The Marriage Trap Page 11

  Her parents wouldn’t hear of it. She was their only daughter and they were going to do it right. Not to mention, of course, how well it fitted into her father’s spiritual plans. And wasn’t it luck, Marguerite had remarked, that they could do all the preparations themselves and would not have to worry about caterers and flowers and bridesmaids and receptions. Things could come about so much more quickly this way.

  That was, in fact, how they had decided upon Saturday.

  ‘Then you’ll still be able to spend a few days with us before you have to get back to the States,’ her mother said. ‘It will be lovely. Honestly, darling, you worry too much.’

  Courtney supposed there was some truth to that. She was worrying every minute of every day. She worried what she would do if Aidan told her father it was all a lie, and then she worried what she would do if he didn’t.

  She expected every moment of every day that he would come and tell her that it was all off. And she was amazed every moment that went by and he didn’t.

  She began to wonder why.

  She wanted to ask him, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear his answer.

  Unless.

  Unless he was coming to love her the way she had learned to love him.

  Fat chance.

  But still, what other reason would he have for persisting in the charade, unless he wanted it to be real? She leaned back against the outside wall of one of the huts and scowled as she thought about it.

  It wasn’t the sort of thing she liked letting herself do, wallowing in make-believe this way. Not unless she could get a book out of it anyway. And she couldn’t get a book out of this, that was certain. Still she couldn’t stop tipping her head back and closing her eyes, letting the soft sounds of the children playing and the women chatting while they worked play over her while she thought about the possibility of marrying an Aidan Sawyer who loved her.

  It was altogether too tempting—and too likely to lead absolutely nowhere. But the feelings she got around Aidan Sawyer were a far cry from anything she had felt about Clarke or any of his predecessors, and she couldn’t help the way he made her feel. All the other men she had known had all been too stodgy, bland and set in their ways for her. They had looked at her stubborn chin and had shaken their heads. Or they had taken her spirit and tried to break it or mould it to suit theirs.

  Only Aidan had fought her nose to nose. He might have resented her coercing him into bringing her, but he had done it. And when things had got rough, he had come to her rescue. As she had come to his. They were suited, she told herself.

  But there wasn’t any future in it.

  Unless he had undergone a miraculous transformation—a transformation that seemed highly unlikely considering the fact that he hadn’t even smiled at her in days—chances were not good.

  She glanced across the compound at him now. He was laughing and talking with three Indian men. He had been sitting there for the last hour, and he hadn’t so much as looked at her. She looked at him gloomily. Then her gaze drifted to two little children chasing a rooster in the dirt.

  In the past, childish occupations like that had only reminded her of her own past, giving her memories that were frequently the starting point of some story or other. Now they made her think of the future—of the possibility of children of her own.

  Aidan’s children?

  ‘Stop it,’ she muttered aloud and, hauling herself to her feet, she went inside the hut to see if she couldn’t coerce her mother into finding something for her to do.

  But all the time she was washing the clothes her mother had found for her, she kept right on thinking about the impossible. And hoping.

  Perhaps he would come to her and tell her he meant it to be more than a sham. Perhaps he would tell her that he had fallen in love with her after all. And perhaps her father would wake up some morning and decide he wasn’t cut out to save the world.

  Not likely, any of them.

  * * *

  The day of the wedding dawned under the threat of a torrential rainstorm. Suitable, Courtney thought, as she stared out of the door of the hut. Maybe they could call it off, like a baseball game. How many weddings had been called off because of rain?

  None. And this wasn’t going to be the first, and she knew it. Nothing would stop her father from performing the ceremony precisely at ten o’clock, not even another of Noah’s floods. It would go on as scheduled… unless Aidan left her at the altar.

  The possibility occurred to her almost hourly. Though whether she was worried that he would or that he wouldn’t, she didn’t know for sure. She could imagine the whole situation in vivid detail, right up to when she would walk out of the hut and across the compound to where her father would be standing, waiting for her. And when she would look for Aidan, no one would be there.

