Truly Married
Autor
Phyllis Halldorson
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19,3K
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15
HarlequinChapter One
Sharon Lachlan shivered and pulled her quilted parka snugly around her as she huddled behind the steering wheel of her new red Corvette. The car had been a present from her husband, Fergus, on the occasion of her twenty-third birthday last August.
Was it a gift of love? Or of guilt?
She shook her head as though to dislodge the unwelcome but persistent suspicion that had nagged at her since morning, when she’d received the third anonymous note.
Although it was only a little past six on this cold November evening, the darkness was total, broken by neither moon nor stars in the heavy cloud-covered sky. The only illumination came from an insufficient number of street lamps and the light that spilled out the windows of the neat older homes nestled behind rows of huge elm trees lining the curbs of this staid middle-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Chicago.
She was thankful for the dark. It sheltered both her and her car from the prying glances of passersby. Or, more precisely, from Fergus Lachlan, who most certainly would recognize her.
Sharon shivered again and rubbed her arms with her gloved hands. The waiting seemed interminable. Dare she start the engine so she could turn on the heater?
If she did it would call attention to the fact that the car was parked at the curb, occupied.
She decided against it, and focused on the second house up the street from her. No lights brightened its windows, but surely its occupant, Ms. Elaine Odbert, attorney-at-law, would arrive home soon. That is, if the note Sharon had received in the mail this morning could be believed.
But why should she believe it, any more than she’d believed the other two she’d received earlier?
In spite of her resolution not to dwell on them, her mind dredged up the first one as clearly as if she had it in front of her. It had arrived at the apartment on a sunny Tuesday in mid-September. She remembered the day because she was leaving the building to go to the hospital where she did volunteer work every Tuesday afternoon.
As she’d passed the bank of mailboxes she’d stopped to check theirs, and found it filled with envelopes. As usual, most of them had been bills, pleas for money from various charities and advertisements, but as she’d sorted through them one had caught her eye because it was different. A plain white envelope addressed to Mrs. Fergus Lachlan, but with no return address.
Curious, she’d ripped it open and found a folded piece of typing paper. There was no greeting, closure, or signature, and the one line message was typed in capitals. “YOU’D BETTER CHECK OUT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN YOUR HUSBAND AND ELAINE ODBERT.”
Sharon had been more startled than shaken. Fergus and another woman? Impossible! No! Fergus loved her, and she adored him. Of course, their marriage had had its ups and downs. Fergus acted more like a father than a husband toward her. He tended to be bossy and overprotective, and she often got fed up and overreacted. She knew she should do a better job of controlling her temper, but she was just getting her wings, so to speak, as an independent woman and his habit of making decisions without consulting her was maddening.
Sharon knew that Elaine Odbert was the newest member of Newberry, Everingham and Jessup, the law firm where Fergus was making a name for himself as a rising young defense attorney. She’d even greeted Ms. Odbert a couple of times when she’d gone to the office to meet Fergus for lunch. The woman was thirtysomething and nice looking but not the seductive type.
Sharon had torn up the offending missive and scattered it in the nearest trash can as she’d walked out the door. She wasn’t going to upset him with that kind of garbage. She couldn’t deny that she and Fergus quarreled a lot, but the making up was sheer ecstasy.
Now her reverie was broken by headlights coming slowly down the street toward her, and she snapped to attention. Maybe this was Elaine. In spite of her determination to give no credence to those poison-pen notes her stomach muscles knotted. Damn! So much for her faith in her husband.
She should have destroyed the third note the same as she had the other two and ignored it, but her self-confidence in her own judgment, and even her trust in Fergus’s integrity, had been whittled away by the repeated insinuations. If she ever got her hands on the creep who wrote them she’d throttle him.
Somehow she always thought of the troublemaker as a man. Someone who worked at the firm and was jealous of Fergus’s success. A rival hoping to extract a petty revenge for being left behind in the competitive climb to the top.
Sharon drew a deep breath as the headlights neared Elaine’s driveway, then let it out as the car drove on past and turned in at a house at the other end of the block.
Her relief was maddening. She should have been disappointed that it wasn’t Elaine coming home unaccompanied so that Sharon could prove to herself that her husband wasn’t carrying on with the woman.
