A Perfect Marriage (9 page)

 
Minutes ago she'd been sitting on his lap, kissing him, wooing him, pressing his hand to, her breast. Humiliation burned through her entire body. He didn't want her. His physical reaction had been nothing more than a reflex, just a fleeting, automatic lust.

"What do you expect me to do?" she asked him, trying to keep any shrillness out of her voice. "Wait until it is over?"

He shook his head. "You don't understand, Celine."

"How could I?" She had to suppress hysteria. "I'm only your wife, after all. Of course I don't understand!"

"I've told you I'm sorry," he said. "It doesn't do any good repeating it." His chest heaved. "Celine-if you can't understand at least try to accept it. It will never be over." His eyes were almost desperate in their dark demand. "I'm in love with her."

Chapter
 
5

'In love."
Celine stared blankly. "You said you'd never fall in love again."

"I know."

Her voice rising despite her best intentions, she said, "You spelled it out for me before we got engaged. You warned me! All you could promise me was loving friendship in a stable marriage. You'd never be tempted to stray because your heart-the part that could fall in love, anyway-was buried with Juliet!"

"I know what I said! I was wrong." He looked almost haggard. "I was wrong," he repeated. "I was wrong to think it, wrong to say it, wrong to build my marriage to you on a mistaken belief. I can only hope that in time you'll forgive me."

"Forgive you? When you've just told me you intend to go on seeing-who is she? Anyone I know?" Mentally she started running through a list of their friends. None of the women seemed a likely candidate.

"You've met her." He bent his head, one hand massaging the back of his neck.

 
Celine momentarily recalled how she'd caressed him there, five minutes ago-aeons ago. "Well-" she said.
"-Who?"

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't make this public," he said.

Why?
she
wondered wildly. Was he ashamed? Or protecting the woman? "Hasn't she told her husband? A bit less honest than you, is she?"

"She isn't married," he said. "It's Katie
.. .
Kate Payne."

At first sheer astonishment held her silent. Immediately on its heels came a feeling, rather than a coherent thought of course.

"Bo Peep?" she said at last, and began to laugh, peal after peal,
her
head going back.

"Don't, Celine!"

But she went on laughing, a hand at her midriff, the laughter welling out of her until he grabbed at her shoulders and gave her a sharp little shake. "Stop it!"

His face was white and furious. Celine choked to a stop and stared at him, her eyes wide and clear. "You fool, Max," she said distinctly. She knew her face had gone tight, hard. "You think you're in love with that little blond bombshell?
You and how many of your balding, pot-bellied, fatuous, middle-aged colleagues?
I'll bet half the office is in love with the girl. You'll all get over it!" Impatiently she knocked aside his arms, so that his hands left her. "You're better-looking than the other senior partners," she said, her voice cool and expressionless. "I can understand why she's plumped for you, but for heaven's sake, you're ten-eleven years older than she is.
And married."

"Celine, I'm serious about this-about her."

She stared, and finally shook her head faintly in wonder. "Oh, I can see you are. And I suppose you think she is, too."

He opened his mouth, and she knew he'd been going to say that Kate was just as serious as he was. But he changed his mind. "I needn't discuss her feelings with you," he said instead. "That's between Kate and me. I hope that we-you and I-can remain the friends we've always been. It may not be easy at first, but I'm sure we can work it out."

  
 
They'd always been able to work out any problems. But this ... this was different. She looked at him, her husband of twelve years,
her
friend since so far back that she couldn't remember when he hadn't been a part of her life. And she saw a stranger.

"Max," she said, almost gently, as something inside her seemed to crack in all directions, "you surely don't expect me to accept this, go on as if-as if things are the same as they always were?"

He looked shocked. "No," he said. "I don't expect that. I'll-I'll have to leave, of course." He looked around his study as though mentally assessing what he'd have to take with him. "If you can give me a couple of days," he said
,
"to get organised ... or do you want me to go now?"

