The Marriage Replay
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Maggie Cox
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CHAPTER ONE
SORREL had been dreading this day. The almost absurdly formal room she’d been shown into seemed to echo her dread, and multiply her fear that nothing good could happen inside its singularly unwelcoming oak-panelled walls.
Despite it being the kind of glorious spring day outside that made a person glad to be alive, inside this forbidding room there was no such complementary feeling—no glimmer of hope or renewal at all. How could there be when Sorrel was about to come face to face with the husband she’d left three months ago and discuss their divorce?
Her stomach felt as if it had one huge knot inside it…had, in fact, been feeling like that for days now, with no relief. Absently, her fingers curled into her clothing, but they were so cold—as though they’d been plunged into ice—that they would hardly flex at all.
The thought of seeing Reece again filled Sorrel with one part joy and three parts sorrow. She’d always thought that their love was unbreakable…that it could withstand any rocky terrain or crashing wave that threatened to unbalance it. The last few months had tested that belief to the limit.
Reece had been a cold, unfeeling stranger to her the night she’d finally decided to leave him. An impenetrable stone eleventh-century castle wall couldn’t have been more impervious. He’d been so caught up in the whirlwind of activity and demand that was his work that he simply hadn’t even seemed to see that Sorrel had also had needs that were crying out to be met. Her husband had thought that she was the intolerant one—the one who was deliberately making difficulties where there really weren’t any to begin with.
The following day, after the worst argument their marriage had ever endured, he’d left the house in the early hours of the morning to catch a train to York, to discuss a classical concert he was promoting, and Sorrel hadn’t seen him at all. She’d told herself that if he’d cared sufficiently about repairing the damage that had been done between them he wouldn’t have left to catch that train. He would have postponed his ‘pressing and important’ business meeting and stayed home, to attend to the far more important subject of his marriage. The fact that Reece hadn’t done any such thing had left her with little alternative but to pack her bags and leave.
Disheartened and melancholy, Sorrel had moved out of the architect-designed house they’d shared in Pimlico, London, and temporarily moved in with her sister Melody and her family in Suffolk. She’d had to get away.
Everything had been getting her down…the rows, the hurt, the accusations, the horrible suspicions about who Reece spent his time with when he was away, and the long periods apart when time crawled by so deathly slow that Sorrel wanted to scream inside with loneliness. No amount of activity or socialising with friends could make up for the aching chasm deep inside her very soul that could only be made whole again by her husband’s friendship and love.
She’d known when she’d married Reece that, being the internationally acclaimed music impresario he was, his job would naturally involve a lot of travel. Being a fashion model herself, Sorrel was not unused to travelling the world. But then had come the time when she’d stopped looking forward to boarding yet another plane or another private yacht and had simply longed to be home in her own place—a real home, with Reece. She couldn’t explain it…she’d just suddenly needed to put down roots.
The rows had started when he had demonstrated no sign of wanting such simplicity at all. In fact, perversely, his work commitments had seemed to accelerate, and Sorrel had barely seen him from one week to the next—unless, of course, she’d travelled with him. Increasingly she had not wanted to do that.
‘We’ll have some coffee shortly, Mrs Villiers…we’re just waiting for Mr Villiers to arrive. Are you comfortable? You look a little chilly, if you don’t mind my saying. Shall I close the window?’
As the impeccably attired solicitor rose up from his seat at the head of the long formal table, Sorrel glanced up at him in alarm. ‘No! Please don’t shut the window.’
There was a real danger of her not being able to breathe if he shut out the vital supply of fresh spring air that just at that moment was helping her keep her anxiety at a level that was manageable. If he closed it off, the already daunting and chilly room would be even more like a tomb encasing her, and she wouldn’t be able to sit still and face Reece across that alienating formal table and accept that he obviously didn’t love her any more.
It was he who had instigated this discussion with his solicitor about a divorce. When Sorrel had received his letter at her sister’s house a fortnight ago, she had wept until her eyes were dry of tears. She’d been hoping for an entirely different content in his coldly brief missive. Foolishly, and perhaps naively, she’d been hoping there might be talk of forgiveness and compromise…even starting over. But it wasn’t to be…
Muted voices outside the door told her that her husband had arrived. Steeling herself for the sight of him, and unable to stop shivering at the prospect, Sorrel lifted her chin a little and silently prayed that she would not betray her distressing inner turmoil. Why give him even more ammunition to shoot her down with than he had already? This man had been her whole world, and now he was showing her that he no longer wanted to be part of her world at all. She almost couldn’t bear it. She certainly didn’t want him to see her devastation.
Just then he walked in the door, his heat-provoking glance immediately seeking her out, then frostily disregarding her as though she were an insignificant stranger. The stunning verdant gaze that had once studied her with such adoration now appeared as hostile as a sworn enemy…as if love had never visited their captivating emerald depths at all…
Sorrel didn’t know how she remained in her seat instead of flying out through the door with grief.
