An Indecent Marriage (21 page)

Jessica sat watching him, her eyes huge, the fingertips of one hand pressed to her lips, as if to stem the tide of words that threatened to rush out at him. She kept silent with an effort. She had waited a long time for this, wondering how he really felt, and she wanted to hear it all. Now that he had begun she could see that he was loath to stop. He raced ahead, unloading the burden of pain and uncertainty he had carried since his youth. And through it all, a refrain kept repeating in Jessica’s brain: he loves me, he said he loves me.

“This is tough,” he said huskily, clearing his throat. “Even now I’m tempted to ask you to stay with me, to give it another try. I don’t care anymore about how or why you left; I don’t know if I ever really did. Maybe it was all an excuse to keep you with me, pretending it was for revenge, while in reality I just couldn’t bear to let you go. You can make yourself believe anything if you want something badly enough, and I wanted you real bad.” He coughed. “Anyway, I won’t plead with you to keep on with this. I know how miserable you’ve been, and to tell you the truth, it’s been hell for me too, seeing you so unhappy every day. I thought I was hardened enough to take anything, but that has about done me in. So it’s best we call it quits. You can’t force these things.” He looked down at the floor, and added in an unsteady voice, “I’m sure you’d like children, and I know you wouldn’t want my children.” He stopped short, and Jessica realized that he was too upset to go on. She couldn’t have kept quiet any longer anyway. Listening to him on this subject was too much to take in silence.

“I do want your children, Jack,” she said softly, and she was amazed at how controlled she sounded as she finally told him what she had longed for him to know for ten years. “I wanted your child that last winter we were together. That’s why I left Bright River.”

It was several seconds before he raised his head, and she saw dawning comprehension in his eyes as he gazed at her.

“What do you mean?” he asked in a deadly quiet voice. He had gone pale, and he was staring at her with an intensity that made her feel transparent.

“I was pregnant with your child, Jack. My father told me that if I didn’t marry a man he knew, a man he considered suitable to be my husband and the father of his grandchild, he would prosecute you for statutory rape.”

Jack simply looked at her, dumbstruck.

“He would have done it, too. And you had no possible defense. You were over eighteen and I was underage. The consent of the minor doesn’t negate the charge, and the district attorney was in his pocket. They were buddies. He left me no choice. So I did what he told me to do. I went to New York and married his friend. After my miscarriage I divorced him and never came back here until my father fell ill.”

Jack sat down heavily, as if his legs would not support him. When he finally spoke his voice sounded rusty, unused.

“Why didn’t you tell me this when you came back two months ago?”

Jessica smiled sadly. “And let you ruin my father?”

He searched her face, and then closed his eyes. The gesture was an admission of responsibility for everything that had followed her return.

“Anyway, I thought that even if I told you I was pregnant when I left that January, you would have said the child was Arthur’s.”

“Arthur’s?” he repeated woodenly.

“Arthur was the man I married. My father told you I had been seeing him while I was with you, didn’t he?”

Jack eyed her miserably, and nodded. “He never said the name, only that you’d had another boyfriend in New York, and you’d left town to marry him.”

“I was sure it was something of the kind. Can’t you see that he said that because, with your background and insecurities, you’d believe it? There was never anyone else, Jack. The baby was yours.”

“And you lost it?” he asked huskily.

“Yes.”

He bent his head and covered his face with his hands. “Oh, Jesse, the awful things I said to you,” he rasped, his voice muffled. “How can you ever forgive me?”

“I forgave you when you said them. It was your pain talking, I know that.”

“And the way I’ve treated you since we’ve been married?” he asked, lifting his head and eyeing her warily, as if she might strike him.

“You have the rest of our lives to make up for that,” she said gently. “Starting right now.”

“Are you saying...” he began hoarsely, then paused to take a deep breath and start again. “Are you saying that you’ll stay with me?”

“Of course, Jack. I love you. Where else would I go?”

He rose suddenly, and as she watched in astonishment, headed for the door. As soon as she divined his intention she called after him, “I’m telling you right now, Jacques, if you leave me again you are going to be in big trouble.”

He halted in his tracks and turned into the bedroom instead, slamming the door after him. Jessica heard him lock it. She waited a decent interval, and then knocked softly.

“Jack, let me in, I want to talk to you.”

No response.

“Jack, please. Don’t shut me out. We’ve wasted too much time already at cross purposes.”

She heard the lock give and the door swung inward. As she crossed the threshold she saw him sitting in the shadows. He wouldn’t look at her.

“Jack, don’t try to handle this alone,” she whispered, standing in front of him and putting her hand on his shoulder. In the next second he had pulled her into his arms and pressed his face to her breast. She held him and stroked his hair as if he were a little boy.

“I feel like such a damn fool,” he said huskily when he could talk. “Why did I listen to him, when I knew how much he hated me, how much he wanted to tear us apart?”

She understood that he was talking about her father. “You were only a kid, Jack, and he was a smart man with a wide experience of the world. He knew just what to say. I don’t blame you. Don’t blame yourself.”

“I do,” he murmured. “I always will, for the years we’ve lost.”

“We’re still young. We can start again.”

He drew back and looked up at her from his sitting position. “Can we?” he asked quietly. His eyes sought hers for guidance. His customary air of authority and competence was gone.

“I’m counting on it,” Jessica replied, smoothing his hair.

He turned his head as her hand fell to his cheek and he kissed it. “Jesse,” he whispered. “Why didn’t you find me after you lost the baby? Why did you wait so long?”

“I wrote Maddy from Europe after I got settled there with my job, and she told me you were away at school. It seemed you had gone on without me. I didn’t want to intrude on your life again.”

