Lindsay Armstrong: Trial By Marriage

She swung round from the dressmaker’s dummy convulsively to see Cliff Wyatt standing just inside the front door, his dark gaze riveted upon the wedding-dress. ‘What a—concoction!’ he added wryly, and drew his gaze from it to her, standing in her socks. ‘But you know’ he mused as he took in her loose hair and the lovely pink and gold quilted sleeveless jacket she’d put on for warmth, ‘I could picture you in something… simpler?’

Sarah closed her mouth with a click, bit the cotton thread and put her needle carefully into a pin-cushion before she said arctically, ‘It’s not mine, Mr Wyatt, so neither did you do me an injustice nor are any as- persions you care to cast at my taste in fashion going to do anything other than bounce harmlessly off me.’

‘My apologies,’ he said gravely. ‘So you make wedding-dresses in your spare time?’

‘No, I don’t,’ she said crossly. ‘Well, I am doing this one in my spare time but it’s the first. It’s Cindy Lawson’s. You may have noticed that this part of the world is not densely populated by dressmakers so I… well, offered to help out.’

He laughed. ‘As a matter of fact I’ve had that fact rammed down my throat with monotonous, mad- dening consistency today—I mean the lack of dress- makers, hairdressers, beauticians, manicurists, boutiques—and the like. My sister does not believe she can live without them these days,’ he added with less than humour.

‘Well, I should have thought that would have been obvious to you before today,’ Sarah said candidly.

‘True,’ he agreed drily. ‘What was not so obvious was that she would take it into her head at this highly inconvenient time to decide she was a much maligned wife and to come running home to me.’

Sarah shrugged as if it was none of her business, which it wasn’t, and said curtly, ‘If you’ve come to check out the schoolhouse, it’s all locked up and you’re about three hours late.’

‘It seems I need to apologise again,’ he replied pleasantly, ‘which I do. I got caught up in other things and away from a phone.’

‘Oh.’ Sarah gazed at him and discovered what it felt like to have the wind taken out of your sails. ‘Well…’ she paused, then reached for her boots ‘… I suppose I could unlock it—uh—my casserole! If you wouldn’t mind waiting while I take it out of the oven—.’

‘No, don’t do that—is that what’s creating such a delicious aroma?—and don’t bother to struggle into your boots again,’ he said politely. ‘I really only came to explain that I’d been held up; we can do our tour another time. But there is something you could do for me,’ he said, his gaze wandering around the colourful room and coming to rest on the open wine bottle on the counter that divided the living-area from the kitchen. ‘You could offer me a drink.’

Sarah blinked then took her glasses off and rubbed her eyes. ‘You… want to sit down and have a drink with me?’ she said cautiously as she put her glasses back on.

‘Why not?’ he queried. ‘It sounds like an essen- tially civilised thing to do. I also like Bach.’

‘Very well,’ Sarah said with a little tilt of her chin, because although there was no outward manifestation of it she knew perfectly well that he was laughing at her and would succeed in making her feel churlish and petty if she expressed any further reluctance- damn him! she thought darkly. ‘I was having a glass of wine; it’s nothing outstanding but it’s all there is—.’

‘So you better just drink it and behave yourself, Mr Wyatt,’ he said softly. ‘I’ll do my best, ma’am.’ And he had the gall to sit himself down in an armchair and offer her a bland, innocent expression.

She went to get another glass with all the com- posure she could muster, and took her casserole out anyway because it was ready. But finally there was nothing left to do but sit down opposite him after handing him his glass, and rack her brains for some- thing to say.

He said it for her. ‘Were you born to this kind of life, Miss Sutherland?’

Surprise caused her to lift an eyebrow. ‘No. Why do you ask?’

‘You seem to be extremely competent at it.’

‘I like it,’ Sarah said slowly. ‘For one thing,’ she went on with a little spark of irony in her blue eyes, ‘as you so rightly surmised, I’m… well, I love teaching—’

‘You could teach just as well in a city.’

‘But I couldn’t have my own school.’

‘I see,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘But there must be other things you like about the place?’

‘Oh, there are. They’re just a bit hard to put into words,’ she said non-committally and sipped her wine.

His lips twisted. ‘I wouldn’t have thought that was often a problem for you.’ And he waited.

Sarah frowned then said with some asperity, ‘Why do I get the feeling this is lapsing into the kind of discussion we had this morning?’

‘It could be,’ he drawled, ‘that, while I’m trying to draw you out in a very friendly sort of manner, you are resisting strongly. Very strongly for the rather small person you are, in fact. But of course I should have realised that smallness in stature and smallness of spirit are two very different things; indeed, I should have realised it from the moment you offered to punch me in the mouth.’

Sarah stared at him steadily for a long moment but no blinding revelations came her way. He looked only minimally less vital than he had in the morning—as if he was enjoying the opportunity to relax—and he looked absolutely no less wildly attractive for being able to rest his broad shoulders lazily back in her arm chair, stretch his long legs out and return her steady regard with just the suspicion of a wickedly amused little glint in his dark eyes. She said at last, ‘Perhaps I don’t forgive and forget that easily.’

‘Ah. Well, may I say that you look much less like a born and bred school-marm than you did this morning?’ His gaze rested on her loose hair that had a tendency to be full and wayward when unconfined and show off the golden glints in its brownness more, as well as highlight her delicate bone-structure, then his gaze drifted to her hands, which were slim and elegant, and her narrow, also elegant feet in plain white socks—which she immediately tried to tuck out of sight. ‘Yes,’ he mused, ‘not so prim and proper or fighting mad. Have you ever thought of wearing contact lenses? Your eyes are a rather lovely blue.’

A tinge of colour stole into Sarah’s cheeks but she forced herself to say coolly, ‘Flattery will get you no- where, Mr Wyatt. I adjusted to not being a raving beauty years ago.’

‘There’s that old saying about beauty being in the eye of the beholder,’ he murmured thoughtfully. ‘It seems rather—inexplicable to me that your domes- ticity alone hasn’t made some man want to take you for his wife.’

The colour in her cheeks increased. ‘If that’s trying to draw me out in a very friendly manner,’ she said curtly, ‘I’d hate to think how you’d do it when you’re feeling hostile.’

He shrugged and looked at her with a faint, genuine frown. ‘I don’t know why but you strike me as some- thing of an enigma, Miss Sutherland.’

‘No, I’m not, I’m perfectly normal!’ she was goaded into saying. ‘However I may look to you, for example,’ she went on scathingly, ‘I would rather die than be married for my domesticity.’

‘So you believe in love, grand passions—and all that kind of thing?’

‘Yes …’ Sarah stopped and bit her lip.

‘Has it ever happened for you?’

‘No… look, why are we talking about it?’ she said with a mixture of confusion and irritation. ‘It’s got nothing whatsoever to do with you!’