In films people left their spouses dramatically at all hours, packing bags in haste and departing into the night, apparently with no problem of where they would go. Englishmen would say "I'll be staying at my club." Max didn't have a club to go to. She pictured him entering a motel or hotel in the early hours, or trying to explain to his parents that he needed a bed.

Stupid.
He had Kate, didn't he? He'd go to her. "Are you going to move in with ... your mistress?" she asked stiffly. :'Kate isn't my mistress."

"You're sleeping with her, you said."

" :
We're lovers," he said stubbornly.

"That's different?" Without waiting for an answer, she asked, "How often have you made love-behind my back?" He'd said,
Not
that often. So exactly what did that mean?

A faint line of colour darkened his cheekbones. "I really don't think that's-"

"Don't tell me it's not my business," Celine said, in the grip of a fiercely controlled anger. "I want to know!
So how many times?"

"What does it matter?" Restlessly he spun away from her to walk towards the window and swung round to face her again, as though he'd needed distance between them.

 
That made her angrier still. She held it in, repressed a primitive urge to shriek abuse at him. "It matters to me!" she said tensely. "I'm your wife, damn you! I have a right to some answers!"

His mouth was a clamped line, his jaw clenched. She knew he was rigidly containing his own temper. "Not to that question." He paused there, and she thought he wanted to turn away, his body making a slight movement, but he checked it, staying where he was. "The first time," he said, "I thought it would never happen again. I hadn't intended it to happen at all-and neither had Kate."

Celine suppressed a snort of disbelief. She believed that Max had intended to keep to his wedding vows-as for Kate Payne's intentions, she had serious doubts.

Doggedly, Max went on. "I might not have told you-if it had stayed at that. I tried to put it down as an indiscretion, one I had to live with, rather than ease my guilt by burdening you with a confession-"

Of course he'd felt guilty. Max was an honourable man. He'd always been honest with her. They'd been honest with each other.

He said, "But the second time I could no longer pretend that it wouldn't happen again, and again, when the opportunity arose."

"You make `it' sound like an act of God," she said scornfully. Max had always been in control of his life, his emotions.
"A thunderstorm or a lightning strike."

One shoulder lifted briefly. "It is a bit like that," he said with perfect seriousness. "The thing is, Celine-I never expected to feel this way again."

As he had felt for Juliet, he meant. Juliet, the girl he'd been going to marry, whose photo he still kept in a drawer of his desk. As he'd never felt for Celine.

Surprised at the depth of the pain she felt, Celine tightened her lips against a tendency to tremble, and drew in a breath. She had never been jealous of Juliet's place in his heart, never attempted to take his dead fiancee's place, and

  
 
he
hadn't wanted her to. But now he thought he'd found someone who could.

She had a sudden mental picture of Max naked in bed with Kate Payne, his dark head bent over her tumbled blond curls, his eyes gazing into hers. She closed her own eyes briefly, trying to shake the image. Opening them again, she looked straight into his. "You didn't bring her here, did you? You haven't-not in our bed?"

"Good God-no!
Of course not:'

Of course not.
Max had more sensitivity, more style than that. She was almost ready to apologise when he added, "I wouldn't do that to Katie-or to you."

At the afterthought, Celine's teeth snapped shut on the apology. She had an urgent desire to throw something heavy at his well-groomed head. Instead she said nastily, "She doesn't mind you calling her Katie?"

Max flushed, and she wished she'd kept her mouth shut. Obviously the pet name was a private thing between Kate and him. Celine was glad that he didn't answer.

She felt hot herself. The atmosphere in the small room seemed stifling. She had to get out of here before she lost control, and either fainted or gave vent to a fit of uncontrollable temper. She wouldn't lower herself, wouldn't let him see how deeply wounded she was, how he'd shattered her belief in herself, in him, their whole life together. "I'm going to bed," she said. "I don't think you know what you're doing, Max. But I can't stop you. I don't suppose you intend to join me tonight."