“Intrude?” he said incredulously. “I was lost without you. How could you think otherwise?”

“I was hurt by all of it, too, Jack,” Jessica replied softly. “I wasn’t reasoning clearly. The only thing I knew was that I had to get away from my father and what he had done. I ran so far I left the country.”

“I’m sorry,” he said hastily, standing and enfolding her. “Of course you were hurt, I can only imagine what you must have suffered. It’s just that I keep thinking about the days and weeks and months we threw away, playing right into your father’s hands.”

“Do you still hate him?” Jessica asked, snuggling against his chest.

“I did. I used to hate him so much I could have killed him. But I don’t know after all this time. I’m kind of worn out with it, you know? It’s like the only thing that matters is that you left me back then in order to protect me, not because you preferred a rich man that your father liked.”

“I’m so glad,” Jessica murmured. “If you could see him now, how beaten and resigned he is, you wouldn’t be able to feel anything but pity, believe me. Maddy said something about people paying for the wrong they do. I wonder if it’s true. Every time I see him, I think it is.”

“Does Maddy know all about this?” Jack asked.

“Yes, I told her.”

Jack sighed, tightening his grip on her. “She must think I’m a horse’s ass.”

Jessica giggled. “Since when do you care what Maddy thinks? You were always dodging her when we were in school.”

“She’s your friend,” Jack said archly. “I don’t want her badmouthing me to you.”

“As if I’d listen,” Jessica sniffed.

“Aha! So she’s tried.”

“Well, she expressed an opinion or two.”

He held her at arm’s length. “Like what?”

“She said you married me in indecent haste.”

He grinned, and Jessica’s heart turned over. She hadn’t seen that smile, a real smile, since that last evening when Lalage took their picture, the one she’d found in his valet box.

“She’s right about that,” he responded. “I couldn’t wait to get you into bed.” Then his expression changed. He bent suddenly and slipped one arm under her knees and swung her off the floor.

“Jack, what are you doing?” she protested as he marched out of the bedroom and into the hall with her in his arms.

“I just remembered something,” he said, opening the outer door of the apartment and stepping into the corridor.

“Am I going to find out what it is?” she asked. “I hate to point this out to you, but it’s about five in the morning, and I’m wearing nothing but a semitransparent robe.”

“I wish you were wearing nothing,” he said, nuzzling her neck and pulling the door shut behind them.

“If any of your neighbors are up they’re going to think this performance very strange.”

“They’re all asleep, and if they’re not, the hell with them,” Jack replied, opening the door again and carrying her back inside.

“Is this supposed to signify something?” Jessica asked, as he reentered the apartment and deposited her on the floor.

“I carried you across the threshold,” he explained. “I never did it when we came back from the wedding. I thought you might punch me if I tried.”

“Punch you? Never.”

“Well, you weren’t exactly cooperative about the rest of the arrangements. No reception, no honey...” He snapped his fingers. “The honeymoon! We have to have one now. Where would you like to go?”

“I’ll go anywhere with you, Mr. Chabrol.”

“That’s reassuring, Mrs. Chabrol, but not very informative. How does Hawaii sound? It might be nice to ditch all this cold weather.”

“Hawaii sounds wonderful. But unless I’ve been misinformed, the only requirements for a honeymoon are two people and...”

“A bed?” he suggested.

“Right you are. So what would you think of getting a head start on the festivities?”

He took her by the hand and led her into the bedroom. In the first pale light of dawn he slipped her robe off her shoulders and lifted her onto the bed.

“Jesse,” he said softly. “It’s really you, you and me together, the way it used to be.” He bent and kissed her, his lips on hers as soft as a breeze.

“It really is,” she replied, reaching up to slip her arms around his neck.

And as the night waned, Jack made love to her and said all the things she’d been pining to hear, satisfying her soul as fully as he had always satisfied her body.

Jessica woke later to a pale wintry day and a new life. The recent snowfall had left a layer of creamy frosting on everything she could see from the bedroom window, and she sat up to get a better look. It was amazing how, for the first time, she didn’t mind waking up alone. She was confident that Jack was nearby and slid off the edge of the bed, belting her robe around her, to go look for him.

He was sitting near the window in the living room, wearing only a pair of jeans, staring out at the falling snow. An outside streetlamp, still on, cast a glow upon his face, and by its light Jessica could see the wetness of tears on his cheeks. He was crying.

She coughed loudly, making a production of shutting the door to the bedroom, giving him a chance to recover. She saw him wipe his eyes hastily with the back of his hand, and she waited until he motioned her closer before she went to him.

“What are you doing out here?” she asked him, perching on the arm of his chair and bending down to put her arms around his neck, resting her head against his shoulder.

“Thinking,” he said. His voice sounded congested, nasal.

“About what?”

“About you.”

“What about me?”

He shook his head. “I can’t believe you put up with me acting like such a jerk all this time and never told me the truth.”

“Jack, let’s not talk about it anymore,” she said wearily. “It’s over and done with. I just want to forget it.”

“I can’t dismiss it that easily,” he said huskily. “All I’ve done the past few years, all my plans and schemes, were based on a lie. I lived to get back at you, and it was all for nothing.”

Jessica stood up, walked a few steps away and then turned to face him.

“If I had told you the truth ten years ago, you would have gone to jail. If I had told you the truth two months ago, you would have disgraced my family. I had to wait until your desire for revenge ran its course.” She sighed. “I was beginning to think it never would.”

He hung his head. “I am so sorry,” he said hoarsely. He gave a short bark of laughter. “The words are pathetically inadequate, aren’t they?”