Phantom Marriage

‘No indeed,’ Tara agreed blandly. ‘I doubt that purity had much to do with his motives at all!’

Sue pulled a face as she opened the kitchen door. All three children were seated round a large well scrubbed table. The kitchen was decorated in an attractive farmhouse style, and Mrs Barnes, the housekeeper, smiled warmly as Sue and Tara walked in.

‘Mummy, I’ve eaten all my tea,’ Mandy announced importantly, ‘and helped to feed Piers. Simon has been playing…’

‘No, I haven’t,’ Simon interrupted, scowling horribly at his sister.

‘Then why haven’t you eaten that?’ Mandy demanded triumphantly, pointing to several small pieces of carrot still on Simon’s plate.

‘Because I’m not hungry,’ Simon countered, while Tara hid a sympathetic smile. Simon wasn’t over-fond of carrots, and she was forced to hide another smile when Mandy announced, ‘Simon can’t have any icecream if he doesn’t eat his carrots, can he, Mummy?’

She had just finished pointing out that since Mandy herself had been allowed a bar of chocolate earlier in the week even though she hadn’t been able to eat her sprouts, it was hardly fair to demand now that Simon be deprived of his treat simply because he disliked carrots, when Alec and James came into the kitchen, the dog at their heels. The labrador made straight for Simon, tongue lolling as she sat expectantly at his side, eyeing the despised carrots with a hopeful gleam in sherry brown eyes.

Alec pounced on his son, drawing shrill screams of pleasure from the little boy as his father hoisted him on to his shoulder.

‘Alec you’ll make him sick, he’s only just finished eating,’ Sue protested. ‘Put him down.’

Simon was engrossed in the dog, Sue and Alec in their son. At the opposite end of the table, Mandy, sturdy independent Mandy, glanced from her high stool down to the floor and then hopefully, enchantingly up at James’s lean height. Tara felt a huge lump come into her throat, and something raw and painful turned over in her breast.

‘Mandy—’ she began warningly, but it was already too late. Mandy had turned to James, a winsome smile planting dimples either side of her upturned mouth, her arms stretching upwards imperiously.

Tara’s heart quaked for her small, 5.0 vulnerable daughter. Never in all her six years had Mandy ever made the slightest gesture of appeal to a member of the despised male sex, and Tara wished with all her heart that she had not chosen to make her first to James Harvey of all people.

She saw James step forward and then grimace, his eyes hooded and unreadable as he turned away from the small girl.

Mandy’s face dropped, tears filling her eyes and, her maternal instincts up in arms, Tara rushed forward, clasping Mandy in her arms and swinging her down to the floor, her expression bitter with indignation and contempt as her eyes clashed hotly with James’s.

Later when they were getting the children ready for bed, Sue, who had obviously witnessed the incident, said uncertainly, ‘I can’t understand what’s come over James. He’s always seemed so fond of children.’

‘As long as they’re not mine,’ Tara supplied acidly.

‘I just don’t understand it,’ Sue repeated. ‘It’s so out of character.’

Not as far as she was concerned, Tara reflected grimly. Unlike Sue she was under no delusions as to James’s true character. Behind that handsome face, that virilely male body lay nothing but an arid desert incapable of supporting any real emotion.

She dressed for dinner reluctantly. At best it could only be an awkward meal. Sue was already aware of the emnity which existed between her two guests; and Tara could not forgive James for the way he had deliberately turned his back on Mandy—on his own child. She tugged impatiently at her hair, anger sparkling in the jade depths of her eyes as she applied eye-shadow and mascara.

Sue had said that while they invariably changed for dinner when they were in the country it was only into clothes they could relax in, and with this in mind Tara elected to wear a dress which had been one of the ‘free samples’ she had been given by one of the fashion houses. Designed along the lines of an Eastern kimono, the heavy cream silk was embroidered delicately with flowers and butterflies in soft iridescent colours that caught the light whenever Tara moved.

The gown was tied with a matching sash and secured by hidden press-studs. Tara had worn it on several occasions and felt extremely comfortable in it. Fastening her hair into a smooth chignon, she checked her appearance again in the mirror before stroking her throat and wrists with Van Cleef’s ‘First’, a Christmas present from Chas, and then feeling that she had done all she could to prepare herself for the evening ahead, Tara slipped on a pair of high-heeled gold sandals and opened her bedroom door. Her heart dropped as she saw James on the point of leaving his room. A narrow-fitting velvet jacket and narrow tapering dark trousers added to his height, emphasising the subtle play of muscles beneath the tailored fabric. He paused as he saw Tara approach, his eyes moving slowly over her body.

Tara felt as though she were frozen to the spot, completely incapable of moving, forced to suffer the hated subjugation to his will as his glance stroked mercilessly over every inch of her body, leaving her nerve endings acutely sensitised to the aura of raw maleness emanating from him. An electric silence seemed to spread out around them, even the sound of her own heartbeat unnaturally loud in her ears.

Somewhere in the distance Tara registered the opening of a door, and then Sue’s voice shattered the silence, her generous,

‘Tara, you look fantastic—where did you get that gorgeous creation from?’ restoring some semblance of normality to the atmosphere. Drawing a shuddering breath, Tara managed to find the coherency to explain how she had come by her gown.

‘A perk?’ James sneered openly. ‘And that satisfies you? Being paid for your services with a handful of cast-off dresses? My dear, you’ve sold yourself cheap indeed.’

‘James!’ Sue looked shocked and upset. ‘Tara, I’m…’

‘Forget it,’ Tara told her, forcing a smile. ‘Contrary to what James seems to suppose, Chas pays me for my work,’ she emphasised the word deliberately, ‘in the usual coinage—and neither am I his mistress, paid or otherwise. Even if I wanted to have an affair with Chas, I wouldn’t,’ she added for good measure. ‘I’ve got the twins to think about, and I happen to think that children learn best by example.’

‘Very noble,’ James sneered. ‘Quite a metamorphosis. When did it come about?’

‘James…’

There was no mercy in the look he turned upon Tara, when Sue murmured his name James’s expression softened, his arm coming round her shoulders in an affectionate gesture that filled Tara with a welter of conflicting emotions.