Reluctant Wife Read online

  A door on the veranda slammed in the rising wind and the afternoon was eerily dark now. Roz hesitated for only a bare moment before grabbing a headstall and lead and starting to run.

  It was raining by the time she rounded up the old mare, who chose to be dithery, but when Adam loomed up he patted her neck briefly and thrust a hand through the headstall, skull-dragged her for a few paces until she decided she’d met her match and meekly and almost coyly followed him. Roz and the foal had to run to keep up.

  When they reached the double garage doors, the mare again displayed some reluctance, but then sniffed the straw and was coaxed to go in, and Nimmitabel trotted in after her. Just as they closed the doors, the hail started. ‘Oh, your car!’ cried Roz above the growing cacophony on the old tin roof. ‘Drive it under the house—I’ll move some gear …’

  Not many minutes later and not any too soon they were up in the safety of the house, soaked to the skin but safe from the wild, whirling world outside of white hailstones, many of them the size of golf balls.

  Roz had seen hail before, but never like this—within minutes the landscape all around resembled a jagged snow scene. The noise was incredible as the deadly white missiles pounded down on the roof, and she shuddered to think of being caught outside in it, of the mare and foal out in it. Adam Milroy put his arm around her slim shoulders and she was intensely grateful to him for coming back, just for being there …

  But it was ten minutes before she could say as much, before the hail passed and it was only rain drumming on the roof and they could make themselves heard. Then he only smiled and said it was the least he could have done. By which time it was almost too dark to see, so she went to put on a light, but nothing happened.

  She looked helplessly at the switch and tried again, but again nothing happened. Adam Milroy remarked, ‘It’s not to be wondered at, there could be power lines down. Have you any alternative source of power?’

  ‘The stove and the fridge are gas,’ she told him, ‘and I have some hurricane lamps. So I won’t starve and I’ll have some light—I’ll be fine now, really I will, if you’d like to … I mean … I’m sure the worst is over and … She peered through the gloom at him.

  But all he said was, ‘Got a torch?’

  ‘Oh yes, two, but …’

  ‘Then I’ll go down and check the horses. You get those hurricane lamps going in the meantime.’

  ‘Well …’ But perhaps, like the old mare, she sensed a will that was no match for her, because she went into the kitchen and got the torches and gave him one. While he was away, she used the other to dig out the lamps and prime them and light them. She was just wondering what was taking him so long, if the mare and foal had panicked at the noise and the unfamiliar confines and hurt themselves, when he came into the kitchen, looked around approvingly and said, ‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to put me up for the night, Roz. The reason you have no electricity is that the storm uprooted an old tree beside the gate—it brought the powerline down. It’s also completely barred the driveway.’

  She stared at him in the soft light with her lips parted and her eyes wide, until he raised an eyebrow and said with his lips twisting, ‘Do you mind so very much? I’m sorry, there seems to be no help for it, but you don’t have to worry that I’d take advantage of you.’

  ‘No!’ She rushed into speech. ‘Oh no, I didn’t … that wasn’t… I just feel so terribly guilty … I …’

  Adam looked ironically amused for a moment, then his gaze softened and he said, ‘You’re also very sweet, young Roz.’

  It was a night Roz was to remember.

  It rained all night, sometimes tempestuously, so that the house creaked rather alarmingly, but she could only feel safe and dry and with that awful sense of loneliness kept at bay.

  She changed out of her sodden jeans into a loose pink dress and left her hair down and loose to dry. She found Adam Milroy some dry clothes and made up the bed in the spare room. Then she jointed a chicken and casseroled it with carrots, celery, bacon, onion, sherry and some tinned tomatoes and mushrooms. She set the kitchen table with one of her grandmother’s damask cloths and laid out the old-fashioned bone-handled cutlery, two matching napkins in wooden holders, and finally the fragrant casserole and a dish of fluffy white rice and some fresh beans from the garden she’d picked that morning.