  He had given no sign that he intended to abandon her. But what did that signify? Though her experience with such things was not great, she doubted if many men who bolted at the last minute dropped blatant hints beforehand. And he certainly couldn’t be marrying her unwillingly. Could he? For the thousandth time she wished she knew the answer to that question.

  Her hand shook as she brushed her hair and the brush fell to the ground. Only two hours until the fateful moment. Jacinta, who had been like her shadow ever since her mother had started planning the wedding, pounced on it and handed it back to her.

  ‘You worry?’ she asked Courtney, a smile lighting her dark face.

  ‘Yes.’ At least she didn’t have to lie about that. It was all right for brides to be panicky, though not for her reasons.

  ‘Come eat something,’ Jacinta urged her. ‘You feel better.’

  ‘Yes, do,’ Marguerite encouraged, taking in her daughter’s pale face and trembling hands.

  Courtney shook her head. ‘I couldn’t. I—don’t feel too well.’

  Marguerite smiled benignly. ‘It’s only nerves. I felt the same way the day I was marrying Chippy.’

  Courtney doubted that her parents’ wedding had been even remotely like this one, but she didn’t say so. She just went on numbly brushing her hair until it shone golden in the stormy shadows of the mid-morning light.

  ‘A little food in your stomach will do you good,’ Marguerite insisted, thrusting a bowl of spicy vegetable soup into her hands.

  Soup she couldn’t face. But seeing that she wasn’t going to escape without something, she reached for some grapes and popped one into her mouth. ‘I think I’ll take some to Aidan,’ she said quickly, needing an excuse to escape.

  ‘It’s bad luck, sweetie,’ her mother cautioned.

  What could be worse? Courtney wondered. But she merely shook her head and said, ‘I’ll tell him to hide his eyes.’

  Once she had got away from her mother and the everpresent Jacinta, she thought that seeing Aidan was an excellent idea.

  She could not, absolutely could not, face being left at the altar and having to make explanations there. If he was going to back out at the last minute, he owed it to her to tell her now.

  And if he wasn’t?

  If he wasn’t, she wanted to know that, too. And why. Crossing her fingers, she strode across the compound and entered his hut.

  He was still asleep. She stared, outraged at the injustice of it. She hadn’t slept more than ten minutes all night. Probably not more than ten hours over the past three days. And he was lying there in his hammock, curled on his side, a thin cotton blanket half-way down his chest, which rose and fell with the even breathing of a man who didn’t have a care in the world.

  She walked around the hammock, staring at him from both sides, trying to decide how she should wake him… if she should wake him. Once she walked to the door, then came back and stood glowering down on his sleeping form. With her luck he wouldn’t leave before the wedding, he would just sleep right through it!

  And what would her father—and his parishioners—think then?

  She reached out and took hold of his foot and shook him firmly. He scowled fierc
ely and twitched away from her, grumbling in his sleep. She tugged again.

  ‘Ahem!’

  He blinked, then opened his eyes and frowned at her from beneath the mosquito netting. ‘Oh, it’s you. What d’you want?’ His voice was gruff with sleep.

  ‘I brought you some grapes.’ She held them out.

  He shook his head, baffled. ‘You woke me up for that?’

  ‘I need to talk to you.’

  He rubbed his hands through his already spiky hair, then squinted at her. ‘Why?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why?’ he repeated, as if it were a perfectly sane question. He rubbed a hand over his face, scratching absently at the stubbly beard that had been growing for the past few days.

  ‘You do know what today is, don’t you?’

  ‘Saturday?’ he ventured.

  ‘Yes. It’s Saturday,’ she agreed through clenched teeth, feeling as if she were talking to a half-wit. ‘And what happens on Saturday, do you remember that?’

  He straightened out in the hammock and stared up at her implacably. ‘We’re getting married.’ There was absolutely no emotion in his voice.

