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Amanda’s hands balled tensely into fists in the folds of her skirt. She hung on to her patience with an effort. ‘Mother, please don’t start that again.’
‘I’m not starting anything,’ her mother said righteously. ‘But I’m entitled to my opinion, and I find it hideous that any child of mine could have-sold herself for worldly gain.’ She shook her head. ‘A marriage begun for all the wrong reasons will never prosper.’
Amanda suppressed a wry smile. For once, she thought, her mother had been uncannily close to the target.
‘Did you see in the papers how well dear Nigel did in that Swedish rally?’ Mrs Conroy pursued eagerly.
‘I could hardly avoid it,’ Amanda returned neutrally.
She’d been half afraid that his success might revive the stories about her broken engagement and subsequent marriage, but she need not have worried. The newspapers had other, more promising scandals to occupy their attention, as Malory had prophesied. In fact, if she hadn’t panicked over Nigel’s insidious attempt to re-enter her life, there would have been no need for this marriage at all.
‘You’re very pale,’ Mrs Conroy surveyed her critically. ‘And I think you’ve lost weight, too.’ She sniffed. ‘Married life, I suppose. Some men have no consideration.’
‘Some men,’ Amanda agreed levelly. ‘Not all.’ Her lashes lowered to shut out the sight of the older woman’s disapprovingly primmed face. Her mother’s idiosyncratic attitude to sex had never bothered her before, but now she wished suddenly, passionately, that Mrs Conroy was different—the sort of mother it was possible to confide in.
But what could she say?
My married life doesn’t exist in the way that you think. Malory has made love to me once, and once only, and since that evening a month ago when he taught me more about pleasure in a few short minutes than many women experience in a lifetime, he hasn’t touched me or come anywhere near me.
Her mouth twisted ironically. No, she couldn’t say that. Mrs Conroy would undoubtedly tell her how fortunate she was not to be ‘bothered’ in that way.
She picked up her bag, and rose to her feet.
‘Going already?’ Her mother’s mouth turned down discontentedly at the corners.
‘I must, I’m afraid. We’re giving a reception at the house for some foreign buyers tonight, and I need to get back to check on the arrangements.’
‘I should have thought your husband was wealthy enough to employ someone to do that for him,’ Mrs Conroy said sourly.
‘Oh, he is,’ Amanda agreed with a semblance of cheerfulness. ‘But he likes me to be involved.’
And as it was the only purpose she fulfilled in his life, she was determined to make the most of it, she thought, as she drove home.
Her mind went back almost obsessively to that night over four weeks ago. When Malory had left her, she’d eventually pulled herself together and gone up to her room. She’d undressed, put on a lacy peignoir, and curled up on the window seat. At any moment, she knew, the door would open, and he would come to her—to finish what he’d started in that firelit room downstairs. To make her his completely.
She had woken, chilled and cramped, shortly before dawn, to the shattering realisation that she was still alone. She had crept into bed and lain there, shivering. She had been so sure she would spend the night in his arms. So sure, and so wrong.
When morning came, she had stayed in her room until she was certain he’d left the house, telling herself she couldn’t face him—ever. But that had been foolish. She’d been obliged to confront him that evening over the dinner table—and he’d beas if nothing had happened. No awkward initial encounter, no recriminations, no passionate aftermath. As if the previous twenty-four hours had been wiped away and they were still—comparative strangers.
As the days passed, Amanda had realised with a kind of shock that this was how Malory intended their relationship to stay. At first, she hadn’t been able to comprehend the reason, then eventually the truth dawned on Irer. Her initiation into the mechanics of sex had not been at all as she’d anticipated, and she’d been too obsessed with her own disappointment to consider Malory’s reactions. Now, it occurred to her for the first time that he might have been equally disillusioned, have found her lacking as a lover in all kinds of ways.
And there was no way in which she could argue with that, Amanda acknowledged with a small, bitter sigh, as she turned her car into the drive, and parked at the side of the house. Her sole option now was to fill the role he’d indicated for her in this marriage as efficiently as possible, and stop hoping for anything more. Because, shamingly, she’d come to realise that Malory had aroused needs and longings in her that only he could satisfy.
