Newlyweds of Convenience

Carraig, which had a surprisingly good deli section. It wasn’t the most exciting lunch in the world, but it looked appetising when it was all spread out on the kitchen table.

Not that Sheena noticed. She was too busy gushing to Torr about what an exciting project Kincaillie was. ‘You’ve done a marvellous job already, Torr. It’s going to be wonderful when you’ve finished with it,’ she enthused after he had shown her round. Mallory had been left in the kitchen to get lunch ready.

‘I’d love to live somewhere like this.’ Sheena sighed wistfully. ‘Such history! And those mountains on your doorstep! You could climb every day. It’s paradise, isn’t it?’

Mallory cut the lemon tart viciously. Why didn’t Sheena tie herself up in a ribbon and offer herself to Torr with a label reading ‘suitable wife’? And look at Torr, nodding away and smiling, obviously delighted to have found someone who shared his feeling for Kincaillie! Had either of them even noticed that she was there? Perhaps they thought the soup had made itself and the tart had appeared by magic.

It went on like that for hours-Torr and Sheena nose to nose over the plans, while Mallory cleared up around them and wasn’t even asked for her opinion. By the time Sheena finally left, she was in a vile temper.

‘I think that went very well, don’t you?’ Torr made the mistake of saying when he came in from waving Sheena off.

‘Well, you obviously enjoyed it,’ said Mallory, who was taking out her feelings on the washing up, banging and crashing plates and glasses together.

Torr’s eyes narrowed at her tone. ‘I did,’ he said evenly. ‘Sheena’s got some really interesting ideas for what we can do here.’

‘Don’t you mean for what she can do with you?’ Mallory snapped, and he sighed.

‘You’re not still on that nonsense, are you?’

‘It’s not nonsense.’

With one part of her mind Mallory could recognise that she was behaving badly. She couldn’t really understand why she was so upset. Wasn’t she the one who had insisted that she and Torr couldn’t have a future together? Torr would be staying at Kincaillie, so she shouldn’t blame him for planning for a future that didn’t include her.

She shouldn’t, but she did.

She didn’t want to be jealous, but she was.

Confused, churning with uncertainty, Mallory took out her unease on Torr, who seemed so calm and certain of himself and what he wanted. She knew it wasn’t fair, but she couldn’t help herself, and knowing that she was being unreasonable just made things worse.

‘Sheena spent the entire day simpering at you, and you lapped it up!’ she threw at him. ‘You couldn’t wait to scurry off on your own together.’

Torr’s jaw tightened with exasperation. ‘You could have come with us. If you’d had any interest in Kincaillie, you would have done.’

‘I was busy making the special lunch you ordered, if you remember!’

Hurt more than she wanted to admit by the implication that she wasn’t interested in Kincaillie, Mallory tipped the dirty water out of the washing up bowl with such venom that it slopped all over her front.

‘Although I don’t know why you bothered,’ she went on, muttering under her breath at the mess. ‘Sheena wouldn’t have cared if we’d given her a bowl of Charlie’s food as long as she could sit and make eyes at you!’

Something raw and unpleasant had crept into the atmosphere, and by this time Torr was evidently having trouble keeping his own temper under control.

‘Don’t you think you’re being rather childish, Mallory?’

‘If you call it childish to object to Sheena flaunting her qualifications to be the next Lady of Kincaillie in front of my face. “This is paradise, Torr,”’ Mallory mimicked with an atrocious Scottish accent. ‘“I’d so love to live here, Torr. We could go climbing every day. Oh, and by the way, Torr, I’d be so much better a wife for you than Mallory, who’s only good for making lemon tart.”’

‘Why do you care, anyway?’ Torr demanded, losing the battle with his temper at last. ‘You’re going back to Ellsborough, as you keep saying. It won’t be anything to do with you. But now you come to mention it, I think you’re right. Sheena would make a perfect Lady of Kincaillie. She wouldn’t make a fuss about the conditions here.’

‘No, I dare say she wouldn’t have wasted a moment’s time cleaning the bathroom or getting rid of the spiders’ webs in the bedroom, would she?’ Mallory practically spat out. ‘What a waste of time, when you could have been running up and down mountains together!’

‘Well, it’s not too late,’ said Torr, his mouth a compressed line and a white shade around his mouth. ‘I’ll invite her down for the weekend when you’ve gone.’

When you’ve gone. Funny how three simple words could twist her entrails into a painful knot that made Mallory suck in her breath. How casually Torr had uttered them, as if it didn’t matter at all whether she was there or not.

‘It won’t just be a weekend,’ she said bravely, given the fact that she was trying desperately to keep her voice from shaking. ‘Once Sheena gets a foot in the door, she’ll be here for ever.’

‘I can think of worse fates than spending my life with an attractive woman who cares about the same things I do and who actually wants to be with me.’

Torr’s eyes were cold and his voice very hard. Mallory felt sick.

‘What about the love of your life? The one you were never going to get over?’

‘She’s not attainable and Sheena is,’ he said flatly. ‘Perhaps it’s time I gave up on that dream. It was never going to come true, anyway.’

‘I thought you never gave up?’ Mallory couldn’t resist goading him, and Torr looked at her for a long moment, his eyes unreadable, before he turned away.

‘There’s a first time for everything.’

CHAPTER NINE

‘I’M TAKING Charlie to the vet.’ Mallory found Torr about to climb the scaffolding to the roofers a couple of days later.

Ever since Sheena’s visit they had been frigidly polite to each other. Mallory had been huffy all that evening, and when they’d gone to bed she had firmly turned her back to him and pretended to sleep, telling herself she would do something about another room first thing in the morning.

When you’ve gone. Torr’s words circled endlessly round her brain.

She was the one who had suggested that she only stay a year, Mallory kept reminding herself. It had been her idea to earn her divorce. So why did Torr’s casual acceptance of the fact that she would be leaving in a matter of months hurt so much?

Mallory couldn’t shake the humiliated feeling. She had been happy recently. She had let herself believe that she could live in the present and not worry about the future, and she had let down her guard. She had forgotten the reality of her marriage to Torr.

Torr hadn’t forgotten. He hadn’t lost sight of the truth. They didn’t have a relationship, they had a deal.

That was what she had wanted, wasn’t it?

Mallory didn’t know any more. All she knew was that the warmth of the last few weeks had evaporated, and they were back to the cold formality of the early months of their marriage.

And that she wanted to weep.

Unable to think of anything else to do, Mallory had gone back to her digging. Charlie lay in his usual place in the grass, but he’d been listless again, and when he’d turned away from his breakfast three days running she started to worry in earnest.

‘Do you want me to come with you?’ Torr asked now, when she told him about her decision to take the dog to the vet, but she shook her head.

‘No. I’m sure it’s nothing serious,’ she said, refusing to admit to her own fears. ‘I just wanted to let you know I was taking the car.’

The stilted politeness was awful. Only a few days ago he would have smiled at her, or taken the opportunity to touch her. He might have run a hand down her arm, or smoothed her breeze-blown hair back into place. She might