of fact I thought it quite got you off the bit for a moment, Justin.’ She changed her expression to one of severity and mimicked, “My wife has been leading people up the garden path from the cradle.” But yes, it would have been better if it had come off,’ she conceded. ‘You do so hate publicity, don’t you, Justin?’
‘I can’t believe you really enjoy it,’ he commented drily.
Lucy wrinkled her nose. ‘It was only a rural paper. I thought it was rather tasteful to choose a rural paper instead of a national daily. And all I’d planned to do was show them the house and some of...our treasures, and all your improvements to the property. It would have been quite a scoop for that young man, don’t you think? Something about the Waites in a newspaper, even just a rural one. You’ve probably blighted his career, Justin, and he was rather sweet, really.’
‘I haven’t blighted his career at all, but he does understand now that my wife is off limits so you might as well forget him, Lucy. And any other young man who takes your fancy.’
Lucy laughed and pushed away her soup. ‘You perceive me quaking in my shoes, Justin,’ she murmured. ‘Still, all may not be lost,’ she mused. ‘There’s got to be at least one person out there now who’s thinking that the Waites of Dalkeith and Riverbend have a very strange marriage.’
‘On the contrary, there could be at least one person out there who is actually thinking that Lucinda Waite is a spoilt brat and deserves a good lesson.’
‘From my experience of young men, Justin, they don’t generally have those thoughts about me. It’s only your generation—at least, you’re the only one of your generation I have to go on, and I have to tell you that if you mean what I think you mean—’
‘That you deserve to be put over someone’s knee and ceremonially spanked?’ he broke in lazily.
‘How picturesque.’ For the first time a little glint of anger lit Lucy’s eyes. ‘I have to tell you I should probably get so angry I’d even be capable of taking a pot-shot at you. Don’t forget I’m an excellent shot and I would know exactly how to inconvenience you considerably without doing a lot of harm—and make it all look like an accident anyway.’
‘That wasn’t what I had in mind, Lucy,’ he drawled, and reached for the decanter to pour himself some wine.
‘How brave you are,’ she retorted.
‘What I had in mind—were I so minded,’ he continued, holding his wine glass up to the light meditatively, ‘was a lesson of another kind. Such as—’ he put the glass down gently and their eyes locked ‘—removing your dress from your delectable body, uncovering your breasts and the rest of you and making love to you until you’re—shall we say, in a much more amenable frame of mind? I have this theory on women,’ he went on, idly inspecting the pulse that had started to beat rather erratically at the base of Lucy’s throat. That without regular, satisfying sex they become fractious and troublesome, and in your case in particular, dear Lucy, that what you really need is a couple of kids to keep you out of mischief.’
It took Lucy several moments to gather enough composure to be able to speak, moments that were made worse for her because her tall, satanic husband did not relax his leisurely scrutiny of her in the slightest and then had the gall to pour her a glass of wine and push it towards her with a faintly amused twist of his lips.
In the end, as she sipped the golden liquid, it was he who spoke first. ‘You don’t agree?’
‘I think,’ Lucy said carefully, ‘that it’s a pity you didn’t live in a different era, a bygone era for example, when women were treated like chattels and it was accepted practice to generalise about them as if they were so many... sheep. As if they had no minds, only instincts.’
Then tell me this—you’ve ordered the course of this marriage so far; how happy has it made you?’
‘You’ve gone along with it,’ she said tautly.
‘Were you secretly hoping I’d do something as uncouth and as—exciting as taking you against your will after you made your dramatic declaration on our wedding-night?’
Lucy gasped. ‘Only minutes ago you were talking about... you were talking about...’
‘Something quite different, Lucy,’ he said.
‘I can’t see it, personally.’ She looked at him defiantly.
‘I was talking about finding out what your will really is in this matter,’ he said and his teeth glinted in a sudden grin. ‘Don’t look so worried, I’m not going to do it. Not tonight, at least. But I do make the point that to a certain extent you’ve given me yourself as a hostage in this ridiculous war, Lucy, and perhaps you should bear it in mind the next time you decide to fire any shots. Would you care to dish up the casserole or shall I?’
Lucy put down her napkin and stood up. The silver casserole was on a hot plate on the sideboard. ‘I will,’ she said, but didn’t move immediately. ‘Justin, you gave me very little choice about marrying you. You made it very plain that I could lose everything I possessed, not the least my home, where I’ve lived all my life, if I didn’t marry you. You put it to me that we could fight each other for years over Dalkeith and that you would fight for it although it was more or less all I had, while you’d inherited Riverbend and made yourself a huge fortune on top of it—’
‘That’s debatable—’
‘Don’t interrupt,’ she commanded. ‘But since you have, it was never my fault that our fathers were foolish enough to own this place in partnership and then even more foolish to fall out with each other and leave us to inherit this mess—’
‘Lucy, the cold, hard facts of the matter are a little different. Because Riverbend and Dalkeith are adjoining properties and because our fathers were friends, when your father got into financial difficulties, my father offered to inject some money into the place and accept a partnership in return—a silent partnership,’ he said significantly. And waited while Lucy tried to look unaffected but failed. He went on, ‘What broke up the friendship, despite this concession to your father’s ego, despite trying to help save Dalkeith from going under the hammer, was that your father persisted in believing that Australia could ride on the back of its sheep forever and fought every suggestion my father ever made for diversification away from growing wool.’
Lucy bit her lip. ‘I didn’t know all that,’ she said bravely, however.
‘No, but that wasn’t my fault,’ he retorted impatiently. ‘It was his fault that you didn’t know, his fault that you were allowed to queen it over all and sundry as Lucinda Wainright of Dalkeith and never suspect you’d have to share this place with anyone, let alone with me, whom your father had given you the impression you shouldn’t want to know any more anyway. Although—’ his eyes glinted ‘—there were times when you didn’t mind knowing me, Lucy.’
She coloured faintly but said with spirit, ‘If you’re referring to the days when I was barely out of rompers and didn’t know better than to follow you around whenever you were here—’
‘As a matter of fact I’m not referring to those days,’ he said softly—and said no more.
She blushed properly this time, which made her angrier. ‘If this is your revenge for—’ She stopped abruptly.
‘It isn’t,’ he answered equably. ‘Not against you, anyway.’
‘Then tell me this, Justin: what was your motivation for coming to see me only a fortnight after my father’s funeral and telling me that the only sensible course for us to pursue was to get married?’
‘Ah, well, my better nature did slip a bit then, I have to confess. You were so proud. I could also visualise the complications that might arise if someone else married you or got you pregnant before we’d sorted it all out. You have to agree, Lucy, that you left a trail of broken hearts around the district—it was really only a matter of time before you—er—fell. But