Newlyweds of Convenience

excuse to see you,’ he confessed.

Mallory made a face. ‘And lost a fortune as a result!’

‘It was worth it,’ said Torr. ‘I got you instead.’

‘But I was so…’

‘Unhappy?’ He nodded. ‘I know. I could tell that you were broken by Steve’s betrayal, and I’m not proud of the way I used your debts as a lever. I stopped short of outright blackmail, but I could see that you had very few options, and selfishly I saw it as a chance for me. I’d always thought of myself as someone who got what he wanted, and I wanted you.

‘It seemed simple then,’ Torr told her. ‘I told myself that it was just desire I felt for you. I thought it would be enough just to have you, but of course it wasn’t. Our wedding night…I’ll never forget the repulsion in your face.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Mallory, wincing at the memory. If only she had known then how much she would come to love him!

Torr lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a warm kiss into her palm. ‘I’m the one who should apologise to you,’ he said. ‘I effectively blackmailed you into marrying me and then forced myself on you. I’m not surprised you were revolted, but at the time I was furious-with you for still loving Steve after the way he’d treated you, but most of all with myself.’

‘With yourself? Why?’

‘Because I’d been a fool. I’d known how you felt about Steve, but I’d let myself believe that somehow you would miraculously fall in love with me. I’d wanted you to be someone you weren’t,’ said Torr, remembering. ‘I had this fantasy about you, and then I didn’t like it when I realised that you weren’t a fantasy, you were a real person, and you were deeply unhappy married to me. It seemed pretty clear that I was going to be unhappy too, and it was all my own fault.

‘I should have ended the marriage there and then,’ he said, ‘but I’ve never been good at admitting that I was wrong. I couldn’t bring myself to tell you that I knew I’d made a terrible mistake.’

‘I’m glad you didn’t,’ said Mallory. ‘I would never have come to Kincaillie if you’d done that. I would never have fallen in love with you.’ The thought made her shudder, and she kissed him with relief.

‘That’s true,’ Torr agreed, winding his fingers in her dark hair and kissing her back. ‘But it’s no excuse for treating you the way I did. I was so angry and disappointed and jealous of Steve, and I took it all out on you.’

‘So you were trying to punish me when you brought me to Kincaillie?’ She had been right about that, anyway.

‘Partly,’ he admitted. ‘But I really wanted just to see you here, too. Even if I couldn’t make the marriage work, I thought I would at least have memories of you here to keep me going. At the same time, I was hoping that a fresh start might help us make a go of it after all-I wasn’t thinking very logically at the time!’

‘It’s good to know that you’re not always cool and rational,’ Mallory teased him, and he snorted with laughter.

‘Cool is the last thing I’ve been since we got here! How could I be cool when I had to share a bed with you? You were so gorgeous, even in those long john things you used to wear. I’d lie there and feel how soft and warm you were, and I’d smell your perfume and my head would reel…You have no idea what those nights cost me!’

Mallory laughed. ‘They were just as bad for me, you know. I wish I’d known how you felt,’ she sighed, thinking of all those wasted sleepless nights.

‘I couldn’t tell you. I was afraid of spoiling things just when they seemed to be getting better. I didn’t want a repetition of our wedding night! Besides,’ he said, ‘I’d promised you that I wouldn’t touch you, so I couldn’t go back on that-especially when you kept telling me how much you still loved Steve.

‘I knew I wasn’t being fair to you. I’d trapped you into marriage and brought you somewhere you hated. I hadn’t realised quite how bad the conditions were until we got here,’ Torr admitted guiltily.

‘Oh, it’s not so bad,’ said Mallory, resting her head against his shoulder and forgetting everything she had flung at him in her fury on the road to Carraig.

‘You say that now!’ Torr tweaked her nose. ‘That wasn’t what you said at the time, and you were right. You coped so much better than I thought you would, too, and that just made me feel worse.

‘I think that’s when I started to fall in love with you properly,’ he said. ‘Until then, I’d just seen you as a beautiful, desirable woman, but when we got here, and you got stuck into cleaning and painting, I fell in love with you as a person too. The more I got to know you, the more I loved you-and the more I realised just how selfish I was being. I wouldn’t have blamed you at all if you’d simply walked out-or driven out, maybe-so when you offered to stay for a year I knew that I was lucky that you were prepared to do that.’

‘I thought you were relieved that I’d decided to go!’

‘I did feel relieved,’ Torr confessed, ‘but only because I thought a year would give me a chance to persuade you to change your mind.’

‘You didn’t do much persuading,’ Mallory teased him. ‘I practically had to beg you to make love to me!’

‘I had to be sure you wanted it as much as I did,’ he said, and she smiled at him.

‘Are you sure now?’

‘Well, now you come to mention it, I might need a little convincing…’ said Torr, a laugh in his voice as he drew her down onto the shingle for a long, long kiss. ‘It’s just as well these stones are so uncomfortable,’ he murmured a little breathlessly into her ear at last, and Mallory laughed, not really caring about the discomfort as long as she was with him.

When Torr pulled her back to a sitting position, she leant blissfully against him once more. ‘I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me how you felt once we were sleeping together,’ she said.

‘You made such a point about it being just a physical relationship that I thought it would be easier for you if I pretended that was all it was for me too,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t at all sure how you felt. Sometimes I let myself hope that you were starting to feel something for me, but at others it seemed that you disliked me as much as ever.

‘Then Charlie died, and I hated seeing you suffer again.’ His arm tightened comfortingly around her. ‘I could see how lonely you were without him, and how much you missed having a dog. I knew you would never be able to replace Charlie, but I hoped that if I found you a new puppy it would be a distraction for you.’

Mallory straightened in the circle of his arm. ‘A puppy?’

He paused and tucked a strand of hair tenderly behind her ear. ‘That’s what I was doing in Inverness yesterday. Sheena told me that she knew of a litter of puppies, and I wanted to see if they were suitable before I offered to take you up to choose one.’

‘Oh.’ Mallory bit her lip guiltily, remembering how jealous she had been about his trip to Inverness. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I should have done, but I wanted it to be a surprise. More fool me,’ said Torr dryly. ‘By the time I left, I was wishing I’d never thought of it. You were so cool that I was beginning to think that I should just give up. And then when I met you on the road this morning, I realised that it was time to stop hoping. When I thought about the terrible night you must have had, I knew it wouldn’t be fair to make you stay any longer when all you wanted was to go back to Ellsborough. I just had to face the fact that I would lose you.’

His jaw worked at the memory. ‘That drive back this morning was the worst of my life. I couldn’t bear the thought of going inside with you, of sitting there in the kitchen, knowing that you were packing, and that when you came out you would be leaving me on my own for ever. I came down here and tried to imagine Kincaillie without you, but all I could see was an empty ruin and an empty future.’

Torr laid his palm against Mallory’s cheek and traced the outline of her mouth tenderly with his thumb. ‘I knew then that I wouldn’t be able to bear Kincaillie if you weren’t here. I’d decided that I would follow you back to Ellsborough and start again there, try and build a proper relationship from scratch if I could persuade you to give me another chance. We can still do that, if that’s what you want,’ he said, but Mallory shook her head.

‘No,’ she said. ‘This is where I belong now. It’s where we both belong. I didn’t realise how much I loved it here until I had to face the thought of leaving. Last night was awful-but not because Kincaillie is isolated or scary. It was because I was afraid I might never see you again and I’d never had a chance to tell you how much I loved you.’

A smile that left her dizzy with happiness started in Torr’s eyes and spread over his face. ‘Tell me now,’ he said.

‘Take me back to bed and I will,’ said Mallory, and Torr hauled her to her feet and helped her up onto the