A Whirlwind Marriage (8 page)

Marianne didn’t wilt beneath the savage enmity of Liliana’s eyes as they flashed her way, but inside her spirit shrank at what was almost madness in the other woman’s gaze. She was unbalanced, Marianne thought sickly. She had to be.

And then Zeke challenged the thought as he said softly, ‘She doesn’t need help, Josh, not in the way you mean anyway. She is obsessed, all right, but not with me, not really. Liliana always comes first with Liliana, and when I finished our relationship some years ago she couldn’t accept that a man had actually chosen to walk away from her. It was the first time it had happened, you see; before me it had always been Liliana who ended the affairs. She wants what she can’t have, like a spoilt child in a toy shop, and when she gets the toys she wants she takes delight in breaking them. I knew that by the time I left her, but she fooled me inasmuch as I thought she’d accepted how things were between us and ceased to care. I’d never have offered her the job otherwise.’

Josh looked straight at Zeke now, as he continued to grip his daughter’s hand beneath the table, and said drily, ‘It seems to me you shouldn’t have offered it to her anyway. Not one of your best decisions, Zeke.’

Zeke looked back into the older man’s calm eyes and then nodded slowly. ‘No, it wasn’t,’ he agreed expressionlessly.

Liliana had clearly had enough of being discussed as though she was not present. She rose in one fluid, sinuous movement of black silk and glared at them all as she spat,
‘You’ll pay for this; you see if you won’t. I won’t be treated like this.’

‘Sit down.’ Zeke didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to; he was quite terrifying enough as it was.

Marianne had always known he could be a formidable opponent—he must have been to get from where he’d started to where he was now—but she was seeing the cold, hard side of him in action for the first time and he was frightening.

His eyes were like piercing steel as they skewered Liliana’s, and his voice was glacial, penetrating the thought process like liquid ice.

Liliana sat. The devil himself would have sat.

‘I can make you wish you were dead, Liliana,’ he said, softly but clearly, ‘in a hundred different ways you haven’t even thought of. I can strip you of your reputation, make sure you never work again, arrange it that you never get invited to another show, another first night, another exclusive party. And I would do it without any compunction after what you’ve done. You understand that?’

Liliana opened her mouth twice to speak, but all she could manage was a nod of her carefully coiffured head.

‘No one touches me and mine, and you give Marianne the respect due to her as my wife when you address her. Okay? She is worth a hundred of you and you know it; that’s what really eats you up. The contract is cancelled as from now and you’ll get out of London if you know what’s good for you. One word, one whisper against me and mine, and I’ll make sure you suffer the torments of the damned.’

‘Zeke—Zeke, I didn’t mean it.’

‘Yes, you did, and we both know it. You would have wrecked my marriage on a pack of lies without a grain of truth in them. I don’t want to hear that you’re back in town for a very long time, Liliana, and just be thankful I’m
holding my hand and you can still work in Paris and Milan and New York.’

The waiter chose that moment to arrive with their cocktails, and he placed each one in front of them hurriedly, his antennae picking up that this was not a good time.

Liliana watched him depart and then she picked up the fluted glass of deep, almost black liquid and drained it, replacing it on the table with a flourish that wasn’t lost on the rest of them before she rose gracefully to her feet.

She might be a lying, venomous little snake, without a moral to her name, Marianne thought, but one thing was undeniable. Liliana had class.

‘Goodbye.’ The opaque eyes swept over each one of them as Claude shuffled to his feet beside his sister. ‘I will be sure to be in Paris by the end of the week. Will that suffice?’ Liliana asked Zeke, her voice cool and even but her cheeks flushed with high, angry colour.

He nodded dismissively and then turned to Josh and Marianne. ‘Another cocktail?’ he enquired pleasantly. ‘And I think we’ll have a bottle of Bollinger with our meal…to celebrate.’

There was a moment’s silence as Liliana continued to stand there, unable to believe she had been dismissed in such a cursory fashion, and then she swept out of the restaurant with a muttered oath, Claude trailing behind her.

‘Whew.’ Josh leant back in his seat on a long sigh. ‘You sure know how to keep an evening buzzing, Zeke.’

