The Marriage Miracle
‘I understand.’
She had a way of not smiling, but making you feel as if she was. Inside.
‘And for the fact that there was no dry sherry.’
She pulled her lips back in an attempt to stop herself from laughing out loud, then apologised. ‘I’m sorry. It’s not at all funny.’
‘It should have been.’ He thought, actually, that if she’d been there to share the joke it would have been bearable.
‘What about your parents?’ she asked, distracting him.
‘What? Oh, my mother looked tragic and drank the champagne; my father harrumphed and said that it was a bit of a rum do.’
‘And your sisters were a complete embarrassment?’
‘Nothing new there.’
‘While you, of course, were always the perfect brother. No frogspawn in their face cream, no spiders in their slippers, no itching powder in their beds.’
‘Frogspawn in their face cream?’
‘Forget I said that. That one is reserved for wicked stepmothers.’
‘You did that to your stepmother?’
‘Oh, I did all of them. But then I’m not nice.’
‘That rather depends on what prompted it.’
‘My father married her, poor woman. That was enough.’ Then, when he didn’t respond, ‘I told you. I’m not nice.’
He shook his head and, taking his cue from her about being direct, unemotional, he said, ‘It wasn’t your character I was thinking about. It just occurred to me that if you managed to fish for frogspawn you can’t always have been in a wheelchair.’
‘You think a wheelchair would have stopped me? If I couldn’t have managed it myself, I would have persuaded someone else to get it for me.’
‘Fran?’ he asked, glancing in the direction of the bride, who smiled at him before leaning close to Guy to whisper something in his ear.
‘I wouldn’t have told her why I wanted it,’ she assured him. ‘She is much nicer than me. But it wasn’t necessary. The wheelchair has only been part of my life since a combination of speed, black ice and an absence of due care and attention led to a close encounter with a brick wall.’
There was no self-pity in her words. It was a throwaway line with a matching smile—a practised defence against unwanted sympathy, he guessed—and she did it so well that he knew most people would grab at the opportunity to smile with her and move on.
Having seen what she could really do with a smile when she meant it, he wanted to know what had really happened—what she really felt.
‘How long?’ he asked.
‘Three years.’ And for a moment he glimpsed something the smile was supposed to hide. Not the three years that had passed, but the lifetime to come. Then, filling the silence while he thought about that, she said, ‘Don’t look so tragic. It could have been a lot worse.’
Forcing himself to match her matter-of-factness, he replied, ‘Of course it could. You could be dead.’ And then, remembering that momentary glimpse of something darker between the smiles, he wondered.
But Matty laughed, provoked out from behind the lurking shadows. ‘Cheery soul, aren’t you? Actually, I was being rather more down-to-earth about my condition.’ Seeing his confusion, she grinned. ‘It’s an incomplete lower spine injury, which means I can at least use the bathroom just like anyone else.’
‘Oh, well, I can see how that’s a bonus. Although you’d have been in trouble if you’d been a man.’
She laughed out loud. ‘I like you, big-shot banker. Most of the people here would have taken to their heels by now.’
‘Is that why you do it?’
‘Do what?’ she enquired innocently.
‘Test people?’
‘I only test the patronising ones who talk over my head. The ones who ask Fran if it’s okay for me to have a drink—as if, because I can’t stand up, I’m incapable of carrying on a normal conversation. The ones who speak to me as if I’m hard of hearing.’
He glanced around at the empty terrace and then back at her. ‘You seem to have got it down to a fine art.’
‘Lots of practice. But once we get this far I do like to get the bathroom thing out of the way, since sooner or later people start to worry about it. I find being open and direct makes for a more relaxing conversation.’
‘Liar. You just want to make them squirm.’
‘Are you squirming?’
‘What do you think?’ Then, ‘How about sex?’
‘Now?’ she asked, as if he’d just propositioned her. ‘I thought you were a man who liked to get to know a woman first.’
‘I’m open to persuasion. So, is it a problem?’
‘Nothing is a problem if you want it badly enough, Sebastian. For instance, I’m assured that, if I was prepared to strap myself into braces and put myself through several circles of hell, I could get up off my backside and stand on my own two feet. Even walk, after a fashion, although no one is promising it would be much fun, or even a remotely practical way to get about. Nothing as simple, or graceful, as my chair.’ Again there was that wry little smile. ‘And if you can’t tango, what’s the point?’
