Claiming His Bride

He’d said his threat was a figure of speech and she believed him. Yet there was an astringency in his voice that disturbed her.

The music stopped, and after a moment Blaize released his hold.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

He inclined his head and she tried not to read irony into the gesture. ‘I’ll see you back to your table.’

He didn’t touch her again, and as she resumed her chair and took the glass her previous partner handed to her, Blaize exchanged greetings with her parents, who had also returned to the table.

‘Sorrel tells me she may be staying on,’ he said casually, ‘if she can find a job in Wellington.’

Her mother swept her a look of surprise. ‘You didn’t say anything to us!’

‘I haven’t made up my mind,’ Sorrel said quickly.

‘Well.’ Rhoda sounded approving. ‘It’s time you came home.’

‘High time,’ Ian concurred. ‘It would be nice to have our baby girl back.’

Useless to argue with the description. She was their only child and her father would always see her as his baby, she supposed.

‘Sorry if I let the cat out of the bag,’ Blaize said.

‘It doesn’t matter.’ Sorrel shrugged. But she was dismayed at the premature disclosure.

Blaize chatted for a minute longer with Rhoda and Ian, then went to join Cherie, who sat with her head bowed at their table, while three people across from her apparently shared a joke. At Blaize’s approach she turned and smiled, holding out a hand. Blaize took it in his and retained it, seating himself close by her.

Sorrel looked away.

The bride and groom took the floor again, dancing close together.

Regarding the dreamy happiness on Elena’s face, Sorrel felt a lump rise in her throat, accompanied by a sharp envy. Her cousin was the same age Sorrel had been on her own planned wedding day—just over twenty-one—and Elena had known her new husband for only nine months, yet she seemed certain of the rightness of their marriage. What would it be like to fall in love with a stranger and know you wanted to spend your life with him?

Elena, as Sorrel’s mother said, had always been a sensible girl—level-headed, practical, even cautious. But she was surely taking a huge risk now. Sorrel wished her well, passionately. Since first seeing Elena as a tiny, solemn-faced newborn, she had felt protective of her little cousin. Elena had been the nearest thing to a sister she’d ever had. Sorrel was fond of Elena’s two younger brothers too, but the girls shared a special bond that had only strengthened as they grew older.

And Blaize, she supposed, had been the nearest thing to a brother of her own. He too was a sole child, although he had cousins living nearby and was close to them, especially in their teenage years, when he’d seemed to prefer their company above anyone’s. But he and Sorrel had also spent a lot of time at each other’s homes. The Kenyon and Tarnower families had been linked by ties of both business and friendship since early in the previous century.

Ian Kenyon and Paul Tarnower, the eldest sons, had taken over Kenyon and Tarnower Limited from their fathers, and expected to hand it on to their own children. Expected, once Ian realised he was not going to have a son, to see their children, married to each other, produce more Kenyon-Tarnowers to carry on the tradition.

‘Dance again?’ The man beside her broke into her thoughts.

She hesitated, lifting her glass for another sip of her drink. More of their table companions returned and sat down, but didn’t block her view of Cherie’s pretty profile flirtatiously turned up towards Blaize, nor his answering grin as his palm cupped her shoulder. They were almost within kissing distance.

Wrenching her gaze away, Sorrel took a bigger gulp of wine than she’d meant to and nearly choked on it. ‘Yes,’ she said hoarsely. ‘Let’s dance.’

But somehow the pleasure had gone out of it. She endured the evening until the bride and groom left, after she and Elena had snatched a few private moments and an affectionate hug.

When her parents suggested they leave she was only too glad to comply, making sure her table mate didn’t have a chance to suggest seeing her again as she said goodnight and thanked him for his company.

And that was that, she told herself bleakly when she had thankfully reached her own room, scarcely changed since she’d deserted her old life and the family home. Fervently she hoped for Elena’s continued happiness, but it did throw her own past and present into stark relief by contrast.

What, after all, had she accomplished by running away?

Independence, of course. Unbuttoning the jacket of her suit, she brushed aside the moment of self-pity and disillusionment. She didn’t need a man to live a successful life.

