Marriage of Convenience

Chapter Twenty-Three

So he had come to fetch her back! There could be no other explanation for his unexpected arrival, and Freya's insides felt like jelly and her heart was beating too fast. There was no place to hide, she walked rapidly forward and tried to look pleased and surprised when she turned into the wide main hall because her aunt's eyes would be on her and that lady was no fool she would be quick to pick up bad vibes.

'Theo! I didn't expect you how nice!'

Her pasted smile wobbled at that last line, and disappeared totally when he answered suavely, 'Yes, isn't it? Nice for both of us.' His smile was warm enough but the azure eyes, set between thickly fringing black lashes, were quite cold. He turned to Sophia, as he apologized, 'Lunch would have been delightful, Sophia.

But I promised myself I'd take Freya for a break she's been working much too hard lately. So I've planned a second mini-honeymoon.' A smooth movement gathered Freya into the crook of his arm and she stood rigidly still, knowing this was a deadly game. She was afraid of the outcome.

'I would have come for you sooner,' he was telling her silkily, 'but I got stuck in endless meetings.' He made it sound like an apology, but the pressure of his hard fingers as they bit into the soft flesh just below her ribs told a different story. 'So, if you'll forgive the rush, Sophia, I suggest Freya throws her things together. We've quite a drive ahead of us.'

'But of course!' Sophia's eyes, as they flickered between the two of them, were alight with approval. She had taken to her new nephew-in-law; Freya thought dully Sophia thought he was the best thing that happened to the Dexter family in a long time. Freya thought dully.

Although she knew she was being manipulated, that a second honeymoon, a break for his hard-working, adored wife, was the last thing Theo had in mind, she tried to smile, to look happy. Her fight with her husband was a private thing, dark, demanding and devious. She would do anything to prevent it from becoming public knowledge.

Sitting beside him in the Jaguar he used when he drove himself, Freya was lost for words. She picked a few openers over in her mind and abandoned them with a bleak compression of her lips. Whatever she said would only result in a row. He had fetched her from Dexter House because she was his property, a fact he had been known to point out to her before!

She closed her eyes, the bright sunlight of late spring mocking her depression. But she willed herself to relax, to find some of the strength she would need when Theo, at last, would break his silence. And eventually, she sank into an uncomfortable dozing state, the tension that stretched between them unabated as mental images, rather than dreams, they were all of Theo of the way he had been and the way he was and she snapped back into full consciousness and became immediately aware that they were passing through deep countryside, unfamiliar to her.

'Been enjoying the sleep of the just?' His words were edged with sarcasm, telling her that he had known precisely when she had opened her eyes. 'Have I ever told you that you look innocent, like a child, when you sleep?'

She ignored that. It was an invitation to yet another attack and she wasn't going to oblige him. Instead, she asked, ' We should be back in town by now'

'When you chose to run away you left me with no option but to bring you back,' he replied obliquely.

'I did not run away!' she snapped, unable to prevent the hot words from coming. 'You knew where I was, and why,' she said stonily.

'I knew you'd run out on me. You could have worked with Sam just as easily from home,' she supposed he was right. She had been running away from an intolerable situation. And as if he'd read her thoughts, he told her levelly, 'Things can't go on as they are,' and she wondered, with a wrench of pain, if he'd decided to go for a divorce, after all. He could be extracting no pleasure from the bitter thing their marriage had become. Even his revenge, his need to humiliate her had to lose its savor eventually.