Second Best Wife (10 page)

She swallowed the lump in her throat, making a supreme effort to keep her voice light and airy. 'What makes you think I shall be any more loyal than Jennifer?' she taunted him. 'We are sisters, after all! And
I'm
not at all in love with you!'

His hand closed over hers, his fingers as hard as steel bands. 'Try it and see what happens to you. I'm not the type of man who competes for the favours of his wife, Georgina, and you are my wife, whether you like it or not.'

'Only because —'

'You can't argue your way out of this one, Mrs. Ayres. You're caught in a snare of your own making when you said the words that made you a wife.
My
wife!'

'I didn't have much choice,' she protested, but there wasn't a great deal of conviction in her words. Nobody could have
made
her say the words, nobody but herself, so why had she?

'Your jealousy of Jennifer
made
you,' he countered dryly. 'You never count the cost when it comes to the long-standing rivalry between you! However, I'm not complaining. Haven't you promised me that you're better than she is?'

She flushed. ‘I only meant —' She broke off, finding it impossible to discuss with him whether she or Jennifer had the better figure. When one was loved such things hardly mattered, and if one was not loved it mattered even less.

‘Yes?'

‘I'm not jealous of Jennifer!' she protested in a whisper. ‘Why should I be? She hasn't anything I want and she never has had!'

‘Not even the ability to attract every man in sight?' he put in dryly. ‘When she was around nobody ever looked twice at you, did they, Georgie, not unless you forced yourself on their attention with your fists! Going away to college should have given you the space to find yourself. I wonder why it didn't. Away from your sister, you're not as strident as you are in her company. When you hold on to that temper of yours you're quite an attractive girl. Why didn't you take the opportunity to make your own friends?'

She uttered a mirthless laugh, hunching up her shoulders and refusing to answer. How could she tell him that most of the friends she had shared with Jennifer had been hers in the first place? He would never believe that it wasn't she, but Jennifer, who had resented her popularity and had done everything she could to subvert her friends to herself. Georgina had never cared sufficiently to bother about her sister's activities, but now she wished she had. She would have liked to have flung half a dozen potential lovers in William's face! It would have given her a most rewarding pleasure to have flicked her fingers at him and gone off with somebody else — somebody who would have more charm in his little finger than William had in his whole body, a fact she would have brought home to him with the kind of insolent derision to which he frequently treated her!

When the haze of tears cleared from her eyes she found the car had stopped and they were parked in the centre of a town whose buildings could only have been built by the British but which, nevertheless, was completely foreign to the English high streets it so closely emulated. Of course the people who thronged the pavements could never have been English. There were the men, spare and narrow hipped in their sarongs, and the women as bright as butterflies in their distinctive saris if they were rich enough to wear such a costume; some of them seemed to have no more than a much washed skirt, similar to those worn by the men, and a bolero top that accentuated their very feminine figures.

'Never mind,' said William, 'you have me now.'

She jumped, wringing her hands together. 'What?'

'You may have few friends, but you've landed yourself a husband, Georgie Porgie.' He stroked her cheek with his forefinger. 'Wake up, Madam wife, this is Kandy. Are you hungry?'

She stared at him, not really seeing him at all. 'Really, William, how Victorian can you get? Madam wife, indeed!'

'Why not?' His smile forced a shiver up her spine. 'I have very Victorian ideas about marriage. He for God only; she for God in him! It goes with the decor the British Raj left behind!'

'That was in India,' she pointed out in husky tones. The shiver had settled into a space round her heart, increasing in intensity until she was afraid it would explode inside her. 'Yes, let's go and eat! And may we stop for a while and see the Temple of the Tooth? Is it genuinely a tooth from Buddha himself? I'd love to see that!'

'A whole lot safer than crossing swords with your husband?' he suggested, mocking her hurried, breathless speech.

'Not at all! I'm hungry!'

He shrugged his shoulders. 'Why not? The rest will keep until after you've met Celine.'

Georgina's spirits deflated with all the speed of a pricked balloon.
Celine!
How could she have forgotten all about her, even for a moment?

'I suppose Celine is your Victorian romantic dream?' she murmured, and then almost immediately, 'I shouldn't have said that. I'm sorry—only you did ask for me to say something nasty. You seem to enjoy getting me all riled up about nothing at all.'

He studied her closely and she could feel herself colouring angrily under his regard. 'I like to have my first impressions confirmed. They're not as inaccurate as you would like me to believe, my Georgie Porgie! You never miss an opportunity to rise and snap, do you? But be careful! There's a hook in the bait when you play such games with me. I always play to win and, unlike the Duncans of this world, I never, never cry!'

'You may do one day,' she muttered, put out. 'Everyone cries sometimes!'

His eyes narrowed. 'I shouldn't bet on it.'

She would have liked to have turned away and have talked about something else — anything, as long as it didn't mean they had to go on fighting. But she was far too stubborn to allow him to see she was worsted.

'Are you as nasty to poor Celine too?' she asked him, looking him straight in the eyes.

'You'll have to judge for yourself,' he said, and added, 'Celine doesn't answer back. She's all woman in that way, having learned that more victories are won with soft words by the fair sex. Why don't you try it some time?'

'I wouldn't be so patronising!'

He placed a finger across her lips, effectively silencing her. 'Is that what it is? My, my, but you tempt me to teach you better!
All
is fair in love and war, my dear.'

'And which is it in Celine's case?' she demanded, resisting the temptation to bite his finger. 'I already know which it is with me!'

