Читать книгу When Enemies Marry - Lindsay Armstrong, Lindsay Armstrong - Страница 6

CHAPTER ONE

‘JUSTIN, this is unbelievable; there’s a photographer—oh, sorry, I didn’t realise you were with someone.’

Lucinda Waite paused on the threshold of her husband’s study, then swept in, continuing, ‘But it’s only you, Sasha—well, you and someone else. How do you do?’ she added politely to the third party in the study. ‘I’m Justin’s wife Lucinda, but most people call me Lucy. Who are you?’ she enquired, extending her hand graciously.

‘Robert Lang,’ the third party murmured, rising hastily and taking the extended hand. ‘How do you do, Mrs Waite?’ He was about twenty-three and looked both embarrassed and slightly dazed.

‘Not very well, thank you, Mr Lang,’ Lucy Waite replied with a grimace. ‘My privacy is being invaded—and I can’t help feeling you might be responsible for it all.’

Robert Lang blinked beneath a clear blue gaze and made a mental note that registered some surprise. They were the colour of deep blue velvety pansies, her eyes, and her skin had the texture of cream rosebuds while her hair, caught back carelessly, was the colour of ripe wheat. Now, now, he cautioned himself, letting his gaze drift over the rest of Lucinda Waite, it can’t be all perfection. Short legs possibly, out of proportion with the rest of her, or hippy and pear-shaped, thick legs—no, his eyes widened, talk about legs, they were sensational...

‘You’re staring, Mr Lang,’ Sasha Pearson said all but inaudibly and not quite kindly She was an elegant redhead in her early thirties but whether she was family hadn’t been made clear.

But Robert Lang, despite his youth, was not without charm and ingenuity. ‘I sure am,’ he conceded boyishly. ‘In point of fact, I’m quite bowled over. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone as lovely as you, Mrs Waite—er—if you’ll forgive me for saying so, sir!’ He turned deferentially to Justin Waite still sitting behind his desk, not altogether in a further demonstration of his charm but because, to his mind, Justin Waite was not the kind of man one gave offence to and possibly least of all in the matter of his stunningly beautiful, flawless, twenty-year-old-if -she-were-a-day wife.

‘You’re forgiven, Mr Lang,’ Justin Waite said. ‘My wife has been having that effect on people since she was in her cradle.’ He moved in his chair and stood up, revealing most of the over six foot, lean, muscled length of him that, coupled with rather hard grey eyes and a look of worldliness and experience, had kindled Robert Lang’s wariness in the first place. ‘My wife has also,’ he went on coolly, ‘been leading people up the garden path for almost as long.’

Lang’s eyes widened and jerked to Lucinda. But, far from any expression of outrage, she merely smiled faintly, and murmured, ‘What have I done now, Justin?’

‘Invaded your own privacy, my dear, from what I can gather. Did you or did you not write to a certain publication and invite them up here to do a story on the place, and on you?’

‘Yes, I did—so that’s who you are!’ Lucy said to Lang with a glorious smile. ‘But you didn’t let me know you were coming. I thought you must be one of those maverick journalists who turn up from time to time and make my life a misery.’

‘Lucy, that happened once and has never been repeated,’ Justin Waite said in the kind of voice that caused Robert Lang some trepidation, although it didn’t seen to have any effect on his wife.

‘And the reason you didn’t know he was coming, Lucy,’ Sasha Pearson—where did she fit in? Robert wondered—rose and picked up a letter from the desk, ‘is because while Justin and I were away you didn’t bother to open any mail although you assured me you would.’

‘That’s right,’ Robert Lang said eagerly. ‘I did write and suggest today if it would suit you.’

‘Oh, dear,’ Lucy Waite said regretfully. ‘You really should have waited for a reply, Mr Lang, but now I know who you are, we might as well go ahead. I’ve got nothing else on. By the way, you are indispensable, Sasha, aren’t you? Forgive me for ever doubting it! I’ll just go and get changed.’

‘You’ll do no such thing, Lucy.’

‘Justin.’ Lucy protested. ‘Why not?’