"I'll sleep here," he said. There was a couch in the study where they sometimes put up overnight guests if the bedrooms were full. "Celine-"

About to go out the door, she reluctantly looked back at him.

"Thank you," he said, "for taking it so well."

Had she taken it well?
she
wondered as she went along the curved gallery to their-her-bedroom. It had never seemed such a long way before. The floor appeared to be receding in waves before her feet. He meant, she supposed, that
she
 
hadn't
succumbed to tears or tantrums. Either would have made him very uncomfortable. Max had never been one for showing a lot of emotion, and he didn't particularly like it in others.

Although, she recalled as she climbed into the big double bed, when her mother had died, it was Max who had held her in his arms while she cried. She'd not wanted to cry in front of her father, who was devastated himself, pale and numbed with his own grief, not wanted to make things harder for him. And she'd tried to be strong for her younger brother, who hadn't been able to contain his sobs at the graveside. She and her older brother had taken the main responsibility for planning the service and the burial, and Nancy had stepped in to help with the gathering afterwards in their home.

Only when it was all over, the last of the mourners had gone home and the house had been returned to order with the invaluable help of Max's family, she'd found herself alone in the kitchen with him, and he'd put a sympathetic arm about her shoulders and said softly, "Poor old Linathey all lean on you, don't they?" And the tears had come.

He'd held her and let her cry. Once she thought someone came to the doorway, and Max shook his head and whoever it was went away again. And when the wracking sobs finally died he'd found a handkerchief for her and then dampened a towel and sponged her flushed, tear-stained face and swollen eyelids, giving her a final hug when she muttered that they'd better go and see what the family was doing.

Tears stung again at the back of her eyes as she remembered that Max of long ago, and the one she'd just left in the study, who'd told her that their marriage, as far as he was concerned, was over, and that he hoped they'd remain friends.

Such a cliché, she thought, leaning over to switch off the bedside light. She supposed it was possible. They had friends who had been invited to their ex-spouses' weddings to new partners, and who had actually wished the couple L

  
 
well
with seeming sincerity. She knew divorced parents who managed to bring up their children in apparent accord and to enjoy family outings, despite their separation and sometimes the founding of a new family, perhaps of two.

Yes, it was possible. Just at the moment, though, it seemed that she could never accept such a relationship with Max.

In the blessed darkness she let one tear fall before blinking the rest away, savagely sinking her teeth into her lower lip. She would not cry. Not tonight when Max might hear, or worse, when he might come into the room and see.

But he wouldn't. He was sleeping alone in his study tonight. That was the arrangement.

There'd be other arrangements to make in the coming weeks, months. Would he want to move out all his thingshis clothes, books,
furniture
? Should she ask him to? What did people do in this situation?

Worked things out, she supposed.
In a sensible and civilised fashion.

She wished she felt sensible and civilised. Instead she felt as though she was burning up inside, with rage and pain and a sort of bewildered disbelief. If-heaven forbid-Kate Payne had walked into the room at that moment, Celine truly believed she might kill the girl.

She didn't expect to sleep, but at some point in the night she must have dropped off. She woke with a slight headache and a feeling of dread, not knowing immediately what caused it. Before she opened her eyes, the memory of the scene last night in Max's study returned. She sat up, hoping it had been a dream, but the heap of chiffon on the floor where she'd discarded her glamorous peignoir brought it back in hideous detail.

It was no dream. Max really was leaving. He didn't want to be her husband any longer.

She heard her father go down the stairs. It must have been the sounds of his morning ritual that woke her. She ought to go and make him breakfast. Max, of course, had
always
 
made
his own. But she'd usually joined him before he left for work, and kissed him goodbye.

That was in the old days. Lately, she realised, he'd avoided even that cursory peck on the doorstep. She'd put it down to reticence in front of her father, or just forgetfulness, now that their normal routine had been disrupted by Ted's presence at the breakfast table, lingering over his third cup of tea.