Marriage Without Love & More Than a Convenient Marriage?

‘Mm, it’s very nice,’ Kieron drawled softly as though he had read her thoughts.

‘You shouldn’t have told Gail about Nicky,’ Briony protested, trying to change the subject.

His eyes glinted with anger.

‘Why not? Nicky might be a dark secret to you, but not to me. I’m proud of my son and I don’t care who knows that I fathered him.’

His chauvinism infuriated her.

‘I don’t suppose you care about them knowing how you fathered him either, do you? You’re practically inhuman! You expect me to behave as though this were the happiest day of my life, when all the time you’ve forced me into this marriage to prevent you from taking my son—a son that you fathered without thought or love, or any other emotion except ambition. Your arrogance is astounding! I.…’

Her words were smothered by his mouth, the hard, angry pressure of his hands bruising her skin through the thin chiffon. She could hear people laughing and cheering, and when Kieron released her she was chagrined to discover that they were the centre of a small crowd of grinning onlookers.

Someone claimed Kieron’s attention, and he turned aside to talk to them. Most of their guests were people from the paper. There were one or two people Kieron had introduced as old friends, and Briony had endured their curious inspection with as much fortitude as she could muster.

Mrs Johnson was looking after Nicky, and al

ready she was fretting to get back to him. Ever since his accident she worried whenever she was away from him, and Kieron had already rebuked her once for fussing over him.

She had been bitterly angry, resenting his assumption that he had an equal right to say what was best for Nicky, and now her stomach lurched protestingly as she realised that marriage to him had given him that right.

She wandered away, deep in thought, not realising until he caught her arm that Matt had been following her. He looked thin and unhappy, and she was consumed with guilt at not letting him know what was happening.

‘I couldn’t believe it,’ he reproached her. ‘Briony, what am I going to do without you? No one listens to me but you.’

She almost laughed out loud at his childish self-absorption, realising with new clarity that his appeal had been similar to Nicky’s, only far weaker, and that it had been his dependence upon her which had relaxed her barriers, as though she had known instinctively that he would never represent the same threat to her defences that Kieron did.

‘I miss you so much, Briony,’ he mumbled. ‘I wanted to talk to you. I don’t know what to do. Should I take Mary back?’

If he had to ask her he couldn’t be very sure of his feelings, Briony thought in exasperation. She was just about to tell him that he would have to make his own decisions, when a dark shadow loomed, and she glanced up to find Kieron bearing down on them, his face grim and unsmiling.

‘Briony is my wife now,’ he told Matt angrily, grasping her wrist painfully tightly. ‘Just remember that. And as for you,’ he grated to Briony as Matt shrank back, ‘what the hell do you think you’re playing at? I haven’t gone to all this trouble to convince everyone that we’re a pair of deliriously happy reunited lovers just to have you sabotage everything by letting that idiot weep all over you!’

The intensity of his anger shocked her into silence.

‘Matt and I are old friends,’ she protested when she had found her voice. ‘No one would ever think that.…’

‘You were lovers?’ Kieron grated. ‘You’d be surprised. I thought you were myself, until I found out you were virtually untouched.…’

‘Like the Sleeping Beauty awaiting the Prince’s kiss?’ Briony flung at him. ‘Is that what you think, Kieron? That you only have to touch me and I’ll waken up? I’m sorry to have to disappoint you. I’m frozen all the way through.’

‘You melted the other night,’ he reminded her softly, watching her eyes so that there was no way she could conceal her shock wave of reaction.

‘I didn’t know what I was doing,’ she countered bravely. ‘Nicky’s accident…the shock.…’

‘Yes, I know all about that,’ he agreed harshly. ‘You don’t need to put into words that you wouldn’t have let me within fifty miles of you if your defences hadn’t been cracked wide open. But they aren’t unbreachable. Remember that next time you feel like defying me!’

He turned on his heel before she could respond, leaving her feeling stricken by the realisation that he had spoken the truth. Where Kieron was concerned she was dangerously vulnerable, and she would have to work ceaselessly to ensure that her defences were never breached again. She had already endured the galling bitterness of lovemaking without love once; she could not survive that agony again.

CHAPTER SIX

THEY left the reception in a shower of rice and confetti, to the tune of goodnatured teasing from their colleagues, although Briony noticed that neither Gail nor Matt was there to wave them off.

‘I didn’t think you’d thank me for organising a honeymoon,’ Kieron said sardonically as they drove out of London. ‘Although seeing you dressed—or should I say undressed—like that is giving me second thoughts.’

‘Then forget them,’ Briony said crisply. ‘You told me to buy a new outfit and I did.’

‘What a pity you can’t always be so delightfully obedient,’ Kieron mocked. ‘Where am I to sleep tonight, by the way, or can I guess?’