‘Welcome, Mr Villiers. Won’t you sit down and make yourself comfortable? I will just have a word about some coffee for us all. Excuse me…’
Edward Carmichael—Reece’s wealthy and dapper solicitor—made himself scarce from the room. Sorrel could feel the tension roll off her husband’s impressive broad shoulders in almost tangible waves, and his formal grey pin-striped suit added to her already deepening sense of alienation and fear. She hardly knew what to say. In the end the dilemma was taken out of her hands.
‘Did you drive into London?’ Reece questioned her, his familiar transatlantic tones as formal as the lofty room that surrounded them.
‘No, actually, I didn’t. I came up on the train. I was going to drive, but then I—I decided against it in case the traffic was bad.’ Self-consciously, Sorrel’s words died away. She’d been about to explain that she’d been suffering from an upset stomach for the past few days and had worried about being carsick. But then she thought better of revealing such an intimate detail to her husband, because she was afraid to witness his undoubted lack of concern. ‘Anyway…’ She shrugged her shoulders in the butter-soft tan suede jacket she wore over her knitted cardigan, feeling ill with nerves. The sheer strain of the past three months and her dread of what the future might hold had taken its toll. ‘At least I was able to read my book on the train.’
Drawing out the high-backed chair opposite her, Reece undid the buttons on his suit jacket and sat down. ‘Hopefully we can get this over with as quickly and as painlessly as possible,’ he remarked, reaching out to pour some water from the carafe in front of him into a cut crystal tumbler.
Did he really hope that? Then it was clear that he must possess a heart of stone, Sorrel thought in despair. Her hurt blue eyes considered the aloofly handsome face before her, with its clean-cut and strongly defined symmetry of jaw and cheekbone, the slight cleft in his indomitable chin that she’d always found so disarmingly sexy, and the piercingly sharp intelligent green eyes that complemented his dark blond hair. It was hard to believe that he’d once told her that she was the woman of his dreams. Now he looked at her as if he could hardly bear to be in the same room as her!
‘I—I didn’t expect to get such a letter from you,’ she forced herself to say, needing to make a more personal connection—even if it was a somewhat wounded one. But just then the solicitor returned, followed by a woman bearing a tray with coffee. She deposited it between Reece and Sorrel then discreetly left. Edward Carmichael resumed his seat, settled his hands on the blotter in front of him and cleared his throat.
Reece’s heart and stomach had seemed simultaneously to somersault at the sight of his arrestingly beautiful young wife. He was quite aware that he’d spent a large part of their two-and-a-half-year-old marriage away, travelling for his work, but the last eleven weeks and two days had seemed like an eternity without her. At least when he had been away before Reece had always known that he had Sorrel to come home to. Now the stunning state-of-the-art house he had had constructed just for her seemed like a glass and steel prison without her in it. A luxurious glass and steel prison, full of expensive furniture and objets d’art—rooms empty of anyone to appreciate them or even use them. Because being in the house for any time at all was a too-painful reminder of what Reece had lost.
But, even so, he couldn’t gaze upon Sorrel’s blond angelic perfection with any genuine delight or pleasure any more. The woman had walked out on him and left him, clearly demonstrating her contempt. She hadn’t even had the decency to leave him a goodbye note. Instead, her partially denuded wardrobe and two missing suitcases had testified to the fact that she’d gone away, and in three long months Reece had had neither letter or phone call to let him know how she was or what she intended to do about their clearly disintegrating relationship.
He had tortured himself with the possibility that she might have met someone else, was having an affair and hadn’t been able to confess to him the true reason that she had left him.
Sorrel’s closest relationship outside of their marriage had always been with her sister Melody, so Reece had been in no doubt that she’d gone there. After ringing and checking that that was the case, and being reassured by Melody that Sorrel definitely wasn’t seeing anyone else, Reece had had to force himself to come to terms with her absence.
Furious that she had eliminated the chance for him to express his feelings on her leaving, Reece had decided to wait no longer for Sorrel to make a decision. Instead he’d called her bluff and decided that a quick and easy divorce was probably the best solution all round. Why wait when all they had done for months now was argue anyway?
Reece was sick of it. He’d never dreamt in a million years that the slightly self-effacing, calm, even-tempered angel he’d married could make his life quite so difficult or inflame his temper more quickly than anyone or anything else. The tense situation between them had started to infringe upon Reece’s work, too, tearing his mind away from it when his job required all the concentration he could muster. But he’d found it increasingly hard to detach himself emotionally and focus on business when most of his thoughts seemed to be concerned with Sorrel. Seeing her again now, after nearly three months, wasn’t making things any easier…
‘Shall we proceed?’
