Sara Craven - Marriage Reclaimed

The leopard, Joanna thought suddenly, was wounded. No longer the cool, invulnerable conqueror, but someone she wasn’t sure she recognised any more.

She felt her own hurt, her own grief well up inside her in response. Her hand went out to touch his arm. Her lips parted to say his name.

Then a door halfway down the gallery opened and Cynthia came out. She was wearing a white satin dressing gown, and her hair was loose on her shoulders. She had no make-up on and her eyes were red, as if she’d been crying non-stop for hours.

She looked, Joanna thought, about twenty years old.

Cynthia stared at Gabriel, her mouth trembling. ‘I thought I heard your voice,’ she said huskily. ‘Thank God you’ve come. It’s been so awful.’ Her voice broke. ‘So terrible. Oh, Gabriel, darling.’

She ran to him, burying her face in his shoulder, her whole body shaking as she pressed against him. And his arms closed round her, holding her.

It was, Joanna thought dispassionately, a brilliant performance. But somehow she had no desire to see any more of it.

She turned and went into her own room, shutting the door behind her, wishing, as she did so, that she could shut out the image of Gabriel and Cynthia together with equal ease.

And knowing, with heart-chilling certainty, that it was impossible.

IT WILL all be over soon. Joanna, smiling, shaking hands with departing mourners, heard the words echoing in her head over and over again like a mantra.

It was her own personal act of faith, she thought defiantly. Something to cling to in the ongoing nightmare of the past few days.

It had almost been a relief to lose herself in the beauty of the funeral service that morning. The ancient parish church had been crowded, the affection and emotion from the congregation almost tangible.

She had walked composedly up the aisle with Gabriel at her side, and if significant glances and whispered comments had been exchanged she hadn’t noticed them.

The only distraction from the age-old words of sorrow and farewell had been Cynthia’s ostentatiously muffled sobbing. But then her behaviour had been over the top all week, Joanna thought wearily.

Her stepmother, constituting herself chief mourner, had plagued the staff with constant demands for service. She’d also criticised all the arrangements for the funeral, from the choice of hymns to the food being served at the buffet, but without offering any alternatives or assistance.

And she had barely let Gabriel out of her sight.

Not that he seemed to object, Joanna admitted fairly, although he’d never appeared to pay her a great deal of attention in the past.

But she wouldn’t have welcomed it then, either, because she’d been engaged in her single-minded pursuit of Lionel.

Cynthia had even persuaded Gabriel to drive her to London, with the plea that she had nothing suitable to wear at the funeral. No doubt she had also coaxed him to foot the bill for the mountain of elegant carrier bags and boxes she’d brought back with her.

Watching her descend the stairs that morning, dressed from head to foot in black and wearing a hat with a veil, Joanna had hoped he would feel his money had been well spent.

Perhaps he thought that Joanna herself should have made more of an effort, she’d speculated, hugging the comfort of her navy wool coat around her.

Back at the house, Cynthia had stationed herself on one of the sofas in the drawing room, looking ethereal and accepting condolences as if she were Lionel’s widow.

Or Gabriel’s future wife.

The thought stabbed at Joanna like a knife in the ribs. But she could no longer doubt the seriousness of Cynthia’s purpose. Not having seen her in action over the past few days.

It doesn’t matter, she told herself steadily. It can’t matter, because when it happens I’ll be long gone and far away.

In the meantime she had to cope as best she could, accepting the sympathy and good wishes of their friends and neighbours.

‘You’re looking very pale, my dear,’ said the wife of the local MP. ‘I’ve told that charming husband of yours that he should take you away for some winter sun. A second honeymoon, perhaps,’ she added archly.

Joanna, encountering a sardonic look from Gabriel standing only a few feet away, coloured to the roots of her hair and muttered something disjointed.

People were beginning to drift away, and while Gabriel was outside on the drive saying a few last goodbyes Joanna took the opportunity to go up to her room.

One more ordeal—the reading of the will—to be faced, and then she could get on with her life, she thought, picking up a comb and running it through her hair.

Mrs MP, however out of touch with a particular local situation she might be, had nevertheless been right about one thing.

Joanna did indeed look pale. And subdued, and drab and totally unexciting in her cream lambswool polo-neck sweater and pleated navy skirt, she added silently, pulling a face at her reflection. Although her uninteresting appearance was probably no bad thing, under the circumstances.

She didn’t want to be noticed, she reminded herself. She wanted to fade into the background and then disappear altogether and without trace.

Now she lingered at the window, reluctant to return downstairs, even though she knew Henry Fortescue would have been buttonholed by Cynthia by now, and be looking for rescue.

It had snowed overnight, and a faint powdering still touched the top fields with white. The sky was unremittingly grey, and the whole landscape looked bleak and frozen.

Like me, she thought ironically. But the weather suits the day. Brilliant sunshine wouldn’t have been appropriate at all.

With a sigh, she turned away from the starkness of winter and surveyed her room instead.

She’d started to pack up some of her more serviceable things, sorting them from the smart clothes and cocktail wear, which could go to the local charity shop, and putting them in the old suitcase which she’d arrived with all those years ago. Not in the matched luggage which had accompanied her on honeymoon, she thought, swallowing. That would stay behind with her jewellery, already collected together in its leather case. Only her wedding ring remained, but that was purely temporary.

And she’d been through the classified ads in the county newspaper, looking for possible posts as resident housekeeper, and had written to several of the most likely. If all went well, she could be gone within the week.

But she would miss this room, and the refuge it had provided for so long. Not least in the past two years.

She would probably miss the Manor itself, although it had already begun to change. With Lionel there had always been noise—raised jovial voices, laughter, dogs barking.

Now the place hummed with a quieter, different kind of energy, as if a powerful dynamo had been switched on. There was a new vibrancy—an edge in the atmosphere.

Lionel’s study was now unrecognisable. The day after Gabriel’s return, a large van had brought a computer and every electronic aid to communication known to the mind of man. The old desk had been sidelined, and in its place was a vast modern affair, bristling with equipment and reminiscent of Mission Control, Houston.

Clearly Gabriel planned to use the Manor as an extension of his office.

So, he won’t be using pressure of work as an excuse to stay away in future, Joanna thought. Perhaps the freedom to do exactly what he wants when he wants isn’t quite so important to him any more.

He had taken total control of the house—and only once had she seen that control slip. She had been on her way to bed the previous night when she’d noticed a light in Lionel’s room. She’d walked down the passage and through the open door, had seen Gabriel on his knees beside his father’s bed, his head buried in his folded arms, his whole body shaking…