A rush of self-disgust nearly overwhelmed her. She shouldn’t have to prove that Fergus was an honorable man. She’d never doubted it until those insidious notes kept coming.
The second one had arrived in October. If it had been packaged the same way as the first had been she probably would have burned it unopened, but this one came in a beige square envelope postmarked from Oak Park, Illinois, the suburb of Chicago where Sharon had been born and raised.
Although her parents were dead, and she had no brothers or sisters, she still had friends there. She’d assumed the envelope was from one of them.
It hadn’t been. Inside she’d found a note card with a reproduction of a Homer Winslow painting on the front and a message again typed in capitals.
She couldn’t remember exactly how it was worded, but it had been one paragraph informing her that because she’d ignored the first note, her husband and Ms. Odbert were now lovers.
Sharon had fought off a chill of foreboding. Why was someone tormenting her this way? Could there possibly be any truth in these vicious missives? No, she couldn’t, wouldn’t believe that! She’d set a match to it in the fireplace and watched it burn, but the feeling of apprehension continued.
She would have told Fergus about it, but he was in Washington that week pleading a case before the Supreme Court and she hadn’t wanted to discuss it on the phone. By the time he’d arrived back home she’d calmed down and realized that by destroying both notes she had no evidence to back up her story.
Not that he wouldn’t have taken her word for it, but she couldn’t bring herself to confront him. She’d tried to deny the doubts that made her so cowardly, but finally decided to wait and see if the writer would continue his insidious campaign before she took any action.
Still, the nagging doubts had persisted, and she’d found herself questioning Fergus when he would call to say he would be working late, or when he had to go into the office on a weekend.
But she’d taken herself firmly in hand after she’d picked up the phone one Sunday afternoon and actually dialed his office number to see if he’d answer. Fortunately she’d caught herself in time and slammed the phone down before it rang at the other end.
She’d been ashamed for letting an anonymous tipster cause her to doubt her husband, and had firmly put it out of her mind.
Sharon shifted uncomfortably. It was really cold now. She could see her breath, and it was clouding up the windshield. She was either going to have to roll down the window or turn on the heater so she could see out.
It was really no contest. No way was she going to open the window and let the cold wind off the lake blow in on her.
She turned on the engine and the heater and again settled back to wait. This was getting more ridiculous by the minute. If something didn’t happen in the next quarter hour she was going home. That’s where she should have stayed in the first place!
The third note had been delivered by messenger just a few hours ago. It was encased in a white business envelope, an exact duplicate of the first one she’d received. Obviously the sender had been confident that he’d planted enough suspicion in her mind to assure her opening it even though she knew it was more of the same vicious lie. She’d played right into his hand.
Reaching for her purse on the seat beside her she rummaged through it in the dark until she came up with the envelope and a penlight she always carried. Quickly extracting the piece of typing paper, she unfolded it and reread the typed message by the dim light of the tiny flashlight.
I TRIED TO HELP YOU, BUT YOU IGNORED MY WARNINGS. NOW YOU’RE GOING TO PAY FOR YOUR ARROGANCE. ELAINE ODBERT AND FERGUS LACHLAN HAVE RESIGNED FROM THE FIRM AND ARE MAKING PLANS TO ELOPE THIS EVENING. IF YOU WANT TO SAY GOODBYE TO YOUR HUSBAND YOU’D BETTER BE AT THE ODBERT HOME WHEN ELAINE AND FERGUS RETURN THERE FROM WORK. SURELY YOU AREN’T GOING TO HIDE YOUR HEAD IN THE SAND AND LET THAT BASTARD TREAT YOU SO SHABBILY. THE ADDRESS IS—
Sharon didn’t have to reread the address. It was branded into her brain.
The writer had assumed right. The earlier warnings had planted the malignant seed of doubt in her mind, and by the time the last one arrived she’d been compelled to read it.
Neither could she blithely discount this letter as she had the others, though God knows she’d tried. She’d told herself that Fergus would never be unfaithful to her. He loved her, but even if he hadn’t he was too moral a man to take a mistress when he had a wife.
