He's My Husband! - Lindsay Armstrong [48]
He transferred his gaze down to her fingers on his and said, ‘You’re right. OK, let’s soldier on.’
So they did. But the effort, on top of an aimless, unhappy day, told on Nicola, and she fell asleep in the car on the way home, only to half wake up and find that he’d carried her into her bedroom.
‘Sorry,’ she mumbled.
He handed Nicola her pyjamas and paused. ‘Can you manage?’ he said quietly at last.
‘Of course, but thanks.’
‘Goodnight, then.’
And she was alone, suddenly wide awake, staring at the door as he closed it quietly behind him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IT WAS pouring with rain the next morning, and cool.
Nicola got up reluctantly and looked out to sea, but the horizon was obscured and the whole world looked grey and bleak. She shivered and pulled on a brave yellow tracksuit, which helped to warm her body but did not release any burst of inspiration in her mind.
Then the utter silence of the house struck her again. Of course—it was Ellen’s day off, as well as there being no children in residence, but when she glanced at her watch to see that it was nine o’clock, she frowned. Brett was not that late a sleeper, even on Sundays.
Nor was he this Sunday, she discovered, for his car was gone. Then she saw a note on the fridge from him, saying that one of his clients had got himself into trouble and he was at the watch-house with him.
She crumpled it up and threw it into the garbage bin, then absently made herself a boiled egg for breakfast. As she ate she went through the kaleidoscope of memories of the night before. Three things stood out. The half-formulated idea of going to see Marietta and trying to explain how things stood, the foolish words she’d uttered about not being unique enough for him, and...
But the third was the most vivid mental image she carried. Despite her sleepiness the night before, when Brett had carried her from the car to the bedroom, it had shouted itself to her that he, once he’d put her down, was determined not to lay a finger on her.
All the more reason I should do something, she thought, and brushed a stray tear away.
She did a few chores after her breakfast, but in a halfhearted fashion. It was as she was tidying Brett’s bedroom that she heard his car. She hesitated, then went on making the bed.
She heard him come through the connecting door to the garage, heard what sounded like the kettle being filled and was nerving herself to go and greet him when he appeared at the bedroom doorway.
‘Hi,’ she said uncertainly, straightening. ‘Got your note. Is he in serious trouble?’
Brett wore jeans, boots and a pale grey jumper. His hair was ruffled and damp and his eyes bleak. ‘Serious enough. He threatened to shoot both his wife and himself if she persisted in leaving him for another man. He was only restrained in the nick of time.’
Nicola gasped. ‘Who is it? Do I know him?’
Brett told her who it was and she did know him. ‘But that’s incredible—he’s not that kind of man,’ she protested.
‘Who knows what we’re really like under the surface?’ he said dryly. ‘Who knows, for example—? Oh, what the hell.’ He strode over to his veranda door and slammed it shut, then stood staring at the rain through the glass panels moodily.
‘Brett,’ she said after a long moment, then paused to marshal her thoughts and choose the right track to approach him in this mood. ‘Brett—’ She stopped and looked around.
This was the bedroom he and Marietta had shared, and he’d changed nothing, not the king-size fourposter bed, with its glorious coverlet of rich forest-green quilted silk—a colour that had suited Marietta perfectly—nor had he changed the gold-braided head roll pillows, the gold foil lampshades or the fuchsiaframed paintings on the white walls.
‘Brett—that was the kettle. Would you like a cup of coffee?’
He shrugged, as if it didn’t matter much to him.
‘Come into the lounge; I’ll bring it through.’
She made a plunger pot of Blue Mountain coffee and put out some of Ellen’s home-made biscuits.
‘What I was going to say...’ she eyed him as she poured