Sara Craven - Marriage At A Distance

“I—guess it has to be,” Joanna whispered.

“Graciously spoken, as always,” he murmured. “What did you do with your wedding ring?”

“It’s in my pocket.”

Gabriel held out a hand. “Give it to me.”

He slid the ring onto her finger.

“I’m sure you’ve no wish to repeat our vows…. However, I feel I should seal this solemn moment somehow…. So I’ll kiss the bride.”

SARA CRAVEN was born in south Devon, England, and grew up surrounded by books, in a house by the sea. After leaving grammar school she worked as a local journalist, covering everything from flower shows to murders. She started writing for Harlequin in 1975. Apart from writing, her passions include films, music, cooking and eating in good restaurants. She now lives in Somerset.

Sara Craven has recently become the latest (and last ever) winner of the British quiz show Mastermind.

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CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

Endpage

THE air in the study was stale and cold. It was gloomy, too, with the curtains at the long windows half drawn against a February dusk.

But the girl who sat curled up in the big leather chair beside the fireplace had not switched on any of the lamps, or lit the neatly laid fire waiting in the grate.

Her only response to the chill in the room had been to spread an old velvet smoking jacket over her legs like a rug. And every so often she looked down at it, touching the worn pile gently, breathing the faint aroma of cigars that rose from it.

Impossible to think that Lionel would never wear it again. That he would never come in through that door, large, loud and unrelentingly kind, rubbing his hands together and exclaiming about the weather, his face red from tramping over the hills with the dogs, or riding out on his latest hunter.

When the new chestnut had come back yesterday without him, Sadie, his girl groom, had said dourly that she’d warned him the horse was too fresh. But the worst they’d expected was that Lionel had been thrown, perhaps suffered a broken collarbone.

Instead, as Dr Fraser had told them, the massive heart attack that he’d suffered had probably knocked him from the saddle. It was also, he’d added gently, the way Lionel would have wanted to go.

Joanna could accept that. Lionel had always been restless, she thought. Always active. Since his retirement as chairman of Verne Investments five years ago, he’d been forever looking for ways to fill his days. He would never have wanted to be chronically ill, perhaps bedridden, the rush and bustle he’d thrived on denied him.

But that did not make it any less of a shock for those left behind, she thought, the muscles in her throat tightening.

And the question endlessly revolving in her tired mind was, What’s going to happen to me now?

Because Lionel’s death had changed everything. Taken all the old certainties away with him.

Until yesterday she’d been Joanna Verne, his daughter-in-law. The girl who ran the house for him and dealt with all the boring domestic issues he hated to be plagued with.

Twenty-four hours later she was little better than a displaced person. The estranged wife of Lionel’s son and heir, Gabriel Verne, who had spent the last two years of their inimical separation storming round the globe, building on the success of Verne Investments, turning his father and himself from the merely rich to the mega-rich.

Gabriel, who would now be coming back to claim Westroe Manor, and also to rid himself finally of the wife he’d never wanted. And her stepmother, she acknowledged wryly.

In the distance she heard the doorbell jangle, and she pushed the encumbering folds of the jacket away and got to her feet.

She’d asked Henry Fortescue, Lionel’s solicitor, to call, and she didn’t want him to find her lurking here in the dark like this. She owed it to herself—and to Lionel—to put a brave face on things.

She moved swiftly, rattling the curtains along their poles to exclude the last remnants of grey daylight, switching on the central pendant, and kneeling to put a match to the kindling. By the time Mr Fortescue was shown into the room by Mrs Ashby, the flames were licking at the coal and the study looked altogether more cheerful.

Henry Fortescue’s face was strained and sad. He and Lionel had been close since boyhood, she remembered sympathetically as she rose from the hearthrug, dusting her hands on her denim jeans.

He came across to her and took her hand. ‘Joanna, my dear. I’m so sorry—so very sorry. I can still hardly believe it.’

‘Nor I.’ She patted his sleeve. ‘I’m going to have a whisky. Will you join me?’

The surprise on his face brought a reluctant smile to her lips. She said with gentle irony, ‘I am old enough. And I think we could both do with one.’

‘And I’m sure you’re right.’ He smiled back at her with an effort. ‘But only a very small one, please. I’m driving.’

‘Highland water with it?’ Joanna busied herself with the decanter and glasses on a corner table.

‘Oh, yes. I wouldn’t insult Lionel’s memory by diluting his best malt with soda.’

He raised the glass she handed him with slight awkwardness. ‘What shall we drink to?’

‘I think—absent friends, don’t you?’ They shared the toast, then sat opposite each other on either side of the fireplace.

After a pause, he said, ‘And how is Mrs Elcott?’

Joanna bit her lip. ‘In her room. She’s—devastated.’

‘I’m sure she is,’ Henry Fortescue said with a certain dryness. ‘It must be intensely frustrating for her to know that her hopes will never now be fulfilled.’

Joanna raised her eyebrows. ‘That, dearest Mr Fortescue, was almost indiscreet,’ she observed with mock reproof.

‘I intended it to be,’ he returned robustly. ‘I knew exactly what she was after and I didn’t like it, either as Lionel’s friend or his lawyer.’

Joanna sighed. ‘Lionel, as we both know, was too kind for his own good. Look how he’s always treated me.’

He frowned. ‘I hope you’re not equating your situation with your stepmother’s. It was perfectly natural for Lionel to offer you a home after your father died. Your mother was his favourite cousin, after all. But Cynthia had no claim on his generosity at all. Why, she and Jeremy had only been married a matter of months when the accident happened. She was a total stranger to him.’

He shook his head sternly. ‘She was a young, healthy woman. Still is, for that matter. There was nothing to prevent her finding another secretarial job—making a life for herself. But instead she moved herself in here—on your coat-tails, as it were.’ He snorted. ‘She should have been the one running the house all this time. I know that was Lionel’s intention.’