He didn’t buy that, not for a minute, but she’d changed the subject and he didn’t press it. Instead, picking up the lead she’d trailed to draw him away from the dark side of her life and back into the light, he asked, ‘What would you have done if I’d been up for the foxtrot?’
‘Oh, please! Most men’s eyes glaze over at the first mention of a simple waltz.’
‘You didn’t give me a chance to glaze,’ he objected.
‘No, but then I was certain a man like you would know that you can smooch to a waltz. No one under sixty has the first idea how to foxtrot,’ she went on, ‘so I knew I was safe with that one.’
‘So, we delay the dance until you’ve decided that I’m worth the effort. I’ll just call a cab and we’ll go somewhere quiet for dinner.’
Even as he took out his cellphone it occurred to him that he had no idea if she could manage a cab. Or whether any of the restaurants he knew were wheelchair accessible. And while he hesitated, confronted by a reality that was quite new to him, Guy came to his rescue.
‘Matty, Fran wants you in the marquee. Apparently she’s got some journalist slavering to look at that alphabet book you made for Toby.’
‘She’s what? It’s her wedding reception, for heaven’s sake!’
‘Hey, don’t blame me. I’m just the messenger. Since she’s discovered how good she is at business I get the feeling that nothing is going to stop her from taking over the world.’
‘I know,’ she said, backing away from the table. ‘To be honest I find it just a little bit scary.’
As Sebastian moved to accompany her, Guy, hand on his shoulder, detained him. ‘Oh, no. My lovely wife has plans for you, too.’ Then, as if suddenly aware that he’d interrupted something, ‘You don’t mind if I borrow him for a moment, do you, Matty?’
‘You can keep him, darling. I’ve been neglecting my duties for long enough.’ She extended her hand in a gesture that clearly said goodbye. ‘Lovely to meet you, Sebastian.’
He held it rather than shook it. ‘I thought we were going to have dinner?’
‘Thanks, but it’s been a long day. Next time you’re in London, perhaps.’ As if to emphasise her dismissal, she disentangled her fingers and, with a little wave, said, ‘Try and be kinder to your sisters; I’m sure you needed bossing. And give my love to New York.’
She didn’t wait for a response, but executed a neat ninety-degree turn and moved swiftly along the path. He watched her until she had been swallowed up in the crowd of people milling around the entrance, then he turned back to Guy.
‘She’s some woman.’
‘Yes, she is. I’m sorry if I broke up something…’
‘No. You heard her. We’ll have dinner next time I’m in London.’
Guy grinned. ‘She doesn’t know you’re staying?’
‘I don’t believe I mentioned it.’
Most people had deserted the gathering dusk of the garden for the flower-scented warmth of the marquee, and Matty paused for a moment in the entrance, assailed by a sudden ache in her throat as she watched couples wrapped in each other’s arms swaying to the music.
She had so loved to dance. Loved the intimacy of being close to a man, her arms about his neck, while he whispered hot desire in her ear.
She shivered a little, looked back to where she’d been sitting. But as the crowd shifted she could see that the terrace was empty and, as she remembered the whispered exchange between Guy and Francesca, it took all her will-power to resist the feeling that Sebastian had sent out some kind of ‘rescue me’ signal.
She’d liked him. Wanted to believe he was better than that. And dinner, once, would have been special. But then he’d have gone away. And even if he hadn’t—
‘There you are,’ Fran said, appearing at her side, saving her from her thoughts. ‘Susie Palmer, the reporter who wrote that first piece about my business, wants to meet you—talk about Toby’s alphabet book.’
‘You gave her a copy?’
‘Forgive me for being a smug mother, but I wanted her to know that you’d made the original for Toby.’
‘If I was Toby’s mother I’d be smug. Has Connie found him, by the way? He was running around in his pyjamas a little while ago.’
‘Forget Toby for a moment. This woman has it in her power to give you the kind of publicity money can’t buy.’
