Newlyweds of Convenience Read online

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ asked Torr, who had been watching her face without Mallory realising.

  She turned her head to look at him. ‘Steve,’ she said after a moment. It was the truth, if not the whole truth.

  ‘Ah.’ It was Torr’s turn to look at the sea far below. There was a pause. ‘Are you having regrets about last night?’ The words sounded as if they had been forced out of him.

  ‘No.’ Mallory shook her head. ‘No, not at all. I had a good time last night.’ She hesitated. ‘I think we made the right choice, don’t you?’

  ‘That rather depends on which choice you mean,’ said Torr.

  ‘To make the most of our time together,’ she said, puzzled by the ironic undercurrent in his voice. What other choices had they made?

  He kept his eyes on the view. ‘You mean before you go back to Ellsborough next year?’

  ‘Yes.’ Mallory could hear the note of doubt in her own voice. Sitting up here in the clear air, with the hills around her and the sea spread out like a glittering sheet below, her life in Ellsborough seemed very far away.

  But of course she still wanted to go back to it. Last night had been wonderful, but that was because it was simply a healthy physical attraction, uncomplicated by love or need. That was how Mallory wanted it to be, anyway. She had been too hurt by Steve to risk her poor battered heart again any time soon.

  ‘We can enjoy now because we know it’s not for ever,’ she said, uncomfortably aware that she sounded as if she was trying to convince herself more than Torr.

  But what else could they do? Anything might seem possible up here, but she couldn’t live up in the hills for ever. It wasn’t realistic to think about a future with Torr. Even if she had been able to face lifetime in Kincaillie’s ruins, how could she ever be really happy when she knew that he was still in love with someone else?

  No, it would never work. Much better to stick to a physical attraction that would run its course and leave it at that.

  ‘We can pretend for a year,’ she told Torr, ‘but we can’t pretend for ever.’

  ‘Pretend what?’

  ‘That there won’t always be two people between us. Steve and the woman you love. We can ignore them for a while, but they won’t go away. Can you really imagine a future when you’re happy without her?’

  There was a long pause. Torr sighed and upturned his mug to empty the last of his coffee into the heather. ‘No,’ he said eventually, without looking at Mallory. ‘No, I don’t think I can.’

  The long walk seemed to have tired Charlie out, and for the next few days he was very quiet. He lost his appetite and was happy just to sleep in the long grass while Mallory carried on digging in the kitchen garden.

  ‘I hope that walk wasn’t too far for him,’ she fretted to Torr. ‘He’s always been so bouncy that I forget he isn’t a young dog anymore.’

  ‘Why don’t you get the vet to check him over?’

  Mallory made a face. ‘I could, but he does hate going to the vet. He’s an awful baby about it. If he doesn’t get better soon, though, I will.’

  Fortunately, the mention of the vet seemed to rejuvenate Charlie miraculously, and the very next day he seemed back to his old self. Mallory took him down to the beach and was reassured to see him bounding into the waves.

  ‘I think he’s fine,’ she said to Torr that evening, much relieved.

  Privately she had wondered if Charlie was jealous that a large part of her attention had shifted to Torr, and she made a point of making an extra fuss of the dog, which made him very happy. When his tail was thumping and his eyes closed in ecstasy as she pulled gently at his ears, it was hard to believe that there was anything wrong with him at all.

  The niggling worry about Charlie aside, Mallory was happier than she had been since before Steve left her. They were enjoying a spell of fine, dry weather, and it was impossible for her spirits not to lift when the sky was bright and blue and the air was soft and the sea glittered in the sunlight. The roofers were making progress, and with Dougal’s advice she was beginning to see some results in the garden. Mallory would never have believed that the back-breaking work of clearing and digging and planting could be so satisfying.

  And then there was Torr.

  Sometimes she felt quite dizzy when she looked at him. He might just be up on the scaffolding, talking to the builders, or filling the kettle, or brushing the dust from his hair at the end of the day, but the sight of him would make her heart flip and send the oxygen in a giddy rush to her brain.