After taking the first job that offered when she arrived in Melbourne—serving behind the counter in a huge department store—she now had her own department and her own staff. She had transformed a rather stuffy section appealing mostly to a wealthy middle-aged clientele by adding lively, funky but good-quality clothes that drew in younger customers. Last year her employers had staved off a head-hunting attempt by considerably increasing her salary, but lately she’d been feeling restless, a little bored.

She unzipped her skirt and found a hanger. Glimpsing herself in the full-length mirror of the wardrobe, she saw her cheeks were slightly flushed, her eyes more green than usual, and glowing.

One thing about meeting Blaize again—he’d got her adrenaline going. She felt more alive and stimulated than she had in years.

Anger did that, she supposed. Maybe she wasn’t entitled, but his smouldering sarcasm had woken a like response in her.

All very well for him to lay the whole blame at her door, but if he’d really cared for her, surely he’d have noticed something was amiss in the days leading up to their wedding?

Or perhaps in his supreme self-confidence he’d simply never given a thought to the possibility that she might not want to marry him. After all, there had been no shortage of other willing candidates.

Which brought her back to Cherie Watson. Who certainly looked willing enough. And was Blaize ready to contemplate marriage again? He was over thirty now, perhaps looking to have children while he was still young enough to enjoy them.

When they’d been engaged they’d both taken it for granted they’d have a family. ‘No hurry,’ he’d said. ‘When you’re ready.’

She couldn’t accuse him of being overbearing. He’d consulted her about everything—where they would live, how she wanted the house they’d chosen decorated, whether she wanted to continue in her job as a junior in a government publications operation. ‘If you prefer to stay home I don’t mind,’ he assured her. ‘I can afford to keep us both.’

‘What would I do all day? Of course I’ll keep working.’

‘Sure,’ he had agreed readily enough. ‘Whatever makes you happy.’

His laid-back air, suggesting not so much a burning desire to make her happy as simply a tolerant attitude to whatever she chose to do, would have been envied by many women. No doubt she’d been unreasonable in finding it vaguely disturbing. Certainly she’d had no wish to be tied to a jealous, possessive husband.

But neither did she want a distant one who didn’t mind what she did so long as she kept his home to a certain standard, entertained his business associates adequately, and provided him in due course with the requisite number and gender of children to continue the family name and business and prove his virility.

She had seen that kind of marriage among her parents’ friends and associates. Seen desperate, unhappy women trying to fill their lives with empty activity while their husbands were immersed in business, scarcely noticing their wives. Or couples who seemed virtually strangers, going through the motions of social interaction with others when they had nothing to say to each other, and nothing to hold them together once their children left home, except habit and a desire to keep up appearances.

The prospect of following the pattern, entering an emotionally sterile marriage, terrified her.

Sometimes she’d thought it couldn’t come to that, with her and Blaize. He surely felt something for her, if only a lifelong fondness. But the closer their wedding had approached, the more distance there seemed to be between them. When he kissed her and held her she could forget her fears and doubts, persuade herself he truly loved her. But there was less and less opportunity for that as the preparations seemed to take up all her time—choosing her gown and the bridesmaids’ dresses, consulting over the guest list and the form of the ceremony, fittings, showers, rehearsals, helping her mother with details like music, flowers, the design of the invitations.

She’d been exhausted long before the day, a bundle of jumping nerves and increasing doubts. Only the fact that it was Blaize, whom she’d known all her life and loved ever since she could remember, whom she was marrying, had kept her from running away from it all much earlier.

And disastrously, she had wrecked everything in the end. Blaize was no longer her fiancé, or even her friend.

Standing under a cool shower, Sorrel shut her eyes and tried to wash away the memories, but behind her closed lids disturbing pictures played of the old Blaize who had regarded her with lazy warmth in his smile and fondness in his eyes, and of the new Blaize whose smile was almost cruel, and whose eyes were hard as granite when he looked at her.

Blaize was right about the inevitability of their meeting again. They had always moved in the same circle, shared friends and interests—it was one of the reasons that everyone had thought them so well suited. And it had been a major cause of Sorrel’s staying away so long.

The Friday following Elena’s wedding, Sorrel attended the opening of an exhibition of Pacific design at a gallery owned by a family friend. She was studying a draped length of screen-printed natural silk featuring a modern interpretation of a traditional Cook Islands pattern, when she became conscious of a tall male figure beside her. Some sixth sense warned her before she turned her head and saw Blaize looking down at her, one hand negligently in his pocket.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.

