The Marrying Game (61 page)

She trusted him. It felt delicious to lie back in the warmth, and let him do the worrying about the dreadful driving conditions. Her head was as light as a balloon. This was very like a dream, but part of her was intensely conscious of every detail. Edward’s hands gripped the wheel. He frowned at the road ahead. The windscreen wipers made two fan shapes in the blanket of snow that was muffling the car.

Edward took it all – Christmas rush, ghastly weather, disastrous traffic – as a personal challenge. Rufa observed his strategies passively, wondering why she was so calm. Shouldn’t she be in agonies of remorse? That would probably come later. The sheer relief of having Edward beside her cancelled out everything else. This was the end of a nightmare, escape from an underground dungeon. At last she was able to admit to herself how bitterly she had missed him. She wished he had not hurried her out of the flat before they had finished talking. With Edward, there was never a feeling of having said enough.

There was no point trying to talk to him now. He was too busy proving himself superior to all obstacles. He left the crawling motorway, where flakes of snow whirled madly in dismal orange lights, and nosed along black lanes where there were no lights at all. They slipped silently through shuttered villages and skirted isolated small towns. Rufa watched him, thinking how lucky it was that she had run into Adrian. Thanks to Adrian (or rather, the doctor he had summoned at presumably vast expense) she now felt better than she had done for weeks. The antibiotics made her a little
woozy
, but that was nothing. It was even rather pleasant, after the wretched, nauseous weakness. The infection had turned her misery into full-blown tragedy. How strange, she thought, that tragedy could boil down to something so prosaic, and be cured with pills.

The car slowed, and halted. Edward put on the handbrake, and switched off the engine. They were surrounded by blackness, studded with a few distant specks of light. The wind had risen, and it made the only sound in the desolation.

Rufa, who had been dozing in the warmth, foolishly murmured, ‘Where are we?’

‘God knows.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I’m lost,’ Edward said. ‘I can navigate a whole armoured convoy through Bosnian hills riddled with snipers, but I can’t find Berwick-on-Tweed. Give me another look at that map.’ He unclipped his seat belt and leaned across her, to study the map he had placed on her knees. ‘You were right, we should have stayed in Edinburgh. I can’t think what possessed me – except that I had to take you away. Before you disappeared again.’

‘I’ve given up disappearing,’ Rufa said.

‘How are you?’ His grey eyes, veined like pebbles, met hers. ‘Is this killing you?’

‘Not at all, I’m fine.’ His face was close to hers. She stroked his forehead, tracing the faint lines. ‘I do love you.’

For a moment, he was wary. Then he tried to laugh it off. ‘Despite my hopeless orienteering?’

‘I love you so much I don’t mind being lost in a
snowstorm
in the middle of nowhere,’ Rufa said. ‘It’s still better than being alone, without you.’

‘Without anyone.’

‘You in particular. Why don’t you ever believe me when I say I love you?’

This startled him. ‘Of course I believe you.’

‘No you don’t. I’ve tried and tried. You think I’m grateful, or something.’ Rufa’s heart thudded uncomfortably, but she was suddenly desperate to speak the unspoken. ‘You’ve never let me show you. It’s as if you didn’t want me to love you – in that way, I mean. I wish you’d tell me what I did wrong. When we got married, I was perfectly willing to sleep with you.’

He let out a brief, angry laugh. ‘Being “perfectly willing” to have sex is not the same as wanting it. Every time I went near you, you looked as if you were at the dentist’s.’

‘I did not!’

‘That’s how it felt to me. And I can’t make love under those circumstances.’

‘You have too much pride.’

‘Yes.’

‘But Edward,’ she pleaded softly, ‘isn’t it different now?’

‘After Tristan, do you mean? Should I be thanking him for switching you back on?’

Rufa winced. ‘That’s not fair.’

‘Whatever the problem was, he seems to have cured it,’ Edward said. He groaned, and drew away from her. ‘God almighty, what a time to tell me.’

‘I’m doing this all wrong,’ Rufa said despairingly. ‘Perhaps it was because of him that I— but if you’d slept with me, I would have learned it all from you.’

He was angry, making an effort to rein in his voice. ‘Are you saying I should have forced you, until you got to like it? Is that what Tristan did?’

‘No!’ She was snapping now. ‘I thought we agreed to forget the past. Or did that only apply to me?’

‘You seem to expect some sort of apology from me, because I was too decent to rape you –’

‘I do not!’

He gave a sigh that was half a growl. ‘This is stupid. This time yesterday, sitting here with you would have been my idea of perfect happiness – and now we’re arguing. Rather ironically, just like a married couple.’

‘All I’m trying to say is that I love you,’ Rufa said. ‘And I loved it when you fucked me.’

‘You were drunk.’

‘I should have got my hands on more of that brandy, so you’d fuck me again.’ She smiled, a little sourly. ‘You really don’t like it when I say fuck, do you?’

‘Not madly. It doesn’t seem necessary, and it’s not like you.’

‘How do you know what I’m really like? You seem to have this fantasy picture of me, and it’s a real pain to live up to sometimes. You wouldn’t fuck me, and I thought you didn’t want me.’

‘Well, you were wrong.’ Edward grabbed her hand, and pressed it against his erection. ‘That’s how much I want you.’

Rufa’s head swam. Her flesh suddenly ached to be touched by him.

He moved towards her, unfastening her seat belt. He kissed her hard on the mouth. Their hands tore at each other’s layers of clothes. When Edward pulled away from her, they were both breathless. She was afraid he
was
still angry, but he was smiling. He stared into her face for ages.

