in the first place and nothing you or anyone else can say will stop me divorcing you!’

Gemma stumbled over to the door where she gripped on to the knob with a white-knuckled intensity. But she did not turn that knob. She dragged some deep, steadying breaths and, when she felt enough in control, slowly turned to face her husband once more.

‘Just tell me one thing before I go,’ she said.