The Constantin Marriage Page 3

  ‘No,’ Leonie said in a husky, transatlantic voice. ‘Not my work, but rather nice all the same.’

  ‘Thank you!’ Tattie looked around and, observing Alex nowhere in sight, added quietly, ‘Why did you come tonight, Miss Falconer?’

  Leonie Falconer resumed her wariness rather abruptly. She was in her late twenties, early thirties, Tattie judged. She was also several inches taller than Tattie, but none of that prevented Tattie from eyeing her severely and imperiously.

  A tinge of colour ran beneath Leonie’s honey-gold skin, then she shrugged. ‘Curiosity, I suppose. Why would I be invited in the first place? Also—’

  ‘I can tell you that,’ Tattie interposed swiftly, ‘Irina organised this party. Alex was unaware until today that you had been invited. So was I. And Irina was definitely unaware of who you were, otherwise she wouldn’t have touched you with a bargepole.’

  ‘I see.’ Leonie looked fleetingly amused then oddly bitter. ‘Well, there’s no reason I shouldn’t be here, as it happens. I got my marching orders some time ago. And marching orders they were too—Any fuss, Leonie, and Constantin will cease to do business with you. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how deadly Alex can be when he sets his mind to it. But when his brief infatuation with you ceases, Mrs Constantin,’ Leonie added silkily, ‘I’ll get him back.’ And she turned on her heel and walked away.

  ‘What was all that about?’

  Tattie jumped and found her husband standing beside her. ‘Probably an age-old ritual between mistress and wife, Alex,’ she said coolly, then her lips trembled and she laughed softly. ‘But how bizarre that you should use me to extricate yourself from her.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he said rather grimly.

  Tattie opened her mouth then caught sight out of the corner of her eye of his mother, radiant in pink silk that didn’t suit her at all but didn’t manage to dim her personality either, approaching them with a slight limp. She sighed inwardly and said, ‘Don’t worry about it, Alex, but I think you should dance with me in a very husbandly way now, if for no other reason than to let your mother think her party is a real success!’ And she melted into his arms.

  Surprise kept him rigid for a moment. And he said barely audibly, ‘You’re going to have to explain later, you know, Tatiana.’ Then he drew her into his arms and, despite the implicit threat in the use of her proper name that always told her he was in a dangerous mood, kissed her lightly before swinging her round to the music.

  ‘I think I’ll go to bed now, Alex,’ Tattie said at two-thirty in the morning, after a swift silent ride home at the end of the party.

  She had preceded him into the lounge, a lovely room she had created in their apartment—the apartment he had bought and presented to her as a wedding present in accordance with the contracts he and her mother had agreed upon—with a view through the wide windows to the terrace. The view was dark now, of course, but the oil rig anchored in Darwin Harbour for maintenance was lit up like a Christmas tree.

  ‘Oh, no, you don’t, Tattie.’

  She stopped in the middle of the lounge and turned to look at him. She had her shoes in one hand, her pearls in the other and her face was shadowed with weariness.

  ‘Alex, this is no time—’

  ‘Sit down, Tattie,’ he ordered, and came across to her with two tall glasses in his hands.

  ‘What’s this?’ she queried as he handed her one.

  ‘Something long, cool and delicious for someone who has partied as vigorously as you have. Don’t worry, I’m not planning to make you drunk and seduce you.’ He looked down at her wide eyes and slightly apprehensive expression.

  Tattie took the glass from him, drank deeply as if she was very thirsty, then in a stiff little voice recounted her conversation with his mistress. And she sat down abruptly.

  Alex lounged against a pillar and merely twisted his glass in his hands. ‘What she told you is not an accurate representation of the events.’

  Tattie went to wave her hand and realised she was still clutching her pearls. She put them down carefully. ‘It doesn’t matter one way or the other to me, Alex.’

  ‘I would have thought it might in the light of how we go on, Tattie. You did say you wanted to discuss that with me.’

  ‘Well. Yes. But…’ She trailed off, looking almost ashen with weariness and strain now. ‘I can’t think straight.’