But that line of thinking led her into a truth she’d preferred not to face. The inescapable fact that she had been the aggressor in their courtship, and in their decision to marry.
She’d seduced him, although he hadn’t put up much of a fight. He had been upset, though, when he discovered, too late to stop, that she was a virgin.
She’d been raised with moral standards, too, but she’d fallen in love with Fergus Lachlan, brilliant young attorney, the first day she’d met him. He’d also been attracted to her then. He’d told her as much.
Had she trapped him into a marriage he hadn’t really wanted because he felt guilty about taking a nineteen-year-old girl’s virginity?
No! She couldn’t believe that. Although he was ten years older and possibly thought he should have exerted more control, she was the one who’d come on to him, and she hadn’t told him ahead of time that it would be her first sexual experience.
If there was blame it was hers, but what could be so wrong about two consenting adults making love?
Besides, in the three years they’d been married he’d never indicated that he was really unhappy. Oh sure, they quarreled a lot, but it was only because she objected to him taking charge of her life and not giving her space to grow and make her own decisions, or mistakes if that was the case. And there’d always been those passionate reunions when they’d both said they were sorry just before they rocketed to the stars.
Most of the time they were still lovers in every sense of the word. They laughed together, played together, sometimes even cried together, and in bed they were sheer magic.
Another set of headlights appeared at the far end of the street in front of her, and this time the front of the garage at the house she was watching lit up and the door opened as the car swung into the driveway. Although she was too far away to identify the driver, Sharon could see that it was a woman and she was alone before the vehicle glided into the garage and the door closed behind it.
This time the relief Sharon felt was joyously welcome. She sank back against the seat and let out the breath she’d been holding. The self-appointed informant had been wrong! Fergus wasn’t with Ms. Odbert. He really did have to work late as he’d told Sharon on the phone when he’d called her earlier in the day.
It was that message from him, seeming to confirm the letter’s evil accusation, that had toppled her off the fence she’d been straddling and frightened her into checking up on him. How could she have had so little faith in a man she loved as much as she loved her husband?
The lights went on in the Odbert house, and Sharon couldn’t wait to get away from there. Although she doubted that she could bring herself to tell Fergus about this episode, she could try to make up for it by being especially loving when he did get home.
She looked down to shift into Drive, but when she raised her head again there was another set of headlights coming toward her. A shudder of apprehension ran through her as the car swung into Elaine’s driveway and the sensor light came on, illuminating the satiny black BMW.
Fergus’s car!
As she watched, frozen with shock, the door opened and her husband stepped out. Possibly she could have been mistaken about the car, but even if he hadn’t been wearing the same tan Burberry overcoat he’d worn to work that morning she’d recognize his collar-length brown hair, and his tall, loose-jointed frame anywhere. He was as much a part of her as her own image.
Quickly he closed the door and strode around the car and across the front of the house to the porch, where another sensor light came on, illuminating that area. Within seconds the door opened and he stepped inside and closed it behind him.
Sharon was stunned, unable either to move or to cry out her anguished disbelief. This couldn’t be happening! It was all a nightmare, and she’d wake up any moment.
But she didn’t, and as the minutes ticked by she knew this was no dream. She wasn’t going to wake up warm and safe in their luxurious king-size bed with Fergus’s long, lean, hard-muscled body wrapped around her, spoon fashion, his hands cupping her breasts even as he slept.
So what was she going to do now? Was she going to condemn her husband just because he’d followed a fellow lawyer home from work? That didn’t mean he was going to run away with her. There could be any number of innocent reasons why he would do that. Couldn’t there?
She could at least give him the benefit of the doubt.
Quickly she turned off the engine, opened the door and got out. She’d go up to the house and confront them, tell them about the anonymous notes, confess that she was spying on him and lay this thing to rest for good. They’d probably insist on taking legal action against the slimy creature who sent libelous letters through the mail if they could find out who it was.
Slamming the door behind her, she hunched her shoulders against the cold wind that buffeted her and blew her long medium-brown hair across her face. She’d forgotten to wear one of her wool knit tams that would have kept her head warm and her hair from blowing.