  Courtney felt a tidal wave of emotion swamp her. ‘Are we?’ She couldn’t help it. The question sprang out unbidden.

  He went completely still. ‘Unless you called it off. Did you?’

  ‘N… no. I… thought… you would.’

  He stared at her, his face still not giving anything away. ‘No,’ he said evenly, ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Oh.’ She hoped there wasn’t as much relief in her voice as she felt in her bones. She gave him what she hoped was a bright smile. ‘Well, uh… all right.’

  They looked at each other in silence.

  Courtney twisted the tails of her shirt nervously. ‘I… er, I… that’s all I wanted to know, really,’ she babbled. ‘I just…’ she gave a half-hysterical laugh, ‘didn’t want to be… left at the… altar.’

  He looked at her, his eyes blank. ‘No.’

  She managed a smile again, twisted her shirt tails again, then began backing out of the hut quickly, and knocked over the rickety bookcase that her father had built and which impeded backward progress towards the door.

  ‘Heavens,’ she muttered and turned to right it, stuffing the books in haphazardly, feeling her cheeks and the back of her neck burn. She got all the books back in, then flashed a worried glance at Aidan. He hadn’t moved.

  ‘Well, I’ll… see you later,’ she said brightly, giving him a jaunty wave of her hand.

  ‘Yes.’

  She was out of the door in a flash, and back a split second later. ‘Aidan?’

  He looked startled. ‘What?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why are you going through with it?’

  He glared at her. ‘You need me to.’

  ‘But you don’t have to,’ she argued.

  ‘Would you rather I didn’t?’

  ‘No. I mean, yes. I mean… well, you don’t have to. I can think of something else,’ she went on frantically.

  ‘What?’ His voice held an emotion at last—scorn.

  She didn’t know. She hung her head. Her heart pounded painfully against her ribs. Why hadn’t she just left things well alone? Why hadn’t she quit while she was ahead? ‘I… I could think of something,’ she said finally.

  Aidan snorted.

  ‘You told me you didn’t want to be married again,’ she went on steadfastly, wishing she would shut up with every word she spoke. ‘You said marriage was a trap. So why are you doing it?’ Say you love me, she pleaded silently. Tell me that’s the reason.

  ‘It doesn’t have to be a trap,’ Aidan said calmly and reasonably. ‘We can always get it annulled.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘Dearly beloved…’

  It was actually happening.

  ‘We are gathered here today…’

  She hadn’t believed it would, not even at the last instant.

  ‘…to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony.’

  But it was. She and Aidan were standing side by side, stiff and silent, while her father intoned the introductory words of the marriage ceremony. He paused then and smiled at them both, then turned to the assembled congregation, a group of about forty Indians plus his wife and Robert, all equally stiff and silent except for Marguerite’s audible sniffs, and repeated the words in the Indian dialect.

  Courtney tried to catch a glimpse of Aidan out of the corner of her eye. But the veil her mother had fashioned out of a sheer length of nylon net that someone had traded for and had used to catch bait with made it difficult. But she had no difficulty remembering the white, strained face she had focused on when she had walked in measured steps across the compound to the soft reedy flutes that had played an improvised processional moments before.

  ‘…those who enter into this relation shall cherish a mutual esteem and love,’ her father was saying. ‘They bear with each other’s infirmities and weaknesses, comfort each other… in honesty and industry provide for each other.’

  The words, which ought to have been an inspiration, were a condemnation instead. It was hypocrisy. It was wrong. It was a mockery of all that marriage should be. And yet it wasn’t.

  She did love Aidan. Given the chance, she would cherish him, would bear with him in sickness and pain, would comfort him. In honesty she could promise to be the best wife she could be.

  But Aidan wanted no wife.

  ‘Aidan Sawyer, will you take this woman to be your wife?’ Endicott directed his gaze at the man who stood beside her. ‘Will you pledge your commitment to her in ail love and honour, in all duty and service, in all faith and tenderness, to live with her in the holy bond of marriage?’

