The Accidental Bride (4 page)

He was sitting up, leaning against a mound of pillows of his own, flicking through something or other on his iPad. Probably financial reports; he was a terrible workaholic. And working, reading emails, checking weather reports or just about goddamn anything all staved off facing the issue of whether he was going to attempt to sleep beside her tonight.

I wish you’d tell me what it is. I know most things now … even about that bitch Clara … but the sleep thing, well, you’re keeping me waiting on that one.

Only once or twice in their relatively brief relationship had John ever managed to sleep in the same room as her, never mind the same bed. He claimed he couldn’t fall asleep in another person’s presence, but, as yet, hadn’t fully explained why that was.

Was it something to do with the car crash he’d been in,
all those years ago? He’d fallen asleep as the passenger in the car, believing that Clara, his lover of the time, was fit to drive home from a party. She’d told him she hadn’t been drinking, and he’d accepted that as the truth, but hadn’t thought to ask her whether she’d taken any drugs.

I bet you think if you’d stayed awake, you could’ve snatched the wheel at the last moment, don’t you?

Perhaps that was the root of it? His psyche kept him awake and on his guard, lest some disaster should occur, like the one that had led Clara to pile their car into another, killing a woman and seriously injuring her daughter. The fact that the injured daughter, Rose, had long since forgiven John for his involvement, and had even become a good friend of his, made no difference.
He
couldn’t forgive himself.

Lizzie studied John from beneath her eyelashes, adoring the elegance of his profile, and the way he adorably nibbled at his lower lip when he was concentrating. There was probably nothing he could have done if he’d been awake that night, and he couldn’t be blamed for believing the word of the woman he’d loved. Lizzie wondered if, now, he would believe her in the same situation. Or had Clara bolloxed up his complete trust in her sex for ever? Perhaps that was why he was still holding back and, in this one thing, would not confide in her?

‘Go to sleep, Lizzie. It’s late, and you’ve had a busy night.’ Turning to her, he winked and flicked a glance at her rump beneath the pale flower-sprigged cotton that had replaced the peach satin too beautiful to spoil with sticky balm.

She gave him a ‘what about you’ look.

‘Don’t worry about me. I’ve a few more things I want to
keep tabs on, but I will try soon. Promise. If you’re already sleeping, it might be easier for me to nod off, you know.’ He reached out and flicked a few strands of her hair that had fallen across her chin out of the way. Then he kissed her, softly, gently. ‘If I know you’re lying there waiting for me to fall asleep, it’ll only make it more difficult.’

‘Sorry, boss.’ She was feeling tired, actually. There was nothing like being spanked, then shagged, twice, to make you drowsy.

‘You’ve nothing to be sorry for, love. It’s me that’s the freak.’

‘You’re not a freak,’ she protested, loving he way he smoothed her hair, as if she were their little cat Alice, who was at home at Dalethwaite Manor, being cared for by the efficient and irreplaceable Thursgoods. Alice purred like a high-powered motorboat when she was stroked, and Lizzie felt like doing the same.

‘Go to sleep, sweetheart,’ he urged again, and almost as if her subconscious was more obedient than her conscious mind, she felt herself slipping.

Even if he didn’t sleep himself, his beloved presence at her side helped her to let go and bid adieu to the waking world.

‘John …’ she breathed, and then she was gone.

Lizzie shot up in bed, awake in a flash, and gasped. Somehow she’d ended on her back, and shooting straight up into a sitting position induced a twinge in her bum, a little echo of the spanking that had eluded the apothecary balm and even John’s best efforts to pull his strokes.

What had woken her so abruptly? She looked around the room. No John. Despite her resolve to be sensible, her heart ached that he wasn’t there, fast asleep beside her. A bit of breeze had come up, and the long voile curtains at the window leading to the balcony were flapping slightly. Maybe that was what had reached into her sleep?

But no, that wasn’t it. As if on a time delay, a dream came back to her, strange and unsettling. John had been falling down and away from her into a void, a bit like lost and frozen Jack in the film
Titanic
. And it was all the more troubling because there seemed to be some kind of monster or perhaps luring siren down there in the deep, pulling him, dragging him down.

Bloody fucking Clara! I don’t need to be Sigmund Freud to work that one out.

