The Marriage Trap Read online

  ‘Uncle Leander?’ Her mother sounded totally baffled. ‘We didn’t write you about Leander. You never got our letter?’

  ‘Never. I haven’t heard a word out of you for over a year. And you know about the trust. Uncle Leander is ready to get the lawyers to try to break it, and I had to stop him. So I came. I came to prove to him that you were really still alive—that some day you’d be home and need that money.’

  But as she spoke, her mother began to smile and shake her head. Her confusion had obviously cleared, and now she patted Courtney’s hand as if to humour her.

  ‘That’s what you think,’ she said when Courtney stopped speaking.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You really came to marry Robert.’

  Surely she was hearing things. Surely her mother hadn’t just said something about marrying someone. Heavens above, she didn’t even know anyone named Robert!

  ‘Mother, I’m here because of Leander. I need to get Daddy to write and sign a letter giving his whereabouts, I need to have it witnessed, and I need to get back to Los Angeles within three weeks.’

  But Marguerite had more important things on her mind. She was shaking her head and murmuring about how Courtney was getting more lovely with every passing year and how pleased Robert would be, and how right Endicott had been to think of it.

  ‘Mother,’ Courtney tried again. But her words were cut off at once by a booming voice.

  ‘Ah, daughter!’ And she was quite suddenly enveloped in a fatherly hug. ‘At last!’

  Endicott Perkins beamed down at her, still as burly and beneficent as ever, his snowy white hair and wire-rimmed glasses making him look positively cherubic. He looked, too, as if he had just pulled off a minor miracle, and if he actually thought she was going to marry someone called Robert on his say-so, she supposed he might imagine that he had.

  ‘Dad,’ she said, giving him an awkward hug in return. But all the time she was hugging him, her eyes were busy darting around the sea of faces, all of them darkly bronzed and smiling, none of them looking as if they might belong to someone called Robert.

  ‘I knew you’d come when you got the letter,’ he told her, looping his arm over her shoulder and hugging her against him while he towed her into what was most likely his hut. She glanced around and was grateful for once lo see Aidan following her, even if he did have a bemused look on his face.

  ‘I didn’t get any letter, Dad,’ she protested again.

  ‘No?’ He looked momentarily amazed, then beamed even more broadly than before. ‘An act of the Spirit, then,’ he pronounced it.

  Courtney gulped. She had no doubt that the Spirit was active in the world. She just didn’t want anyone, least of all her father, thinking that her arrival here had owed anything to It.

  She started to tell him about Uncle Leander, but he scarcely paid attention. ‘Leander’s an old tightwad, quite probably in league with the devil,’ he informed her. Then he chuckled. ‘How deliciously ironic. To think of Leander unwittingly being a messenger of good.’

  ‘I don’t think—’ Courtney began, but her father cut her off.

  ‘It’s not really important. The important thing,’ he told Courtney expansively, ‘is that Robert needs a bride and here you are! An answer to our prayers.’

  ‘And our letter as well, even if you didn’t get it,’ Marguerite added, smiling at her daughter.

  Courtney tried to smile in return, while her mind was frantically winging all over the place. ‘Who’s Robert?’ She still couldn’t see anyone she thought might possibly be him.

  Endicott laughed. ‘My assistant pastor, I think you’d say—if I had a regular church. He’s another missionary.’

  ‘A lovely young man,’ Marguerite chimed in. ‘Right out of Yale Divinity. From a long line of holy men. So sincere. So kind. So devout. So handsome.’

  ‘And a bachelor,’ Endicott added, as if Courtney hadn’t figured that out already.

  ‘It’s his one drawback,’ her mother continued. It sounded as if they had rehearsed it. If Courtney didn’t know them so well, she might have expected that they had. But she knew they simply thought with one mind. And now they thought she ought to marry whoever this Robert was.

  God, they hadn’t changed a bit. They’d just gone from offering her to Indian tribes to offering her to unknown men!

  ‘Harder for single men to be effective here,’ her father was saying as he bustled her into the centre of the village. ‘The people like to see stability if you’re living with them. They don’t like to think you might be…’ he coughed delicately ‘…interested in their women.’ His normally ruddy cheeks got a bit ruddier.

