Second Best Wife (6 page)

'You've never done anything to make me like you very much, so why shouldn't I? Not that I did! Not because of you, but because of me. I wouldn't
stoop
—'

'Words, Georgie. I think you'd do almost anything to get even with me—perhaps you think you're justified, who knows? But I can promise you you won't enjoy the fruits of your triumph! Marriage can be heaven or hell, my dear. I was going to try and make it as pleasant as possible for you; I now feel relieved of any such obligation. My vengeance can be as bitter as yours —and a great deal more intimate!'

She closed her eyes, trying not to listen. 'Why don't you let me go and marry your marvellous Jennifer, if that's what you want to do?' she asked him.

He was quiet for so long that she thought he hadn't heard her and she opened her eyes to see what he was doing. His face was very close to hers in what could easily have been mistaken as a loving gesture. Only she could see the cold hardness of his eyes.

'What I have, I hold, Georgina Ayres,' he said slowly. 'Isn't that what I promised you this morning?
To have and to hold, from this day forward?
For ever? For the rest of your life, my dear, dear wife!'

She closed her eyes again, giving herself up to misery. What a fool she had been to marry him, she thought. What a
fool
! Perhaps she had said it aloud, though she had said it to herself.

'Why did you marry me, Georgie?' he asked her. 'I couldn't really have forced you to it, as you very well know. What made you actually say the fatal words?'

The pain of her unhappiness collected as a lump in her chest and the back of her throat felt as stiff as a board.,

'I think I wanted to,' she answered. 'I wanted to see Sri Lanka.'

'And to be my wife?'

'I don't know,' she confessed. 'I tried not to think about it. I thought you'd find out —I thought you might be kinder once we were away from home. I don't know what I thought!'

To her surprise he smiled at that. 'Very likely! Poor Georgie, do you always hit out before you think, even when it's yourself who gets hurt?'

Her gaze flew to the yellow smudge that was all that was left of the black eye she had given him.

'Only with you,' she confided. 'You're the only person I've ever hated.' She swallowed, summoning up all the reserves she had at her disposal. 'I wish I were as nasty as you think me,' she said passionately, 'and I'd make you wish you'd never been born!'

His smile widened. 'You can try,' he invited her.

He turned away from her, settling back in his seat, and began to read the printed menu he had found in the pocket in front of him. 'Good lord, they don't mean us to starve! Two dinners and three breakfasts! That ought to hold us for a few hours after we get there!'

Georgina slept fairly well until the vast aeroplane prepared to come down at Bombay. She had watched the pirate film that had been provided for their entertainment, but had been unable to keep her mind on the rather trite story. She had enjoyed the fencing, though. She had done some fencing herself while she had been away at college and she found that that knowledge added to rather than detracted from the carefully staged fights on the screen.

She had taken some pleasure in telling William that the heroine was very much better with the foil than the hero.

'Are you a female chauvinist as well?' he had asked her. 'I am when she has to work quite so hard not to disarm him entirely,' she had retorted. 'She could take him apart any time she chose!'

'It wouldn't do much for the story line,' he had observed. 'The helpless maiden rescuing the knight in shining armour doesn't sound right. That's the trouble with women these days, they won't stick to their own role in life.'

'Wailing and weeping on the sidelines went out with crinolines,' she had said with satisfaction. 'We've learned it's better to rely on ourselves since then. It's better to make one's own mistakes.'

'And have two heads in every household?'

She had considered the point carefully, sure he had laid a trap for her. 'I suppose it works better when the man is the head and the woman the heart of the family, but some men abdicate their responsibilities and then the woman has to step in or the children suffer.'

He had picked up her hand in his, examining the ring on her finger. 'I shan't abdicate my responsibilities,' he had said.

It wasn't possible to get any accurate impressions of what Bombay was really like. Circling over it as they came down to refuel at the International Airport, it looked much smaller than Georgina had imagined it to be. But then, from the air, all India looked the same dun colour and practically uninhabited. The teeming millions of India were nowhere to be seen.

'Next stop Colombo,' said William.

'And then where?'

'Nowhere today. I'll be picking up a car tomorrow and then we'll drive up to Kandy and settle in. Today, we'll sleep off the flight and catch up with ourselves.'

'And see Colombo?' she prompted him.

He shook his head. 'There'll be plenty of time for that. Don't look like that, Georgie. We're going to do things my way and it simply doesn't pay to rush about the moment you get off an aeroplane after a long flight. You'll see the whole island before we go home, I promise you. Only not today.'

She looked up at him through her lashes. 'You're still angry,' she accused him. 'It will take more than that to spoil my pleasure, though. Everyone says Sri Lanka is a beautiful place, and even you can't make it ugly just to spite me!'

He was taken aback by the attack. 'My dear Georgina, hasn't anyone ever told you about the effects of jet lag? If you want to make yourself ill, by all means take yourself off and visit the museum, or anywhere else you want to go. I'm going to bed!'

She wondered if she wanted to brave an unknown city in an unknown world by herself and came to the conclusion she didn't.

'You're sure it isn't because you want to ruin things for me?' she demanded, still suspicious.

'My revenge will be a great deal more subtle than that,' he told her. 'Enjoy Sri Lanka all you can, it's your marriage to me which is going to be your prison. For once, you're going to pay for taking something away from Jennifer out of the rather despicable envy you've always had for her. To be an unloved wife is more of a punishment than to deny you any amount of sightseeing, as you'll find out!'

He made a formidable enemy, she thought. 'You mean we're each going to live our own lives — ?'

'What on earth makes you think that?' he exploded.

