The Second Mrs. Adams

“Of course he does.” Morgana squeezed her hand. “But it’s you I’m thinking of now, my dear.”

“I don’t…I don’t follow you.”

Morgana sighed and got to her feet. “You were intimate with David this weekend, Joanna.”

Joanna blanched. “How did you…”

“He told me.”

“David told you…?” Joanna shot to her feet. “Why? Why would he tell you something so…so personal about us?”

“We’re very close, I’ve told you that. And perhaps he was feeling guilty.”

“Guilty?” A chill moved over Joanna’s skin. “Guilty about what?”

“Are you sure you’re up to this? Perhaps I’ve made a mistake, coming here. I wrestled with my conscience all day but—”

“I feel strong as an ox. Why should my husband have told you that he and I…that we were together this weekend? And why should he have felt guilty about it?”

Morgana’s teeth, very tiny and very white, closed on her bottom lip. “Because he’s done a cruel thing to you, and he knows it.” She took a deep breath. “I can’t stand by and see him do it. You see, Joanna, David intends to divorce you.”

Joanna felt the blood drain from her face. “What?”

“He should have told you the truth weeks ago. I tried to convince him. So did his attorney, but—”

“His attorney?”

“Yes.” Morgana clasped Joanna’s hands. “You must be strong, dear, when I tell you this.”

“Just tell me,” Joanna said frantically, “and get it over with!”

“The day of your accident,” Morgana said slowly, “you were on your way to the airport You were flying to the Caribbean, to get a divorce.”

Joanna pulled her hands from Morgana’s. “No! I don’t believe you. I asked David about our marriage, he never said—”

“He listened to the doctors, who said it was vital you have no shocks to your system.”

“I don’t believe you. It isn’t true…”

Joanna’s desperate words halted. She looked at Morgana and then she gave a sharp cry of despair, and spun toward the window and the sad little garden beyond.

It. was true. Every word. What Morgana had just told her made a terrible kind of sense.

David’s unwillingness to bring her home from the hospital. His coldness. His silence. His removal.

Their separate rooms…

But their rooms hadn’t been separate this weekend.

“I suppose,” Morgana said kindly, as if she’d read Joanna’s thoughts, “that it’s difficult to accept, especially after the intimacy of the past weekend.” She sighed. “But if you could only remember the past, you’d know that…well, that sex was all you and David ever had together. It’s what led up to your marriage in the first place.”

Joanna looked at her. “What do you mean?”

“Surely you know that David is a man with strong appetites. There have been so many women… They’re in his life for a while and then, poof, they’re gone. And then he met you. You were so young…” Morgana struggled to keep the anger and hatred from her voice. “He’s a moral man, in his own way. I suppose, afterward, he felt an obligation.” Morgana smiled pityingly. “Unfortunately, it wasn’t love. Not for David.”

Joanna’s legs felt as if they were going to give out. She made her way to the couch and sat down.

“He said things this weekend,” she whispered while the tears streamed down her face, “we planned things…”

“Yes, I’m sure. He was full of regrets for what had happened in Connecticut. I was blunt, I said, ‘David, it’s your own fault, you shouldn’t have listened to the doctors, you should have told Joanna the truth, that your marriage had been an impetuous mistake and you were in the process of ending it…’”

And, with dizzying swiftness, Joanna’s memory returned.

“Oh, God,” she whispered, “I remember!”

Pictures kaleidoscoped through her head. She saw herself coming to New York from the Midwest, looking for a new life and finding, instead, the only man She would ever love.

David.

He was almost ten years older and he moved in such exalted circles… It was hard to imagine him taking notice of someone like her.

But he had, and on their very first date, Joanna had fallen head over heels in love.

She remembered the passion that had flamed between them, how she, the girl her friends had teasingly called the eternal virgin, had gone eagerly to his bed soon after they’d met.

Oh, the joy of his proposal. The excitement of flying to Mexico to get married, the honeymoon in Puerto Vallarta, the weeks of happiness and ecstasy…

And then the slow, awful realization that she wasn’t what David had wanted at all.

He’d never said so. He was too decent. But it was a dream that could not last and the signs of its ending had been easy to read.

David had given up his everything. His friends. His charities. He stopped going to the office, saying he preferred living in Connecticut but Joanna knew that everything he’d done was based on his conviction that she wouldn’t fit into the sophisticated life he led in the city.

When Morgana offered her help, Joanna leaped at the chance to salvage her marriage.

What she needed, Morgana told her, was a life of her own, a life that would make David see her as more than just a woman he was responsible for but as someone as proficient in her sphere as he was in his.

“A man of his energies needs challenge to perform at his best, my dear,” Morgana said. “By devoting so much time to you, he cheats himself. You must develop interests of your own. Show him you’re equal to the position he holds in the world. Perhaps if you joined some clubs, or sat on some charity committees, you’d learn how to organize this house, how to look…”

Morgana clamped her lips together but it was too late.

“You mean,” Joanna asked in a choked voice, “he’s embarrassed by the way I look?”

“No, not at all,” Morgana quickly replied.

Too quickly. Joanna understood that “embarrassed” was exactly what she’d meant.

But nothing she’d tried had been enough to halt the collapse of the marriage. David had grown more distant. The bed that had once been a place of intimacy and joy became the cold setting in which they ended each day by lying far apart until finally, Joanna had salvaged what little remained of her pride by moving into a separate room. Eventually, David had suggested divorce. Joanna had agreed. It had all been very civilized, though the day she’d set out for the airport and the legal dissolution of her marriage she’d been so blinded by tears that she hadn’t seen the oncoming taxi until it was too late…

The memories were almost too painful to bear. Joanna buried her face in her hands while Morgana stood over her.

“Poor Joanna,” she crooned. ?

?I’m so sorry.”

Joanna lifted her tear-stained face. “I can’t…I can’t face him,” she whispered, “not after…”

It was difficult for Morgana to hide a smile of triumph.

“I understand,” she said soothingly.

“I don’t want to be here when David gets back. I don’t want to see him ever again.” Joanna grasped Morgana’s hands. “Please, you must help me.”

“Help you?”

“I have nowhere to go. I don’t really know anyone in this city…except you.”

Morgana frowned. Time was of the essence. She had to get Joanna out of here before someone showed up. Luck had been with her, so far. The maid and the housekeeper were out; the chauffeur was among the missing, too.

But David…David could come home at any minute.

She made a quick decision. “You can sleep on the pull-out sofa in my living room until we work out the details.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t impose.”

“Nonsense. Go on, now. And I suppose you’d best leave a note.”

“A note?”

“Yes. Something clear and concise, so David understands why you’ve gone.” So he knows you’ve left him deliberately, so that he doesn’t scour the streets, trying to find you…

“But what shall I say?”

“Just the truth, Joanna, that you’ve recovered your memory and you wish to proceed with the divorce.”

Joanna nodded. Still, she hesitated.

“Morgana? I’m almost ashamed to admit it but when I first heard David talk about you, I was…I was jealous.”

“Of me?” Morgana’s smile felt stiff. “What nonsense, Joanna. David’s never even noticed that I’m a woman.”

But he would notice it, at long last, she thought as Joanna left the room.

Finally, finally, she was about to take her rightful place in David Adams’s life.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“DAVID,” Morgana said, “you must calm down.”

“How the hell can I calm down?” David, who had been pacing the floor of his office for the past ten minutes, swung toward Morgana. “It’s a week since Joanna disappeared. A week, dammit! And all these damned private investigators are no closer to finding her than they were when I first hired them!”

“Getting yourself all upset won’t help.”