  ‘We told Robert that he really needs a wife,’ Marguerite said brightly. ‘We told him all about you.’

  ‘And he wants to marry me?’ Courtney asked hollowly.

  ‘Thinks it’s a capital idea,’ Endicott said jovially. ‘He sees the wisdom of it.’

  ‘Oh, of course.’ He would. Probably thought it was part of his vocation. She thought she might faint. Except if she did, chances were when she came to she would be married. She wasn’t about to take the risk.

  ‘Dad,’ she tried gamefully. ‘I didn’t get your letter. I didn’t know anything about this.’

  ‘What difference does that make?’ both of her parents chorused, the first signs of worry creasing their seraphic laces.

  ‘Well, I—’

  ‘You’re needed here. Needed to do the Lord’s work. Needed to be Robert’s wife.’

  The primeval panic was upon her, the age-old fear of being thrust into the breach once again. ‘That’s… that’s why I came actually,’ she babbled, groping her way as she spoke. ‘Besides Uncle Leander, I mean. I came to…’ she floundered ‘…to tell you that I… I’m already getting married.’ She couldn’t very well marry their Robert if she was already engaged, could she?

  ‘Married?’ Marguerite’s face fell.

  ‘Married? You?’ Consternation turned Endicott’s features to a worried frown. ‘Married?’ he repeated, as if it would disappear if they said it three times.

  The group of Indians who had been standing witness to the entire proceeding seemed to have caught that one word at least. They began murmuring among themselves, the word being repeated in English, in Portuguese, in whatever language they spoke.

  ‘Yes, married,’ Courtney confirmed, casting about frantically for something to back the lie up with.

  ‘To whom?’ her father demanded.

  She opened her mouth and willed her brain to come up with an answer. Any answer.

  ‘To me,’ Aidan Sawyer said.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Courtney thought she must have gone through the looking glass with Alice. A fitting punishment probably, considering the lie she had just told. But had Aidan Sawyer really just compounded it tenfold by saying, ‘To me’?

  She spun and stared at him. He was standing just behind her, that slightly mocking half-smile on his face as he looked from one dumbfounded parent to another. Then the smile tipped a little more generously on the left side and he nodded his head in confirmation at the same time that he laid a proprietorial hand on his new fiancée’s shoulder.

  ‘And you are…?’ her father demanded, scrutinising this stranger who was so inopportunely spoiling his plans.

  Aidan looked down at Courtney, obviously waiting to be properly introduced. He gave her an encouraging wink. She looked away quickly. Winks made her more than a bit nervous these days. And she was having trouble finding her voice.

  ‘This, uh, this is… Aidan Sawyer, Dad,’ she managed at last. She turned to Aidan and said rather helplessly because it was all too obvious, ‘I’d like you to meet my mother and father.’

  ‘I’m pleased to meet you, sir.’ Aidan stuck out his hand, which the Reverend considered for a split second before deciding that it was his Christian duty to shake it. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you.’

  ‘Well, we’ve heard absolutely nothing about you, Mr. Sawyer,’ Marguerite
said bluntly. ‘Honestly, Courtney,’ she scolded her daughter. ‘How could you not have written? How could you not have said?’

  ‘It… it… I…’

  ‘It happened fast, Mrs. Perkins,’ Aidan told her in his nasal Boston drawl. ‘You know the feeling… love at first sight and, well, I took one look at Courtney and…’ he grinned ‘…she knocked me off my feet!’

  Courtney choked, then glared at Aidan. He stared back in wide-eyed innocence.

  ‘Well, I…’ For a moment Marguerite seemed just as at sea as her daughter was. Then she allowed, ‘Well, yes, I guess I do know,’ and she looked adoringly into Endicott’s eyes and gave her husband’s arm a hearty squeeze. ‘It must have been just like Chippy and I were.’

  Courtney wanted to laugh at the thought of her mother and father having a relationship even remotely similar to hers and Aidan Sawyer’s. How could anyone actually believe she was going to marry him?

  But what alternative did she have? Was she going to open her mouth now and say it had all been a joke? A pretty tasteless one at that? And if she did, what then?

  She would probably end up marrying Robert, that’s what.