'You said unloved. I thought you meant—unloved.'

'I see.' His grim amusement cut her to the quick. 'Making love is a euphemism that should never be used in our kind of marriage, but I don't see why I should deny myself the pleasures of your body for such a quixotic reason, do you?'

'I think you're horrid!'

'So you've said before. It becomes tedious. It would be more wifely if you kept your opinion of me to yourself in future.'

'While you can say what you like about me? You'd better look out that I don't black your other eye for you! A fine fool you'd look if I did!'

'By all means try if you think you can, but to be forewarned is to be forearmed. I might get in first. Have you thought of that?'

'You mean you'd hit me?' She could scarcely believe her ears. Surely William wasn't the kind of man who would hit a woman?

'There are times when I'd give anything to wallop you black and blue, but I don't suppose I will unless badly provoked, and you won't do that, will you, Georgie Porgie? I'll make a pact with you: if you keep your fists to yourself, so will I. Agreed?'

She sniffed. 'You talk as if I were always punching you in the face,' she complained.

'Once was enough,' he said dryly. 'I won't be as forbearing another time, my ruffian wife.'

'No? I suppose you'll think of Jennifer and let fly? What a pity she won't be there to see it!'

He snorted in derision. 'Could be! And you won't have my mother in your corner to cheer you on either, which should reduce your chances somewhat. You'd better make up your mind to behave

yourself like the lady you were brought up to be!'

She managed a wide, insouciant smile, to show him how little she cared about his threats. 'I'll see,' she compromised. 'It was such a splendid black eye last time that the joy of it may last me for a long time to come, but I'm not making any promises, you understand? Even ladies slap down their menfolk when the occasion demands it, you know.'

'The operative word is slap, my dear, not punch in the eye!'

The wry humour of his words appealed to her, but not for worlds would she have let him see it. 'Why don't you go outside and stretch your legs?' she suggested to him.

His only answer was to sit down again in the seat beside her, hunching his shoulders in an attempt to get a little more comfortable. She sank back herself, pushing her legs out in front of her. Why it should matter to her that he should choose to stay, she could not tell, but his presence lit a small candle of happiness inside her. If he would only forget Jennifer for a few days he might see her as a person in her own right. If only — It was the most useless phrase she knew. He didn't want to forget Jennifer and, now that he couldn't have her, he was intent on exacting his revenge for his disappointment from her. If only he would believe her about the letter! If only —

'I'm going to write to Jennifer,' she said aloud. 'I'll tell her you got her letter safely. You can read it before I send it, if you like.'

'I don't believe in flogging dead horses. Put Jennifer out of your mind, Georgie, and I'll try to do the same. We're stuck with each other, so we may as well make the best of things.'

She pursed up her lips. 'And know you're wishing I were Jennifer whenever you come near me? Why should I put up with that?'

'I'm more likely to treat you gently if I do imagine you to be Jennifer! But you needn't worry. No one would mistake you for her in their right senses. And you won't mind half as much as you think you will. If you were honest, you would admit you liked my kisses very well indeed. Nor have you any excuse for mistaking my intentions towards you, like you did Peter's. A trifle slow in the uptake, your gentleman friend, wouldn't you say?'

Georgina would have said a great deal more than that, but she

restrained herself nobly. 'He's not such a fool as all that!'

'My dear girl, you should have seen his face when I suggested to him you were hoping to marry him. He wasn't worthy of your undoubted talents!'

She blushed with pleasure. 'What talents?' she asked hopefully.

'That would be telling!'' His mouth twitched. 'You haven't had as much experience of the opposite sex as you pretend, Georgie Porgie. The time for kissing mere boys has gone now you have a man of your own. You'll need all the talents you possess to cope with him!'

'With you?' She felt suddenly humble in the face of the challenge he held out to her. He must feel
something
for her after all.

'Since Peter failed you, I'm the only man you've got,' he drawled, getting slowly to his feet. 'I won't have you playing around with anyone else.'

He disappeared down the aisle towards the open door of the plane, exchanging a laughing word with one of the fresh hostesses who had come on board a few minutes before. Georgina saw the quick interest on the hostess's face and wondered if every female felt the same way when they saw his shaggy good looks and the distinctly masculine look in his gold-brown eyes. Was it no more than the automatic, feminine reaction to any personable man that she felt for him? Was that what had been the matter with her ever since she had discovered she didn't dislike him half as much as she had thought she did? But no, that was ridiculous. He wasn't the kind of man who had ever attracted her in the past. Her type had always been the well-read, gentle, academic sort, not an engineer who liked to get his hands dirty and who didn't give a damn how he won just as long as he did. That was the William she knew! A man too arrogant to be borne!

Yet when he came back to her there was no doubt but that her heart beat faster.

'We're about to have breakfast again,' he said, throwing himself back into his seat.

'Again?'

'It's the last time before Colombo,' he said solemnly. 'You'd better make the most of it.'

She giggled in a way she seldom did, but which Jennifer did all too often, and was rewarded by a sharp look from her husband.

‘You don't do that often enough,' he told her.

‘There hasn't been much to laugh about recently,' she reminded him.

‘We'll have to change that.' His eyes lit with a purely masculine glint that shook her to the core, it was so unexpected. ‘What kind of things

do you find funny, Georgie?'

‘Not you!' She turned her head away and made a play of fanning herself with the paperback she held in her hand. ‘It's hot in here, isn't it?'

He put out a hand and took the book away from her, glancing at its title as he did so. Apparently he approved of the title, for he turned it over and began to read the blurb on the back.

‘Coward,' he murmured. ‘What do you think I can do to you in a public plane?'