Second-Best Bride

‘I want to be happy!’ she whispered.

She rocked on her feet but managed to hold her ground. The murmurings grew louder while she stared in confusion at Trader, who looked equally alarmed, small beads of sweat glistening on his brow. Hopelessly muddled, she gripped her skirt convulsively, causing some of the petals from the flower swags to float to the floor.

‘He loves me, he loves me not,’ she intoned inaudibly to herself, superstitiously counting each petal as it fell. ‘He loves me, he loves me not…’ Her breath stopped. ‘He loves me!’

Her lashes fluttered up in the unlikely hope that the childish game had some foundation. Incredibly, Trader was smiling gently and the love in his eyes made her give an involuntary sigh of bemused pleasure. She was totally oblivious to the chorus of sentimental sniffs to her left and the amused smiles to her right. Her father tugged in vain. She was transfixed. Immobile.

I love you! Trader mouthed, tenderly, adoringly. And she melted. Stupid she might be to go against every ounce of rational thought in her brain, but with that affirmation, all her worries vanished in a rush of relief and a shy delight.

I love you! she mouthed back in soft, heart-aching delight, seeing his whole body relax as though he’d been tense and uncertain too.

He loved her. She’d put her life on the line that he did. That heart-stopping worship in his soul-searching eyes couldn’t possibly be faked!

Her slender body still trembled but now she glowed and her smile broke out, filling her face with radiance. She sighed in sheer relief at the narrowness of her escape from a life of misery without him. Seeing Trader’s loving face, she knew there was more to the blackmail and Trader’s strange behaviour than her father had let on. There must be another side to the story, and between them they’d work out a solution to living their lives decently.

Courage and confidence lifted her head on its slender neck. Like a graceful swan, released from its ugly duckling stage, she floated towards Trader, the man she loved, an incandescent joy on her face. And to her great delight he came slowly towards her as if he couldn’t bear to wait any longer to be near her, to touch her. That was how she felt. They’d been apart for too long. Hours!

She was aware, briefly, of her mother’s moist eyes and hugely happy smile beneath the ridiculous little hat Trader had helped her choose. It made her look young and beautiful, thought Claire fondly. And saw how quickly her mother transferred her gaze to her father, and ached at the intense longing in her mother’s sweet face. Dear Ma! It took all sorts!

And Claire vowed to forget her father’s jarring behaviour and questionable ethics and to concentrate on the fact that he had the power to make her mother content, after years of unhappiness. If they got together, her mother could give up work at last and her angina would be more manageable and less life-threatening. Claire smiled with joy.

‘I hope she knows what she’s doing!’

Claire flinched, but she didn’t let Phoenix’s anxious aside dim her smile at all. She did know. Trader was stretching out his hand to her and she had eyes only for him.

‘My beautiful madonna,’ he said softly.

Shivers chased down her spine at the way he looked at her. Nice shivers. They made her feel special. Cherished.

‘Trader!’ she husked.

Filled with a wonderful lightness of heart, she reached out and took his hand, watched him half disintegrate, saw the strong jaw working, the swallowing of a lump in his throat that echoed hers—and, unknown to her, almost everyone’s in the church.

‘Trader,’ she sighed happily.

He loved her!

Firmly he drew her to his side and his fierce, possessive look told her that he never wanted to let her go again. Lovingly he guided her the last few yards down the aisle. And, elated beyond belief, she shyly lowered her eyes to quietly savour the wonderful moment of certainty. Her dreams were safe and love would conquer all their difficulties. Feeling the acuteness of his relief, she felt privileged and humble that she should have prompted such a profound love in a man’s heart.

His hand tightened its grip a little. ‘Claire!’ It was a wonderfully husky growl that never failed to make her feel she was being caressed and it reached deep into her bones. ‘You worried me for a moment back there!’ he said softly. ‘I thought that——’ He gave a low laugh that still had an edge of relief to it. ‘I thought you were going to jilt me!’

The clergyman fidgeted, the starched cassock crackling meaningfully, but Claire’s eyes pleaded mutely for a moment to speak to Trader.

‘If I had?’ she asked gently.

‘I would have caught you and kissed you till you surrendered to me,’ Trader murmured. He smiled. ‘I love you, Claire!’ he said with fierce conviction. ‘I love you so much it stops my breath!’