His brows rose a fraction. ‘Studying the exhibits,’ he drawled, his leisurely gaze slipping over her sleeveless cream dress, perfectly plain but for a gold chain belt, and lingering on the slit neckline. ‘It’s an interesting show.’

Until now she’d thought the dress quite modest. But he was standing close, and with his height she had no doubt he could see a good deal more cleavage than her mirror had shown.

She took a deep breath, hoping it would dispel an incipient blush, but his eyes mercilessly took note of the rise and fall of her breasts and, when his gaze returned to her face, held a glint of heartless amusement.

‘Where’s Cherie?’ she asked.

The amusement sharpened into something else. ‘She may be along later. She had another engagement.’

Engagement. The word struck like a knell in her mind. Stupid. Even if Blaize and Cherie were engaged it shouldn’t make any difference to her.

She turned away from him, taking the few steps to the next piece in the show, a smoothly carved free-form shape in some light wood.

Blaize was at her elbow again. ‘Are you alone?’

‘Yes.’ She didn’t look at him. ‘My parents had a dinner invitation tonight.’

‘I suppose you’ve lost touch with your old friends.’

She shrugged. ‘Not all of them. I still have friends if I need them.’

A small boy darted away from his parents and reached up to touch the wood sculpture. His mother swooped on him, and Blaize moved aside to give her room, his sleeve brushing Sorrel’s bare arm. She smelled the wool of his lightweight suit, and lemon-wood aftershave—the same one he’d always worn—and was swept by an unexpected wave of longing.

‘Sorry!’ the young woman gasped, struggling with her protesting offspring.

‘No problem.’ Blaize briefly laid a hand on Sorrel’s waist and moved them out of the way, steering her towards a glass case protecting a jade pendant on a fine gold chain.

The polished green stone gleamed under a carefully placed spotlight. ‘The colour of your eyes,’ Blaize said softly.

She looked up at him, startled at the comment, but it was a moment before he met her gaze. Then he blinked as if he had to clear his head. ‘You wouldn’t think it would be hard enough to use for weapons.’

In pre-European times Maori craftsmen using stone tools had formed the green stone they called pounamu into adzes and short, sharp-edged battle clubs, some delicately decorated with carved patterns.

‘It took patience,’ Sorrel said. Sometimes years of work went into fashioning a lethal patu, or an ornament to be hung from an ear or strung on a cord about the neck. ‘And skill.’

‘Didn’t the women add the final finish by rubbing the greenstone against their thighs? Dedicated helpmeets.’

Sorrel gave a thin smile. ‘These days women have better things to do.’

He laughed. ‘By the way, how’s the job-hunting going?’

‘I haven’t decided yet if I’m staying.’ She returned her attention to the intricate whorls of the jade pendant.

‘Are you in a relationship over there?’ Blaize asked. ‘Let me guess—you’re having second thoughts and it would be simpler to just not return. You could write him a letter instead.’

Sorrel flared at him. ‘I’m not in a relationship! And don’t jump to conclusions about what I’d do.’

She moved away but he followed. ‘You told me at Elena and Cam’s wedding that you weren’t free,’ he reminded her. ‘And as for what you’d do if you wanted out, your track record speaks for itself.’

‘I said I wasn’t available,’ she argued. ‘It’s not the same thing.’

For a moment he said nothing, staring at an intricate Maori carving with glowing paua shell insets that hung against a white wall. ‘So…no boyfriend?’

‘I don’t need a man.’

He turned to her then, eyes glimmering with sudden speculation. ‘You’re not telling me you’ve lived like a nun all these years?’

She faced him squarely. ‘I’m not telling you anything. How I live my life is my own affair and certainly nothing to do with you!’

A flicker of expression crossed his face, his mouth momentarily drawing into a narrow line. Then he shrugged. ‘Fair enough.’

Another couple paused nearby and Blaize took Sorrel’s arm again until they stood before a trickling waterfall where several pieces of statuary and pottery had been arranged on slabs of stone.