‘Are you all right?’ Zeke ignored Josh, reaching across to touch Marianne’s arm.

She was trying hard to conceal her emotions—she wasn’t even sure what half of them were. Relief, overwhelming, blinding relief was there, along with stunned amazement, incredulity, confusion, wonder, shock, and a certain puzzling panic that at the moment was vague and
indeterminate. ‘Yes, I’m all right,’ she said slowly, ‘although it’s hard to imagine someone that can be so devious.’

‘Devious, manipulative, selfish, downright evil…’ Zeke included Josh in the turn of his head. ‘You’re right, Josh. Not one of my best decisions.’

‘I’m…I’m sorry, Zeke.’ Marianne raised her head and looked directly into the smoky grey eyes as she spoke. ‘I should have known you weren’t having an affair with her.’

But how should she have known? she asked herself in the next instant, barely aware of Zeke murmuring some soothing reply before Josh engaged him in conversation. Their whirlwind courtship and swift marriage had meant she’d barely been familiar with even the basics of what made Zeke tick when she’d married him. Those few golden weeks had been a haze of romantic dinners and thrilling excursions into London for shows and parties. They had talked of a big house in the country and of filling it with children and cats and dogs, of holidays abroad, the wedding, their honeymoon. But when had they talked about
themselves
, bared their souls and got to
know
each other? They hadn’t.

She sat sipping at her frothy pink cocktail, more disturbed than she had ever been.

And when they had come home from their honeymoon—a time spent almost exclusively in bed as the sensuous hunger of their love had obliterated everything else—Zeke had picked up his old life again almost as though he didn’t have a wife, and she had found herself imprisoned in a beautiful, cold, empty shell of a home.

The babies hadn’t happened and so the house hadn’t happened; he hadn’t made time for something that wasn’t necessary just because she kept asking for it, needing it. When she had talked of finding a job he had been gently
dismissive at first—‘You don’t need to work, darling, and I want to look after you. It’s so wonderful to know you’re here waiting for me when I come home.’ And then the gentleness had faded and he’d become curt, cold, if she expressed a wish to work outside the home. And she, mindful of his childhood and all he’d never had, had fallen in with his demands, wanting to remove all memory of past hurts and slights.

Not that she had been actively unhappy, not at first. They had had a busy social life—all Zeke’s friends and business contacts, of course—and had enjoyed their evenings at home together, which had always finished in one way. They were perfectly suited in bed, desire flaming between them if they so much as touched one another.

But after a few months she had become frustrated, bored and restless, and it was then she had felt the pressure from Zeke to change, to conform to what he wanted in a wife. And because she loved him so much she had done just that—which had been bad for both of them, she thought now.

He had changed from the Zeke she had first loved and she had become someone she didn’t recognise, losing her confidence, her belief in herself, everything that made her
her
. Zeke hadn’t wanted a real wife—he’d demanded a pretty little doll he could dress up and keep in an elegant doll’s house. And she’d fallen in line.

‘Marianne?’ The waiter was in front of her, holding out an embossed menu as Zeke’s voice carefully prodded her back into the present. ‘How about caviare to begin with? You enjoy the way they do it here.’

She glanced at him, seeing the dark good looks, the quiet, controlled arrogance and the devastatingly magnetic sexual attraction, and her stomach turned right over. She loved this man, and she was probably going to lose him
altogether, but she couldn’t go back to the way things had been. She couldn’t follow him mindlessly through life; she had her own goals to aim for and dreams to realise. She was a person as well as a wife, and if she had to choose between Zeke or losing her identity…

‘No, I don’t really like caviare, Zeke,’ she said clearly. ‘I don’t think I ever have. I just tried to, for you.’

‘For me?’ He stared at her, puzzled but still smiling, and she nearly chickened out. Nearly.

‘Yes, for you,’ she said quietly. ‘But it’s probably just as well I don’t care for it because I certainly won’t be able to afford it in the future, on a student’s budget.’ Then she raised her eyes to the young waiter as she said, ‘I’ll have the Parmesan and bacon salad, please, followed by the salmon in lemon and white wine.’ And as the ponytail dipped and dived about her hot cheeks she finished the last of the pink cocktail.

