Newlyweds Of Convenience. Jessica Hart
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terrible scene on their wedding night.
She looked back at photograph. ‘But…this looks like a castle,’ she said, still puzzled.
‘It is.’ To her relief, Torr moved away from the fireplace and sat down on the sofa at right angles to her chair. He lounged easily in one corner, as far away from her as he could get. ‘You can only see the medieval part in that view, but there’s a later wing behind, so it’s more comfortable than it looks.’
‘You’ve inherited a castle?’ said Mallory in disbelief. She was more than half convinced now that the whole thing was some kind of hoax that Torr was pursuing for his own reasons.
A bit like their marriage, in fact.
‘The whole estate,’ he said, as if it were the most normal thing in the world to acquire a ruined castle. ‘And the title that goes with it, if that interests you. It turns out that I’m the new Laird of Kincaillie,’ he went on, an ironic inflexion in his voice, ‘and as you’re my wife, all evidence to the contrary, that makes you the Lady.’
All evidence to the contrary. Mallory flushed and her eyes slid away from his.
‘I didn’t realise that you were in line to inherit a castle,’ she said uncomfortably.
‘Nor did I,’ said Torr. ‘Oh, I knew that my family had associations with Kincaillie, but I certainly never expected it to be mine. I remember my father took me there when I was sixteen, and my great-uncle was Laird, but he had two sons so it didn’t seem likely I would ever inherit. One of them was killed in an accident years ago, and the younger brother had already emigrated to New Zealand by then and didn’t want to come back. There’s a complicated entail in place which means that Kincaillie can’t be sold, so it’s been abandoned for the last few years. Apparently he had a heart attack a few months ago, and it took some time for the lawyers to track me down.’
‘And you just heard today?’
Torr shook his head. ‘I’ve known for a couple of months. I went up there for a few days as soon as I’d got the letter. I met the solicitors and had a look at Kincaillie again.’
‘A couple of months?’ Charlie lifted his head from his paws as Mallory’s voice rose. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Frankly, I didn’t think you’d be interested.’ Torr’s expression hardened. ‘You haven’t shown much interest in my life up to now, have you?’
Mallory coloured. It was true. She had barely known him when they got married, and she had learnt virtually nothing about him in the five months since their wedding.
‘If you’d been interested enough to ask where I was going when I went up to Scotland, I’d have told you.’
‘I assumed it was a business trip,’ she said uncomfortably.
‘And I assumed you didn’t care one way or the other.’
The truth was that she hadn’t. She hadn’t cared about anything since Steve had betrayed her and abandoned her and skipped the country, leaving her to deal with the mess he had left behind.
‘Why tell me now, then?’ she asked.
‘Because you’ll need to start packing.’
‘What for?’
‘I told you, we’re moving to Kincaillie.’
Mallory drew a breath. ‘You’re not serious about that, are you?’
‘Of course I’m serious.’
‘But it’s a ruin,’ she said, looking down at the photograph again.
‘It needs a bit of work, agreed,’ Torr replied, ‘but you were the one who wanted something to do.’
‘A bit of work? You only need to look at this picture to see that it’s a major restoration project! It’ll take for ever.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Torr, ‘but staying in Ellsborough isn’t an option. I’ve sold all my businesses, and I got a good deal on the house, which was confirmed today.’
Mallory was still trying to assimilate the news that he had sold his companies when his last words registered belatedly. ‘Which house?’ she asked with a sense of foreboding.
‘This one, of course.’
‘You’ve sold the house?’ she repeated very slowly, an unfamiliar feeling stirring inside her.
Anger.
How strange to feel angry again, she thought with a detached part of her brain. Strange to feel anything after all these months of feeling nothing at all. But that was definitely rage flickering along her veins, warming the iciness inside her.
Torr was watching her face with sardonic amusement. ‘I didn’t even have to advertise,’ he said. ‘There were so many buyers who’d expressed an interest if the house ever went on the market that it went straight to auction. Of course, the fact that the interior had been designed by Mallory Hunter just upped the price, as I’m sure you’ll be glad to know!’
Mallory surged to her feet, startling Charlie, who sat up and studied her worriedly. He had never seen her like this before, her face bright with fury, her hands clenching and unclenching.
Mallory had never felt like this before. The anger was crackling through her. She had once seen a film of a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, and she had marvelled at the way it slowly spread its crumpled wings. That was how it was for her. The unfamiliar anger was filling her up, warming her, pushing into cracks and crevices until everything that had been weak and crumpled and collapsed about her was smooth and whole again, until she was Mallory Hunter, grown woman of thirty-two and successful interior designer, instead of the broken, beaten shell Steve had left behind.
‘Without even discussing it with me?’ she demanded of Torr, who regarded her with a kind of speculative interest, noting how the dark brown eyes, dull for so long, were suddenly flashing.
‘Why should I?’
‘I’m your wife!’
‘Only when it suits you,’ he said brutally. ‘Like when you needed me to pay off all your debts, for instance.’
Mallory flushed, but stood her ground. ‘We had an agreement,’ she reminded him. ‘You said you needed a hostess, someone to help you with entertaining who wouldn’t make any emotional demands on you. I needed somewhere to live where I could have Charlie with me, and, yes, you would settle my debts. But that was the deal,’ she said fiercely. ‘The house was part of that, and now you’re telling me that you’ve sold it out from under me without even mentioning the possibility!’
‘I’m providing another home,’ said Torr indifferently. ‘And one Charlie will like a lot more than this one.’
Hugging her arms together against the sick, panicky feeling, Mallory turned away. The anger was already fading, leaving her feeling trapped and suffocated. There had to be some way out of this. All she had to do was keep calm.
She drew a deep breath. ‘Look, can we talk about this? I know how much I owe you, and that I haven’t been very… forthcoming,’ she said, and moistened her lips. ‘You’re right, I haven’t made much of an effort to make our marriage work so far, but I will,’ she promised. ‘I’ve realised that I have to find a way of moving on from Steve.’
Torr’s expression was far from encouraging, but Mallory gritted her teeth and ploughed on. ‘We got off to a bad start,’ she tried again.
‘That’s one way of putting it,’ he said, with a short, unamused laugh.
There was an unpleasant silence, and for Mallory it was as if they were both back in that expensive, awful hotel room, at the moment when she had realised, much, much too late, what a terrible mistake she had made.
‘Don’t do