  And that was nothing compared to how her body reacted when he pulled off his clothes at night and reached for her with a smile. The very thought of that was enough to dry the breath in Mallory’s throat and set her senses churning and clenching with desire.

  She was in lust with her own husband, Mallory acknowledged to herself. Embarrassingly so, in fact.

  At least she wasn’t in love with him. That really would be embarrassing. Mallory was careful not even to contemplate the possibility. They had been through all this before, in any case. She knew that Torr’s heart lay elsewhere, and the thought of falling in love and exposing herself to being hurt again was terrifying. It left her feeling edgy and vulnerable. Don’t even go there, she warned herself sternly.

  So Mallory kept a careful guard on her heart and told herself that she was happy to live day by day.

  She was less happy when Torr informed her one evening that Sheena Irvine would be coming down from Inverness to see how the work was progressing.

  ‘We’d better give her a decent lunch,’ he said.

  Mallory pursed her lips. ‘Why can’t she have a sandwich like the rest of us?’

  ‘Because she’s coming just for a day. It’ll be a long drive for her.’ Torr looked thoughtful. ‘I suppose we could clear out a room for her.’

  ‘I’ll make lunch,’ said Mallory quickly. She didn’t want Sheena staying the night! ‘I’ve got to go into Carraig anyway tomorrow, so I’ll get something there.’

  ‘Well, see if you can find something a bit more exciting than a sandwich,’ he said.

  Why was he so determined to make a fuss of Sheena? Mallory wondered sourly. Remembering how blatantly Sheena had flirted with Torr, she had a good mind just to buy a tin of sardines and some sliced bread. On the other hand, perhaps this was a good opportunity to remind Sheena that Torr already had a perfectly good wife. She might not be able to climb a mountain, but she knew how to entertain. That was one of the reasons Torr had married her, after all.

  So Mallory made fresh soup and a lemon tart, and she bought bread and cold meats and cheeses at the shop in Carraig, which had a surprisingly good deli section. It wasn’t the most exciting lunch in the world, but it looked appetising when it was all spread out on the kitchen table.

  Not that Sheena noticed. She was too busy gushing to Torr about what an exciting project Kincaillie was. ‘You’ve done a marvellous job already, Torr. It’s going to be wonderful when you’ve finished with it,’ she enthused after he had shown her round. Mallory had been left in the kitchen to get lunch ready.

  ‘I’d love to live somewhere like this.’ Sheena sighed wistfully. ‘Such history! And those mountains on your doorstep! You could climb every day. It’s paradise, isn’t it?’

  Mallory cut the lemon tart viciously. Why didn’t Sheena tie herself up in a ribbon and offer herself to Torr with a label reading ‘suitable wife’? And look at Torr, nodding away and smiling, obviously delighted to have found someone who shared his feeling for Kincaillie! Had either of them even noticed that she was there? Perhaps they thought the soup had made itself and the tart had appeared by magic.

  It went on like that for hours-Torr and Sheena nose to nose over the plans, while Mallory cleared up around them and wasn’t even asked for her opinion. By the time Sheena finally left, she was in a vile temper.

  ‘I think that went very well, don’t you?’ Torr made the mistake of saying when he came in from waving Sheena off.

  ‘
Well, you obviously enjoyed it,’ said Mallory, who was taking out her feelings on the washing up, banging and crashing plates and glasses together.

  Torr’s eyes narrowed at her tone. ‘I did,’ he said evenly. ‘Sheena’s got some really interesting ideas for what we can do here.’

  ‘Don’t you mean for what she can do with you?’ Mallory snapped, and he sighed.

  ‘You’re not still on that nonsense, are you?’

  ‘It’s not nonsense.’

  With one part of her mind Mallory could recognise that she was behaving badly. She couldn’t really understand why she was so upset. Wasn’t she the one who had insisted that she and Torr couldn’t have a future together? Torr would be staying at Kincaillie, so she shouldn’t blame him for planning for a future that didn’t include her.

  She shouldn’t, but she did.