W
HEN
Marianne awoke the next morning the room was filled with a strange light hue and it was quiet, very quiet. Unusually quiet. She glanced at the monstrous plastic wall clock some previous occupant had fixed on the wall over the fire. Six o’clock. Early, but not so early that the hum of London traffic shouldn’t be making itself known in the background.

She stuck her nose out of the covers and took a deep breath before diving for her dressing gown. Having lived with central heating all her life she couldn’t believe how cold the room got during the night.

‘Oh, gorgeous…’ When she pulled back the curtains the thick, white, starry flakes of snow falling from a laden sky brought her eyes opening wide. It had been ages since it snowed; the last two years they hadn’t seen any in London, and it was so
beautiful
.

For a moment she forgot all her troubles and remained staring out of the window like a child spying its presents on Christmas morning.

The dismal street had been transformed into a winter wonderland, ethereal and pure and white, and the snow was already several inches thick. She could see parked cars, like huge rectangular snowballs, completely covered by the feathery mass, and halfway down the street someone was already beginning to clear their vehicle preparatory to beginning the day.

As she watched, a family saloon came down the street,
very slowly, before disappearing round the far corner and leaving deep indentations in the snow.

Thank goodness she hadn’t got to rely on a car or public transport to get to work. It was going to be chaotic on the roads this morning. She felt a brief glow of pleasure at her autonomy before she shivered convulsively and set to work restoring the bed back into a sofa. Soon the gas fire was blazing away, she had a steaming cup of coffee at her elbow, and she was snuggled on the sofa with her duvet wrapped around her as she sipped at the drink.

Would Zeke be awake yet? Suddenly all the brief magic was gone. He had been angry last night, furiously angry, and when he had seen her home, after they had taken her father to pick up his car from the apartment car park where he’d left it, the atmosphere had been tense and electric.

She had thought, once they were alone, that he would allude to her comment about becoming a student, but he hadn’t, and when she had tried to broach the matter he had been curt and hostile in his refusal to discuss it.

Perhaps she shouldn’t have pushed it at that point? she asked herself as she placed the empty coffee cup on the floor before pulling the duvet’s thick folds more securely round her. The evening had been one of highly charged emotion as it was, and he’d obviously clicked on to the fact that she wasn’t going to fall into his arms and go home with him, in spite of what had come to light regarding Liliana.

But when they had reached the bedsit and she’d become aware he intended to drive away without another word something had snapped. She’d screamed at him, she reflected miserably, positively screamed. ‘How can you say goodnight like that and just leave?’ she’d shouted. ‘What’s the matter with you anyway?’

‘Me?’ There had been savagery in his eyes as he’d
swung round to face her in the car. ‘I said goodnight because it is perfectly obvious you don’t want to be in my company a second more than is necessary, that’s all.’

‘That is not all.’

‘Oh, yes, it is, Marianne. You heard Liliana and Claude, you know there’s nothing between Liliana and I, but you don’t want to come home. End of story.’

‘End of story?’ She hadn’t been shouting then; her voice had been scarcely a whisper. ‘We haven’t talked anything out, Zeke,’ she’d said brokenly, ‘so how can it be end of story? This is our marriage you’re talking about.
Our marriage.
’

‘You think I don’t know that?’ he’d said in cold, clipped tones.

‘I’ve no idea what you know or don’t know,’ she’d said grimly. ‘How could I have? You never talk to me, not really, and you never listen either. Everything,
everything
, is on your terms, always. I’m expected to sit at home twiddling my thumbs all day and wait for you to return from the world of million-dollar deals and fast living, and then just be the sweet, docile wife with the dinner ready and the bedclothes laid back.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he’d said harshly. ‘It’s not like that.’

‘It’s exactly like that.’ She glanced at him, but he’d been staring ahead, his features rigid. ‘I know I shouldn’t have believed you were having an affair, but everything pointed to it, don’t you see? Liliana is in your world, and she’s vibrant and alive and interesting. And you needed her, needed her expertise and flair. Certainly more than you needed me,’ she’d added bitterly.