Blue eyes stared into hard grey ones and, despite only mild protest registering in Lucy Waite’s expression, the atmosphere was suddenly electric and Robert Lang found himself, to his amazement, wondering what went on behind locked doors between Justin Waite and his wife. Did he beat her or did he throw her down on the bed and make punishing love to her...

‘Because I say so, Lucy,’ Justin Waite said with sudden detachment as he looked away from his wife thereby seeming to cut the electric current between them. ‘Go back to your horses, my dear, and I will apologise for this misunderstanding.’

Lucy Waite shrugged. ‘Whatever you say, Justin,’ she murmured. ‘Do forgive me, Mr Lang,’ she added. ‘I haven’t been married very long, you see, so I’m not altogether familiar with the rules, I guess, but I—’

‘Lucy—’

‘Just going, Justin. Bye!’ She strolled out with a wave.

‘I gather,’ Justin Waite said across the dinner table, to his wife, ‘that today’s events were more shots in the war you promised me the day you married me, Lucy.’

Lucy Waite smoothed down the skirt of the clinging, long-sleeved black dress with a heart-shaped neckline that she’d changed into for dinner and picked up her soup spoon. She’d also tucked a creamy gardenia into the hair that was lying loose and rippling on her shoulders. ‘You gather right, Justin.’

“It wasn’t much of a shot.”

Lucy sipped her soup then grinned. ‘As a matter of fact I thought it quite got you off the bit for a moment, Justin.’ She changed her expression to one of severity and mimicked, “My wife has been leading people up the garden path from the cradle.” But yes, it would have been better if it had come off,’ she conceded. ‘You do so hate publicity, don’t you, Justin?’

‘I can’t believe you really enjoy it,’ he commented drily.

Lucy wrinkled her nose. ‘It was only a rural paper. I thought it was rather tasteful to choose a rural paper instead of a national daily. And all I’d planned to do was show them the house and some of...our treasures, and all your improvements to the property. It would have been quite a scoop for that young man, don’t you think? Something about the Waites in a newspaper, even just a rural one. You’ve probably blighted his career, Justin, and he was rather sweet, really.’

‘I haven’t blighted his career at all, but he does understand now that my wife is off limits so you might as well forget him, Lucy. And any other young man who takes your fancy.’

Lucy laughed and pushed away her soup. ‘You perceive me quaking in my shoes, Justin,’ she murmured. ‘Still, all may not be lost,’ she mused. ‘There’s got to be at least one person out there now who’s thinking that the Waites of Dalkeith and Riverbend have a very strange marriage.’

‘On the contrary, there could be at least one person out there who is actually thinking that Lucinda Waite is a spoilt brat and deserves a good lesson.’

‘From my experience of young men, Justin, they don’t generally have those thoughts about me. It’s only your generation—at least, you’re the only one of your generation I have to go on, and I have to tell you that if you mean what I think you mean—’

‘That you deserve to be put over someone’s knee and ceremonially spanked?’ he broke in lazily.

‘How picturesque.’ For the first time a little glint of anger lit Lucy’s eyes. ‘I have to tell you I should probably get so angry I’d even be capable of taking a pot-shot at you. Don’t forget I’m an excellent shot and I would know exactly how to inconvenience you considerably without doing a lot of harm—and make it all look like an accident anyway.’

‘That wasn’t what I had in mind, Lucy,’ he drawled, and reached for the decanter to pour himself some wine.

‘How brave you are,’ she retorted.

‘What I had in mind—were I so minded,’ he continued, holding his wine glass up to the light meditatively, ‘was a lesson of another kind. Such as—’ he put the glass down gently and their eyes locked ‘—removing your dress from your delectable body, uncovering your breasts and the rest of you and making love to you until you’re—shall we say, in a much more amenable frame of mind? I have this theory on women,’ he went on, idly inspecting the pulse that had started to beat rather erratically at the base of Lucy’s throat. That without regular, satisfying sex they become fractious and troublesome, and in your case in particular, dear Lucy, that what you really need is a couple of kids to keep you out of mischief.’