  He took his time. He sipped his drink then he said quietly, ‘My suggestion is that we stop fooling around and get this marriage off the ground.’

  Tattie’s mouth fell open as she sorted through this. ‘Fooling…?’ she said incredulously, picking on perhaps the least startling aspect of his advice.

  ‘Or whatever you like to call it.’ He looked briefly quizzical.

  ‘You know what I like to call it, Alex.’

  He lifted an eyebrow at her. ‘You also gave me to understand that you knew what you were getting into, Tattie. But, for what it’s worth, your suggestion of a year’s grace was a good one. At least we know now that we can get along pretty well.’ His mouth quirked. ‘We don’t appear to have any habits that drive each other up the wall.’ He looked at her with a question in his eyes.

  ‘That’s…assuming we were brother and sister, Alex. Lovers could be a different matter.’

  He put his glass down on a beautiful, inlaid pedestal table and came over to her. She stared up at him wide-eyed as he removed her glass from her fingers then drew her to her feet.

  ‘My dear Tattie,’ he murmured with his hands resting lightly on her shoulders and his gaze summing her up from head to toe, ‘I feel quite sure that it could only enhance our relationship to become lovers. Trust me.’

  His fingers slipped from her shoulder to trace the line where his pearls would have lain and, despite her tiredness and confusion, she couldn’t help the reaction that came to her again, that trembling sensation any close contact with him brought to the surface.

  ‘But sleep on it,’ he suggested.

  ‘I…’ She bit her lip.

  ‘I’m off on a tour of the pearl farms early tomorrow,’ he continued. ‘I’ll be away for a few days. So you’ll be able to do more than sleep on it.’ He kissed her lightly on the top of her head. ‘I thought, after that, we could spend a little while at Beaufort. I have some ideas for it.’

  Sheer blackmail!

  Tattie sat up, saw it was nine o’clock in the morning and clutched her head as the blackmail thought raced through her mind.

  Tired as she’d been, sleep had been difficult, and when she’d achieved it weird dreams populated by Leonie Falconer resembling some sort of smug sun goddess had plagued her. So why had she woken up with blackmail on her mind?

  Because apart from her mother only Alex knew how close to her heart Beaufort especially was. How could he not? True, she’d been fascinated by the cultured-pearl side of his business—she would have loved to be visiting the farms with him—but it was his cattle stations and how he handled them that she had attempted to absorb like blotting paper. All for the purpose of applying that knowledge to Beaufort and Carnarvon should she ever have to run them on her own.

  But, more than that, perhaps only Alex guessed that twelve months had not been long enough for her to have the confidence to run them on her own and that was why he’d applied the sheer blackmail of promising her some of his time at Beaufort and mentioning the ideas he had for the station. What else could she think?

  ‘You could ask yourself why he wants to stay married to you, Tatiana,’ she murmured, and lay back with a sigh.

  Had the impossible, the wonderful, the dream within a dream that she hadn’t dared to allow herself to dream, come true? Had her husband finally fallen in love with her? Or had the time come to amalgamate her inheritance with his into one big cattle operation, something that had not happened to date?

  Why, she pondered gloomily, did that seem much more likely?

  And she answered herself tartly, he made her feel like a kid, not—apart from one f
leeting moment yesterday and she wasn’t even sure about that—a woman he found desirable. It was as simple as that.

  On the other hand—she sat up again, struck by a new thought—why had he divested himself of his mistress? Because of a growing but hidden attraction to her—or so she would have no ammunition with which to continue the stalemate or base a decision to leave him on?

  Her bedside phone rang. She stared at it, then lifted it reluctantly.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Tattie?’ her mother-in-law said down the line in a slightly overwrought way. ‘My dear, that was the best party I’ve ever given and all thanks to you!’

  Tattie frowned. ‘No way, Irina. I didn’t do anything; you did it all.’