She wanted to tell Fran that she didn’t want any kind of publicity. She wanted to say, Don’t do this to me. I’m not you…
But her cousin was glowing with happiness, wanting so much to include her in her joy, so instead she smiled and said, ‘Well, don’t just stand there. Lead the way.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘FOREST FAIRIES?’
Sebastian closed his eyes. Maybe this was all a bad dream, he thought. Maybe, if he concentrated very hard, he’d wake up in the pastel-free zone of his loft apartment…
Nothing doing.
When he opened them, the display of neon-bright, fairy-bedecked birthday cards was still there.
A week ago he’d been sitting in his Wall Street office, the fate of major corporations in his hands. All it had taken was one phone call to change his life from the American dream to a British farce. He just wished Matty Lang were here to see what the ‘big-shot New York banker’ had come to.
She, he was certain, would have enjoyed the joke. With her there he might have been able to see it for himself.
‘They were our most profitable line…’
Blanche Appleby, Uncle George’s secretary since time immemorial, hesitated, unsure exactly how to address Sebastian now that he was a head taller than her and, in his real life, the vice-president of an international bank.
He let the image of Matty’s smile fade. ‘It’s still Sebastian, Blanche.’
She relaxed a little. ‘It’s been a good many years since I called you that.’
‘I know, but you don’t have to go all formal on me just because I’ve grown a few feet. I’m still going to need you to hold my hand on this one. I know nothing about the greeting card business.’ Knew nothing and cared less. But he was stuck with it.
‘What about the staff?’
‘I’ll talk to them all later, when I have a better idea what’s—’
‘No. What do you want them to call you?’
He stifled a groan. Life was so much simpler in the US. There he was simply Sebastian Wolseley, a man defined by what he did and how well he did it rather than by the fact that one of his ancestors had been the mistress of Britain’s merriest monarch.
As Viscount Grafton, his title was a courtesy one, one of his father’s spares, passed on at birth to keep him going until he inherited the big one. He’d made damn sure that no one in New York knew about it. And perhaps that was a small upside.
Baiting minor aristocracy was a blood sport in the British media; any coverage of his involvement in Coronet Cards was likely to be of the mocking variety. Since it would be the Viscount they were mocking, he might just get away with it.
It would be worth any amount of mockery if it meant no one in New York discovered that he’d put his career at the bank temporarily on hold to rescue Forest Fairies from fiscal disaster.
‘What did the staff call George?’ he asked.
‘Everyone but the senior staff just called him Mr George.’
Paternal respect for the Honourable George, what else?
‘Maybe in another twenty years,’ he said. ‘For now I’d prefer it if everyone just called me Sebastian.’
‘Everyone?’ She sounded slightly shocked.
‘If you’d pass that on.’
‘Well, if that’s what you want.’
‘I do.’ Then, since there was no point in putting off the inevitable, he indicated the display of birthday cards, paper plates, napkins and balloons strewn across the conference table that took up one end of the office. ‘You say these were Coronet’s bestselling lines?’
Maybe he should have made more effort to hide his disbelief.
‘You’ve never seen the television programme?’ she asked, surprised.
‘I don’t believe so.’
‘No, well, I don’t suppose they’re on American television.’ Her tone suggested that their transatlantic cousins didn’t know what they were missing. ‘They were very popular here, which is why George bought a twenty-five-year licence to use the characters on a range of cards and party products.’
That got his attention. ‘Did you say twenty-five?’
‘Forest Fairies parties have been very popular with three-to six-year-old girls.’
‘George bought the rights to produce this stuff for twenty-five years?’ he persisted. ‘How much did it cost the company?’
‘It was a very good deal,’ she said, instantly protective. ‘The line was the mainstay of the business for several years.’
The fact that she appeared to be referring to all this success in the past tense finally got through. ‘Was?’
‘Sales have declined somewhat since the TV programme was dropped from the schedules,’ she admitted.
Sebastian was torn between relief that there would be fewer Forest Fairies in the world and despair that the one item keeping the company afloat was in decline.
It was a close call.
Distracted by a howl of frustration, Matty gave up any pretence of working. All morning she’d been stopping her mind from wandering off to think about Sebastian Wolseley. The sexy way his eyes had creased as his face had relaxed into a smile. The way his eyes changed colour.
Back in New York, he’d still be asleep, and that was a tantalising thought, too. It was so easy to imagine him lying with his face in a pillow, his long limbs spread-eagled across a wide bed.