A tall, gaunt-looking woman with grey hair floating about the shoulders of a flowing lime-green chiffon dress accosted them. ‘Sorrel! My dear girl, how long have you been back? And Blaize too! Are you two together again? How nice—I always thought you belonged with each other.’ She had the carrying voice of an ageing and slightly deaf stage actress.

‘No, we’re not!’ Sorrel said quickly. ‘We just happened to bump into each other here. I came home for my cousin Elena’s wedding.’

‘Elena…oh, yes, the little dark girl. But she’s a child, surely!’

Sorrel smiled. ‘Not any more.’

‘Oh, the wings of time!’ Augusta Dollimore clasped her hands dramatically, then said briskly, ‘Well, sometime we must catch up, dear, and you can tell me all about Australia. I won’t interrupt your little tête-à-tête.’ She patted Sorrel’s arm and gave Blaize a roguish look. ‘Don’t let her slip away from you this time!’

Sorrel protested, ‘We’re not having a—’

But she was gone, wafting away to buttonhole someone else.

Sorrel let fly a forceful word under her breath, but Blaize’s mouth wore a reluctant grin. ‘You know Gus never listens to a word anyone says, and she’s incurably romantic. That’s probably why the country is littered with her ex-husbands.’

‘The woman’s a menace,’ Sorrel muttered. Augusta knew everyone, and made it her mission to keep them all informed of each other’s doings. Except that she frequently got things wrong. ‘She’ll be telling people we…that we’re…’

‘A couple? It’s just gossip. Nobody takes her seriously.’

‘Aren’t you worried that Cherie might wonder if there’s something in it? I don’t think it would be a good idea for her to arrive and see us talking,’ she said.

His brows drew together for a moment. ‘In a place as public as this?’ He looked around them. ‘Cherie’s not a fool.’

Implying that Sorrel was, for even raising the possibility of upsetting his girlfriend.

‘And you’re not a woman,’ Sorrel retorted. Hadn’t he picked up Cherie’s tacit signals? This is my man—keep off the grass.

‘You noticed,’ Blaize said.

For a second she was confused. ‘Didn’t you?’

‘That I’m a man?’ His brows lifted. ‘Are we talking about the same thing?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I was thinking about Cherie.’

‘Bad joke,’ he conceded. ‘What about her?’

‘She’s very pretty.’ If he hadn’t seen her possessiveness and insecurity, Sorrel wasn’t going to point them out to him. ‘Have you known each other long?’

‘About six months. She did some interior design for us when we renovated our offices—your father didn’t mention it? Why are you so interested?’

‘I’m not, particularly,’ she denied. ‘I was just trying to carry on a normal conversation.’

‘Difficult, isn’t it?’ he said pleasantly.

‘You’re making it so.’

He paused. ‘Forgive me, Sorrel. I can’t help feeling you got off lightly. You didn’t have to deal with the aftermath of your dramatic exit. I was an object of interest for months.’

And he couldn’t escape as she had. His father’s precarious health and his commitment to the family business had tied him. ‘I’m sure no one blamed you.’

‘No, they pitied me,’ he said, and his acrid tone told her how he’d hated that. ‘Except for a few who seemed to assume I’d either beaten or betrayed you.’

Her mouth opened in protest. ‘No!’

He gave her a mirthless smile. ‘Since they weren’t told any reason, they invented one. I did the same. For a while I was convinced you’d found someone else.’

‘It was nothing like that!’

‘Then what the hell was it? You still haven’t given me an explanation.’

‘I told you, I was too young.’

‘You didn’t say so when we got engaged. I thought you were expecting a ring when you turned twenty-one.’

She had been. Everyone had been waiting for Blaize to propose—their parents, their friends…

‘I didn’t want that kind of marriage,’ she said flatly.

He frowned. ‘What—’

His cell phone trilled, and he swore and pulled it from his pocket. ‘Yes?’ he barked into the machine. His voice changed immediately. ‘Cherie…’

Sorrel took her chance of escape, murmuring an excuse before she turned tail and moved rapidly through the crowd to the exit. She had seen most of the show and earlier paid her respects to the gallery owner. There was no need to stay any longer.

Outside she paused, breathing in the night air and orienting herself. There was a taxi stand not far off but no cabs on the rank. She walked over and waited, idly watching the traffic pass until a car drew up close to the curb and the passenger door opened.

