Marriage Without Love & More Than a Convenient Marriage?

‘Kieron’s going to need all the help you can give him until he settles in, Briony,’ Doug told her, sublimely unaware of the undercurrents eddying fiercely around him. ‘I’m going to take him round and introduce him to the other editors and then we’re going out to lunch. Anything urgent, get Phil to deal with it, will you?’

Phil Masters was Doug’s assistant, a tall gangly Scot with a shock of red hair and a temper to match.

Doug and Kieron were standing up, Kieron extending his hand to her, his expression a mingling of contempt and indifference, which changed to anger as she withdrew automatically from him.

With Doug looking on she could hardly make a scene, but the touch of those cool brown fingers against her own skin made her shake with a sickness and fear that left her drained and trembling. And this was only the beginning.

As she walked back into her own office, Kieron murmured something to Doug, and the connecting door was closed. Alarm prickled over her, fears she had thought long submerged suddenly filling her mind and obliterating everything else.

‘How long has Briony worked for you?’ Kieron asked Doug casually as the latter picked up his coat.

‘Umm, about eighteen months. Best secretary I’ve ever had.’ He hadn’t been as unaware of Kieron’s reaction to Briony as he had pretended, and naturally he was curious as to its cause. ‘Am I right in thinking you know her?’

‘I once thought I knew someone who looked like her, but it turned out that I didn’t know her at all.’

His tone of voice warned Doug not to probe.

‘I’m not surprised to hear she’s a man-hater,’ he added sardonically. ‘She’s one of those women who seem to get a thrill out of leading men on and then kicking them in the teeth. Quite a hang-up!’

Doug didn’t argue the point. Whatever relationship had once existed between Briony and Kieron was their business and theirs alone, but he could foresee fireworks between them in the not too far distant future, if they were going to work together.

The two men emerged from the office, and Briony darted a quick look at Kieron’s shuttered face. It told her nothing. When they had gone she stared unseeingly at her typewriter, ignoring the over-flowing ‘in’ tray, her mind racing frantically in circles as she tried to think of a way of ensuring that she need never set eyes on Kieron Blake again.

There wasn’t one, of course. Not unless she gave up her job, and that was impossible. In a more buoyant economic climate she might have done so, even if it meant taking a drop in salary, but to take the risk in the middle of a depression would be extremely foolhardy. She needed her salary. Every penny of it. She closed her eyes, shivering suddenly with cold. The office door opened and she jerked upright, her face paper-white, but it was only Matt Dyson, one of the sub-editors. It was the joke of the Globe that while Briony gave every other male the cold shoulder, Matt Dyson, the original worm who never turned, was her only male escort.

‘Is something wrong?’ he asked, eyeing her with mingled uncertainty and embarrassment.

Doug referred unkindly to Matt as her ‘lame dog’, and it was true that his long face often wore an expression of anguished apology. He was nervous and introspective and the other men often made fun of him behind his back. He had once confided to Briony that he had wanted to become a painter, but that his parents had disapproved. He was in his late twenties, with fair, thinning hair, and mild hazel eyes. His wife had left him two weeks after Christmas, and now in April he still hoped every day that she would miraculously return to him. He worshipped the ground she trod, although Briony could not see why. Mary Dyson was a dumpy brunette, narrow-minded and everything that Briony disliked in her own sex. She had often contemplated telling Matt that his wife might treat him a little better if he treated her a little worse, but she had no intention of getting involved in other people’s personal problems.

‘Lunch with me?’ Matt asked hesitantly. ‘Or have you another date?’

She hadn’t, and she didn’t particularly feel like eating, but she knew that she could not remain in her office thinking about Kieron Blake.

To her surprise Matt took her to a fashionable new restaurant which had recently opened, and had become a favourite haunt of Globe staff. It was inclined to be rather pricey, and since she knew that Matt was having problems making ends meet, Briony frowned, wishing he had taken her somewhere more modest. Now she would have to insist on paying for her own meal and he would be hurt and offended.

The restaurant was full apart from one table set for six and one vacant one for two next to it. The waiter removed Briony’s coat with a flourish and a look in his eyes which immediately made her own harden as she directed a freezing stare at him.

Matt dithered over the menu. He always did, and Briony had grown used to it. In contrast she had decided what she was going to eat immediately, and she gave her order coolly, while Matt cast anguished glances, first at the menu and then at the hovering waiter. It took all of five minutes and they still had to endure the fiasco of choosing the wine. Matt hadn’t a clue about wine and normally ended up hot and bothered and very obviously patronised by the wine waiter. Briony sat through it all with detached uninterest, throwing a cool smile at Matt when he eventually managed to make up his mind, which he accepted with the gratitude of a dog being thrown a bone.

They had just started on their main course when the table adjacent to them filled up. Briony was conscious of being scrutinised but refused to look up. Matt turned to say something to her, and upset his wine glass, an expression of abject apology on his face as the contents cascaded over the table and

dripped on to her cream wool skirt. She stood up, shaking off the moisture and assuring him that no harm had been done. As she sat down again she realised that the occupants of the other table were Doug and Kieron, and four other deputy editors from the paper.

Doug grinned at her, but it was Kieron Blake of whom she was most aware, her hands shaking beneath the narrowed blue stare he turned upon her.

‘Come and join us,’ Doug invited, calling over a waiter to move the tables together. ‘We’ll soon catch up with you.’

Briony willed Matt to refuse, but of course he didn’t, and somehow she found herself sandwiched beween Doug and Kieron while Matt sat opposite her next to the Features Editor, Gail Wyndham.

Gail and Briony had never been particularly friendly. Gail was a tall blonde, a career woman first and foremost but one who made no secret of her enjoyment of the opposite sex. It was rumoured that she knew every attractive male on the Globe intimately, and watching her openly flirting with Kieron Blake Briony suspected that it would not be too long before he joined that list. He was letting Gail make all the running, his manner lazily amused, just enough awareness in it to encourage her, and Briony felt faintly sick as she watched them together. One of the other men tried to engage her in conversation, but she cut him off abruptly, shocked to discover that Kieron had switched his attention from Gail to her, his eyes alert and watchful, a cynical twist to his lips.

‘I’ve been dying to meet you for ages,’ Gail murmured softly, stretching out a plum-tipped hand to touch his arm. ‘You were quite a celebrity on the Street even before you went to the States.’

‘Oh?’

Under the table Briony gripped her hands together until her knuckles showed white. From the moment she had seen Kieron Blake in Doug’s office she had known this moment would come. It seemed ironic that after so many years of nightmares about it, the confrontation should arrive just when she had at last hoped she was over them. Inwardly she was shaking with mingled sickness and fear, but years of hiding her feelings and repressing them behind a blank wall helped her to concentrate on her food, although if anyone had asked her what she was eating she would not have had the faintest idea.

‘The Myers case,’ Gail continued in a husky voice. ‘It made newspaper history—the sort of scoop we all dream about. While the rest of the press were speculating about what part of the world James Myers might have disappeared to, you managed to discover that he was right here in this country all the time, posing as his sister’s boy-friend.’