It took Lucy several moments to gather enough composure to be able to speak, moments that were made worse for her because her tall, satanic husband did not relax his leisurely scrutiny of her in the slightest and then had the gall to pour her a glass of wine and push it towards her with a faintly amused twist of his lips.

In the end, as she sipped the golden liquid, it was he who spoke first. ‘You don’t agree?’

‘I think,’ Lucy said carefully, ‘that it’s a pity you didn’t live in a different era, a bygone era for example, when women were treated like chattels and it was accepted practice to generalise about them as if they were so many... sheep. As if they had no minds, only instincts.’

Then tell me this—you’ve ordered the course of this marriage so far; how happy has it made you?’

‘You’ve gone along with it,’ she said tautly.

‘Were you secretly hoping I’d do something as uncouth and as—exciting as taking you against your will after you made your dramatic declaration on our wedding-night?’

Lucy gasped. ‘Only minutes ago you were talking about... you were talking about...’

‘Something quite different, Lucy,’ he said.

‘I can’t see it, personally.’ She looked at him defiantly.

‘I was talking about finding out what your will really is in this matter,’ he said and his teeth glinted in a sudden grin. ‘Don’t look so worried, I’m not going to do it. Not tonight, at least. But I do make the point that to a certain extent you’ve given me yourself as a hostage in this ridiculous war, Lucy, and perhaps you should bear it in mind the next time you decide to fire any shots. Would you care to dish up the casserole or shall I?’

Lucy put down her napkin and stood up. The silver casserole was on a hot plate on the sideboard. ‘I will,’ she said, but didn’t move immediately. ‘Justin, you gave me very little choice about marrying you. You made it very plain that I could lose everything I possessed, not the least my home, where I’ve lived all my life, if I didn’t marry you. You put it to me that we could fight each other for years over Dalkeith and that you would fight for it although it was more or less all I had, while you’d inherited Riverbend and made yourself a huge fortune on top of it—’

‘That’s debatable—’

‘Don’t interrupt,’ she commanded. ‘But since you have, it was never my fault that our fathers were foolish enough to own this place in partnership and then even more foolish to fall out with each other and leave us to inherit this mess—’

‘Lucy, the cold, hard facts of the matter are a little different. Because Riverbend and Dalkeith are adjoining properties and because our fathers were friends, when your father got into financial difficulties, my father offered to inject some money into the place and accept a partnership in return—a silent partnership,’ he said significantly. And waited while Lucy tried to look unaffected but failed. He went on, ‘What broke up the friendship, despite this concession to your father’s ego, despite trying to help save Dalkeith from going under the hammer, was that your father persisted in believing that Australia could ride on the back of its sheep forever and fought every suggestion my father ever made for diversification away from growing wool.’

Lucy bit her lip. ‘I didn’t know all that,’ she said bravely, however.

‘No, but that wasn’t my fault,’ he retorted impatiently. ‘It was his fault that you didn’t know, his fault that you were allowed to queen it over all and sundry as Lucinda Wainright of Dalkeith and never suspect you’d have to share this place with anyone, let alone with me, whom your father had given you the impression you shouldn’t want to know any more anyway. Although—’ his eyes glinted ‘—there were times when you didn’t mind knowing me, Lucy.’

She coloured faintly but said with spirit, ‘If you’re referring to the days when I was barely out of rompers and didn’t know better than to follow you around whenever you were here—’

‘As a matter of fact I’m not referring to those days,’ he said softly—and said no more.

She blushed properly this time, which made her angrier. ‘If this is your revenge for—’ She stopped abruptly.

‘It isn’t,’ he answered equably. ‘Not against you, anyway.’

‘Then tell me this, Justin: what was your motivation for coming to see me only a fortnight after my father’s funeral and telling me that the only sensible course for us to pursue was to get married?’