  Courtney couldn’t even lift her eyes to watch his face. She could do no more than stare at the dirt between her feet and hold her breath. She only breathed again when she heard the words, emotionless and wooden, ‘I will.’

  ‘And you, my daughter…’ She knew from her father’s voice that he was smiling at her, but she couldn’t smile back. She could do nothing except feel the misery of the moment, knowing that she was marrying the man she loved, promising the things she meant most deeply in her heart, and that they were the last words on earth he wanted to hear.

  Her father repeated the question he had asked Aidan lo her this time, then waited for her response.

  She shivered as if the sun had vanished, though the storm had come and gone and it shone brighter than ever. Then she dredged up the words from the bottom of her heart. ‘I will.’

  Endicott beamed. He reached for her hand which, despite the heat and humidity, felt cold and clammy, and he put it into Aidan’s colder, clammier one. ‘Please be seated,’ he said.

  They sat on a makeshift bench, the tribe clustered around, sitting on mats, every eye on Endicott who bowed his head for a moment, shut his eyes, then, taking a breath, lifted his gaze and looked right at the couple seated before him.

  ‘Marriage,’ he said in the soft, slow cadences that Courtney remembered from childhood, ‘is a commitment. It is a promise. A burden, and yet a joy. It brings with it happiness and it can bring with it hardship. But above all, it must bring with it love.’ He looked at them each in turn. Courtney swallowed hard, then, steeling herself, met his gaze. If Aidan did, she had no way of knowing. His hand tightened convulsively around hers.

  ‘It is not,’ her father went on sonorously, ‘always what we would have it be. And it is not,’ he added with a self-deprecating smile, ‘always with whom other people would have us marry. But there is a lesson there, too. We must not always think we know best. We must be open, willing to learn, to embrace the things we do not understand, the things we would not have chosen… for there is a wisdom beyond ours.’

  He folded his hands and smiled down at the couple sitting so stiffly before him. ‘It is that wisdom that we celebrate today. It is that commitment we celebrate today. We do not know what the future brin
gs to this marriage, to these two young people. But we pray that they are blessed with happiness, fidelity, the joys of parenthood, long life. We hope earnestly that they will bring these things to each other, enriching each other’s lives, cherishing each other as long as they both shall live.’

  Courtney felt more vile, more rotten, more perfectly awful than she had ever felt in her life. Because she wanted all those things desperately—wanted them with Aidan—and the whole thing, all her promises, all his, all her father’s well chosen words, were a lie. She bowed her head and wished the earth would swallow her up.

  ‘Come now,’ her father was saying, beckoning to them. Trembling she got to her feet and Aidan lurched to his. She heard him let out a pent-up breath. She heard him swallow. She felt the slight tremor in his hand which still held hers.

  ‘The vows,’ Endicott said, turning to Aidan.

  The vows. Compounding the disaster, they promised each other fidelity, love, kindness—everything good and beautiful.

  Then Aidan took a ring and slipped it on her finger, repeating the words her father said, ‘With this ring, I thee wed.’ And their eyes met for the first time since she had walked across the compound. She thought he looked as if he had died.

  His expression was hunted, as if he were caught in a trap from which there was no escape, and the only way out was to retreat within himself.

  She was glad she had no ring for him. It would only have made things worse.

  ‘I now pronounce you man and wife.’ Endicott turned to Aidan. ‘You may kiss the bride.’

  Marguerite stepped forward and lifted the former fishnet from her daughter’s face, turning her bodily so she faced the man who was her husband. He didn’t move, just looked at her, stricken.

  ‘Well, go on, man, don’t be bashful.’ Endicott was chortling now. He gave Aidan a push on the shoulder. ‘Kiss your wife.’

  Courtney remembered their last kiss—their first kiss. She remembered the warmth, the way the blood sang in her veins, the way her heart hammered and her body had responded to his. She remembered the need she felt, I he overpowering ache that had only grown worse when at last he had put her away from him. The colour flared in her cheeks.