The Constantin Marriage

How would she have coped, she wondered irrationally, with that kind of weather on top of the cyclone-like disturbance of mind she was experiencing at the moment? With the kind of weather that, in the few short steps from an air-conditioned car to air-conditioned premises, left you bathed in sweat with your make-up melted and your hair limp?

She glanced at Alex through her lashes. Unlike her, he had been born and bred in Darwin and the ravages of the wet season never seemed to bother him. But men, she reminded herself, didn’t have to worry about looking limp and bedraggled. Indeed, men, she added bitterly to herself, had more powers than were altogether good for them. Such as being able to command a mistress to do this or that.

Mind you, always assuming the mistress hadn’t gone to ground, she reminded herself with a touch of black humour!

Tattie had never met Leonie Falconer, design jeweller with her own business who did quite a bit of work for Constantin, although she’d had her pointed out a couple of times. There had to be an element of luck in this, Tattie had reasoned, because, although she didn’t think Alex would parade his mistresses in front of her, Darwin was not a big city.

And, although she couldn’t think favourably of his mistress, a small part of her applauded the woman’s bravado. She had obviously accepted the invitation, then put herself out of Alex’s reach at least on this the last day that he might have been able to ‘warn her off’. But why accept it in the first place? Tattie was forced to ponder. And why would Alex’s mother invite her? Not to mention—how lately had Leonie become an ex-mistress?

So many imponderables, she thought wistfully, but the greatest of them all was sitting right beside her, driving his beautiful car with such ease and flair towards his parents’ Fannie Bay mansion.

Of course he had always been a huge imponderable, if not to say the biggest challenge of her admittedly young life. And she’d cautioned herself from the moment she’d known what was going on to keep her wits about her. Right up until about half an hour ago she’d thought she’d succeeded in this ambition.

A pearl necklace, the feel of his fingers on her skin and her breasts and the shocking discovery that the mere mention of the word mistress, ex or otherwise, had caused all her careful strategies to come tumbling down. To the extent that she wasn’t sure whether she loved Alex Constantin to distraction or hated him exceedingly.

She clenched her fists in her lap and wondered how much she’d given away this evening. Twelve months of such self-control, she marvelled, quite possibly lost in a matter of minutes. She visualised again the picture they’d made in the mirror, he with his dark head bent towards her, she still stunned beneath the impact of his personality, and all that usually leashed masculinity in his tall frame flowing through to her.

Had it been her imagination, she mused a little painfully, or wishful thinking? Because he normally kept that side of him very much leashed in all his dealings with her but she had the feeling tonight had been different. If only, she went on to think, the subject of his mistress had not come up in almost the same breath she would have been more sure…

But really—she glanced at him covertly again—there was only so much of the masculine impact of Alex Constantin he could leash from her. Just to be sitting beside him in his austere dark suit and blue shirt, watching him drive his car, was a bit like a body blow.

Not especially good-looking, he was nevertheless vitally attractive. He was tall, fit and athletic, he could be wickedly amused and amusing, he could be quite kind yet devastatingly scornful when the mood was on him. Above all, he could be the quintessential enigma, so that the reason he’d agreed to an arranged marriage with her when he could have had any woman he chose remained a mystery to her.

Unless, his reason had been her reason—two vast cattle stations that went by the name of Beaufort and Carnarvon…

‘We’re here, Tattie.’

She came back to the present with a little jump, to see that her husband had made his statement with false gravity.

‘So I see,’ she commented, looking at the house blazing with lights and the stream of cars parked in the street.

‘Oh, well, what do they say? “Onward, Christian soldiers”! “Fight the good fight”—or, something along those lines.’

He laughed and put his fist beneath the point of her chin. ‘You are a character, Tattie,’ he said affectionately, and added, ‘If it’s at all possible, just be yourself and have a good time.’

With your mistress in attendance, your mother, who never fails to drop delicate little hints and tips about how to fall pregnant, and my mother there, and you treating me like a kid you pat on the head—of course!

She didn’t say it, but only by the narrowest of margins. She couldn’t prevent the serious irony of her fronded blue gaze as it rested on him fleetingly, however. But before he got the chance to remark on it she opened her door and slipped out of the car.

‘That is quite a statement, Tatiana,’ Natalie Beaufort said to her daughter when they found themselves alone in the powder room together after the fabulous seafood buffet.

Tattie squinted down at her pearls. ‘It is lovely, isn’t it?’

‘It is, but I was thinking more along the lines of the comment it makes on the success of your marriage.’

Tattie observed her mother and spoke without thinking. ‘How do you know it’s not conscience money?’

Natalie’s sculptured eyebrows shot upwards. ‘Is it?’

‘I could be the last to know—aren’t wives supposed to be?’

‘You don’t seriously believe Alex is being unfaithful to you so early on?’ Natalie asked with a frown.

Tattie thought of pointing out that, although she was behaving herself beautifully, Leonie Falconer was amongst the guests tonight. Leonie, who had been reliably revealed to her as Alex’s mistress before he’d married her—and she’d had no reason to believe, until tonight, that things had changed.

But although Natalie was her mother—or perhaps because of it—Tattie knew only too well that her mind moved in mysterious ways sometimes. Such as the number of times Natalie had brought her to Darwin over a year ago, ostensibly to catch up with her old friend Irina Constantin but really to position her daughter firmly in Alex Constantin’s sights.

Such as Natalie’s decision to move to Darwin herself after Tattie’s marriage, like some sort of guardian angel, even though she basically considered the place a far-flung outpost of civilisation. And she decided to hold her peace.

