The Six-Month Marriage

Not one word of concern for her. Not one solicitous phrase; not one comforting touch … nothing. She knew she had to say something, but all she could manage was a pitiful sound like a weak kitten, her senses acutely attuned to everything about him. She could feel the leashed energy emanating from his body; smell the clean cold scent of his skin. She shivered feeling reality recede and darkness wash over her. As she slid forward she felt Blake’s arms catch and then lift her.

‘Well, well,’ he murmured laconically. ‘Here you are back in my arms. The last place you swore you’d ever be again. Remember?’

She tried to tell him that she had never been properly in his arms; that she had never known them as those of a lover, but it was too much effort. It was simpler by far to close her eyes and absorb the delicious warmth emanating from his body, letting her senses desert her.

CHAPTER TWO

‘COME ON SAPPHIRE, the shock can’t have been that great.’ The coolly mocking words broke against her senses like tiny darts of ice as she started to come round. She was sitting in a chair in the kitchen of Sefton House, and that chair was drawn up to the warmth of the open fire. The flames should have comforted her, but they weren’t powerful enough to penetrate the chill of Blake’s contempt. ‘Flaws Valley females don’t go round fainting at the first hint of adversity,’ he taunted, watching her with a cynical smile. ‘That’s a London trick you’ve learned. Or was your faint simply a way of avoiding the unpalatable fact of our meeting?’

She had forgotten this side of him; this dangerous cynical side that could maim and destroy.

‘I knew when I came up here that we were bound to meet, Blake.’ She was proud of her composure, of the way she was able to meet the golden eyes. ‘My faint was caused simply by shock—I hadn’t expected the weather to be so bad.’ She glanced round the kitchen, meticulously avoiding looking directly at him. She lifted her hand to touch her aching temple, relieved to discover the cut had healed. ‘Don’t worry,’ Blake tormented, ‘it’s only a scratch!’

She had either forgotten or never fully realised, the intensity of the masculine aura he carried around him. It seemed to fill the large kitchen, dominantly. Droplets of moisture clung to the thick wool of his sweater, his hair thick and dark where it met the collar. His face and hands were tanned, his face leaner than she remembered, the proud hard-boned Celtic features clearly discernible.

The gold eyes flickered and Sapphire tensed, realising that she had been staring. ‘What’s the matter?’ Blake taunted, ‘Having second thoughts? Wishing you hadn’t run out on me?’

‘No.’ Her denial came too quickly; too fervently; and she tensed beneath the anger she saw simmering in his eyes. The kitchen was immaculately clean; Blake had always been a tidy man but Sapphire sensed a woman’s presence in the room.

‘Do you live here alone?’

She cursed herself for asking the impulsive question when she saw his dark eyebrows lift.

‘Now why should that interest you? As a matter of fact I do,’ he added carelessly, ‘although sometimes Molly stays over if it’s been a particularly long day.’

‘Molly?’ She hoped her voice sounded disinterested, but she daren’t take the risk of looking at Blake. What was the matter with her? She had been the one to leave Blake; she had been the one to sue for a divorce, so why should she feel so distressed now on learning that there might possibly be someone else in his life? After all he had never loved her. Never made any pretence of loving her. But she had loved him … so much that she could still feel the echoes of that old pain, but echoes were all they were. She no longer loved Blake, she had put all that behind her when she left the valley. ‘Molly Jessop,’ Blake elucidated laconically, ‘You probably remember her as Molly Sutcliffe. She married Will Jessop, but he was killed in a car accident just after you left. Molly looks after the house for me; she also helps out with the office work.’

Molly Sutcliffe. Oh yes, Sapphire remembered her. Molly had been one of Blake’s girlfriends in the old days. Five years older than Sapphire, and far, far more worldly. She had to grit her teeth to stop herself from making any comment. It was no business of hers what Blake did with his life. As she had already told him she had known they would have to meet during her stay, but not like this, in the enforced intimacy of the kitchen of what had once been their home. Not that she had ever been allowed to spend much time in here. The kitchen had been the province of Blake’s aunt, a formidable woman who had made Sapphire feel awkward and clumsy every time she set foot in it.

‘What happened to your aunt?’ she questioned him, trying not to remember all the small humiliations she had endured here in this room, but it was too late. They all came flooding back, like the morning she had insisted on getting up early to make Blake’s breakfast. She had burned the bacon and broken the eggs while his aunt stood by in grim silence. Blake had pushed his plate away with his food only half eaten. She was barely aware of her faint sigh. The ridiculous thing had been that she had been and still was quite a good cook. Her father’s housekeeper had taught her, but being watched by Aunt Sarah had made her too nervous to concentrate on what she was doing; that and the fact that she had been trying too hard; had been far too eager to please Blake. So much so that in the end her eagerness had been her downfall.

‘Nothing. She’s living in the South of England with a cousin. I’ll tell her you’ve been enquiring about her next time I write,’ Blake mocked, glancing at the heavy watch strapped to his wrist. ‘Look I’d better ring your father and tell him you’re okay. I’ll run you over there in the morning and then see what we can do about your car.’

‘No! No, I’d rather go tonight. My father’s a sick man Blake,’ she told him. ‘I’m very anxious to see him.’

