Back In The Marriage Bed

Abruptly he stepped away. There were some memories it wasn’t wise or safe to exhume, and that was most definitely one of them. But perhaps because of its very danger, he discovered, after he had made his way back downstairs and tried to recommence his abandoned work, it was one that wasn’t going to allow itself to be sent away unrecognised.

Stifling a sigh of exasperation, he got up from his desk and walked over to the French windows, opening them and stepping outside into the garden. He was behaving as though he still loved her—but he didn’t—couldn’t—must not!

In the years they had been apart, the years of her desertion, her destruction of the love they had shared, he had used his anguish to ice-burn his feelings, his love, into a numbness he had refused to feel. Today, seeing the pain and fear in her eyes, he had felt the numbness starting to crack apart.

The knowledge that she had been hurt and close to death, even more than the discovery of her loss of memory, touched and hurt something deep within him he had thought incapable of being touched or brought to life ever again. It wasn’t love, he reassured himself. How could it be?

No, it couldn’t be love. But knowing that didn’t protect him from remembering…

Unwillingly he looked up towards his bedroom window. In that room, in that bed—his bed—Annie lay asleep. Annie…His wife…In the bed he had once shared with Annie…His Annie…His love…

Morosely he looked back towards the river. She had loved to lie in bed at night with the curtains and the windows open so that she could hear the sound of the water. They had even once stolen out in the darkness so that they could swim there together, naked in the silent darkness.

She had demurred at first, protesting that the river would be cold and that they might be seen, but then they had started to touch one another and such things had been forgotten.

The water, he remembered, had been cold, but they had not!

‘You look like a god, a river god,’ she had told him tremulously, her hands trembling against his body, the cry she had given as his body surged powerfully into hers lost in the heated kiss of eager hunger they had exchanged.

Later that night, or rather early the next morning, she had reached for him in bed, tracing the sinewy muscles on his arms with her fingertips and her kisses and then, for the first time, becoming more demanding, more assertive as her lips had touched tentatively against his stomach before moving lower.

‘Promise me you’ll love me for ever,’ she’d demanded.

‘For ever,’ he had told her, and he had meant it.

He moved back inside. He was a grown man now, with an intricate report waiting to be finished, and he had no business standing out here allowing his thoughts to drift into such dangerous waters.

No matter how much Annie’s present plight might compel his compassion he mustn’t allow himself to forget what had happened.

‘I can’t remember,’ she had wept, and he had actively felt her fear and panic. But until she could remember neither of them would be fully free to walk away from the past—and from their marriage.

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘HOW are you feeling now?’

‘Fine,’ Annie fibbed quickly, avoiding meeting Dominic’s eyes as she stretched across the kitchen table to pour herself a fresh cup of coffee.

She had been here in his house for nearly three days now. Seventy-two hours. Which in her view was seventy-two hours too many. Granted, she had virtually spent the first twenty-four of them asleep, but she had recovered from the shock of her accident with the kettle now and she felt thoroughly ashamed of the way she had overreacted to the whole incident.

It was time for her to go home. She wanted to go home. She needed to go home, she reminded herself shakily. The realisation, when she had finally woken up, that she was asleep in Dominic’s house and in Dominic’s bed had sent a spasm of emotion through her that she still didn’t feel strong enough to dare analyse.

She felt nothing for him other than anger at the way he had treated her—of course she didn’t. But he had looked after her.

‘I’m not hungry,’ she had begun that first evening, when she had finally recovered from her shock and he had arrived in her bedroom—his bedroom, in reality—with a tray of food.

‘Eat it,’ was all he had said, but somehow his actions had touched her already sensitive emotions, and after he had gone her salty tears had mingled with the soup he had brought her.

‘This is your room,’ she had protested later, when he had come in to remove the tray.

‘Our room,’ he had corrected her shortly, stopping as he’d seen the way she froze.

‘Don’t worry, there’s no way I want to insist on my husbandly rights,’ he had assured her grimly. ‘I’ve made myself up a bed in one of the other rooms.’

‘Actually,’ she continued determinedly now, but still avoiding looking directly at him, ‘I feel so well that I really think it’s time I went home and…’

‘And what?’ Dominic challenged her. ‘No! There’s still too much unresolved business between us, Annie.’

‘I…I have things to do—my garden, the house,’ Annie told him, and then stopped as she saw he was shaking his head. ‘The neighbours will be wondering what’s happened,’ she insisted.

‘There’s no need for you to worry about any of that,’ Dominic assured her calmly. ‘I’ve already explained the situation to your neighbours. And as for the garden, I can speak to the people who do mine and ask them…’

‘You’ve explained what situation?’ Annie interrupted sharply, her heart starting to thump heavily with nervous tension.

‘I’ve told them about your accident with the kettle and I’ve explained that, as my wife—’

‘Your wife! You told them that we’re married…’ Annie exploded in angry disbelief.

‘Why not?’ Dominic challenged her. ‘After all, it’s the truth.’

‘But we’re getting a divorce,’ Annie protested, and added angrily, ‘You had no right to do that. I don’t want—’

‘People to know that I’m your husband?’ Dominic interrupted her cynically.

Annie shook her head. How could she explain to him how mortified she felt about the prurient curiosity she feared she was bound to be the subject of once people knew that she had a husband she couldn’t even remember marrying?

‘You had no right to do that,’ she repeated huskily, before getting out of her chair and pacing the kitchen nervously and then telling him sharply, ‘I want to go home, Dominic. I want to go home now.’

‘This is your home,’ he repeated grittily, adding, before she could deny it, ‘I had the house placed in joint names after we got married, Annie, which is one of the reasons I haven’t been able to sell the place—without your written agreement…’

‘You can have it,’ she told him quickly. ‘I don’t want…I can’t stay here.’

‘Why not? What is it you’re so afraid of?’

‘Nothing…nothing,’ she denied fiercely, turning to face him as she did so.

‘You’re treating me as though I’m your adversary, Annie,’ Dominic told her grimly. ‘Your enemy. I’m not. All I want—’

‘Is for me to recover my memory so that I can tell you why I left you,’ Annie interrupted him sharply. ‘Do you think I don’t want to remember? Do you think I’m pretending, lying? Have you any idea how it feels to be told that you’re married…that you’ve shared a life…a love…with a man who…?’

Annie stopped as she felt the full weight of her own emotions threatening to overwhelm her. ‘Of course I want to remember. But I can’t,’ she told him flatly.

‘Maybe not—by yourself. But perhaps with my help—’ Dominic began.

‘Your help?’ Annie stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You and I shared those missing weeks of your life, Annie. I can remember them, even if you can’t. I can remember everything we did…everything—and I think that if we were to relive them…if I were to take you back through them…it j

ust might…just might bring something back for you.’

‘What do you mean “if we were to relive them”?’ Annie asked him warily. What he was suggesting was ridiculous, and of course there was no way she was going to agree to it, but he was obviously determined to have his say.

‘Oh, you needn’t look at me like that,’ he assured her immediately. ‘I’m not some kind of weirdo who gets off on forcing a reluctant woman to have sex with him, Annie. This will be a return to the past without the sexual element of the relationship we shared. After all, that is something you haven’t forgotten, isn’t it?’ he taunted her softly.

Hot-faced, Annie swallowed the angry words of denial springing to her lips. He was talking about her dreams, of course, and she couldn’t deny what he was saying—much as she longed to be able to do so.