Now Lizzie was the one who couldn’t sleep. She didn’t need to go down that road, lying awake in the dark, speculating, and yes, despite her better instincts, hating this unknown woman who’d been the love of John’s life before she was. And maybe still was, subconsciously, regardless of his conscious protestations that she, Lizzie, was The One.

She rubbed her arms, chilled by the air.

These Provençal nights could sometimes be a bit on the cool side, especially in the early hours. It’d been mild and pleasant when they’d been playing down in the grove, around midnight, but now in the deep, dark night of the soul, it was very cold. Lizzie pushed her feet into her Indian silk slippers as she stood, and dragged the cosy embroidered comforter off the bed, to wrap it around her shoulders.

Where was John? Asleep in his own room? Down in the sitting room, working on his laptop? Or somewhere else?

On instinct she padded to the open doors to the balcony, stepped out soundlessly, and peered out.

A lone figure was sitting at the table on the patio, on the long bench that flanked it. The table reminded her of the one down in the grove. The two had probably been bought as a pair.

John’s skin gleamed in the moonlight. Not with the golden, exotic glow it’d reflected from the oil lantern before, but a cooler, more silvery light now. A more troubled light. It seemed that he too was enduring his own dark night of the soul.

Quietly, but still knowing he’d know she was coming, Lizzie crept down the wrought-iron steps that led from their bedroom balcony to the patio below, and joined him. He didn’t turn until she was right beside him, and sliding
onto the bench. His face had a stark, uneasy quality to it that cut her to the quick on his behalf.

She didn’t speak, but draped the voluminous comforter around his shoulders. It was plenty big enough for two.

‘Thanks, sweetheart. It’s a bit chilly, isn’t it?’ His smile lightened the mood a little, yet it seemed world weary. The warmth of his shoulder against hers was welcoming, though.

‘It certainly is. Which begs the question why you’re sitting out here in just your pyjama bottoms, freezing your nuts off?’

John laughed. ‘Don’t worry, my nuts are fine. How’s your bottom? This bench isn’t exactly upholstered.’ He pressed a kiss to the side of her cheek.

Goodness, she hadn’t noticed. She’d plonked down on the hard wood and barely felt anything. Which just showed what the magic of John’s beauty in the moonlight could do.

‘It’s much better now. Barely a twinge.’ She shuffled closer, feeling his skin warm in contact with hers. ‘What’s in there?’ She nodded at the cup he was cradling.

Wordlessly, John offered it to her, and she brought it to her lips. Ooh, coffee. When she took a sip she almost reeled back. Good grief it was strong. Delicious, but ferociously potent.

‘Jesus, John, swigging this stuff isn’t going to help you sleep. With or without me in the room.’ Even so, she took another mouthful herself, needing to be braced up, if she was going to ask the thorny questions she’d so far avoided.

When she passed the cup back to him, he stared into it, then put it aside, reaching for her hand.

‘I suppose I’m punishing myself. If I can’t sleep with you, I don’t deserve to sleep at all. Hence the caffeine.’

‘That’s just stupid.’

He raised his hand to his lips, and kissed it in a vague, almost abstract way. ‘It is, isn’t it? I’m an idiot.’

‘Not an idiot,’ she said fiercely, gripping the hand that held hers, twisting it a little, and kissing it in return. ‘Just someone with … stuff on his mind, that’s all.’ She rubbed her cheek against the back of his hand, loving the silk of his skin.

‘Yes.’

The single word hung in the air, heavy with all the other words, the ones he didn’t, perhaps couldn’t, say. Should she force the issue? Ask the questions she normally resisted? She hated being a nag, hated pushing him. It seemed so ungrateful when he was so kind and wonderful, giving her gifts, both material, and of himself, with his mind and heart and body.

‘I told you that you should ask things, didn’t I?’

He had done, back at Dalethwaite, before she’d moved in. He’d said she could ask him anything, and he’d try to answer. Should she go for it now, in these wee small hours that weren’t really like real life, in the light of day?

‘Why can’t you sleep with anyone else, John?’

There, she’d asked, but not the other great sleep-related question that bugged her.

Did you used to sleep like a baby with Clara, before all the bad stuff happened and changed you for ever? Before you took the fall for her, and went to prison when she should have been the one to go?