‘You don’t have to tell me how ill he is,’ Blake told her explosively, ‘I’m the one who told you—remember? Don’t expect me to believe that you’re really concerned about him Sapphire. Not when you haven’t been to see him in four years.’

‘There were reasons for that.’ Her throat was a tight band of pain, past which she managed to whisper her protest.

‘Oh yes, like you didn’t want to leave your lover?’ His lips drew back in a facsimile of a smile, the vulpine grin of a marauding wolf. ‘What’s the matter Sapphire? Did you hope to keep your little affair a secret?’

‘Affair?’ Sapphire sat bolt upright in her chair.

‘Yes … with your boss … the man you’re planning to marry, according to your father. What took you so long?’

‘It’s only five months since I got the divorce,’ Sapphire reminded him stiffly.

‘But you could have got an annulment—much, much faster … Why didn’t you? Or was it that by the time you realised that you could, that the grounds no longer existed?’

It took a physical effort not to get up and face him with the truth, but somehow she managed it.

‘My relationship with Alan is no concern of yours Blake,’ she told him coolly. ‘I’m sorry I’ve put you to all this trouble, but I’d like to get to Flaws as soon as possible.’

‘Meaning you’d like to get away from me as soon as possible,’ Blake drawled. ‘Well my dear that may not be as easy as you think. In fact I suspect that when I ring your father now and tell him you’re here, he’ll suggest you stay the night.’

‘Stay the night? Here with you, when the farm’s only five miles up the road, don’t be ridiculous.’

She glared at him, her eyes flashing angrily.

‘You know it’s probably just as well that you and I have had this opportunity to talk Sapphire. Your father’s perked up a lot since you told him you were coming back. He hopes you and I will bury our differences and get back together.’

Stunned, Sapphire could only stare at him. ‘You must be mad,’ she stammered at last. ‘We’re divorced … my father …’

‘Your father is a very sick man, still as concerned about the future of his family’s land as he was …’

‘When you married me so that you could inherit it,’ Sapphire broke in. ‘You took advantage of my naivetе once Blake, but I’m not a seventeen-year-old adolescent in the grips of her first crush now. We’re divorced and that’s the way we’re going to stay.’

‘Even if that means precipitating your father’s death?’

She went white with the cruelty of his words. ‘His death, but …’

‘Make no mistake about it, your father’s a very sick man Sapphire. Very sick indeed, and worse, he’s a man with no will left to struggle. You know that he’s always wanted to see the two farms united. That was why he wanted us to get married in the first place.’

‘If he’s so keen for you to have the land, why doesn’t he simply give it to you?’ Sapphire asked him angrily.

‘Because he wants to think some day that a child of ours—carrying his blood as well as mine—will inherit Bell land.’

‘Oh so it isn’t just marriage you want from me,’ Sapphire stormed, ‘it’s a child as well? I wonder that you dare suggest such a thing when …’

‘When?’ Blake prodded softly when she stopped abruptly. ‘When you couldn’t bring yourself to touch me when we were married,’ she had been about to say, but the pain of that time still hurt too much for her to be able to talk about it.

‘When you know that I’m planning to marry someone else,’ she told him coolly. ‘Blake, I don’t believe a word of what you’ve just said. My father must know that there isn’t a chance of you and I getting together again. For one thing, there’s simply nothing that such a relationship could offer me.’

‘No.’ His eyes fell to her breasts, and although Sapphire knew that the bulky wool of her jumper concealed them, she was acutely aware of a peculiar tension invading her body, making her face hot and her muscles ache.

‘I would have said that being able to give your father a considerable amount of peace of mind would be a powerful incentive—to most daughters, but then you aren’t like most daughters are you Sapphire?’ he asked savagely. ‘Or like most women for that matter. You don’t care who you hurt or how much as long as you get what you want. Look, I don’t want to be re-married to you any more than you want it, but I doubt it would be for very long.’

He watched her pale, and sway, with merciless eyes. ‘Your father knows already how little time he’s got, and whether you want to admit it or not he’s very concerned about the future of his land—land which has been in his family as long as this farm has been in mine. Would it hurt either of us so much to do what he wants—to remarry and stay together until …’

‘Until he dies?’ She hurled the words at him, shaking with pain and anger. ‘And for how long do you estimate we should have to play out this charade Blake? You must know, you certainly seem to know everything else.’

‘I was the closest thing to family he has left,’ Blake told her simply, ‘Naturally his doctor …’ he broke off, studying the quarry tile floor and then raised his head and it seemed to Sapphire that she had been wrong in her original estimation that he hadn’t changed. Now he looked older, harder, and she knew with an undeniable intuition that no matter what lies he might tell her about everything else, Blake did genuinely care for her father. Despair welled up inside her. Her father dying … Remorse gripped her insides, her throat tense and sore. She badly wanted to cry, but she couldn’t let Blake see her break down.

‘Six months or so Sapphire,’ he said quietly at last. ‘Not a lot to ask you to give up surely? And you have my word that afterwards … that we can part quickly and amicably. This time our marriage will be dissolved.’

‘And the farm … my father’s land?’

‘I’d like to buy it from you—at the going rate of course, unless your London lover wants to try his hand at farming?’