Daphne Clair - Wife To A Stranger

She woke to gathering darkness, the room dimmed and the sea outside grey and sleek with gold highlights.

Momentarily disoriented, she sat up and pushed back her hair. The room, the view were alien to her. Remnants of a dream clung. Familiar voices, a house with tall pale trees around it…

Then she remembered the hospital, Rolfe, the journey home, and the wardrobe full of expensive clothing.

She swung her feet to the thick carpeting and crossed to the dressing-table.

There were three drawers along the top, all holding a variety of makeup and grooming products—bottles, jars, mascara wands. She found a comb and closed the drawer, deciding she needed a shower.

In the bathroom a brass shelf held a stack of thick, clean towels above a heated rail. She hung her clothes from a brass hook and stepped into the shower.

Recessed shelves held scented soap and bottles of shampoo and matching conditioners. The water was hot and forceful. She let it run over her for several minutes, shampooed her hair, and closed her eyes to allow the spray to rinse out the foam.

A sound made her turn her head, and through the steam she saw Rolfe standing in the doorway from her bedroom.

Her immediate reaction was to raise one hand across her breasts and lower the other in the Venus pose.

‘Are you all right?’ Rolfe demanded.

‘Yes. Thank you.’

He nodded and withdrew, closing the door.

Stupid, stupid, she chided herself, turning off the water. She grabbed a towel and rubbed at her hair, then quickly took another, dried her body and wrapped the towel about it, tucking the ends firmly under her arms.

When she entered the bedroom Rolfe was standing at the window, reminding her of the first time she had seen him.

No, not the first time, she corrected herself. The first time she remembered seeing him…

He glanced over his shoulder at her, and then reached to draw the curtains across the window. ‘People walk along the beach.’ He turned to face her. ‘Now and then one of them will climb the bank. You don’t want to entertain peeping Toms.’ The room seemed smaller now, more intimate. ‘I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.’ His slight smile was crooked. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t think…and I was a bit worried. You’re only just out of hospital—’

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘It was…silly of me to be so—’

‘Shy?’ he suggested as she groped for the right word. ‘It certainly didn’t seem like you, Capri.’ His gaze slid over her, making her conscious of her nakedness under the towel.

She felt her body flush. ‘I…suppose I’d got over any shyness with you, after being married for two years.’

‘Oh, I think quite a while before that.’

‘Does that mean we…?’ She paused. ‘I mean, were we…lovers for a long time before we got married?’

‘Several months.’ His eyes glittered and narrowed, as if her thoughtless query had evoked some erotic memory. ‘You’d better get dressed. You’ll be cold.’

It wasn’t in the least cold—the house was surprisingly warm—but she turned to the wardrobe she’d discovered earlier, then hesitated. ‘What should I wear? Are we…do you have any plans for this evening?’

‘Don’t tempt me.’ Again that disconcerting flare of sexual awareness lit Rolfe’s eyes, and she put a hand on the edge of the towel that covered her breasts, nervously checking it was secure.

His voice changed and became crisp. ‘Wear whatever you’re comfortable in. I assumed you wouldn’t feel like eating out tonight, so I got a few supplies in while you were asleep.’

If he knew she’d slept, then he’d looked in on her before. How long had he watched her while she was oblivious?

Mentally she shook herself. He’d been concerned. ‘Do you want me to cook?’ she asked him.

‘Good lord, no! I can rustle up some kind of meal.’

She couldn’t stand around wearing nothing but a towel. Turning to the walk-in wardrobe again, she murmured, ‘Excuse me,’ went in and half shut the door.

When she had dressed and come out again Rolfe had gone. About to close the door of the wardrobe, she paused, surveying herself in the mirror on the back of it. The loose cream silk shirt and dark green trousers suited her colouring and they fitted perfectly. Yet she felt as though she was wearing someone else’s clothes.

Her hair was still damp. She went into the bathroom and hunted in the drawers under the vanity unit, coming up with, as she’d half expected, a hand-dryer. There was a safety plug near the basin, and in ten minutes her hair was dry—silky soft and bouncy with the underlying wave that had always created problems.

Always? For a moment memory seemed almost within her grasp. And then there was nothing.

She brushed the style into shape, then padded back to the wardrobe and, after a brief indecision, slipped her feet into bronze pumps, one of the few pairs of shoes that didn’t have high heels. Then she opened the door and ventured into the turquoise-carpeted passageway.

The aroma of frying meat led her to the kitchen, a spacious room that gleamed with stainless steel and whiteware. Rolfe turned from the stove top set into one of the wide counters. He smiled, his eyes studying her thoroughly and making her skin prickle, not unpleasantly.

‘Can I do anything?’ she asked.

‘Finish off the salad if you like.’ He indicated a glass bowl half filled with lettuce leaves. ‘You’ll find tomatoes and cucumber in the fridge.’ Turning back to the stove top, he took a pair of stainless-steel tongs from a wall rack to flip the chops over.

Looking about, she found the refrigerator, first opening the door of the matching freezer by mistake.

She placed the vegetables on the bench and rummaged in a drawer for a few seconds before Rolfe looked around and asked, ‘What do you want?’

‘A knife?’

He directed her to the wooden block by the refrigerator where she found several knives of different sizes. By the time she’d finished the salad, Rolfe was turning down the heat under the chops. A beeping noise made her look at the microwave oven at one end of the workbench.

‘Can you turn those spuds?’ Rolfe asked her.

She opened the door and dealt with the two potatoes in their jackets, then restarted the machine.

When she turned away again Rolfe was watching her with a curious stare.

‘What is it?’ she said.

‘You seem to be familiar with the microwave.’

She hadn’t thought about it. ‘Yes,’ she agreed, momentarily pleased. Perhaps if she just let things happen without thinking too much, skills and memories would return to her. ‘I must have used it before.’

‘Frequently.’ He gave her a slightly taut grin. ‘As soon as the potatoes are done we can eat.’

Rolfe carried their plates to an adjoining dining room while she brought along the cutlery they needed. He’d already flung a cloth over the small table that fitted into a half-circle of windows. A longer table flanked by highbacked chairs occupied most of the remaining floor space.

The curtains were open, and moths and insects flung themselves against the dark glass. A particularly loud thump made Capri glance up from cutting into her baked potato, and she gasped at the huge brown winged beetle, long feelers waving madly, trying to gain access through the window.

‘It’s only a huhu.’ Rolfe got up to jerk the curtains closed over the window, then sat down again.

The beetle hurled itself twice more at the window, and then apparently gave up and flew away. Relieved, she said, ‘The insects here are pretty rampant.’

‘Only at night. How’s your chop?’

‘Fine. You’re a good cook.’

‘I have a few basic skills.’

‘I’ll do the cooking tomorrow.’