  She didn’t want to be jealous, but she was.

  Confused, churning with uncertainty, Mallory took out her unease on Torr, who seemed so calm and certain of himself and what he wanted. She knew it wasn’t fair, but she couldn’t help herself, and knowing that she was being unreasonable just made things worse.

  ‘Sheena spent the entire day simpering at you, and you lapped it up!’ she threw at him. ‘You couldn’t wait to scurry off on your own together.’

  Torr’s jaw tightened with exasperation. ‘You could have come with us. If you’d had any interest in Kincaillie, you would have done.’

  ‘I was busy making the special lunch you ordered, if you remember!’

  Hurt more than she wanted to admit by the implication that she wasn’t interested in Kincaillie, Mallory tipped the dirty water out of the washing up bowl with such venom that it slopped all over her front.

  ‘Although I don’t know why you bothered,’ she went on, muttering under her breath at the mess. ‘Sheena wouldn’t have cared if we’d given her a bowl of Charlie’s food as long as she could sit and make eyes at you!’

  Something raw and unpleasant had crept into the atmosphere, and by this time Torr was evidently having trouble keeping his own temper under control.

  ‘Don’t you think you’re being rather childish, Mallory?’

  ‘If you call it childish to object to Sheena flaunting her qualifications to be the next Lady of Kincaillie in front of my face. “This is paradise, Torr,”’ Mallory mimicked with an atrocious Scottish accent. ‘“I’d so love to live here, Torr. We could go climbing every day. Oh, and by the way, Torr, I’d be so much better a wife for you than Mallory, who’s only good for making lemon tart.”’

  ‘Why do you care, anyway?’ Torr demanded, losing the battle with his temper at last. ‘You’re going back to Ellsborough, as you keep saying. It won’t be anything to do with you. But now you come to mention it, I think you’re right. Sheena would make a perfect Lady of Kincaillie. She wouldn’t make a fuss about the conditions here.’

  ‘No, I dare say she wouldn’t have wasted a moment’s time cleaning the bathroom or getting rid of the spiders’ webs in the bedroom, would she?’ Mallory practically spat out. ‘What a waste of time, when you could have been running up and down mountains together!’

  ‘Well, it’s not too late,’ said Torr, his mouth a compressed line and a white shade around his mouth. ‘I’ll invite her down for the weekend when you’ve gone.’

  When you’ve gone. Funny how three simple words could twist her entrails into a painful knot that made Mallory suck in her breath. How casually Torr had uttered them, as if it didn’t matter at all whether she was there or not.

  ‘It won’t just be a weekend,’ she said bravely, given the fact that she was trying desperately to keep her voice from shaking. ‘Once Sheena gets a foot in the door, she’ll be here for ever.’

  ‘I can think of worse fates than spending my life with an attractive woman who cares about the same things I do and who actually wants to be with me.’

  Torr’s eyes were cold and his voice very hard. Mallory felt sick.

  ‘What about the love of your life? The one you were never going to get over?’

  ‘She’s not attainable and Sheena is,’ he said flatly. ‘Perhaps it’s time I gave up on that dream. It was never going to come true, anyway.’

  ‘I thought you never gave up?’ Mallory couldn’t resist goading him, and Torr looked at her for a long moment, his eyes unreadable, before he turned away.

  ‘There’s a first time for everything.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘I’ M TAKING Charlie to the vet.’ Mallory found Torr about to climb the scaffolding to the roofers a couple of days later.

  Ever since Sheena’s visit they had been frigidly polite to each other. Mallory had been huffy all that evening, and when they’d gone to bed she had firmly turned her back to him and pretended to sleep, telling herself she would do something about another room first thing in the morning.

  When you’ve gone. Torr’s words circled endlessly round her brain.

  She was the one who had suggested that she only stay a year, Mallory kept reminding herself. It had been her idea to earn her divorce. So why did Torr’s casual acceptance of the fact that she would be leaving in a matter of months hurt so much?