  ‘But you were there, you were so lovely, and the whole world could see that you and Alex are perfect for each other—I just wanted to tell you! Perhaps next year,’ she added, ‘we will have a little addition to the family to celebrate? Tattie…’ There was a slightly awkward pause down the line—an indication of a bull being taken by the horns as it turned out. ‘Are there any problems in that direction? Because I have the best gynaecologist in the country, the most understanding, most gentle, most kind, and he has performed miracles for several of my friends’ daughters.’

  This time Tattie grimaced, then drew a deep breath. ‘Irina…’ But she couldn’t do it. She simply couldn’t dent her mother-in-law’s enthusiasm and her old-fashioned belief that her arranged marriage concept had worked blissfully—although it did cross her mind to say, Perhaps you should have found a Greek girl for Alex. A girl who would understand these things and know where her duty lies…

  She cleared her throat. ‘Uh—Irina, no, no problems that I know of, but this is between Alex and me, I feel…I really feel, don’t you?’

  There was silence, then, ‘My dear, forgive me,’ Irina said a little tremulously down the line. ‘Of course it is. It’s just that I have such a longing for grandchildren and, sadly, I’m not getting any younger.’

  ‘Irina…’ What to say? Tattie thought desperately, because in every other respect Irina had been a lovely mother-in-law. Nor was she getting any younger, and she was also plagued by a troublesome hip, but kept putting off a hip replacement because of her fear of hospitals and operations.

  She was saved by Irina herself, who said bravely, with less tremolo, ‘I promise not to mention these things again, Tattie. I just… Last night…seeing you and Alex…I got carried away. Forgive me?’

  ‘Of course,’ Tattie said warmly. ‘Tell you what, why don’t we have lunch? I’ll ring Mum and see if she can make it as well and we can have a gorgeous gossip about the party. How about Cullen Bay?’ She named a restaurant.

  She put the phone down eventually, wondering as she did if she wasn’t digging a deeper grave to have to climb out of one day. Then she lay back and switched on her television, only to be arrested as she flicked through the channels by a programme about an Indian family in Mauritius. What arrested her was the fact that the patriarch still chose husbands and wives for his family, even sending to India for them, and the whole family laughingly agreed it was still the best way to go.

  She tightened her mouth, switched off and got up to take a shower. While the shower refreshed her body the circles of her mind ran around a familiar pattern. Why hadn’t the Constantins sought a Greek girl for Alex? She knew enough about the continental community in Darwin to know that it wasn’t only amongst Mauritian Indians that this practice was common. She could even see a certain sense to it. Same culture, same background—possibly the same expectations.

  But Alex was about as cosmopolitan as they came—or, to put it another way, he was as Australian as they came. So perhaps he wouldn’t have stood for it?

  A smile crossed her lips at this point in her reflections but it was gone almost before it was born—Alex did exactly as he pleased, she knew, despite his affection for his parents. So had they been, as she’d long suspected, rather clever? Had they found the one lure he’d been unable to resist in their quest to further the dynasty?

  A little dialogue ran though her head, no matter that the girl is not one of us. She still looks to be pliable, and she does have Beaufort and Carnarvon—could he resist that? Could he?

  ‘Perhaps not,’ she answered herself, and started to dress.

  It was yet another bright, cloudless July day, but it passed by in a bit of a blur for Tattie.

  Her cleaning lady arrived as she was having her breakfast coffee, and together they went through the apartment, deciding what needed to be done. Then Tattie went back to her coffee, but the apartment stayed on her mind and she looked around with new eyes.

  She’d chosen pastels, light, airy colours that were above all cool. There were no curtains but wooden louvers at the windows, and she’d made simple but effective statements—a glorious oil painting on a feature wall; a pair of waist-high porcelain urns hand-painted in soft pinks, gold and royal blue; an intricately carved solid silver bowl it was hard to take your eyes from, so perfect were its proportions and soft old glow as it sat on a small sea chest; a vast, comfortable cream couch lined with pink and pewter cushions.

  Mysteriously, she thought with a sudden pang, it had all become home. Yes, of course the lure of the Kimberley region where her ancestral home was, a sprawling, rambling country homestead, still held pride of place in her heart—or did it? And if not, why not?