As she walked across the lawn the porch light came on again, and she felt somehow exposed, as if she had no business being there. Which was probably true, but now that she’d succumbed to the doubts raised by the notes she had to see her course of action through.
At the door she was looking for the doorbell, when she noticed that the metal blinds on the big window to her right were open. Not fully, yet slanted enough so that she could see in but anyone inside probably wouldn’t see her.
Even as her conscience screamed protests she moved toward the glass. She couldn’t stop herself. Although she knew she could be seen peeping by anyone passing by, she had to know what was going on between her husband and that woman in what they thought was the total privacy of Elaine’s living room.
The sheer white curtains covering the blinds from the inside obscured her vision slightly, but she could see the whole room. It was tastefully decorated and furnished and looked warm and comfortable, making Sharon aware that she was shivering outside in the cold.
The room was unoccupied, and she was wondering where Elaine and Fergus were, when Elaine walked through the open archway at one end. She was dressed in a dark-gray suit and a white tailored blouse. A Gucci purse swung from her shoulder, and she carried a brown leather suitcase in one hand and a large matching cosmetic kit in the other.
Sharon gasped, then stared in horror, as Fergus came in behind Elaine, carrying two large Pullman cases!
Dear God, they really were going away together.
Dazed, she watched as they stacked the luggage on the floor next to the end of the sofa, then straightened and turned to face each other. Fergus had his back to the window, but Sharon could see Elaine’s upturned face clearly.
It wasn’t a beautiful face. The nose was too large, the lips too thin, and the hazel eyes were set a little too close together, but even through metal blinds and a curtain Sharon could see the love that radiated from Elaine’s plain features and made her glow when she looked up at Fergus.
Sharon hunched forward and hugged her arms around her waist, trying to deflect the awful pain as Fergus reached out and took the other woman in a lover’s embrace. He lowered his head and covered her mouth with his own in a long, passionate kiss.
Sharon’s vision blurred, and for a moment she felt light-headed and dizzy. She clutched at the window casing to steady herself as the tears that had welled in her eyes spilled down her cheeks and were replaced by more in a continuous cycle over which she had no control.
It was like trying to see through a waterfall. The image shimmered surrealistically, and she couldn’t discern details. Still, there was no doubt but that she was watching a man and woman making love, even though they weren’t having sex.
In those few minutes she discovered that it was possible for the human heart to break.
Her breath came in tearing gasps, and the pain in her chest was almost unbearable as she wrenched her gaze away from the two entwined figures and stumbled the few steps back to the door. In her crazed state she couldn’t think, she could only react, and she had to be sure that what she’d just seen was real and not a hallucination.
This time her finger found the doorbell, and she pushed the button and held it in until the door was pulled open and Elaine Odbert stood facing her.
Elaine’s lips were slightly smeared and swollen from Fergus’s kisses, and her once neatly styled blond hair was disheveled. She blinked in confusion as her gaze fell on Sharon, but before she could speak Sharon did.
“I’m Sharon Lachlan,” she said in a voice too raspy to be her own, “and I want to see my husband.”
Before the other woman could speak or move Sharon pushed past her and entered a foyer. At first she thought she was looking at a picture on the wall directly in front of her. A distorted portrait of a woman in torment, her hair windblown and wild, her face white and ravaged with tears and the features twisted in a grimace of anguish.
But it was the eyes that startled her most. They were wide open, the blue irises dark and distended, and the torment that looked out of them was frantic in its intensity.
It was only then that she realized it wasn’t a picture she was gazing at but a mirror, and it was her own tempestuous image that she saw.
The shock was like a slap in the face, but it brought her back to her senses. Mindless hysteria would get her nowhere. She had to pull herself together. If need be, she could fall apart later, alone and in private.
She swiped at her eyes and face with the back of her hand as Fergus’s voice broke the electrifying silence.
“Elaine, who is it? Is anything wrong?”
Sharon swung around to look at him as he came through the archway from the living room. He stopped in midstride and stared at her as astonishment replaced the inquisitiveness in his expression.
The blood drained from his face. “Sharon!” It was a cry of surprise and...fear? “Dear God, what’s the matter? Have you been mugged? Why are you here?”
