years.
It was high-four feet or so-so the sturdiest sheep couldn’t climb over, but there were throughstones forming a stile so one could enter.
And she’d formed smoots-narrow slits in the stone-regularly spaced, all the way along. ‘To let light in, and so the woodland creatures can enjoy your garden,’ she explained, watching his face with some anxiety. ‘The first morning I walked up here I saw a litter of tiny rabbits munching on your buttercups. And I thought…if this was my grave that’s what I’d want.’
Silence.
‘I can pull it down if you don’t like it,’ she whispered, still anxious. ‘But it was the one thing I could do for you. I know you loved your dad and you loved Lissa. And somehow this seemed right.’
It did, too.
It seemed perfect.
Alastair climbed the stile without a word. Reaching the top, he held out his hand. After the briefest of hesitations, Penny-Rose placed her hand in his and climbed the stile with him. Her wedding dress was lifted carefully over, and then they were together in the fold.
Around them, wildflowers blossomed around masses of tulips. Wisteria had been carefully restrung against the stones. As it was late spring it was losing its flowers so a carpet of soft blue petals lay everywhere, and the wild roses were just starting to bloom.
The smell of the morning was with them. The dew on the grass left a pungent fragrance where they walked, and the two simple graves lay gently side by side. Like two friends.
As they had been, Marguerite had told her. Lissa had been almost a daughter to Alastair’s parents. These were Alastair’s people, and it was right that they be buried together.
‘Thank…thank you,’ he said in a voice that wasn’t too steady, and this time it was he who badly wanted to sniff. Penny-Rose heard it and managed a grin. She was still feeling distinctly sniffy herself.
Keep it practical… ‘Not carrying a handkerchief?’ she managed.
‘They gave me a buttonhole instead.’ He smiled, and plucked the crimson rose from his lapel. ‘As a handkerchief it makes a very poor substitute, but here it is. What’s mine is yours.’
It was a simple statement-a jest-but it hung between them like the promise of the morning to come.
Only…the morning was already here.
‘We…we’d best get back to the castle,’ Penny-Rose said uncertainly. ‘We have a plane to catch this afternoon and we haven’t had any sleep.’
‘That’s right.’ But he couldn’t keep his eyes from her. ‘We have a honeymoon to begin.’
‘A holiday,’ she corrected him. ‘You need to be really married to go on a honeymoon.’
‘And we’re not really married?’
She hitched her dress high. This scene was threatening to run away with her, and she wasn’t ready. Alastair wasn’t ready.
Seduction wasn’t her scene. She was playing for keeps, so she had to be practical. Somehow.
‘No, Alastair, we’re not,’ she told him. She looked down at Lissa’s grave, and a tiny smile curved her lips. ‘I hope we’re becoming like you and Lissa…good friends. But that’s not a basis for a marriage.’
‘Lissa and I thought so.’
‘Well, I’m not Lissa.’ She stepped up onto the stile and stayed on the fence-top for a moment, looking down. She looked immeasurably lovely, dressed in her bridal finery, with the dawn light behind her and the carpet of wildflowers at her feet. ‘I’m me. I’m Penny-Rose. The girl who married for money. I’m your bride for a year, but just for a year, Alastair de Castaliae. So let’s not forget it.’
The door between Alastair and his new bride was firmly locked.
‘Goodnight,’ she’d said sweetly as they’d arrived back at the castle. She’d stood on tiptoe to kiss him but it had been a fleeting kiss of farewell-nothing more. ‘We only have eight hours till we catch our plane. I’m off to get some beauty sleep and I suggest you do the same.’
But how could he, when every nerve in his body screamed that his bride was just on the other side of the door?
Belle.
Think of Belle, he told himself desperately. He’d promised to marry her. That was the sort of marriage he wanted. Not…not what he could have with Rose.
And what sort of marriage was the one he envisaged with Rose? If he allowed it to become…proper.
It was the sort of marriage his mother had had, he acknowledged, because if he allowed himself to give-as Rose gave-there’d be no holding back.
And if anything happened…
As it did. As life had taught him it always did. He’d committed himself to Lissa and it had ended in tragedy.
If something like that happened again, he’d go crazy, he told himself fiercely.
But maybe he was going crazy already!
CHAPTER TEN
TAKING the kids on their honeymoon didn’t make it less romantic, Alastair decided a few days later. It made it more so. After initial polite protests, the kids had agreed to accompany them. They intended to have a great time but they also intended their sister to have a honeymoon to remember for ever.
Which included romantic seclusion.
‘We want to spend time with you,’ both Penny-Rose and Alastair protested, but their words fell on deaf ears.
‘Well, we don’t want to spend time with you,’ Heather declared. ‘So this morning we’ve booked the catamarans. One each. We’re having lessons and the instructor can only take three, so you guys will just have to find something else to do. Hmm. I wonder what?’ She threw them a cheeky grin and disappeared.
Which left them alone. Again.
‘I…I’ll take a walk,’ Penny-Rose said, and Alastair gazed at her in exasperation. In three days she hadn’t relaxed once, and the island wasn’t big enough to stay away from each other for ever.
‘Can I come with you?’
She appeared to give it serious thought. As if she didn’t really want to. ‘I… If you like.’
‘I do like.’
Of course he liked. Who wouldn’t? OK, it might be unwise, but in a simple sarong, with her hair hanging free and her nose sporting a touch of sunburn, she looked almost breathtakingly lovely. What man could resist walking beside a woman like this?
Especially when that woman was his wife. 146
In name only!
He had to keep reminding himself of that. Ever since they’d arrived they’d been treated as being very much in love, and formality was harder and harder to maintain.
The sleeping arrangements were the hardest. There were three guest cottages on the island-gorgeous thatched bures. If Alastair and Penny-Rose had done what they’d first planned and had the island to themselves, they could have had a cottage each. But Liz and Heather had taken one and Michael another. Which left only the honeymoon suite.
The suite was gorgeous. Built right on the edge of the waves, whenever they liked they could push back the folding walls so that sea air and moonlight drifted right into the room with them. Simple but beautifully built, it was almost erotic in its design, with one enormous bed taking up over half the room.
So… The sensible plan had been to place a row of cushions down the middle of the bed.
It worked-sort of. But the trace of shadows under Rose’s eyes told Alastair that she was feeling the strain almost as much as he was.
