Romantic Association - Truly, Madly, Deeply

Something snapped inside him and Ellis ran across the last few yards of deck, pushing between Sarah and Pete. ‘Don’t do it! Don’t marry him. He won’t love you half as much as I do. I can’t bear it if you marry him.’

‘Oi!’ Pete tried to pull him away.

He shoved Pete aside but the man came barrelling back.

Sarah stepped between them. ‘Go away, Peter Millton!’ she yelled. ‘Or you’ll spoil it for me.’

She turned back to Ellis.

He smiled, his anxiety past now, at what her words had revealed. ‘I love you, Sarah Boswick. I can’t think of anything else but how much I love you. Will you marry me?’

‘Of course I will, you fool. I’d have said yes last time but you were so horridly sensible.’

He laughed and wrapped her in his arms, kissing her soundly. It took him a while to realise that someone was tapping his shoulder. He swung round, ready to punch Pete if he had to. But it was the matron of the women’s quarters. So in his joy, he gave her a big hug too. ‘She’s just agreed to marry me.’

Then he turned back to finish kissing his Sarah properly.

Author’s Note

They really did send sixty starving cotton lasses from Lancashire out to Western Australia in 1863. I’ve written a whole series based on this fact, the Swan River Saga ( Farewell to Lancashire, Beyond the Sunset and Destiny’s Path) . But that wasn’t enough to get those young women out of my mind. When I was asked to write a story for this anthology, I immediately thought of using this scenario again. My heroine may be imaginary but the background is as true to life as I can make it.

CAROLE MATTHEWSis a bestselling author of twenty-four hugely successful romantic comedy novels. As well as appearing on the Sunday Times and USA Today bestseller lists, Carole is published in thirty-one different countries and has sold over 4 million books. Her books Welcome To The Real World and Wrapped up in You have both been short-listed for the Romantic Novel of the Year.

Previously unlucky in love, she now lives happily ever after with her partner, Lovely Kev, in a minimalist home with no ornaments or curtains. She likes to drink champagne, eat chocolate and spends too much time on Facebook and Twitter. Her latest book is A Place to Call Home .

For more information visit her website

www.carolematthews.com

I was a trophy wife when Ethan married me, you know. Oh, yes. I could have had my pick of anyone. Men buzzed round me like bees round a honeypot: they were irresistibly drawn to me. I was showered with gifts morning, noon and night. I was wined and dined on private yachts from Antibes to Antigua. That was the life I had.

I was a model, a bloody good one too. I’d done Vogue , Harper’s, Vanity Fair: all the glossies. I didn’t do catwalk though. My breasts were too luscious, my hips too curved. It was all heroin chic in my day and they wanted six-stone skeletons for that. I’m a woman and have always been proud to look like one. I was never going to be just a walking coat hanger. Which meant that I wasn’t ever quite as big as someone like Elle or Naomi. But I never minded that. Not really. I did get out of bed for less than ten thousand dollars a day though not that often. And, let me tell you, I’d been offered far more than that to get into bed too. Not that I ever did. I was very choosy. There were no scandalous pictures of me falling drunk out of nightclubs, wrapped round a different man every night, or snorting cocaine with some unsavoury, unwashed rock star. I always kept myself nice. Held myself well.

I’d had more marriage proposals than you could shake a stick at and had batted them all away. But when Ethan asked me, I said yes straightaway. Ethan was different. He didn’t fawn over me like other men. He was secure in his confidence. We met at a polo match in Windsor. I was presenting the prize and he was the captain of the winning team. His smile lit up my life in a way that nothing had before and made me weak at the knees. I gave him my number and he didn’t call me for weeks. I liked that. Not too eager. It continued like that throughout the whole time we dated. My phone was never deluged with texts and calls from Ethan. I had to ring him . That was a new experience for me. Sometimes he’d leave me sitting alone waiting in restaurants for him –how the press loved that. When I called he’d simply say that he’d forgotten about our arrangement. I thought he was playing a game with me. I guess I learned the hard way.

Ethan was rich, even then. Not as ridiculously wealthy as some of my suitors, of course, but we were never going to be on the breadline. He was from good stock with a family pile in Hertfordshire, a solid, handsome house where we eventually lived. I had my own money too, at one time. But it was expensive being me –looking like that doesn’t come cheap, I’m sure you can imagine –and soon there was very little of it left. Plus, once we were married, Ethan didn’t like other men looking at me. Not in magazines, anyway. The shoots were getting raunchier, less and less clothing. I could have had a big contract with a line of very racy underwear but Ethan didn’t like the idea of that either. He didn’t think that it would be good for my image. On his advice, I turned down so many bookings that eventually, I slipped off the radar. As soon as I hit thirty-five, the agency stopped calling at all. The paparazzi didn’t wait outside our London apartment or chase after me when I came out of restaurants. Ethan said that he was relieved. And I was too. In a way. Plus there were always the hungry young things snapping at your heels: nineteen-year-olds with more confidence and attitude than experience. I was one of them once.

‘Are you ready, darling?’ Ethan asks as he swings into the dressing room. He glances impatiently at his watch and does that tapping thing with his foot. ‘We’re going to be late.’

He’s still handsome, my husband. There’s a smattering of grey in his hair, but it only makes him look more distinguished over the years. It’s so terribly unfair that men grow more beautiful with age whereas women, inevitably, do not. He looks so smart in his hand-tailored charcoal grey suit and crisp white shirt.

‘Is that a new tie?’ I usually bought all his clothes and I didn’t recognise it.

He looks down. It’s grey silk with a faint black line through it. Very stylish. ‘Yes.’

‘You bought it yourself?’

Ethan rolls his eyes. ‘I am perfectly capable of buying my own ties, Lydia. I don’t see why you should be so surprised.’

But I am surprised. That was my role: I looked after the house, I looked after Ethan, I shopped for him.

‘It’s nice,’ I offer.

Even after all this time, I still love him. We’ recently celebrated our fifteenth wedding anniversary. Well, when I say ‘celebrated’ I mean that Ethan was away on business somewhere –Denmark, I think –and I opened a bottle of fizz on my own and watched re-runs of Wallander . When he was less busy we were hoping to hop off for a week somewhere warm.

It’s a party tonight. Another one. This one at The Dorchester. A thank you for five hundred of Ethan’s staff for hitting their targets in these terrible times of recession. Some of them will be made redundant next week, but they don’t know that yet. Tonight, they’ll still be blissfully unaware of their fate and on a high.

I take one last look in the mirror. The last time I appeared in the Daily Mail it was a shot from our beach holiday in Barbados pointing out the cellulite on the back of my thighs. I was mortified. That was the day that my unswerving attachment to the sarong started. Of course, that was years ago. I’ll be forty-five next birthday. Not a milestone birthday, as such, but one that takes me another step further away from my prime. None of the newspapers care what I look like now. But I do. My skin used to be like porcelain, white and flawless. There are wrinkles now –fine ones, thanks to Crème de la Mer and some well-aimed Botox. But they’re undeniably there. Perhaps I’ll have some of the lights taken away from around this mirror. It’s too bright, unforgiving. I might like myself better if I were perpetually in soft focus. I ease back my cheeks with my fingertips and watch my jawline tighten. That’s how I used to look. Once when I was young and desirable.