The Faithful Wife

of reach? Designer clothes, jewels, fast cars and slow, sybaritic holidays in far-flung places?

Heaven knew, she’d earned enough in her own right to indulge every whim, and the Docklands home he’d provided on their marriage had been glamorous enough to negate the memories of any number of back-street flats.

Yet it hadn’t been enough. His love hadn’t been enough. Being his wife, in spite of all the financial advantages—like not having to work for her extremely comfortable living—had become a bore. So much so that she had sought forbidden excitement with her former lover.

Bella, glancing across at him between dark and tangled lashes, saw the ferocity darkening his face and made up her mind. Conscious, suddenly, that she was in danger of snapping the stern of her glass, she made herself loosen up, unknotting her fingers and lifting the brimming glass to her mouth.

They’d agreed not to raise any contentious spectres from the past—but it might dent his huge ego, and certainly wouldn’t hurt him, to know that one of the things she had most wanted—not the most important, but important nevertheless—was something else he’d resolutely refused to give her. She had nothing to lose because she’d already lost everything that mattered to her.

‘I did tell you once, but I guess you didn’t listen. You never listened to what I said if it wasn’t what you wanted to hear. Eventually I stopped saying anything important.’ She looked him straight in the eye and knew a moment’s vindication when she watched his dark brows pull down as her shot hit home.

She gave a small shrug, slender shoulders lifting elegantly beneath the beautifully styled white jacket. ‘I wanted a proper home and a loving family to share it with,’ she said with a touch of cool defiance.

She looked at her empty glass with a glimmer of surprise and put it down. Swallowing wine as if it were water wouldn’t help. She sat rigidly upright in her chair, her hands knotted in her lap, and added, ‘Nothing grand, just a homey place with a garden, and fields and woods around for the children to play in.’ And a husband who was home, sharing the ups and downs of family life, the two of them growing closer as the years went by, not further and further apart until they were like strangers.

She frowned unconsciously, and tacked on tartly, ‘No grimy backstreets, litter and graffiti everywhere—some place where it was safe to walk, with fresh air to breathe. A modest enough dream, but one I valued.’

She’d said enough. Perhaps too much. The silence from him was like a shock. But, oddly, she felt unburdened, lighter. She wasn’t so self-centred that his refusal to even think about the occasional suggestions she’d made regarding a future move out of the City would have made her decide their marriage wasn’t worth keeping.

But she wouldn’t think about that; she couldn’t afford to. Dwelling on what had gone so badly wrong wouldn’t help her to get through the next few days, or keep up the pretence that they were mere acquaintances.

She swept to her feet and began to gather the lunch things together, and told him politely, very politely, ‘I’ll clear away. Would you mind fixing the star to the top of the tree? I couldn’t reach.’

With the kitchen door closed firmly behind her, Bella released a long, shuddery sigh. She wanted to kill Evie for putting her in this situation! Kitty, too, for her part in it! The only thing that gave her any consolation whatsoever was knowing that this place, fully and lavishly provisioned, would have cost them at least an arm and a couple of legs apiece!

Their intentions had been good, though; she had to give them that. But they were living in cloud-cuckooland if they thought that this enforced and probably prolonged contact would have the desired results.

Jake didn’t even like her any more. He didn’t trust her. He would sooner handcuff himself to a baboon for the rest of his life than take her back!

Tears rushed to her eyes. She blinked them away and sniffed ferociously, took the tray to the sink and did the dishes, then collected the clothes they’d worn earlier in the blizzard and pushed them into the washer-drier. Anything to keep busy, keep out of the way of the man she had loved and lost.

From behind the closed door Jake could hear the clink of china. At odds with his chaotic emotions, Bella was prosaically washing the dishes. The sheer unexpectedness of what she’d said had robbed him of speech.

Of course he’d listened when she’d dreamily told him of what she envisaged for their future. Late-night lover-talk, he’d thought it, with her hair splayed against the pillows like a black silk shawl.

He could remember it now, too vividly for comfort—cocooned together in the secret love-cave of the four-poster bed in that quaint old Cotswolds inn where they’d spent the first Christmas of their honeymoon. Her eyes dreamy, romantic, her voice soft and sweet with talk of country cottages, roses round the door, children—their children—fantasy children she’d created for him.

His fingers stroking her hair, her face, the trembling starting up inside him again, his hand sliding down to the sensual swell of her breasts, his mouth covering hers, silencing her. His love for her, his need to drown himself yet again in the perfection of her overwhelming him...

The groan that was torn from him was driven. Oh, God, if only he could wipe his mind clean of all memories! He gritted his teeth, making himself backtrack to what she had actually said, recalling the defiance, the tension in the way she’d said it.

True, in the first couple of years of their marriage she had sometimes mentioned the possibility of moving to the country and starting a family. But she hadn’t made a song and dance about it, and had quietly accepted it when he had decided they should stay where they were.

He’d assumed she meant some place tamed and tidy, chocolate-box rural. And he’d had damn good reasons for not wanting to alter his modus operandi at that time. He’d explained that a move, putting down roots and starting a family, was out of the question. For the time being anyway. He hadn’t known how much—and why—she’d wanted what she called a proper home.

Why hadn’t she told him? In view of her deprived childhood—and that was something else she hadn’t told him about—he would have understood. And, understanding, he would have set about doing something about it.

He had loved her more than life, and would have done anything to make her happy.

Were there other things he didn’t know about her? Things she’d kept back, kept bidden? His jaw tightened. Damn it, he’d been her husband; he’d had a right to know!

And yet he hadn’t made his motives clear, had he? At least, not the underlying motives. The sudden thought washed his mind with icy clarity. Had he been too arrogant, too driven by his own needs, too intent on doing things his way to share the essence of himself with her?

He didn’t feel comfortable with himself about that. His face darkened, tightened, and self-disgust turned into a hard, sharp lump inside him. He had watched her become more withdrawn, more closed in on herself, and had done nothing about it, preferring to assume that it was nothing important. After all, so he had told himself, he’d given her every material advantage any woman could possibly want, and their lovemaking had still been as explosively rapturous as ever.

But that hadn’t been enough. She’d been seeing Maclaine when he was away and had agreed to work with him again. She had been sleeping with him again. All the signs had pointed to it.

He could hear her moving about in the next room. He’d go in there and fetch her. Tell her he’d been wrong about forgetting the past while they were trapped here together. It wouldn’t let itself be forgot ten!