‘Is it the accident? Or prison? Or something else?’

Despite his words to the contrary, he didn’t seem to be able to answer, and while she waited, the night and the garden held its breath.

He was a coward, and he knew it. He should just tell her. It would be such a relief, to at least get this one thing clear. The trouble was, he didn’t fully understand it himself, despite years and thousands of pounds of therapy. He’d spent so many years not thinking about the reasons he could only sleep alone. It was only loving Lizzie that had compelled him to re-examine this issue.

But she was waiting, waiting. She deserved some kind of explanation. After all, what man in his right mind would avoid sleeping next to this beautiful, compassionate young woman? Even with no sex on the agenda, just being at her side was a thing of wonder. He could want her again in a second, but sharing her blanket and her warmth was enough for the moment. It made him strong.

‘It’s a bit of both. A muddle really,’ he began, impatient with his own prevarication. How long could a man who was supposed to be astute and grown up go on being a craven and adolescent idiot? ‘Not clear cut.’ He sighed, and tweaked the blanket tighter around them. ‘People always think that X leads to Y, in a simple cause and effect, but I’ve never found anything in life to be like that. If you’ve got X, Y and Z, you might get nothing, or the answer to the Universe.’

‘That’s forty-two,’ she said, rubbing her face against his shoulder.

‘Quite possibly.’ He smiled, recognising the reference to
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
. ‘But in my case, it’s been a mix of the car accident, prison, maybe even a bit of natural insomnia. All jumbled together. All meaning I can’t relax and let my guard right down properly. Something inside me’s afraid to sleep … even with you.’

‘So, what happened, then?’ she asked in a low, steady
voice. Not a bossy voice, but one he couldn’t deny, or resist. ‘I sort of get the car smash element, I think.’ She turned to him, her eyes gleaming in the low light. ‘You feel that if you had stayed awake as Clara drove, you could have averted what happened. I get that. It makes sense. Your subconscious keeps on telling you that you have to stay awake and “protect” the other person, somehow? Is that it?’

He’d been through all this with various therapists. She’d pinpointed it easily, though. ‘Yes, that’s part of it.’ In some ways, the easiest part; in some ways, not.

‘But the rest? Can you talk about it? It’s OK if you can’t, but maybe it’ll help if you share?’

Why not? Why not share? It didn’t make him a bad person, what’d happened. He supposed it was the old atavistic male desire to be heroic in the eyes of his mate. But the story of him being someone’s prison bitch didn’t have much, if anything, in the way of heroic qualities.

Oh God …

He drew in a deep breath and, as he exhaled, a slender hand closed around his arm, reassuring, urging.

‘Prison isn’t easy for anybody. It’s not supposed to be. But when you’re a particularly young-looking twenty-four-year-old ex-public-school boy with an über-posh accent and blond curly hair and you’re thrown into a closed society of hard, embittered men, some of whom are used to using violence to get exactly what they want … well, it’s no birthday party, I can tell you.’

‘But you don’t have an über-posh accent.’

He laughed again, some of the reluctance and anxiety loosened by her simple words, and the feel of her warm fingertips against his skin. ‘I did then, sweetheart, I’m afraid. Awfully cut glass, and upper crust, don’t you know?’ he said,
dredging deep and recreating the ‘county’ tones that had been so natural to him during the course of his younger life.

She laughed and kissed his shoulder. ‘Ooh, you were a snobby git, then.’

‘I’m afraid so, love.’ He paused, gathered himself and went on, ‘I was terrified for my life,’ he admitted, feeling the dread again after all these years, like a dowsing in the cold of the North Sea. ‘The moment I walked in I suspected I’d be a target, and I was.’ Was he shaking? He didn’t think so, but she held on tighter to him as if he was. ‘But in a way, I got lucky … sort of. I was put in a cell with an older man, Jack. He was a tough, hard-living, and huge. Tattooed. The Full Monty. He could see right through me from the start, and he knew my fear.’

He had to stop. Reaching for the coffee, he took a sip, grimacing because it was cold. ‘He laid things out for me. Yes, I would be seen as “a prime piece of arse”, and certain prisoners would pursue me and just take what they wanted. Didn’t matter if I was fit and could box a bit, and defend myself well enough under normal circumstances. Inside, I didn’t stand a chance.’