‘Ah, well, my better nature did slip a bit then, I have to confess. You were so proud. I could also visualise the complications that might arise if someone else married you or got you pregnant before we’d sorted it all out. You have to agree, Lucy, that you left a trail of broken hearts around the district—it was really only a matter of time before you—er—fell. But of course, there was also the way you’d grown up, five foot six of sheer perfection, a bobby-dazzler in fact,’ he said with a shrug. ‘It occurred to me that not only would I not mind being married to you, but, since we had such a lot in common—’ his eyes drifted around the beautiful room ‘—it would simplify matters considerably.’

‘I’m only surprised you don’t have another theory,’ Lucy said through her teeth. ‘That wives can be schooled and trained like horses. Or is that still to come?’

‘Provided you get them young enough, it could be a possibility, even though you were so spoilt and indulged by your father,’ he said indifferently and shrugged again. ‘Lucy, how much longer do we have to wait to eat? We’ve had all this out before. And you were the one,’ he said with sudden impatience, ‘who accepted my proposal. Which to my mind, if we’re really discussing moral superiority, puts us on a par. Although you mentioned earlier that I threatened you with something like poverty. In fact I offered to buy you out, and that would have been a long way from poverty, my dear.’

‘But I didn’t want to be bought out. I decided to fight in the only way I could think of for my birthright, Justin. My great-grandparents happen to be buried here, and my mother and now my father, I love every acre of Dalkeith and sometimes, when you love something enough, you’re prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to preserve it. Besides which, it occurred to me,’ she said softly, ‘that you’d find it not considerably simpler but much more difficult to dispossess a wife, Justin.’

‘A wife, yes, Lucy,’ he said. ‘But there are certain things you have to do to become a true wife.’

‘It’s only your word against mine—ah,’ she said to herself. ‘So that’s why you haven’t forced me to go to bed with you! You’re keeping your options open, aren’t you, Justin? But while an annulment on the grounds of non-consummation may entitle me to less of your property, it is only your word against mine.’

He lay back in his chair and watched her. ‘Would you lie about something like that, Lucy?’

‘Where you’re concerned, I might. Don’t forget, I have to put up with your mistress parading herself around my home—who knows what flights of fancy the mere fact of that might prompt in me—where is Sasha, by the way?’

‘She’s gone back to Riverbend and she’s not my mistress.’

‘Then she’s dying to be your mistress.’

‘She happens to be an employee, my private assistant in charge of the stud at Riverbend, as you very well know, and she’s extremely good at her job, that’s all; what makes you think she has...the ambition you’re accusing her of?’

Lucy turned to the sideboard at last. ‘You’d probably have to be a woman to understand that. But I would have thought even you could see the sort of censorious way she treats me.’

‘There are times when you lay yourself open to that, Lucy.’

Lucy heaped a fragrant portion of lemon chicken on to a plate, and some steaming, fluffy rice, and laughed. ‘Perhaps I do. But she does so obviously hold this conviction that you were mad to marry me whatever else she is or isn’t, you see. On the subject of mistresses, by the way...’ She turned and carried his plate over to him, not unaware that his gaze was following every move she made, then went back for her own. ‘At thirty, you must have had some, probably dozens. You’re successful, you’re good-looking when you’re not being critical and superior—did none of them prompt you to think of marriage for all the right reasons?’ She sat down and helped herself to salad then courteously handed the crystal bowl to him. ‘Take Joanna Madden, for example.’ she added pointedly. ‘I’m sure a lot of people thought that was a fait accompli.’

‘So did I—once upon a time,’ she said musingly after a while when she thought he wasn’t going to answer.

‘What happened? Did she have nothing as enticing as the other half of Dalkeith to offer you?’

‘She—had her reasons.’

‘You don’t seem particularly perturbed,’ Lucy said witheringly.

He smiled fleetingly. ‘One lives and learns, I guess. Lucy,’ he said after a pause, ‘considering our feelings on the subject of Dalkeith—and while I acknowledge mine aren’t as unaltruistic and loving as yours, none the less it is very important to me-considering that we have its best interests at heart in other words, would it be so hard to see whether we couldn’t make a go of this marriage?’