'Do you? I wonder?' He reached into the car for his coat and shut and locked the doors. 'Come along and we'll eat! I'd like to show you the Temple today, Georgie, but we haven't any time to spare if we're to get to Nuwara Eliya before dark.'

Georgina was unbearably disappointed. 'Does it matter?' she pleaded.

He nodded. 'It's raining in the hills and that may delay us considerably as it is. I'm sorry, my dear, but there'll be other times.'

But she wouldn't be alone with him then, she thought, and wondered why it should be so important to her that she should have his full attention all to herself. She gave in with a good grace, however, accepting the inevitable with a gallant smile that he found touching in its insouciance. It was a little surprising too, he reflected, for he had always been led to believe that Georgina would bear a grudge for years, sulking over what everyone else had long forgotten.

But this Georgina had courage, as his mother had suggested, and scorned to fight with weapons others might well have seized upon, fair or not. This Georgina had a tough, honest quality that he found he admired almost as much as it amused him.

They had lunch at a small local restaurant overlooking the lake which lends an air of enchantment to the whole city. William advised Georgina to follow his example and eat one of the curries that had pride of place on the menu. Georgina, who had a taste for hot, spicy foods, agreed readily and was delighted with the result. Half a dozen dishes were brought to their table, some of them familiar and some of them not, and she had an extremely agreeable half-hour tasting them all one by one.

William eyed her with a tolerant air. 'I don't believe it's even occurred to you that you might upset your tummy with all this strange food,' he observed.

'Why should it?'

'It has been known to. A change of germs more than a change of food probably, but the results are the same.'

'Pooh,' said Georgina. 'A few germs? I won't allow them to get the better of me! I'm enjoying myself far too much!'

'I hope you're right,' he said dryly.

The rain had already started when they left the restaurant. It was more low cloud that had got trapped between the hills than actual rain, but there was a distinct dampness in the air and the sun had completely disappeared for the day.

'It's still beautiful even in the rain,' Georgina sighed, turning round in her seat to see the last of Kandy. 'Did you see those gorgeous flowering trees? The university campus is full of them! I've never seen anything like it!'

'The mauve ones are jacaranda, the scarlet flamboyant— no, that one is a flame tree, I think. The pink ones are new to me too.'

'And the bushes?' she asked eagerly.

'Bougainvillea. I can remember a time when they trailed over things, but they seem to have got them to stand up by themselves nowadays, and to come in so many colours that they're a feast to the eyes all by themselves.' He pointed with a finger at another, darker

tree in the middle distance. 'There's an ebony tree.'

Georgina sat back, contented. 'It was worth coming just to see the flowers and the paddy fields and—and everything,' she said.

'But it would be better still without me?'

Georgina was surprised by the question. She averted her face and stared out at the grey drizzle. 'No, you make a good guide,' she said grudgingly. 'I wouldn't have known what anything was by myself.'

'A good book could have told you.'

She moved uncomfortably. 'I never recognise flowers and birds in books. They always look different somehow.'

He grimaced at the wet road ahead. 'Well, thank you for that recommendation at least,' he drawled. 'It doesn't say much for my personal qualities though, does it?'

'You don't think much of mine,' she retorted.

The rain grew steadily heavier as they climbed higher. It was strange to see the heavy grey skies dominating the countryside that always, in pictures, was bathed in eternal sunshine. The hairpin bends became more and more slippery too, demanding William's total concentration. Georgina was glad of the silence. She had thought the lower slopes spectacular, but the higher they went, the more beautiful it became. There were waterfalls everywhere and glistening white stupas of Buddhist temples hidden away in unexpected valleys. Sometimes, too, the heavily carved square towers that tapered inwards towards the top that marked the Hindu temples rose above the simple buildings of the villages, lending an exotic touch in contrast to the down-at-heel squalor of these high country villages. The Tamil workers, imported from South India for the backbreaking endless task of picking the tea, were the poorest people in the land, and it showed.

The tea factories were the largest buildings to be seen now. They all looked much the same, several stories high, with square, impersonal windows that gazed out across the miles of tea which surrounded them. Sometimes a plume of smoke rose from an asbestos pipe that served as a chimney, but on this wet, gloomy day few of the factories were working as hardly any tea had been picked.

'They'll be glad of the rain all the same,' William said with satisfaction. 'It's been a very dry wet season and tea needs a certain amount of moisture to flourish as it should.' He went on to explain that the higher it grew the finer was the tea obtained. 'But you'll find out all about that for yourself once you're settled in. Some of the best tea in the world is produced on the plantation where we're living.'

Georgina looked at the green bushes with renewed interest. It was funny how one took things for granted, she thought, recollecting the number of times she had made the tea at home without ever giving a thought as to how it was grown and prepared before it arrived on the shelf of the nearby supermarket.

'Jennifer doesn't like tea,' she said, apropos of nothing.

William favoured her with a blank stare. 'Jennifer isn't here to dislike it right now. Can't you leave her where she is, at home in England?'

Georgina pulled in her lower lip, looking away from him. 'Can you?'

'Easily.' He changed down to negotiate a particularly awkward corner. 'Have a look at the map, will you? I think we're nearly there.'

Georgina did as she was told, but the criss-crossing black lines on the plain white paper seemed to bear little relation to the road they were on.

'It's so smudged,' she said, 'it's impossible to tell where we are. Is this the best map you've got?'

'The only one.' He stopped the car and took it from her, huffing and puffing over the almost illegible names. 'Not much help, is it?'

Georgina pointed hopefully ahead. 'Let's go on and hope for a signpost,' she suggested.

He shrugged, putting the map back on her knee. 'We'll try it,' he agreed.