  Before Adam had changed into her grandfather’s clothes he had gone back down to fix up a feed bin in the garage for the mare and spread some more straw.

  The clothes almost fitted him, because her grandfather had been as tall but broader around the midriff, so he had to wear an old leather belt about the waist, but the blue and white checked cotton shirt fitted well.

  Surprisingly, although all through her preparations while he had been down with the horses and also checking the outside of the old house for damage she had worried about being shy and tongue-tied, they talked easily through the meal, mostly about horses, but pleasantly all the same.

  And after it Adam paid her a compliment. ‘That was delicious, I think you must know a lot about cookery already, Roz.’

  ‘I—well, I enjoy it, and I’ve had plenty of practice.’ She pushed her hair which had dried to a tangle of curls behind her ears and couldn’t help beaming with pleasure. Then he insisted on helping her with the washing up and she made coffee and they took it into the lounge.

  ‘You said,’ he remarked as he lay sprawled back in a chintz-covered armchair, ‘and I guess your prowess in the kitchen made me think of it, but you said this afternoon that you’d like to know how the economy worked, and computers. Were you serious?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘Well, computers are something I happen to know rather a lot about,’ he explained.

  She looked surprised, and he explained about his business. She said, ‘I’ve only ever associated you with horses, But if you think I could understand …’

  He looked at her meditatively, then grinned suddenly and asked her for a pencil and paper.

  An hour later Roz was rather amazed to find she did and was quite excited—so much so that she suddenly remembered the bottle of cumquat liqueur Mrs Howard had given them last Christmas, and suggested they try it to celebrate.

  He laughed and looked speculative when she produced two small glasses of it and fresh coffee. He laughed some more when she. took a sip that left her gasping and coughing.

  ‘Oh! I had no idea it was so strong,’ she spluttered at last, laughing too. ‘Although l should have. Grandad used to say it would stun a horse, but I always thought he was teasing.’

  She could never afterwards remember what pierced her feeling of warmth, enjoyment and security at that moment. It could have been wiping the cumquat liqueur-induced tears from hers eyes and looking ruefully across at Adam Milroy wearing her grandfather’s clothes, it could have been remembering him teasing Mrs, Howard, but whatever it was, all of a sudden, like a swift passage from light to dark, all her burdens came back. Not only but she couldn’t believe she could be laughing and joking when only a few miles away her beloved. grandfather lay in a wet, desolate graveyard.

  She put her glass downs and stood up, turning away abruptly.

  Adam Milroy watched her, young and slender and looking younger in the pink dress, with her shoulders shaking as she valiantly tried to control her emotions, and he sighed slightly, then,stood up and went over to her.

  ‘Roz…’

  ‘I’m sorry … I’ll be all right,’ she gasped.

  ‘You’d be better to cry it out. l don’t mind.’

  ‘No. No,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve done that. Now I’ve got to cope. He… he wouldn’t have wanted me to go to pieces, just to remember him with love.’

  All the same, Adam put an arm around her again and she leant against him for a time, quietening.

  Then he said that it had been a traumatic day and, tilting her face up to his and observing the shadows in her blue eyes, suggested she go to bed.

  She agreed and thanked
him. She asked him if there was anything else he would like, but he said no, he’d be fine and he’d take care of the lamps and check on the horses for the last time, so Roz found him a waterproof. Then she stood awkwardly for a moment before bidding him a grave goodnight.

  Roz slept rather well, considering all her problems, and those that she’d not seven thought of. But when the Howards arrived home quite early the next morning, having heard the news of the hailstorm, they encountered not only the Electricity Board workers who had come to clear the tree and repair the line but Adam Milroy. It was obvious that it came as a slight shock to them all, but mostly Mr Howard, that Roz should have spent the night alone in the company of a strange man.