She saw him in one of those vast loft apartments, with light flooding in from floor-to-ceiling windows across acres of floor space, ‘An Englishman in New York’ playing on an expensive stereo.
And she smiled. So few people were able to handle the wheelchair without embarrassment, but he’d passed every test with flying colours.
The journalist who’d been so anxious to interview her about her work hadn’t been able to get away fast enough. Promising to phone. And maybe she would. ‘Plucky wheelchair-bound woman illustrates cute book…’ had to be a bigger story than one about just any ordinary, able-bodied woman illustrating a cute book.
Or maybe it had been her fault. Maybe the woman’s carefully phrased questions had been in such sharp contrast to Sebastian’s matter-of-fact attitude that she’d been unusually difficult. Prickly, even.
But for a few minutes he’d talked to her as if she was whole. Saying things that no one else would have dreamed of saying. Asking her if she tap-danced…
And even when he’d realised that tap-dancing was not, never would be, part of her repertoire he hadn’t changed—hadn’t started talking to her as if she was witless. Dinner with him would have been a rare pleasure. Sitting at a candlelit table, she could have pretended for a few dizzy hours that on the outside she was like any other woman. The way she was deep inside. With the same longings. The same desire to be loved, to have a man hold her, make love to her.
She closed her eyes for a moment, shutting out the reminders that she was not, would never be, like other women. How dared he joke with her, talk as if she could get up and dance as soon as she made the effort?
Then, with a deep breath, she opened them again. It was unfair to blame him. She’d seen him staring into his glass as if into an abyss and just hadn’t been able to keep her mouth shut. She’d only got herself to blame for her disturbed nights.
Because it wasn’t just this morning that she’d been thinking about him. He’d been there, in her head, since the moment he’d taken her hand, held it a touch too long. Been there the minute she’d stopped concentrating on something else.
But Monday was a working day. She couldn’t afford to allow her mind to wander when she had a tight deadline, and she picked out a fresh pastel and concentrated on the illustration in front of her.
‘Go on, Toby, you can do it!’
She looked up again just in time to catch Toby’s attempt at scaling the brightly coloured climbing frame set up in the garden. It was a bit of a stretch, and he was finding it frustratingly hard to reach the top. She leaned forward in her chair, physically encouraging him with her body, yearning to be out there, giving him the boost he needed. Her frustration, unable to find any other outlet, vented itself on the paper in front of her, and with a few swift strokes of the colour in her hand Hattie Hot Wheels, her cartoon alter ego, was lunging from her wheelchair, arms outstretched, as she flew to Toby’s side, scooping him up and lifting him up.
Another triumph for her superheroine, whose special powers allowed her to convert frustrated helplessness into action…
Then Fran placed a steadying hand at Toby’s back, in case he should falter, smiling encouragement, and, putting in a big effort, he finally made it. Of course he did. Why would Toby need a fantasy superheroine when he had a mother with two good arms and legs?
‘Matty!’ Toby, spotting her from his vantage point, wobbled as he gave her an ecstatic two-armed wave from the top, and her heart rose to her throat. ‘Look at me!’
‘Oh, bravo, Toby!’ she called, waving back. ‘How did you get all the way up there?’
‘I climbed. All by myself.’
‘No!’ she said, doing the whole amazed thing. ‘But it’s so high! How did you do it?’
‘Do you want to see?’ he asked.
‘You betcha I want to see.’
And by the time he’d done it for a third time, just to prove to his apparently sceptical godmother that it wasn’t just a fluke, he could indeed manage it ‘all by himself’.
Her smile faded as she saw the half-finished picture she’d just ruined with her cartoon. Deliberate vandalism? Or was that just a load of psychological mumbo-jumbo?
She’d illustrated dozens of romantic stories for women’s magazines, and while she’d known from the beginning that this one—a wide, deserted beach with the distant lovers silhouetted against the setting sun—was going to be tough, she was a professional. This was her living, and she couldn’t afford to turn down commissions just because they tugged at painful memories.
‘Come and join us, Matty,’ Fran called, encouraging her to play truant. ‘It’s going to rain tomorrow.’