Bestowing his best professional smile on both of them in turn, the unctuous Edward Carmichael straightened some papers on the blotter in front of him, clearly denoting that he was the one their attention should be focused on, and not each other.
His hands were small and very white, Sorrel noticed—with perfectly manicured nails and a thick gold wedding ring encasing one plump little finger. She turned her head forlornly away at the sight of it, suddenly wishing that she hadn’t removed the slim platinum band that Reece had put on her finger on their wedding day only this morning, before Melody had driven her to the station to catch her train. Sorrel had only done it because she’d suddenly had the crazy idea that he might ask for it back. Now she saw that Reece might justifiably interpret her not wearing it as agreement to his suggestion that they end their marriage.
Guiltily, she covered the offending hand with its opposite one in her lap. She didn’t want this divorce. She’d never wanted things between her and Reece to go this far or get this bad. If only she had relented and spoken to him when he’d rung Melody, or at least contacted him herself soon after she’d left to suggest they get together and talk about their troubles like civilised human beings—they might have stood a chance of repairing the damage. Instead she’d stubbornly stayed silent and uncommunicative in the stupidly vain hope that he would contact her first and say sorry.
He’d said some terrible things to her that awful night, when they’d had the row to end all rows. His words had been like razor-sharp swords flailing through her heart, slicing it to shreds. Nursing her wounds, Sorrel had longed for Reece to be the one to make the first step towards reconciling. Lifting her gaze to study his expression on the other side of the table, she saw to her great pain that he appeared no less remote and no more amicable than he had when he’d first come through the door. He obviously couldn’t wait to cut the ties that bound them together for good.
‘If you wouldn’t mind,’ she heard him say in answer to the solicitor’s suggestion, ‘I’m catching a train to Edinburgh in a couple of hours, so I’d appreciate it if we could move things along fairly quickly.’
That was when Sorrel literally smelled the coffee. The strong aroma made her stomach roll, then frighteningly threaten to relieve her of her breakfast. Before either Edward Carmichael or Reece had a chance to react, she leapt to her feet and dashed out through the door, calling out to the smartly attired woman on the reception desk for directions to the nearest ladies’ toilet.
Running down a long black-and-white checked marble floor which oddly made her think of that strange game of chess in Alice in Wonderland—Sorrel swept towards the destination she was seeking in double-quick time, barely making it into the nearest cubicle before she was wretchedly and horribly sick.
It was several long minutes before her insides calmed down and she risked returning to the solicitor’s office. When she did, her face was almost as chalk-white as one of the smooth marble busts to be found in any museum, and her limbs felt no stronger than fragile sheaves of corn.
Reece was on his feet the moment she entered, his expression grimly concerned.
‘Are you all right? What the hell happened?’
Automatically he’d come over to her and put his hand behind her waist, to lead her back to the chair she had so abruptly vacated. Sorrel knew that if she dared reply at that moment it might open the floodgates on her tears, and she would embarrass herself in front of her husband and his solicitor all over again. All she longed for, all she really wanted, was for Reece to put his arms around her and tell her that he was taking her home.
But she and Reece didn’t even share a home any more, she painfully reminded herself—and probably wouldn’t again after the outcome of this meeting. So her longing would have to go unanswered.
‘It was just the stupidest thing…the smell of the coffee, that’s all. It’s never happened before. I’m sorry.’
Sorrel didn’t see Reece’s own face practically drain of colour. Returning to his seat, he didn’t sit down but formidably remained standing. His commanding presence was even more riveting in this solemn, almost funereal room. She gazed up at him in genuine bewilderment.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Did it even occur to you that you might be pregnant, Sorrel?’ he asked, emerald eyes glittering hard.
The truth hit her like a thunderbolt shooting out of the sky. The queasy churning stomach she had had for days now; the acute tingling sensation in her breasts; the need to have all the windows opened in whatever room she was in else otherwise she’d feel as if there wasn’t enough air to breathe. Never having been pregnant before, Sorrel had put all those symptoms down to the fact that she was mourning her doomed relationship. She’d been heartsick and in despair, because despite everything—the rows, the tension, the sometimes seemingly relentless periods of deep unhappiness—she loved Reece almost more than life itself.
And her periods had never been completely reliable anyway. Two or three months could easily go by without her having one or being alarmed by the fact. But the night before the row to end all rows she and Reece had loved each other long into the night. And because he’d been away for a whole month, and their need for each other had almost been bordering on desperate—in spite of their marital difficulties—they hadn’t given a thought to using protection…
‘I’m—I’m not! I can’t be!’
Helplessly she glanced across at Edward Carmichael, who had linked his perfectly manicured hands together and was frowning deeply—just like a prosecutor in a medieval court, having just found Sorrel guilty of witchcraft.