  Because this was her own creation? she wondered. Because this was where she and Alex spent most of their time? There was also a house in Perth, another house in Darwin and an apartment in Sydney, but, even though she’d added her own touches to those, this apartment in Darwin was all hers—and Alex’s.

  She took up her cup and wandered into his bedroom. Not that he’d known until their wedding night that this room was to be his and the main bedroom would be reserved for her exclusive use. And what kind of a gamble had that been? she paused to ask herself as she remembered how her wedding day had passed in a fever of nerves. Nerves and the terror that she might have made an awful mistake, only to discover that the equanimity with which he’d heard her out and accepted her proposal had killed a silly little ray of hope in her heart…

  Nor would she forget the humorous quirk to his mouth and the glint of devilry in his eyes as he’d surveyed this bedroom on that night. Because, luxurious though it was, it contained a single bed—a king-size single not much smaller than a double, but nevertheless, perhaps a ridiculous gesture on her part, she brooded. Not to mention a sheer nuisance, since she’d had to get all its bedding custom-made, king-single linen to match her dusky-blue and pearl decor being impossible to come by.

  She grimaced. Young and stupid she’d been, but was she only now about to discover just how young and stupid? She’d certainly had an inkling, as the milestone of her first anniversary approached and she’d found herself unable to come to any decision about her marriage, that—what? She was staring down the barrel of a gun? That she’d foolishly expected something to crop up, some resolution to present itself, only to find that she was still at square one?

  If only she could find the key to the enigma that was Alex Constantin, she thought a little wildly, and walked into the room. The bed was unmade, but otherwise it was fairly tidy. He’d hung up his suit from the night before, his shirt was in the linen basket; only his tie was carelessly discarded over the back of a blue velvet chair. She picked it up and sat down on the bed, running the length of silk through her fingers.

  Other than an exquisite pearl shell on the bureau, Alex had brought nothing to this room. No photos or memorabilia from his pre-marriage days. And his study in the apartment was the same. Functional, sometimes untidy, but essentially impersonal—so much so it was she who had added some blown-up photos of the beautiful bays and rivers that housed his pearl farms. Was he just that kind of man or were his treasures and mementoes stored elsewhere? At the Fannie Bay house of his parents? At—she shivered suddenly—a separate residence he maintained for entertaining his
mistress?

  I won’t do it, she thought abruptly, and got up to hang his tie on the tie rack in his cupboard. I won’t agree to a real marriage with Alex Constantin until I know without doubt that he is…madly in love with me!

  She stared at his ties rebelliously, then went to change for her lunch date with his mother.

  CHAPTER THREE

  FOUR days later Tattie was no further forward in her decision-making process and not sure when to expect Alex back. He’d gone on to Broome, apparently. But she’d kept herself busy, spending most of her days in the legal-aid office where she played the role of receptionist but spent a lot of time listening to other people’s problems and trying to give sound advice.

  It was a Wednesday morning before she left for work when she discovered an invitation in her mailbox from a friend who was having an impromptu luncheon at a popular café in Parap that day. It had been hand-delivered. It crossed her mind to wonder why Amy Goodall, whom she’d been to school with in Perth and was now living in Darwin, hadn’t simply rung her, but she shrugged as she tossed the colourful little invitation on the hall table. Amy had always been unconventional and given to springing surprises on people, and an hour of her stimulating company and others’ would be fun.

  So she dressed with a little more care than normal for work in a stunningly simple sleeveless white piqué dress, black and white sandals and a loop of black and white beads. She brushed her hair vigorously and drew it back into a white scrunchie, and with a lighter step descended to the garage and her racy little silver Volkswagen Golf convertible.

  At twelve-thirty she drove to the Parap shopping centre with its leafy boulevards, parked the Golf under a magnificent poinciana tree and stepped out to be confronted by a man who appeared from nowhere.

  ‘Mrs Constantin?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tattie said uncertainly, and with a strange feeling at the pit of her stomach. He was tall, he looked as if he hadn’t shaved for days, and he had angry blue eyes and matted curly hair. He was also completely unknown to her.