He started forward, his arms reaching out to her, but she stepped back and put up her hand. “No!” It was almost a shout, and she made an effort to lower her voice. “Don’t touch me. I’ve been watching you through the window.”
He gasped, but she hurried on. “I haven’t been mugged—I’ve been violated. Betrayed in a most intimate and degrading way by my own husband.”
Fergus’s face went even whiter, and the agony that crept into his eyes as understanding dawned almost made her forget her own.
“Oh dear Lord,” he moaned, as he sagged against the wall.
She’d momentarily forgotten that Elaine was there, as well. Although it seemed to Sharon that the events since she’d forced her way into the foyer had been acted out in slow motion, actually everything had happened so quickly that Elaine was just now recovering her composure.
She looked from Sharon to Fergus and straightened her shoulders. “We’d better go into the living room, where we can talk,” she said firmly. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you want to, but I’ll have to leave in twenty minutes. I have a plane to catch.”
She had a plane to catch? Didn’t she mean they?
Elaine led the way into the other room and Sharon and Fergus followed. “Please sit down,” she invited, and settled herself in a chair, then turned to look at Sharon. “I’m sure you have things to say to me, too.” Her voice quivered, betraying her emotional upheaval.
Sharon’s knees were trembling so, she practically fell into the nearest chair, but Fergus remained standing.
Now that Sharon had confronted them her mind went blank. She hadn’t considered how she’d handle the situation because she’d been so sure there was no situation to handle. Had it all been wishful thinking? Her way of hiding from an unbearable truth?
As Sharon floundered Fergus spoke. “How did you know I was here, Sharon?” His voice was tight with strain.
Wordlessly she opened her purse, pulled out the envelope and handed it to him.
His eyes widened with shock as his gaze flew over the message. “Where did you get this?”
“It was delivered by messenger earlier today,” she answered in little more than a whisper.
“And what’s this reference to trying to help you and having the warnings ignored?” he asked grimly as he handed the note to Elaine.
Sharon didn’t answer immediately, but watched while Elaine’s face turned red as her mind absorbed the message she was reading. Then Sharon took a deep breath and told them about the other two malicious notes she’d received previously.
“Why in hell didn’t you tell me?” Fergus raged.
“Because I didn’t for a minute believe them.” Her lips trembled and her teeth worried the lower one. “I only investigated this one because I wanted to prove him wrong.”
Fergus’s eyebrows lifted. “‘Him?’”
She shrugged. “I always think of the writer as ‘him,’ but it could as easily be a woman.”
Again the scalding tears poured down her cheeks. “I was so sure that you loved me, that you’d never be unfaithful—”
A shuddering sob shook her, and she dropped her face in her hands.
Fergus groaned and walked over to her chair, but again she cringed from him and he stopped short of touching her.
“Sharon, I do love you,” he said raggedly, “and I haven’t been unfaithful to you.”
His words tore at her like a knife in her chest, and she sprang out of the chair. “Dammit, Fergus, don’t lie to me,” she yelled. “Not any more than you already have. Don’t forget, I saw you and Elaine making love just minutes ago.”
“We weren’t making love—we were just kissing,” he insisted.
The anger that had been curiously missing in the myriad of emotions she’d been feeling finally surfaced, and she whirled around to face him. “Don’t play word games with me.” Her tone was low and grating. “I’m not stupid, and I belatedly lost my innocence when I saw you take that woman in your arms. You weren’t just kissing—you were making love, and don’t deny it.”
Fergus clenched the back of the chair she’d just vacated, as if trying to steady himself. Elaine hadn’t moved, nor did she speak, but her expression mirrored both guilt and despair.
“Sharon, you must believe me,” he pleaded. “No matter how it looked to you, Elaine and I have not committed adultery.”
Sharon’s eyes widened with disbelief, and the only thing she could think of to say was “Why?”
Elaine gasped, but Fergus seemed to understand what she was asking. “Because I’m married to you. I love you, and I couldn’t betray you in that way.”
The pain of knowing he thought she was simpleminded enough to believe his lies was almost more than she could bear. “I told you not to lie to me,” she said angrily. “How can you say you love me, when you and Elaine have resigned from the firm and are running away together tonight?”
