Marion Lennox - The Heir’s Chosen Bride

‘Susie, please, think about it. It’d be sensible.’

‘It’d be committing me to loneliness for the rest of my life,’ she whispered. ‘Even I think I deserve better than that.’

WAS she mad?

Susie lay and watched the shadows. This was her last night in this castle.

The man she loved had asked her to marry him.

A courageous woman would take him on and train him, she thought desperately into the stillness. Marry him and ask questions later. Have a tantrum or six when he spent fourteen-hour days at the office seven days a week and treated her as being on the outskirts of his life. Which was what would happen. She was under no illusions as to how Hamish saw marriage.

He’d had some sort of epiphany this week, she thought. He’d seen Marcia out of her business zone and seen how sterile the life they proposed was.

So he’d gone for the easy solution. The noble one. Ditch the businesslike fiancée and pick up a ditzy one with a gammy leg and attached child. Give his life a bit of interest and do good along the way.

Problem solved.

She rose and crossed to the window, staring out at the moonlit sky. An owl swooped across the night sky and she thought of Taffy. Taffy…

She’d had her for what? A whole day? And she’d gone, and Susie felt…

Sick.

‘This is it,’ she whispered into the dark. She wanted Rose here so she could hug her, so she could tell her baby she was doing the right thing. ‘I can’t expand my heart any more. The heart expands to fit all comers? Maybe, but how often can it break and stay intact?’

She wanted to cry but the tears wouldn’t come. Nothing would come. She should sort a few more things. She should…

Dammit, if it’s not packed now I don’t want it,’ she told the moon fiercely, watching the flight of the owl over the water’s edge. ‘I’ve got no more room. I have no more room for anything.’

‘Marcia, I can’t marry you.’

It was two in the morning. Hamish had been sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for Marcia to come back. Which had taken quite some time. Now she’d burst in the back door, still laughing, and had stopped dead when she’d seen Hamish waiting.

He should have broken it gently, he thought as her laughter stopped. He’d been sitting here for hours, trying to make it right in his head. Nothing made sense any more, but the only absolute that stood out was what he’d just said.

He couldn’t marry Marcia. In the end the words had just come.

‘What? What have they told you?’ Marcia demanded, and he blinked.

‘Pardon?’

‘Hell, this place! How did they know?’

He blinked again-and then he focussed. She looked rumpled, he thought. There was sand in her hair. A strand of dried seaweed was intertwined with the normally impeccable French knot.

The knot was coming undone. She put a hand up to adjust it, a pin came loose and it tumbled free.

What was going on?

‘You’ve been on the sand dunes?’ he ventured cautiously, and she swore and shook her hair looser, causing a shower of sand to fall to the floor.

‘God, who’d live in a small town? People have been staring at me since I hit the town boundaries. I might have known.’ She glared across the table at him, defiant. ‘What do you mean, you can’t marry me? You’re not getting prudish on me, are you?’

‘Prudish?’

‘I was bored, OK? There’s nothing to do in this godforsaken place and you were stuck with the widow.’

‘So…’ He was putting two and two together and making six. But maybe six was right. ‘You and-Lachlan?-headed for the sand dunes.’

‘Of course Lachlan. Who else do you think? Hell, Hamish, someone had to be nice to him. You hardly made the effort.’

But she had coloured. His efficient, cool fiancée was seriously flustered.

‘You were nice to him…as in heading for the sand dunes.’

‘It was just a bit of fun! This is the modern world, you know.’

‘I think I’m old-fashioned.’

‘Well, don’t be. Hell, Hamish, we lead separate lives. That’s the basis of our whole relationship.’

‘What relationship?’

‘We fit,’ she snapped. ‘You know we do. Together we can be a serious team. But not if you’re going to get jealous every time I let my hair down.’

‘I would have thought…maybe you’d want to let your hair down with me?’

‘Oh, come on, Hamish. That’s not what our relationship’s about. We’re a serious team. Does it matter if we get our fun elsewhere?’

And it was as easy as this. He was being let off a hook he hadn’t known he was on until tonight, and suddenly he didn’t even recognise what it was that had snagged him.

She didn’t love him. He didn’t love her. Where on earth had they been headed?

‘I’m in love with Susie,’ he told her, and she paused in shaking her hair to stare at him in incredulity.

‘You have to be kidding.’

‘I don’t think I am.’

‘What on earth do you have in common?’

‘I guess…nothing. Are you in love with Lachlan?’

‘Of course I’m not. I don’t do love.’

‘Including with me?’

‘We’re a sensible partnership,’ she snapped. ‘You know that. We’ve talked about it. You let emotion into your life and it’s down the toilet. If you were on with the widow-’

‘I’m not on with anyone.’

‘But you want to be? With her?’ Disbelief was warring with incredulity that he could be so stupid.

There was only one answer to that. ‘Yes.’

‘She’ll never be a businessman’s wife.’

‘Maybe I’ll be a landscape gardener’s husband,’ he retorted, and she gave a crack of scornful laughter.

‘This is ridiculous. You’re being ridiculous.’

‘Yes.’

She paused. Regrouped. ‘Let’s talk about this. We don’t need to break up. I want that title,’ she said abruptly, as if it was suddenly the most important factor in the whole deal.

‘I think you can buy titles over the Internet if you pay enough,’ he said cautiously. ‘I’ll see what I can do. It can be a breaking-off-engagement present.’

‘You’re not serious.’

‘I’m serious.’

‘I’ve come all this way for nothing? ’ It was practically a yell. She was no longer flustered. She was out and out furious.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Not half as sorry as you’re going to be,’ she snarled.

‘You really think I wouldn’t mind a marriage where my wife trots off into the sand dunes with other men?’

‘This has nothing to do with anything I might have done with Lachlan,’ she flashed back. ‘Has it?’

‘No,’ he admitted. ‘It hasn’t. But I’ve decided… Marcia, maybe emotion is important in a marriage. Maybe we could both do with some.’

There was a long pause, strained to breaking point.

‘Right,’ she said at last. ‘You want emotion? Let’s see how you deal with emotion, you stupid, two-timing wannabe country hick!’

Sitting in the middle of the table was a vast earthenware casserole containing the congealing leftovers. Marcia removed the lid. She lifted the pot-and she threw the entire contents at her fiancé’s head.

With pot attached.

Tuna surprise!

Susie heard Marcia come in. She heard their soft murmurs in the kitchen. Then the voices were raised. Then came a crash of splintering crockery.

Should she get up and investigate?

Mind your own business, she told herself, and shoved her pillow over her head so she couldn’t try to eavesdrop.

She didn’t want to know.

She didn’t.

Breaking off his engagement had been as easy as that.

Hamish lay in bed and stared at the ceiling and wondered where to take it from here.