  So she mustered up an adoring smile of her own and bestowed it on Aidan. ‘I didn’t know what hit me,’ she said, which was certainly the truth. ‘And, er, I… wanted to surprise you.’

  ‘But Robert…’ Her father tried one last time. ‘He… I told him… I promised… I…’ He looked bewildered, as if God had changed sides half-way through the game.

  ‘I’m sure he’ll understand,’ Aidan said easily. ‘And,’ he added with just the right amount of forcefulness, ‘I wouldn’t, if you persuaded Courtney it was her duty to marry him and jilt me.’

  One look at Aidan’s hard face and Endicott Perkins shook his head rapidly. ‘No, no, dear boy. Wouldn’t think of it.’

  ‘Good.’ Aidan gave him a bland smile that belied his words. He would have had a great future in the courtroom, Courtney thought. He could intimidate with the best of them. The world of criminal justice had no idea what it had lost.

  ‘Now,’ Aidan was saying, ‘I think Courtney could use a bit of a rest before she catches you up on any more of her news and hears any more of yours. We both could.’

  Courtney hoped this wasn’t yet another ploy to share her hammock. But she didn’t have time to give it more than a passing thought because Marguerite took him up on his hint at once. ‘Of course, dear, come with me.’ Marguerite led her daughter to the hut that Endicott had come out of earlier, and pointed out a partitioned area that already had a hammock slung in it. ‘We’ve been ready for you.’

  Courtney smiled. ‘How nice.’

  Somewhere deep down she wished it had been for all the normal parental reasons that most mothers and fathers were eager to see their children again. But chances were that wasn’t ever going to happen. She supposed she ought to be grateful they even remembered she existed. On the other hand, if they hadn’t she wouldn’t be in the mess she was in now.

  ‘I’ll just bring the rest of her gear in.’ Aidan was following them, a duffel bag gripped in each hand.

  Marguerite gave him a flustered smile. ‘Oh yes, do. Thank you so much.’ She gave him another wary look, rather like a mother who, having sent her daughter to the pet store to buy a kitten, discovers that the girl has brought home a tiger instead. ‘We can accommodate you, too, I’m sure, Mr. Sawyer. You’re not… not…’ She looked helplessly from her daughter to Aidan, her cheeks reddening at her thoughts.

  ‘No, Mother, we’re not,’ Courtney said firmly. ‘Thank you for helping me get settled. If you don’t mind, I would like to rest now.’ And get my bearings, she added silently, try to see what I can salvage from the chaos of my life.

  Marguerite patted her arm. ‘That’s just fine, dear. And after you do, perhaps you can… can meet Robert.’ Even as she said the words, the fact that meeting Robert was not going to have the significance they had hoped seemed to be borne in on her. She looked very tired. ‘You rest, dear,’ she counselled. ‘And now, Mr. Sawyer…’

  ‘He’ll be along in a minute, Mother.’ Courtney wasn’t letting him get away without a word. If nothing else she was going to banish that dreadful smirk from his face.

  ‘Whatever you like, darling.’ Marguerite fluttered her hands helplessly, then dashed out of the hut.

  ‘How could you?’ Courtney whirled on him, sparks flying.

  ‘How could I not?’ Aidan countered, infuriating her further. ‘Did you want to marry old holier-than-thou Robert?’

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘Then who were you going to suggest marrying?’ he wanted to know. He leaned against one of the heavy wooden supports and folded his arms across his chest, waiting for an answer.

  She couldn’t think of a soul. Clarke? Hardly. He would have been no match for her parents in person, let alone thousands of miles away. If she had mentioned Clarke, they would have talked her out of it before she had said a hundred words. Besides, they would know instinctively that she wouldn’t come by herself to announce her engagement. They would expect her to bring her fiancé with her. And God help her, she had brought Aidan.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she snapped. She hugged her arms tightly against her chest, pacing the dirt floor of the hut, fuming, feeling trapped. ‘I would have thought of something,’ she lied.

  ‘Sure you would have,’ he scoffed.

  She glowered at him. He smiled.

  ‘By the way,’ he added off-handedly, a hint of a grin hovering at the corner of his mouth, ‘what is it we’re not?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your mother said, “You’re not…” and you said, “No, Mother, we’re not.” Not what?’