She swallowed a sob that tore at her throat. “Why haven’t you been honest with me? Why didn’t you come to me and tell me you wanted out of our marriage? I’d have given you a quiet divorce if you really wanted it. You didn’t have to scheme to run off in the middle of the night with another woman and make me an object of pity and gossip.”
A spasm of pain twisted Fergus’s face as he ignored her wish not to be touched and clasped her by the shoulders. “Honey, I know this is going to be hard to believe after the notes you’ve received and what you’ve seen here, but whoever wrote those letters has only given you half-truths and vicious speculations. I haven’t resigned from the firm, and I’m not going anywhere, but Elaine has accepted a position in a law office in California and is flying out there tonight.”
He sighed and released her. “I...I admit that there is an...an attraction between Elaine and me, but neither of us wants to break up my marriage. I’ve always loved you, Sharon, and I didn’t take our marriage vows lightly. I don’t want a divorce. The kiss you saw was one of goodbye, not a prelude to making love.”
He turned away from her and put a few steps between them. “I was going to take Elaine to the airport and then go home to you. I’m sorry that we were indiscreet enough that someone picked up on the attraction and used it to poison your mind with their venom.”
Even in her numbing grief, Sharon realized that she should be relieved. Fergus really didn’t want a divorce.
So he’d gotten involved with another woman. Well, that happened a lot in marriages. He was sending the other woman away, and Sharon tended to believe him when he said they hadn’t had sex. She’d never known him to be anything but honorable in his dealings with people.
Surely that meant he loved her more than he loved Elaine.
Or did it?
Sharon fought against her doubts, but couldn’t put them to rest. As he said, she was his wife, and he took the vows of marriage seriously. It would be just like him to abide by them, even if it meant giving up the woman he really wanted.
With great effort she resisted the urge to break down and sob, to do whatever it took to bind him to her. Instead she again dried her wet face with her hands and pulled in a deep breath to choke back the sobs that shook her.
When she had herself under reasonable control she turned to Elaine, whose cheeks were also wet with tears. “Don’t you have something to say about this?”
Elaine looked Sharon straight in the eye without flinching. “Nothing except to assure you that Fergus has told the truth. We haven’t been intimate, although I’ve let him know that I’d be willing, and I’ve always known that he’d never divorce you.”
She was being searingly honest, and Sharon almost felt sorry for her. This triangle had the elements of a Greek tragedy. It could ruin all three of their lives.
Still holding Elaine’s gaze, Sharon asked, “Are you in love with him?”
The woman didn’t even blink. “Yes.”
Sharon winced, then turned to face Fergus. He appeared so tormented, as if he’d been caught in a nightmare and couldn’t wake up.
Her whole being cried out to her to let well enough alone. To accept the situation and let Fergus and Elaine play it out as they’d planned. Sharon would keep her husband, and the other woman would be gone for good. They could all get on with their lives and pretend that none of this had ever happened.
But could they? She wouldn’t know unless she asked Fergus the same question she’d asked Elaine, and she wasn’t sure she had the courage to do that.
She closed her eyes for a brief moment, then opened them and put her future on the line.
“Fergus, are you in love with Elaine?”
He opened his mouth to answer, but she hurried on. “I’ve always thought of you as an honorable man, and now I’m appealing to that honor. I don’t want to hear about your duty to me. All I want is the truth. Please. You owe me that much.”
He closed his mouth and shook his head. “Sharon, I... You don’t understand....”
“The truth, Fergus.” She sounded like an attorney cross-examining a witness, but she had to know.
His gaze searched hers, and he must have seen how important this was to her. Slowly he looked from Sharon to Elaine, then back again. “Elaine and I have a close relationship. I care deeply for her, but you’re my wife—”
In spite of the scalding anguish his words caused, Sharon felt a calm dignity as she let out the breath she’d been holding. “That’s not good enough. I’m selfish. I want all or nothing.”
Her voice broke, and she took a deep breath. “There won’t be any need for Elaine to go to California. I’m sorry, but I can’t live with you knowing you’re not totally committed to me. I’ll file for divorce in the morning.”
She held her head high and managed to walk steadily across the room and out of the house even though she was blinded by tears of grief.