‘What?’ His eyes had flashed to her for a moment. ‘You can’t believe that.’

‘Well, I do.’ She’d taken a deep breath. ‘I’ve become
someone else since I married you and I don’t like it; I don’t like
her
, the person I see in the mirror every morning. You wouldn’t talk about my getting a job or doing voluntary work. You didn’t like it if I saw Pat or any of my old friends. I’ve been in a strange sort of limbo and I can’t take it any more.’

‘So you’re walking out on me,’ he’d said brusquely, his face looking as though it was carved in stone.

‘I want…I want time—time to think,’ she’d said painfully, her heart thudding. She’d been able to smell the delicious scent of him, a mixture of expensive aftershave and musky male skin, and every fibre of her being had wanted to throw herself into his arms and agree to anything he wanted. But she couldn’t, not now, not after they had come this far.

‘And a divorce will give you that?’ he’d bitten out through clenched teeth.

‘A separation will.’

There had been a tense silence for a moment, and then Zeke had said flatly, his dark face an unreadable mask, ‘I don’t want my wife living in a hovel, Marianne. I don’t know what sort of gesture you thought you were making, but you’ve made it, okay? I can afford for you to live well whatever happens.’

His hands had been tight on the steering wheel, the knuckles taut and white, and it had only been that betrayal of his inward turmoil that had stayed the hot, angry words hovering on her tongue.

She didn’t want his money. Neither had she been trying to make a dramatic gesture! Why wouldn’t he
listen
to her? Even now he couldn’t hear what she was saying. He was so cold, so unapproachable—his mind was a locked door and he jealously guarded the key, even from her.

He had only ever given her little portions of himself,
she’d realised suddenly. Just so much and no more. He had compartmentalised his life and she had been allotted her box, along with everything else, but that was all.

That wasn’t a marriage; it wasn’t even a relationship. She had opened the car door with an abruptness that had surprised them both, her voice weary and strained as she had said quietly, ‘Goodbye, Zeke.’

And his voice had been equally quiet and bleak when he’d answered in turn, ‘Goodbye, Marianne.’

She had expected the car to roar away the moment she turned away from it, but it hadn’t been until she had switched on the light in the bedsit and walked across to the window and begun to close the curtains that it had moved slowly away down the dark, deserted street. And she had gone to bed…alone.

‘Oh, Zeke, Zeke.’ She spoke his name on a little hiccup of a sob, glancing desperately round the room, which had now become quite cosy from the warmth of the gas fire. ‘Please love me like I love you. That’s all I ask.’

It was maudlin self-pity of the worst kind, and after a few indulgent moments she flung the duvet aside and jumped up from the sofa.

She wasn’t going down that avenue—not now and not in the future, she told herself firmly. She had a job to go to and she needed to be bright and cheerful when serving the customers, not pink-eyed and miserable, however she was feeling inside.

And come the weekend she would make some enquires regarding further education; she wasn’t just going to talk about it—she was going to
do
it!

She had never regretted the decision to support her father through the bleak, dark time after her mother’s sudden death, but she’d always known she was merely delaying going away to college or university, nor forgetting it al
together. But then Zeke had swept into her life, with all the charisma and drawing power of a powerful being from another world, and things had changed. She had let them change.

She gathered up her toilet bag and towel in preparation for her sojourn in the bathroom down the landing, and then pulled the belt of her robe tighter as her thoughts travelled on.

She had always enjoyed practical chemistry at school, she was more like her father academically than her mother, and her A level results in biology, chemistry and maths had been excellent. Becoming a doctor like her father had been an idea at first, but then, through work experience and contacts of her father, she had been drawn to a career in medical laboratory work. And she could make it happen; it was up to her. There were thousands,
millions
of women who had absorbing, interesting careers and were wives and mothers, too…

Her heart started thudding as her stomach swirled violently. But Zeke couldn’t—or wouldn’t—see that. And she was losing him. Perhaps she had already lost him. And a world without Zeke would be so empty and pointless that the greatest career in the universe wouldn’t compensate—

‘Stop it.’
She spoke out loud, through clenched teeth. She couldn’t doubt herself now. She had rushed into her marriage like a giddy schoolgirl and the result had been a disaster. She loved Zeke, she would always love him, but she couldn’t go back to how things had been and he didn’t see any need for them to be different. He had been so cold and hard in the car last night, so distant and intractable.