  ‘Aidan!’

  Wide-eyed innocence mocked her. ‘Not what?’ he repeated.

  ‘Sleeping together!’

  ‘Ah!’

  She was blushing furiously. ‘You knew damned well what she was asking.’

  He gave her a smug grin. ‘Just wanted to be certain.’

  ‘Well, we aren’t!’

  ‘I know that.’ His whole demeanour changed suddenly. He looked and sounded grave now, all the mocking gone. ‘Do you want to tell them I was kidding? Do you want to beg off?’

  She blinked, confused.

  ‘We can,’ he told her quietly.

  ‘I—I don’t know.’ Her mind whirled with possibilities, none of them palatable. She sighed and ran her hands through her hair. ‘No,’ she said at last. ‘No, I guess not.’ She sighed. ‘Because unfortunately, you’re the only fiancé they would believe.’

  She scowled at the doorway through which she heard her father directing someone to do something. She felt a sudden surge of anger. Why the hell couldn’t he for once just have been glad to see her without trying to direct her life, too?

  ‘Right,’ Aidan said then. ‘So for the moment we’re engaged.’

  The words had a startling effect on her. The physical reaction that she had had to him the first moment she saw him—the sense that this man was more attractive than any man had a right to be—brought her head up with a jerk.

  Engaged to Aidan Sawyer? A frisson of desire shivered down her spine, followed by a moment of pure panic. ‘Purely a sham,’ she said defensively.

  He gave her a hard look. ‘You’re damned right about that.’

  Well, that was putting her in her place. Certainly she wasn’t expecting anything different, was she? Heavens, no. She gave him a brisk nod, accepting his words, hoping actually that he would leave. A rest sounded like just the thing—one from which she might wake up and discover this was all a bad dream.

  But Aidan didn’t move. He stood waiting, regarding her with that faint, amused smile on his face.

  ‘Well?’ she snarled.

  ‘Give us a kiss, sweetheart?’ he drawled.

  She heaved her duffel bag at him. He dodged it, grinning.

  By the time her mother came to get her for the evening meal, she thought she could cope. She
hoped so, at least. After all, it only required being civil to Aidan until they left again. She would visit a few days, then excuse herself by saying that Aidan had to get back to work. They would leave, and that would be that. She followed her mother out of the hut, smiling, able to face the situation with some equanimity at last.

  She was momentarily taken aback though, when her father swooped down on her, a cookie-jar-shaped blond man in tow. ‘This is Robert,’ he announced, hauling the round young man forward—as if he needed an introduction.

  ‘I’m pleased to meet you,’ Courtney said, shaking his hand, thinking that he looked holier than she did right off the bat. Aidan seemed to be thinking the same thing if the look on his face was anything to judge by. ‘I’ve just been hearing good things about you from my parents.’

  Robert blushed. She could have predicted it. ‘And I’ve heard good things about you, too,’ he told her sincerely.

  She would have bet on that. ‘Well, I don’t suppose you heard I’m getting married,’ she said.

  Robert’s jaw dropped.

  ‘To me,’ Aidan added.

  Courtney shot him a baleful look over her shoulder. He was getting into a rut, saying the same thing over and over. When his hand came down on her shoulder like a vice, it was all she could do not to flinch.

  ‘Aren’t you going to introduce us, darling?’

  She stepped backward and ground her sandal on his toes. His fingers resumed strangling her shoulder. ‘Robert, I’d like you to meet my… fiancé… Aidan Sawyer.’

  ‘I—I’m… pleased to—to meet you,’ Robert gulped.

  ‘Likewise.’

  The two men shook hands, Aidan with a determination in his grip that was obvious to all present. Courtney desperately wanted to poke him in the ribs and tell him it wasn’t arm-wrestling he was engaged in. She contented herself by merely stepping between them, when Robert seemed to go slightly white around the mouth, and saying brightly, ‘Mother tells me you went to Yale, Bob.’

  ‘Robert,’ he corrected automatically, then blushed an even more vivid red. ‘Er, yes… I… I did.’ He got his hand loose from Aidan’s and was cautiously rubbing the feeling back into it with his left one.