It was everything she’d wanted to hear. Shaken, she slowly lifted her lashes and he must have seen the pearly tears at the corner of her huge, soft eyes despite the folds of the gossamer veil, because he gave her a tender, understanding smile that brought a blinding happiness to her face.

The intense devotion in her expression, her unworldly beauty and his compellingly handsome profile, produced a ripple of wistful envy that ran through the church in a low murmur.

Her lips parted. But she couldn’t speak for the lump in her slender throat and touched him on his broad chest instead, with a loving, worshipping hand. Which he took in his and kissed lightly before he turned to the moist-eyed cleric in front of them.

‘Please go ahead. We’re ready,’ he said, with an authoritative nod.

And Claire felt the excitement mounting within her, a mist of love around her that little else permeated. Dimly in the background, she heard the organ notes die away and then the clergyman’s gentle voice. ‘Dearly beloved…’

Trader squeezed her hand rather hard. She tried to listen carefully to every word, every special phrase she and Trader had chosen from her mother’s old prayer book, so that she could savour every second of her wedding-day—so nearly abandoned.

Now she understood her mother’s unshakeable devotion. Once you’d experienced true love, you were never the same again. There was a painful, contradictory seesawing of feelings: a deep core of tranquillity and an adrenalin-spinning excitement. Elation and security. Irresistible drugs of the mind. Trader satisfied all her emotional needs. That was enough.

She stole a look at the man she loved: the clean sweep of brow, the aggressive nose and determined mouth, the achingly beautiful angle of cheek and jaw. An intensely masculine man. Potent, a little unnerving, mysterious.

Her knees weakened. He shot her a look, his eyes glittering with such a fierce excitement that it came close to…triumph.

‘…not to be undertaken lightly or wantonly…’

Her body stiffened a little because her conscience troubled her over that. They were marrying with secrets between them. Maybe without a dowry Trader wouldn’t give her a second thought. His hand squeezed hers reassuringly. In fact, his grip was so tight that she could feel the unusual dampness of his palms and the impression of her bones against his flesh.

‘…but reverently, discreetly, advisedly…’

The pressure on her hand increased till she gasped and turned her huge green eyes to him in apprehension. It was as though Trader was afraid she’d take fright and run. Claire shrank into herself, alarmed by her suspicious thoughts.

Somehow she quelled her disloyal doubts and fixed her gaze on the solemn priest. Every word was of deep significance to her. Marriage was holy. Not to be undertaken lightly…There was a clatter behind them; one of Trader’s guests had dropped something—a portable phone, by the sound of it. And he drew in a deep, harsh breath that filled his body with a rigid tension.

Stricken by her overwhelming misgivings, she steeled herself not to tremble.

‘Therefore,’ intoned the priest, ‘if any man can show any just cause why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace.’

There was a stifled cry behind them which made them both jump. The vicar looked up in sudden alarm as a shocked hush fell. Trader stopped breathing and prickles went down the back of Claire’s neck. Trader had tightened every muscle in his body as though he feared and anticipated a denouncement.

She felt her skin become clammy. And then she heard what she’d been dreading. A clear, ringing word that echoed accusingly in the silence…

‘Wait!’

Claire gave a low, despairing moan of horror and fainted dead away.

It seemed but a moment before the darkness that surrounded her became murky. Voices impinged on her unconscious and slowly she recovered to full awareness—but she kept her eyes tightly shut because she couldn’t bring herself to face anyone. The shame, the awful, hollowing disillusionment, rocketed through her, draining away all normal resilience.

And she tried to untangle her mind because she was no longer lying on the cold, stone floor of the church. It seemed she was sitting in an armchair; she could feel its welcome softness beneath her lifeless body.

Quite motionless, she began to gather the foggy facts together. There’d been an objection to their wedding. Her stomach did its sickening swoop. The whole scenario was so like Jane-Eyre! Trader must have a wife. In the attic? she wondered hysterically. What attic? Where? Perhaps children! Hordes of them! How dared he! She wanted to hide forever…

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry! You know I’d never hurt you——’

Claire all but stiffened at the pathetic whimper. It was Phoenix—Phoenix, when she wanted her mother’s shoulder to cry on…

‘For God’s sake, shut up!’ rasped Trader brutally, shockingly. ‘I’m damned if I’m cancelling the marriage! It means too much to me!’