  Mrs Howard recovered quickly, however—Adam had raised his eyebrows haughtily as the silence had lengthened once the explanations of his presence had sunk in—and she said that they had dashed home because they’d been worried about Roz, knowing she was on her own as well as worried about their own property, and she for one didn’t believe Roz should be on her own yet, but it was so awkward with the foal, but Mr Milroy was not to be concerned, Roz would be coming back under their roof for the time being until … well …whatever arrangements … er …

  Mrs Howard ran out of breath then, which gave Adam the opportunity to commend that idea with a limited-version smile, and mention Roz’s unfortunate encounter with Stan Hawkins the day before.

  Mike immediately took Roz’s hand and Mr Howard looked grimmer—he didn’t hold with gambling of any sort, but Mrs Howard set her jaw and said, ‘That does it. Pack a bag, Roz!’ she commanded. ‘And we’ll move the mare and foal over too.’

  Roz tried to protest, to no avail—and it was time to say goodbye to Adam Milroy again. He seemed to hesitate, then observed, ‘They say it never rains but it pours. I sincerely hope this is the end of it for you, young Roz, and that things improve from here on. Goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye. Thank you for everything.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Roz stirred restlessly and came back to the present with a sigh.

  She could still hear sounds of revelry coming from downstairs and was surprised to see it was not yet midnight. She got up and glanced out of the window, to see that there were still three cars parked in the drive, Amy’s, Angelo’s and Richard’s, and she was happy for Nicky that they had come to spend the evening with her, because she was pretty sure her sister-in-law had something rather weighty on her mind.

  Just as I had, she thought, when I got coerced into going back to stay with the Howards after the hailstorm. Well, I hope Nicky’s problems aren’t as bad, and I don’t see how they could be. If only I’d known!

  She sighed again and sat down in the pink velvet covered armchair, plucking at the cording around the arm and letting her mind drift back again to the days after the hailstorm …

  The move had been accomplished without much fuss—Mrs Howard was like that, bright and bubbly but with a streak of competence and practicality that surprised one sometimes. She was also opposite in character to Mike’s father, a dour man in whom the qualities of honesty and uprightness were clearly visible although a sense of fun was not. But he now owned his own fencing business and could afford to put Mike through college and live a moderately affluent life, although he had barely attended high school himself.

  And despite his contempt for Roz’s grandfather’s passion for gambling, he had been a good neighbour over the years, one couldn’t deny that. But the act of going back to stay with the Howards, to Mr Howard’s visibly growing disapproval of his son’s infatuation for Roz despite Mrs Howard’s attempts to lighten the atmosphere, was a mistake, Roz knew, and she found herself regretting that night very much as she got ready for bed.

  It had been an uncomfortable evening during which Mike had taken her for a walk after dinner, but when they got back it was as if Mr Howard knew that his son had taken her in his arms and kissed her fervently, and asked her to marry him.

  Fortunately, she had made Mike see that it was something they couldn’t rush into and made him promise not to mention it to his parents. But the truth of the matter was that she didn’t know what to think herself, especially when out of the blue, as she was getting ready for bed, she found herself wondering whether the tragedy that had befallen her had tripped Mike’s emotions into overdrive.

  ‘Oh, God,’ she whispered, ‘what made me think that? He’s been so wonderful and it’s been … well, I suppose we’ve been drifting towards this, but in other circumstances we wouldn’t have … we’d have been content to wait at least until he’d finished college, then got engaged perhaps and probably hoped his father got to like the idea better in the meantime.’

  She rubbed her face wearily and sat down on the edge of the bed, wishing desperately that she was at home, spending an evening like she had the night before …

  She caught her breath and thought, how strange that Adam Milroy should have come into her life twice, fleetingly, and that they should both be such memorable occasions. Because at fourteen, when most other girls had been worried about puppy fat but she had been gawky, he had driven into the stable yard to see her grandfather about a horse, and she had been struck virtually dumb.