She considered for a long time then she said rather bleakly, ‘That’s like asking a nation to love their invaders. I don’t think it’s possible. I mean, for another thing, there’s the problem that you don’t respect me—you surely couldn’t if you really believe that regular sex is all I need to keep me happy—’

‘There’s a difference between regular sex and satisfying sex.’

She shot him an oblique look. ‘Your ego is really monumental, Justin, even for a man. All right, but I’m still just another giddy girl to you, aren’t I?’

‘I suppose it wasn’t a help possessing such stunning looks on top of a father who spoilt you rotten, but you certainly don’t go out of your way to dispel that image, Lucy.’

She looked across at him and there was something curiously haughty in her eyes. ‘Perhaps not, but that might not be all there is to me. For example, I do know quite a lot about Dalkeith and how it runs—if young men can sow their wild oats, why can’t girls have a few giddy salad days, anyway?’

He put his knife and fork together and stared at them for a long moment, before raising his eyes to hers. And then there was something curiously enigmatic in them as he said, ‘I’ve told you, what’s history can remain so. Your legion of lovers and my—multitude of mistresses. Unfortunately, you’ve got into the habit of sending out unmistakable signals—you’re probably right about young Mr Lang and the kind of thoughts he’s having about you now.’

Lucy grimaced.

‘Not picking up the bait, Mrs Waite?’ Justin said softly but with an undercurrent of mockery.

She tightened her mouth and subjected him to a deep blue look of considerable scorn.

He only laughed quietly. ‘Just one more thing, Lucy. In case you haven’t already got the message, if celibacy is becoming irksome then I am your only alternative. Remember that:

She burst into speech. ‘What about you? You don’t really expect me to believe I am your only alternative.’

‘Well, you are, so bear that in mind as well, my dear. But I’m afraid celibacy, inside marriage, certainly won’t suit me forever.’ He stood up. ‘And you know, Lucy, while I give your devotion to Dalkeith full credit, there’s no way a twenty-year-old girl could run it. There was no way you could have gone on without the kind of cash it needs again—and Dalkeith has become a rather expensive pastime for us Waites.’ He stopped and watched her as she took the point and looked away uncertainly. Then he went on quite gently, ‘But this way, here you are, mistress of it, and if you’ve got as much sense as I think you have in your more rational moments you must know it’s in good hands. By the way, I’m taking a couple of weeks off and we’re giving a house party this weekend. You might need to get in extra help. Goodnight.’

A couple of hours later, Lucy walked into her bedroom and closed the door.

As part of the austerity measures her father had been forced to introduce before his death, there was no live-in house help on Dalkeith. In fact Lucy had cut short her bachelor of arts degree to come home and look after her father six months ago and after her marriage, a curious marriage to say the least, she’d decided to keep it that way. It gave her something to do, and she’d discovered that, in lieu of her deep interest in Dalkeith being taken seriously, her interest despite herself in the crops Justin planned to grow and the sheep it still ran across its thousand acres of outback western New South Wales, that only left her horses for her to occupy herself with. And two mares in foal and two gelding hacks, devoted to them though she was, didn’t take up a lot of time.

She did have a cleaning lady who came in daily and a farmhand to tend the fireplaces, but it had come as some surprise to her, in those last days of her father’s decline, to find that she enjoyed cooking and gardening.

She sighed suddenly, pushed herself away from the door and picked up the silver-framed photo of her father from her dressing-table. No matter the things that she’d come to suspect even before his death, such as his being eminently suited to being a gentleman of leisure but not a gentleman farmer, and what she’d discovered about him after his death—that he’d tried to rescue Dalkeith from the brink again by gambling on horses, despite it all, she’d loved him and, only three months later, still missed him unbearably at times. If nothing else he’d certainly loved her unstintingly, and he’d taught her all the things he held dear to his heart, among them riding, shooting and fishing. He’d also taught her about art and music, he’d taken her to faraway exotic places, he’d helped her to fix her taste in clothes and all manner of things and yes, spoilt her wildly. But he’d never foisted a stepmother on her after her own mother, whom she couldn’t remember, had died. In fact, she suspected he’d never got over her mother’s death, and certain things in life hadn’t had much meaning for him after it. Including Dalkeith.