‘I might have completely the wrong idea about you,’ he said, ‘but I really don’t think you’d appreciate being fucked in a car.’

Braemar was a detached mock Tudor house, heavily stone-clad, in a street on the edge of Berwick. The snow was too wet to settle here. Fat flakes melted on the concrete drive. It was profoundly dark, except for one ghostly light above the porch. A sign in the front window said ‘Reasonable Rates – Some En Suite – Vacancies’.

‘Only the best,’ Edward said. ‘Come on, let’s wake someone up.’

He jumped out of the car, bracing himself against the wind, and opened Rufa’s door. With one arm around her, he rang the bell vigorously. It shrilled somewhere in the depths of the house, and echoed away into silence. He rang again. ‘Don’t get cold,’ he said. He wrapped Rufa in his arms. They were kissing again. She was almost ashamed of the strength of her desire for him. There was a firmness and confidence in his touch which reawakened all the hunger she had once felt for Tristan, and something else that reached right down to the innermost chamber of her heart. She half-closed her eyes to concentrate on the feel of his hands, working their way under her layers of jersey to her breasts.

A door slammed inside the house. They sprang apart, hearts hammering. There was a sound of soft feet coming downstairs. A light snapped on in the porch, revealing a bulky pink figure behind the frosted glass. A
woman
with grey hair took a long time drawing bolts and turning keys, before she opened the door an inch. ‘Yes?’

‘So sorry to disturb you,’ Edward said, ‘I know it’s late, but my wife and I need a room.’

The woman was doubtful. ‘We don’t take people off the streets, I’m afraid.’

‘Please,’ Rufa said. ‘We hate to bother you, but –’ She smiled up at Edward. ‘But we’re on our honeymoon.’

Edward experienced a rush of pure happiness, so intense that tears stung his eyes. He put an arm around Rufa’s waist. ‘Yes. We’ve only been married a few hours.’

Sympathy softened the woman’s face. She pulled her pink dressing gown more tightly around her. ‘Oh, you poor things – and you’ve had this dreadful weather – well, I can hardly turn you away at this time of year, can I?’ Smiling, she stepped back to let them into her hall. ‘I can let you have one of my en suites.’

The room was large, and loudly decorated. There was a framed print of Landseer’s
The Monarch of the Glen
above the fat, quilted headboard of the double bed. It was very warm, and blazing with light. Once the woman had wished them goodnight, Edward switched off the monstrous chandelier. The walls melted into shadow, embracing them.

He asked, ‘Is this place really all right?’

Rufa whispered, ‘It’s perfect.’

‘And you? How are you feeling?’

‘Wonderful,’ Rufa said. ‘Do stop asking me – I’m not going to pass out this time. I’m sober and in my right mind.’

‘Well, I’m not – this is the most romantic thing I’ve ever done in my life.’ He took her into his arms, burying
his
face in her neck. ‘I couldn’t wait to show you how much I love you.’

‘Show me what you wanted to do to me,’ Rufa whispered, ‘when I made you desperate for sex.’

He began to peel away her clothes, and was inside her before he had reached the last layer. They sprawled half-clad on the nylon satin quilt, gasping at each of his hard thrusts. He whispered in her ear, ‘Ru, my darling, I love you so much – you’re so ridiculously beautiful, you make me so desperate I had a hard-on at the altar – I wish I could stay inside you for the rest of my life –’

They came together, rocking the mattress beneath them, both weeping with the relief of it. Afterwards, Rufa lay in a trance of happiness, holding his head between her breasts.

‘I love you more than the world,’ she said. ‘And you fuck divinely.’

He laughed softly. ‘It sounds lovely when you say it. I might even get used to it.’

‘You’d better,’ Rufa said, ‘because I’m never leaving you again, not for a single day. You’ll never get rid of me now.’

Chapter Sixteen

‘“HIS OWN HEART
laughed,”’ Rose read. ‘“And that was good enough for him. He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived on the Total Abstinence Principle ever afterwards.”’

She sat in her drinking chair beside the range. Linnet, clutching both Ressany Brothers, was on her knee. Roger, Lydia, Selena and Ran were around the kitchen table, drinking third cups of tea, and eating the iced gingerbread stars Selena had made that morning. Ran was weeping.

‘“And it was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.”’ Rose glanced up tearfully at her family. ‘“May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed –”’ She lowered the book.

Everyone chorused, ‘“God bless us, every one!”’

The reading ended, as it had done so many times in the past, with nose-blowing and self-conscious laughter.

‘I have lots of intercourse with spirits,’ Rose said. ‘Somebody please get me a prodigious gin.’

Linnet, supple as a ferret, slid off her knee. ‘When’s Rufa coming?’

‘Do stop asking, darling. The answer will be just the same.’

‘We’ve been expecting her all day,’ Roger said, pouring Rose a generous shot of Gordon’s. ‘Apparently they had to break the journey last night because of the weather.’

‘Well, I don’t care how late it is,’ Linnet declared. ‘I’m staying till she comes. Why is she taking so long?’

‘Edward said they had some shopping to do,’ Rose said. ‘Go and watch your video of
Muriel The Little Mermaid
.’

‘
Ariel
,’ Linnet corrected her, with withering scorn.

‘Go and watch whatever load of pants you’re obsessed with at the moment – and you can have a chocolate from the tree.’

‘Yesss!’ The little girl danced out of the room, twirling her bears around her glossy black head.

The moment she heard the drawing-room door close, Rose said, ‘What the hell are they playing at? I thought Edward was bringing me a distraught Niobe at death’s door, and now they’re going shopping. And God knows where Nancy’s got to. She swore she’d be here by six.’