  Mallory couldn’t shake the humiliated feeling. She had been happy recently. She had let herself believe that she could live in the present and not worry about the future, and she had let down her guard. She had forgotten the reality of her marriage to Torr.

  Torr hadn’t forgotten. He hadn’t lost sight of the truth. They didn’t have a relationship, they had a deal.

  That was what she had wanted, wasn’t it?

  Mallory didn’t know any more. All she knew was that the warmth of the last few weeks had evaporated, and they were back to the cold formality of the early months of their marriage.

  And that she wanted to weep.

  Unable to think of anything else to do, Mallory had gone back to her digging. Charlie lay in his usual place in the grass, but he’d been listless again, and when he’d turned away from his breakfast three days running she started to worry in earnest.

  ‘Do you want me to come with you?’ Torr asked now, when she told him about her decision to take the dog to the vet, but she shook her head.

  ‘No. I’m sure it’s nothing serious,’ she said, refusing to admit to her own fears. ‘I just wanted to let you know I was taking the car.’

  The stilted politeness was awful. Only a few days ago he would have smiled at her, or taken the opportunity to touch her. He might have run a hand down her arm, or smoothed her breeze-blown hair back into place. She might have leant carelessly against him. Their eyes might have met in unspoken anticipation of the night to come.

  Now they barely looked at each other.

  They couldn’t carry on like this for the rest of the year, Mallory realised. The tension was unbearable. She would have to find a way of sorting it out-but first she had to get Charlie better.

  Torr was in the kitchen, about to order materials to be delivered by the builder’s merchant, when Mallory and Charlie came back, but after one glance he put the phone down.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked sharply.

  Mallory’s expression was stony, her eyes stark. She put her bag very carefully on the table. ‘The vet thinks Charlie has a tumour,’ she said, in a voice held so tight it hurt to hear it. ‘He says he can feel it. But he might be wrong, mightn’t he?’

  ‘What if he isn’t?’ said Torr carefully. ‘Is there anything he can do?’

  ‘No,’ she said bleakly. ‘Nothing.’ She drew a breath and steadied the treacherous wobble that threatened her voice. ‘So I’m going to believe that he’s wrong, and even if he isn’t that doesn’t mean Charlie is going to die now. There’s no reason to think the worst. He might have a couple of years yet.’

  Part of Mallory knew that she was denying Charlie’s illness in the same way that she had denied Steve’s betrayal, but she couldn’t bear to face up to losing her beloved dog. She watched him closely, and told herself and Torr that h
e seemed better.

  Torr never disagreed with her, although it was obvious that Charlie was weaker. He still wagged his tail when a walk was mentioned, but he had lost his bounce and the bright eyes were duller now. Whenever she looked at him, Mallory felt as if there were a cruel iron fist gripping her heart. Not Charlie, she prayed. Please don’t let this be real. Make him better, make the vet wrong. Please don’t let me lose him.

  For two weeks she clung to the belief that Charlie wasn’t really that ill, but he grew steadily weaker until he was sleeping most of the time. When she called him, he would struggle to his feet and come over to shove his nose in her hand, but he was very thin and his back legs were unsteady. Still, he would wag his tail feebly, and the look in his eyes told her that he would try and do whatever she asked of him.

  Don’t die, Mallory wanted to say to him. That’s all I ask.

  She looked up one day from caressing his head to find Torr watching her. ‘He doesn’t seem to be in pain, does he?’ she asked, pleading for him to agree.

  ‘He’s a brave dog’ was all he said, deliberately not answering her directly, and Mallory’s eyes filled with tears.

  ‘He’s dying, isn’t he?’

  Torr nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said gently, giving her the honesty she needed then. ‘Yes, he is.’

  At least Charlie’s illness had broken down that awful formality between them. Mallory couldn’t even remember now why she had been so upset about Sheena. What did Sheena matter compared to Charlie? Why had she been so angry with Torr?

  They hadn’t made love since then, but Torr had been there, a strong, steady presence, giving her the space and the quietness she needed, treating her with a gentleness that Mallory wouldn’t have known that he was capable of before.