He’d also sent her to a very expensive convent school where the Mother Superior had been strong-minded enough to persevere with the motherless, precocious, mischievous and often downright naughty Lucy Wainright despite the battles royal they’d had since Lucy had been placed in her care at nine and a half, and she’d continued there until she was seventeen and a half. They’d even parted on terms of mutual respect and by that time quite some mutual affection, although each was loath to admit it.

But had her father, Lucy wondered, as she stared down at his handsome likeness, never really realised how much Dalkeith, above all else, had meant to her? That even in her giddy salad days when she’d been queening it over all and sundry—her eyes flashed briefly—it, even more than her father, had been the rock to come back to. Did she have more of her Scottish great-grandparents in her than he’d ever had? A spiritual affinity with the land that was like a physical tie? Had he not known that, without him and without Dalkeith, brave, bright Lucinda Wainright, darling of society, was in fact lonely and more than a little frightened? But he had known how much she loved Dalkeith; wasn’t that why he’d never told her he’d lost half of it to Justin’s father?

She pushed off her shoes and curled up in the pink velvet armchair beside the fireplace, and stared into the flickering flames with a faraway look in her eyes.

It was ironic but true that she had hero-worshipped Justin Waite as a child. It was also true that Justin had, without her quite understanding it, achieved the status of a hallmark in her mind during her adolescent yeais. A hallmark that she had involuntarily found herself measuring other boys, then men up against, and finding most of them wanting. This had also led her, once she’d left school and on the few social occasions that they had met, to treat him with cool hauteur, yet to experience an undoubted desire to be noticed.

‘And he noticed,’ she murmured a little bitterly, her cheeks feeling warm again. ‘Although the only sign he ever gave of it was that hateful little glint of amusement in his eyes—I really do hate him now!’

She sat up breathing quickly but also feeling a curious mixture of confusion and guilt. Why hadn’t she pressed her father for details about his rift with the Waites, daspite his extreme reluctance to say more on the subject? Well, I did try, she admitted. And of course I know now that he couldn’t bring himself to tell me what was going on—the fact that Riverbend did diversity and go into breeding racehorses with spectacular success must have been an awful blow to his pride, but why couldn’t I have realised it at the time? And then what he did say, about us no longer being good enough for the Waites, set my back right up. With the result, she conceded gloomily, sinking back in the chair, that I made myself ridiculous by treating Justin the way I did. But did I really offed him enough for him to take this kind of revenge? To make me marry him although he didn’t love me and so he can get all of Dalkeith? she asked herself miserably.

And answered herself a little tartly—apart from amusing him, I doubt it. I mean, I never saw him without some beautiful woman on his arm or doing something spectacular like playing polo or crewing on some twelve-metre yacht, and of course he then proceeded to make his own fortune.

She brooded darkly for a moment on how Justin had taken a run-down saddlery business and built it into a nationwide success story—another one—and so not only did Riverbend Stud produce top-flight progeny, but Riverbend Saddlery produced saddles of the finest quality, with an international reputation and all sorts of horse products, as well as clothing—riding boots et cetera. Yes, Justin was clever and not only with horses—and there was a ten-year age gap between them, damn it!

She got up and paced about angrily. ‘So what?’ she murmured to herself, and picked up her silver-blacked hairbrush and turned it over and over in her hands. Then she stopped and looked down at it and fingered the ornate ‘W’ engraved into the handle, and drew herself upright and stared at her reflection with cold eyes. ‘Just remember what he said when he proposed. He said, “We won’t even have to change the monograms, will we? Surely that demonstrates what a practical arrangement it would be.”’

But she shivered suddenly because, in a moment of rage and panic, she had accepted. And then, in a moment of further panic on her wedding-night had made her ‘dramatic declaration’. That she’d never willingly sleep with him. Had she in fact been seriously unbalanced by grief and everything else?