It was hard to resist such siren calls, but every minute spent with Toby was a wrenching reminder of how much she’d lost in the split-second lapse that had robbed her of that future. And Fran’s new baby, joy that she was, just made things worse.
Matty was beginning to feel as if she was trapped on the wrong side of the glass, a spectator to a life she was denied. If only she could afford to move away, get out of London and make a new kind of life. One that wasn’t just a fantasy.
When the phone began to ring, it was almost a relief to call back, ‘Maybe later,’ before turning to pick up the receiver.
‘Matty Lang.’
‘Hello, Matty Lang.’
For a moment her heart seemed to stop beating. It was as if her mind, conjuring up the image of the sleeping man, had somehow woken him.
When it started again, very slowly, she said, ‘Hello, Sebastian Wolseley.’ Then, ‘You’re an early riser. Isn’t it some unearthly hour of the morning in New York?’
‘That is true. But here in London it’s just coming up to eleven o’clock.’
No, well, she hadn’t really thought he was calling from the other side of the Atlantic just to say hello. That would have been totally ridiculous.
‘You said you’d have dinner with me when I came back, but I wondered if you might be able to make lunch? I’ve booked a table at Giovanni’s.’
Giovanni’s? A restaurant so famous that it didn’t have to bother with anything as functional as an address. The kind of restaurant where the rich and famous went to be seen. And it was nearly eleven now.
She had two hours to shower, change, find a parking space. Her hair! She…
She was living in cloud-cuckoo land. Getting carried away.
She never went anywhere without checking it out first. Calling the restaurant to make sure it was wheelchair accessible. That the cloakroom wasn’t upstairs. That, even if it was on the ground floor, she wouldn’t get stuck in the loo door.
Okay, she could still do that.
But she wouldn’t.
‘I said perhaps,’ she reminded him. ‘When you came back. You haven’t been anywhere.’
‘On the contrary, I went to Sussex yesterday,’ he said, and she could see the teasing spark that would be lighting his eyes, the tiny lift at the corner of his mouth that presaged a smile. ‘Command invitation to lunch with the family.’
‘Why is it that I find it hard to believe that you’d respond to anyone’s command?’
‘Well, I did want to borrow a car.’
‘Your family has spare cars lying around?’
‘It’s old. Just taking up space in the garage. I wish I’d taken you with me.’
‘I’m jolly glad you didn’t.’
‘You’re right. Dead boring. Utterly selfish to even consider it. So, anyway, I’ve been somewhere, and now I’m back.’
‘You know I didn’t mean that.’
‘I don’t recall you stipulating a destination. Doesn’t Sussex count?’
It counted. That was the problem. She wanted to have lunch with him.
It would be so easy, sitting opposite him, surrounded by luxury, pretending that they were just two people having lunch together. But then he’d get up and walk away.
She’d already had that dream, but then she’d woken up.
‘I’m really sorry, Sebastian, but I’ve got a deadline that’s getting tighter by the minute. I’m afraid lunch today will have to be a sandwich. But thank you for asking.’
And then, before he could say anything else, she gently replaced the receiver on the cradle.
Sebastian sat back and acknowledged that he could have handled that better.
Giovanni’s, it occurred to him, had been his first mistake.
He’d really wanted to see her, talk to her, but instead of saying so he’d thrown out an invitation to lunch with him at a moment’s notice at the fanciest restaurant he could think of. Few women of his acquaintance could have resisted.
But she wasn’t like other women, and he hadn’t given a single thought as to what she might prefer. Or even that she might have a full and busy life without a moment to spare for him.
Nothing new there. He’d been treating women in that casual, take it or leave it manner for years.
The decent women had left it, the minute they realised he wasn’t offering more. Only the users had hung around: the ones who’d wanted to be seen in smart restaurants, mixing with high-stake players. And that had been just fine. Everyone had got what they wanted without the bother of pretending that they were engaging in anything but the most superficial of relationships.
Nothing messy to interfere with the only thing that really mattered to him. His career.
‘Sebastian, is your phone off the hook?’ Blanche asked, then, seeing him sitting with the receiver in his hand, ‘Oh, you’re making a call.’
He looked up. ‘It’s finished,’ he said, replacing the receiver. ‘What can I do for you?’