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'So it was a marriage of necessity?' Marco shrugged dismissively. Was he good in bed?'
It continued to irk Marco to have to admit that his direct and unsubtle challenge to Emily had sprung from a sudden surge of physical jealousy that the thought of her with another man had aroused. But then sexual jealousy wasn't an emotion he'd ever previously had to deal with. Sex was sex, a physical appetite satisfied by a physical act. Emotions didn't come into it and he had never seen why they should.
He still didn't. And he still had no idea what had made him confront her like that, or what had driven such an out-of-character fury at the thought of her with another man even though she had had yet to become his. It had caught him totally off guard when he had seen the sudden shimmer of suppressed tears in her eyes. At first he'd wanted to believe they were caused by her grief at the breakdown of her marriage, but to his shock, she had told him quietly:
Our marriage...our relationship, in fact, was never physically consummated.' Marco remembered how he had struggled not to show his astonishment, perhaps for the first time in his life recognising that what he had needed to show wasn't the arrogant disbelief so often evinced by his grandfather, but instead restraint and patience, to give her time to explain. Which was exactly what she had done, once she had silently checked that he wasn't going to refuse to believe her.
I was too naive to realise at first that Victor making no attempt to approach me sexually might not be a...because of gentlemanly consideration for my inexperience.’ she continued. 'And then even after we were married—I didn't want him you see. So it was easy for me not to question why he didn't want to make love to me. If I hadn't lived such a sheltered life, and I’d spent more time with people my own age things would probably have been different, and I’d certainly have been more aware that something wasn't right. But as it was it wasn't until I...I found him in bed with someone else that I realised—'
He had a mistress.' Marco interrupted her his normal instinct to question and probe reasserting itself.
There was just the merest pause before she told him quietly. He had a lover, yes. A male lover' she emphasised shakily.
I should have guessed, of course, and I suspect poor Victor thought that I had. He treated me very much as a junior partner in our relationship, like a child whom he expected to revere him and accept his superiority. For me to find him in bed with one of his young students was a terrible blow to his pride. He couldn't forgive me for blundering in on them, and the only way I could forgive myself for being so foolish was to insist that we divorce. At first he was reluctant to agree. He belonged more to my grandfather's generation than to his own. I suspect. He couldn't come to terms with his sexuality, which was why he had tried to conceal it within a fake marriage.
He refused to say why he couldn't be open about his sexual nature. He got very angry when I tried to talk to him about it and suggested that, for his own sake, he should accept himself. The truth was as I quickly learned that to others his sexuality was not the secret he liked to think. There was no valid reason why he should have hidden it, but he was just that kind of man.
I‘d been left a bit of money by my grandfather and so I came to London and got a job. I’d always been interested in interior design, so I went back to college to get my qualifications and then a couple of years ago after working for someone else's studio. I set up in business on my own. I wanted a fresh start and to get away from people who had known...about Victor. They must have thought me such a fool for not realising. I felt almost as though I was some kind of freak...Married, but not married.’
‘And a virgin?’ Marco added.
'Yes’ Emily agreed, before continuing. I wanted to be somewhere where no one was going to make assumptions about me because of my marriage.
Their food arrived before Marco had the chance ask her about the man whom he assumed must have eventually taken her virginity. But he wondered about him. And envied him?
Marco frowned now not wanting to remember the fierce sense of urgency to make Emily totally his that had filled him then and that had continued to hold him in its grip even when he had ultimately possessed her.
He walked back to the bed whilst Emily watched him her heart thumping unsteadily into her ribs. They had been lovers for almost three years, but Marco still had the same effect on her as he had done the first time she had seen him: the impact of his male sexuality was such that it both enthralled and overwhelmed her. Even now when she could feel the pain of the emotional gulf between them almost as strongly as she felt her own desire.