  She remembered it so clearly—the scarlet jumper she’d been wearing that Mrs Howard had knitted her, the patched jeans that were a bit too short for her, the long fair ponytails done up with red bobbles … the bright cold day it was, the shiny foreign car, the tall, dark, handsome stranger wearing brown corduroy trousers and a tweed sports jacket over a black sweater who had climbed out of it. How he’d looked around and then his gaze had fallen on her with a bucket in one hand and a brush in the other, standing transfixed, and he had walked towards her and smiled that brilliant, crooked smile …

  At least, she amended to herself as she sat on the Howards’ spare bed brushing her hair, that part she could remember so clearly, but the rest of his visit had passed in a sort of blur. She knew she’d hardly said a word, she knew she’d never felt more awkward or gawky as she’d led the horse around for his inspection, but that was all.

  And what she had least expected was how from that time on, Adam Milroy would haunt her girlish daydreams and how she would for months build impossible fantasies around him.

  Her grandfather hadn’t helped, because after that visit he had enthusiastically sung Adam’s praises and painted a word-portrait of him that had unknowingly fuelled Roz’s dreams—-he’s worth a mint now, but when I first met him … all the same, he was impressive even then, you could see he was going to amount to something, I could anyway … knows horses inside out … I think he was married once but it didn’t last, plenty of ladies in his life, though …

  It was when her grandfather said that particularly that Roz unaccountably and childishly first thought of Adam Milroy as a Prince of Darkness. Strangely, though, it increased his attraction.

  Of course not even the most ardent daydreams last for ever, and by the time she was sixteen she had begun to understand that women, especially very young ones, were very susceptible to the idea that they would be the one to reform some wildly attractive, sophisticated and experienced older man.

  But although she had acknowledged this ruefully and discovered that her crushes were transferable, it had all worried her obscurely. Until the night Mike, of all people, had asked her to dance at the Grade Eleven party and instead of teasing her about something or other had said very seriously and embarrassedly that he liked her dress and thought she looked nice, then all of a sudden things had come right. She was like every girl she knew, with a boyfriend of her own and starting to fall in love.

  And she was able to dismiss the curious problem of Adam Milroy with the wry thought that she had actually met her version of Harrison Ford or Michael Douglas. ‘And now I’ve met him again,’ she murmured aloud as she switched off the light and slipped into bed. ‘Not that I’d be silly enough to even wonder, but life’s strange. Not, for that matter, that I’m likely to meet him for a third time …’
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  *

  But the next afternoon Mrs Howard received a phone call that made her strangely thoughtful for a time, then she asked Roz whether her appointment with the solicitor was for the next morning or the day after.

  ‘The day after. Why?’

  ‘Well, Roz, that was Adam Milroy on the phone. He’s coming to see you tomorrow and he has some sort of a proposition for you—at least I assume so, because he asked me to ask you not to do anything about your grandfather’s estate until he’s seen you.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Roz said bewilderedly.

  ‘I’m not sure I do either,’ Mrs Howard said slowly. ‘But of course he does breed and race horses.’

  Roz digested this and found it quite drove all other thoughts from her head. Including the nervous suggestion she had just been about to make to Mrs Howard that she should go home.

  Much later that night she was to regret being deflected from that course, because Michael and his father had a row and it was impossible not to hear what was said in the heat of the moment.

  ‘You’re too young to even think of it, Mike! You haven’t had a chance to … look around, to grow up. Do you think I relish the thought of having slaved for years to give you a good education just to see you throw it over the moon for some girl? … How can you expect to cope with college and a wife? I’m not going to support the two of you. Mike, she’s not the one for you, she never will be, believe me, she’s not the kind I would want for a son of mine …’

  Someone knocked on Roz’s door very early next morning, but guessing it was Mike she didn’t respond because she just couldn’t pretend she hadn’t heard, and what could she say? So she waited until both Mike and his father had left the house and then went out, to find Mrs Howard sitting at the kitchen table looking unusually grim and pale.