The weeks they had been apart hadn’t touched him, not deep down. He still didn’t see the need for them to talk, to communicate, to
listen
to each other. She had been
shrivelling up and dying inside for months and he was oblivious to her despair.

She took a deep, shuddering breath, her hand reaching for the door, and then jumped violently when the buzzer connected to the door in the street sounded in her right ear.

‘Marianne?’

It sounded like Zeke’s voice, but it couldn’t be, she told herself silently as she spoke into the intercom. ‘Yes, who is it?’

‘How many men could it be at this time of the morning?’ came the dry response.

‘Zeke? What on earth are you doing here?’

‘Freezing my butt off.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. Come up.’ She pressed the switch to release the street door and then gazed wildly about, as though her clothes and make-up were going to jump on her all by themselves so she could present a cool, contained façade. There was no time to do anything but hastily fumble in her toilet bag and run a brush through her tangled hair before his knock sounded on the door.

Right, you can handle this. From his attitude the night before he had probably come to dot the i’s and cross the t’s on their separation, she thought frantically. He was a control freak in every area of his life; that had become more and more apparent through the two years she had been married to him. Always cool and immaculate, with an undeniable air of authority and command that was awesome. It had only been when they were in bed, and he was loving her with every fibre of his mind and body, that she had felt she had all of him. But perhaps even that had been an illusion she had created because she didn’t want to face up to the sham of their marriage?

When his knock sounded again she pulled herself to
gether and wiped all trace of her thoughts from her face before she opened the door. And then she stared at him, her mouth falling open in a slight gape before she said bewilderedly, ‘Zeke, what on earth…? You’re soaked, absolutely soaked. Has the car broken down somewhere?’

‘No, the car hasn’t broken down,’ he said wearily, raking back his hair as the snow covering his head began to melt in rivulets down his grey face. ‘I’ve been walking.’

‘Walking?’ She could see he was shivering as he stood dripping on the draughty landing, and now she pulled him into the room, shutting the door before saying briskly, ‘Get your coat off and I’ll switch the kettle on. You need something warm inside you.’

‘Marianne?’ As she went to move away he caught hold of her hand and his flesh was ice-cold. ‘I love you. If nothing else, I want you to understand that. But there’s another part of me…’ He let go of her, turning away with a savagery that spoke of suppressed emotion.

‘Zeke, what is it?’ The look on his face frightened her. ‘Are you ill?’

‘Probably.’ He drew a long, shaking breath. ‘In here.’ He tapped his forehead before turning to face her again, contemplating her wretchedly from beneath his hooded lids, his eyes so smoky dark as to be black. ‘When I left you last night I drove back to the apartment and parked the car and then began walking. I needed to think about what you’d said.’

Marianne ignored the fierce stab of hope the last words had given her, and said instead, her voice concerned, ‘You haven’t been walking all night in this weather? Oh, Zeke, that’s crazy. You’ll catch your death of cold.’

‘That’d be a clean end to this mess, if nothing else,’ he said bitterly through the uncontrollable chattering of his teeth.

‘Don’t be silly.’ She regarded him now in the manner of a schoolmarm admonishing a naughty child, although there was nothing childish about the six foot two, big, dark figure in front of her. He looked broodingly sombre and impossibly handsome, but exhausted. And cold, very cold. The last thought caused her to say firmly, ‘Get your coat off, Zeke, and hand it here. There’s an airer in the bathroom; I’ll hang it in there.’

However, once divested of his coat, it was clear he was soaked right through, the designer suit as wringing wet as his overcoat.

‘You’re chilled to the bone, aren’t you?’ She couldn’t believe that the logical, cold, imperturbable man she had lived with for the last two years could have been so irrational as to walk the streets all night in the worst snowstorm the south had seen for a decade. ‘You need a hot bath if you aren’t going to catch pneumonia.’