Jessica Hart - Newlyweds of Convenience

He seemed serious. Mallory turned back to stare through the windscreen, thrown into utter confusion by being suddenly granted the one thing she had wanted for so long.

‘Is it what you want?’ she asked.

Torr changed down to round a sharp bend. ‘Yes,’ he said, in a voice empty of all expression. ‘I think it will be better for both of us if you go.’

‘Well…fine.’ Mallory was feeling cold and rather sick. She had just been released from nine months of labouring. She ought to be feeling relieved, but she struggled to inject some enthusiasm into her voice. ‘Great.’

They drove the rest of the way in a silence that reverberated with unspoken words. He wanted her to go. That was all Mallory could think. He wanted her to go, and she had no excuse to stay.

Torr parked the car exactly where he had done the night they’d first arrived at Kincaillie and switched off the engine. They both stared through the windscreen at the great door without speaking or moving, while the silence yawned around them.

‘What now?’ asked Mallory at last. Her voice sounded thin and reedy.

‘Why don’t you go and pack?’

‘Now?’

‘If I’m going to take you to Inverness I’d rather do it straight away,’ he said. He reached for the door handle. ‘I’ll stretch my legs on the beach while you get your things together. I know you haven’t got much.’

It was true. There wasn’t much. Mallory found the one case that she had brought with her and began emptying the drawers that she had cleaned out so carefully when she’d first arrived. Her hands moved steadily, but inside she was shaking. How had this happened? One minute she’d been promising anything if only she could see Torr alive, the next she had been in the middle of a furious argument.

And now he wanted her to go.

Like a zombie, Mallory went over to the wardrobe and pulled out the skirt that she had worn to the ceilidh. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, she smoothed the skirt over her lap, remembering how it had felt swirling around her legs as she danced, how it had rucked up under Torr’s hands when he kissed her, how it had slithered to the floor as he undressed her.

That had been the first time they had made love. Her heart squeezed at the memory.

She would never touch Torr again. Not like that. She would never feel his mouth and his hands and the hard possession of his body, never wake in this bed with him warm and strong and safe beside her. If she closed her eyes she could picture him exactly. She knew every angle of his face, every line at the edges of his eyes. She knew how he frowned, how the stern mouth relaxed so unexpectedly into a smile, the way he brushed the dust from his clothes at the end of the day.

Mallory looked out of the window. She could see the apple tree where he had buried Charlie for her. The kitchen garden was flourishing. She had cleared and dug and planted, and still there was so much to do, but she was proud of it. It was her garden now. She’d had plans for more vegetables, and had thought it would be nice to plant some flowers next year too. But she wouldn’t be here.

She would be home at last.

But when she closed her eyes and thought about home she saw the kitchen, with its range and its worn table, and the shabby armchairs where she and Torr sat in front of the fire. She saw Kincaillie, settled squarely in the shelter of the mountains. She saw the sea and the islands, a hazy blue on the horizon. She heard the birds wheeling and crying on the breeze, and smelt the air, freshly rinsed by the rain.

This was home.

Slowly, Mallory laid the skirt on the bed and got to her feet.

Torr turned as her feet crunched on the shingle behind him. His face was set, but his voice was quite steady. ‘Ready?’

‘No.’ Mallory shook her head and he frowned.

‘What’s the problem?’

‘I don’t want to go,’ she said simply.

Torr stilled. They looked at each other in silence, the breeze lifting their hair and flicking white caps on the waves. Mallory could feel the sting of salt on her cheeks.

‘I thought you wanted to go back to Ellsborough,’ he said at last.

‘I thought I did too,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t until you said that I could go that I realised I didn’t want that at all.’

She turned to look out at the islands in the distance. ‘It’s true that there are lots of things I’ve missed about Ellsborough, and I may go on missing them, but if I go back there I will miss Kincaillie more. There’ll be no garden in Ellsborough, no sea, no mountains.’ She paused. ‘No you.’

There was a shattering silence.

‘Mallory-’ Torr began hoarsely, but she held up a hand to stop him.

‘I know what you’re going to say,’ she said.

‘Do you?’

‘Of course. We’ve talked about this before, and you’ve always been straight with me. You’re going to remind me that our deal was never about love. I know that. I know you’re in love with someone else, and because you’re the kind of man you are I know that you won’t stop loving her.’

‘No,’ said Torr with a strange, twisted smile. ‘I won’t.’

Mallory’s heart dipped, but she kept her chin up. ‘I’m not asking you to love me back, Torr. I just want to stay here with you and take whatever you have to give. I know it won’t be everything, but don’t make me go away. I couldn’t bear it.’ Her voice cracked. ‘I can’t bear the thought of being without you now.’

‘Isn’t that what you thought about Steve?’ He broke off as a spasm crossed her face. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘That wasn’t fair.’

‘No, it was fair,’ Mallory insisted. ‘You’ve seen me utterly wretched about Steve, and I’m not going to pretend I didn’t love him. I did, I loved him terribly, and when he left me I didn’t think I’d survive. But I did, and I’ve learnt that it is possible to love again. I don’t love you the way I loved Steve,’ she told him. ‘I was dazzled by Steve, swept off my feet by him. When I was with him it was like being in a perfect dream…and I learnt the hard way that a dream was all it was. It wasn’t real at all. But with you…’

Mallory gazed out to sea, trying to find the words to explain. ‘With you it’s different. Maybe you won’t believe me, but the way I love you is stronger, truer. I don’t think you’re perfect, the way I thought Steve was perfect.’

‘Thanks!’ Torr interjected a little wryly.

‘Well, you’re not easy,’ she pointed out. ‘But when I’m with you I feel safe and…and complete in a way I can’t explain.’ She paused. ‘Kincaillie isn’t perfect either. It isn’t romantic. It isn’t a dream. It’s cold and uncomfortable and isolated, and living here is hard work, and for a long time I thought I hated it, but when I went to pack just now I realised that I don’t hate it here all. I love it.’

She turned back to face him. ‘I don’t know how or when it happened, but Kincaillie is a part of me now-just as you’re a part of me, Torr.’

His expression was indecipherable, and apprehension tickled the base of her spine. What if he insisted that he wanted her to leave? She swallowed and straightened her shoulders.

‘I can accept that you don’t love me,’ she told him. ‘I’m just asking you to let me stay so that we can go on as we have been doing. I know I’m not the one you really want, but if you’re never going to be in a position to marry her…?’ She trailed off hopefully.

‘The thing is, she’s already married,’ Torr confided.

‘I see…and there’s no question of divorce?’

‘No.’

‘Well, then…why not have me as second best?’ asked Mallory, a hint of desperation in her voice.

Torr only shook his head slowly. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not a man who settles for second best.’