Her voice rose. ‘I’ve just had a bit of an upset stomach, that’s all!’
‘Have you seen a doctor?’
His voice still sounding remote, as though nothing would ever make it warm towards her ever again, Reece kept his piercing gaze focused on Sorrel’s stricken face.
‘No. Why should I have? I was—I was upset about all this…about us. I didn’t think it was due to anything else.’
She was stunned, the full impact of the possibility of pregnancy starting to permeate her brain.
‘I think under the circumstances that I should leave you two to talk, Mr Villiers.’
Rising to his feet, the solicitor glanced reprovingly from one to the other.
‘Take as long as you like. Just tell my receptionist when you’re ready to see me again.’
As the door closed firmly shut behind him, Reece didn’t quite know what to do with the plethora of strong emotion that was running wildly through his veins. Sorrel was pregnant. He needed a moment for the idea to sink in. She was going to have a baby. His heart felt as if it was on a white-water ride, hurtling towards inevitable rapids. It was very definitely heading into even more dangerous waters when a new and unwelcome thought ruthlessly impinged itself upon his already assaulted mind.
‘Is it mine?’ he demanded, his tone furious and condemning.
Her gaze didn’t waver for even an instant from her husband’s angry yet undoubtedly handsome face, but the hurt that his cruel reaction engendered momentarily sucked all the breath from her lungs—like the wave of heat that hit mercilessly when you stepped out of an air-conditioned hotel lobby onto the baking pavements of Crete or Rome.
‘I can’t believe you would ask me such a dreadful question. Of course it’s yours! Are you suggesting that I’ve been seeing someone else behind your back? What are you trying to do? Make a mockery of our entire marriage?’
‘Right now I don’t know what to think. I thought I knew you, Sorrel, but I was wrong. That all changed when you walked out on me three months ago.’
Shocked at the bitterness that was lacing his accusing tone, Sorrel shook her head slowly from side to side. ‘And you don’t think that might have anything to do with the selfish, unreasonable and totally stubborn way you’ve been acting? You’d rather believe I left you because I was seeing another man than imagine for even for one second that any blame might lie at your own door? I walked out on you, Reece, because I was sick of being made to feel like a second-class citizen in this marriage! The psychologists are right when they say it takes two to make a relationship work. As far as I can see all you’ve ever been concerned with is doing what you want to do, and my needs and wants can go hang!’
‘That’s a damn lie, and you know it!’ Scraping his fingers harshly through his hair, uncaringly dislodging its previous order, Reece glared at her. ‘What the hell are you complaining about? Anyone would think you had difficult circumstances to contend with! We live in the lap of luxury, Sorrel. You have the opportunity to travel the world on a regular basis. I’m not asking you to stay at home and live in squalor while I try and earn a crust—all I’ve ever asked is that sometimes you travel with me so that I can spend time with you. Is that so damn unreasonable?’
‘And what about you staying in our home sometimes, and spending time with me? When you’re travelling you can’t make a proper home, and I told you that I need that. I need to put down roots—not just be aimless!’
‘You knew what I did for a living when we met. You thought it was glamorous and exciting then. You also knew the demanding hours I had to work and you accepted them…or at least you seemed to. As far as your own career was concerned, you said yourself your heart wasn’t in it, and I don’t blame you—but it must have occurred to you somewhere along the line that I wasn’t the kind of guy who could easily stay at home and play happy families with you, Sorrel, so don’t act like some innocent injured party who didn’t know the score!’
Nothing had changed. Three months apart and Reece clearly had developed no intention or even any desire to discuss what Sorrel wanted. That was why the only solution to the stalemate they had reached was to instigate divorce proceedings. He was right and she was wrong.
For a moment Sorrel had forgotten the added dilemma that she now faced—the fact that she was quite likely pregnant with their child. Nothing was working out as she’d hoped. When she’d allowed herself a fantasy about having children, she’d always dreamed that news of her pregnancy would be greeted with joy from her husband. Faced with the reality of her situation now, nothing could be further from that hope.
Sorrel was heartbroken for her child. To be a newly born infant of divorced parents who couldn’t reconcile their differences…how tragic. Her throat threatened to close with pain; her soft blue eyes could not hide her hurt and distress.
‘And what about the baby?’
She prayed he wasn’t going to suggest the unthinkable. Reece would be an utter stranger to her if he did. Whatever his opinion, Sorrel was determined she was going to keep her baby and raise it on her own—no matter what she had to do.
Presenting her with his back, her husband slid one hand into his trouser pocket and strode thoughtfully away from her. Pausing for a moment, as if he needed to be clear in his own mind about what he was about to propound, he turned back to face her, as if reaching a conclusion that met all the rigours of his brief but razor-sharp investigation.
‘The baby changes everything,’ he told her, his voice resolute.