She had already stepped forward when she saw there was no lighted sign on the roof. As she hesitated, Blaize said, ‘I’ll give you a lift, Sorrel.’

‘I’m waiting for a cab, thanks.’

‘It’s Friday night—you could be here for ages and that’s not safe.’

‘I’m all right—’

‘Get in! Or I’ll stay here until a cab comes along.’

Reluctantly Sorrel capitulated, climbing into the seat and closing the door. ‘Thank you, but there’s no need for this,’ she said. ‘There are plenty of people about.’

‘I won’t leave a woman standing about alone at night in the city.’

‘Oh… You make it your mission in life to pick up every woman you see on a street corner?’

He cast her a withering glance, not bothering to respond to that. ‘I assume you were on your way home?’

‘Yes. What about you? Did Cherie stand you up?’

He flung another look at her, weaving his way into the stream of traffic. ‘It wasn’t a date. She couldn’t make it after all.’

He drove in brooding silence for a while, and a glance at him showed an austere profile, and a frown on his brow. She supposed he was disappointed. Presumably he and Cherie weren’t living together, or he’d have been sure of seeing her later.

Striving for some kind of normality, she said, ‘Did you like the show?’

‘Never mind the show. What did you mean by that interesting remark before we were interrupted?’

‘What remark?’ she stalled.

‘About “that kind of marriage”. What kind of marriage did you imagine we would have?’

They were climbing a steep, curved street. On the narrow pathway beside the road a pair of lovers strolled, arms about each other.

Sorrel said, ‘More of a merger than a marriage.’ As the car passed, the couple on the path paused under a street light and kissed.

Blaize made a scornful sound of disbelief. ‘Is that how you thought of it?’

‘Didn’t you? Let’s face it, our parents had been planning it since we—well, since I was in my cradle.’

Ominously he said, ‘Are you telling me your parents forced you?’

‘No, of course not! But you know how it was. We just sort of drifted into it because everyone took it for granted that someday it would happen.’

‘I don’t drift into important decisions,’ Blaize objected. ‘I wanted to marry you, and I thought you were grown up enough to make a logical decision too.’

Logical? She almost laughed aloud. ‘I did,’ she told him, ‘when I decided not to go through with it.

‘A bit late.’

‘Better late than never. Or rather, better than even later…after we’d tied the knot.’

Below them the city lights winked and sparkled, and the water yawned black and still within the curved arms of the harbour. Blaize said, ‘I didn’t look on it as a business merger, Sorrel. We knew each other so well, and—I thought—enjoyed each other’s company so much, marriage seemed a natural progression. I looked forward to spending the rest of my life with you. To making love with you. In case you doubted it, from when you were in your teens I found you very attractive.’

Everything he said only confirmed her conviction that she’d done the right thing. ‘You weren’t in love with me.’

‘In love?’ He seemed to consider that. ‘I’d been in love, several times—an emotional high that didn’t last.’

So he’d decided a cool-headed bargain was a better basis for a permanent relationship. Had she been unreasonable, hankering for something more? ‘All those times it wasn’t real then, was it?’

‘What we had, you and I, was real—or so I thought. More real than some flash-in-the-pan love affair.’

‘A passionless marriage?’ Her mouth twisted.

‘Passionless?’ He was looking through the wind-screen, negotiating another tricky curve. ‘What gave you that idea? I just told you I was looking forward to our lovemaking.’

And he’d been willing to wait until they were married. So had she, though it had crossed her mind once or twice that his fortitude was unusual. Even her parents wouldn’t have been terribly shocked if she and Blaize had been sleeping together, but Sorrel wouldn’t have been comfortable doing so under their roof, and although since he’d turned twenty Blaize had his own bachelor apartment, he’d never invited her to stay the night.

Admittedly he’d wanted the wedding to take place only a couple of months after slipping the diamond engagement ring on her finger, but as their eventual marriage had been tacitly accepted for so long the engagement was only a formality.

While their mothers plunged into a whirlwind of planning, carrying Sorrel along with them, Blaize’s kisses had become increasingly exciting and frequently left her aroused and frustrated, her only consolation the glitter in his eyes and the reluctance with which he put her away from him before leaving her. But he had always been in control, never asking for more than kisses, his hands exploring the contours of her body but not intruding inside her clothes.