‘Just kidding,’ she said mischievously, and was relieved to see her mother subside. She couldn’t keep herself from thinking that there was irony everywhere she turned these days, though. It was her mother who had advised her before her marriage that there were times when men would be men and it was often wiser to ignore the odd fling they might have…

And she found herself watching her now, curiously, as Natalie expertly touched up her make-up. Whereas Alex’s mother was dumpy and not greatly into fashion, but with such a warm personality you couldn’t help loving her, Natalie was very slim and very trendy. She was also artistic and played the piano beautifully and adored what she called ‘café society’.

Whereas George and Irina Constantin rarely left each other’s side, Natalie had frequently sought the solace of their Perth home, away from the lifestyle of Beaufort and Carnarvon and Austin Beaufort, taking Tattie with her.

To be honest, Austin Beaufort had not been an easy man to live with, and Tattie could clearly remember asking her mother passionately once how she coped with him.

Natalie had smiled ruefully and replied that there was an art to coping with men, as she would no doubt discover for herself one day, but walking away from them was something they disliked intensely, and it generally brought them round.

And her mother was undeniably quirky, if not to say downright eccentric at times. She was one of the few people who always used Tattie’s full name, but when Tattie had asked her if she’d been named after a Russian ancestor her mother had replied that she hadn’t. And she’d gone on to say, ‘There’s no doubt pregnancy brought out the Russian in me, however.’

‘Why? How?’

‘Well, it can be very heavy-going at times, with lots of ups and downs and a distinctly 1812 cannon-like flavour to it for the finale. I guess that’s why the name Tatiana came to mind.’

Only her mother could say things like that and believe she sounded quite logical.

For all this, though, when she was not fencing with her mother on the subject of Alex and her marriage, she mostly loved her mother’s quirkiness. And she knew, even if she disagreed with the means, that Natalie had genuinely thought she was protecting her daughter from the dreaded prospect of fortune-hunters, and had genuinely thought she was in love with Alex.

As for disagreeing with her means, that wasn’t entirely true, Tattie forced herself to acknowledge. Because what her mother knew, but few people suspected, was how much of Austin Beaufort there was in his daughter beneath the gloss. And how much of that pioneering Beaufort blood ran in Tattie’s veins, so that Beaufort and Carnarvon meant an awful lot to her, and she’d inherited his almost mystical affinity with the Kimberley country they spread over.

Natalie knew how it had affected Tattie to see both properties start to run down during the last few years of her father’s ill-health before his death, and had sensed the moment of panic that had come to her daughter to discover, on her father’s death, that the responsibility for them now rested squarely on her shoulders. Mystic affinity was one thing. Running two cattle stations that covered the size of the United Kingdom was another.

From that point of view Alex Constantin had been an inspired choice on her mother’s part. It had also been, Tattie knew, why she’d gone along with the charade even after she’d realised she was being steered into marriage with a man who wasn’t in love with her. It had not had anything to do with the fact that she’d been more than a little in love with him. She would never do anything as essentially wet as marrying a man in the hope that she could make him fall in love with her…

‘Penny for them, my sweet?’ Natalie patted her fashionable bronze hair and stood up.

Tattie blinked. ‘Uh…she’s very attractive, Leonie Falconer, isn’t she?’

‘Certainly very golden. She’s a brilliant jewellery designer, I believe, but since she works with Alex you probably know more about her than I do.’

Yes and no, Tattie replied internally. I seem to be the only one tonight who knows she is—or was—his mistress. What I don’t know is why I should be alone in the possession of this knowledge. Perhaps I should be applauding how discreet they’ve been instead of worrying about it?

Her internal monologue was interrupted as her mother gave her hair one last pat and moved towards the door, saying, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if she designed the clasp of your pearls—why don’t you ask her?’

One of the things Tattie loved about Darwin was its cosmopolitan population. In the space of half an hour she danced with a Danish boat-builder, met a Chinese couple who owned a popular restaurant and a New Zealander who made stainless-steel carvings, as well as a Japanese woman who designed clothes.

Nor could she fault her mother-in-law’s party-giving talents. Now the food had been disposed of, the long veranda glowed beneath fairy lights, and the air was fragrant with the heady perfume of what must have been a truckload of roses and orchids in all colours. The guests were colourful and, having wined and dined superbly, were set to dance the night away. It was an extremely successful party.

At all times, however, it was as if Tattie possessed an unseen pair of antennae tuned in exclusively to Alex and Leonie. So far her antennae had picked up no communication between them at all. Then she looked around and found Leonie standing directly behind her, apparently admiring the clasp of her pearls.

‘Oh. Hello,’ Tattie said brightly. ‘We’ve never met but I know who you are—do I have you to thank for my clasp?’

Leonie Falconer possessed hazel eyes, long gold hair and a statuesque figure presently clad in a beautiful gown of gauzy fabric shot with all the colours of the rainbow. She too wore pearls—Constantin? Tattie wondered—and a chunky, very lovely gold bracelet.

But all this was on the periphery of Tattie’s mind as she watched those hazel eyes narrow with a slight wariness then relax as she finished speaking.

‘No,’ Leonie said in a husky, transatlantic voice. ‘Not my work, but rather nice all the same.’

‘Thank you!’ Tattie looked around and, observing Alex nowhere in sight, added quietly, ‘Why did you come tonight, Miss Falconer?’

Leonie Falconer resumed her wariness rather abruptly. She was in her late twenties, early thirties, Tattie judged. She was also several inches taller than Tattie, but none of that prevented Tattie from eyeing her severely and imperiously.

A tinge of colour ran beneath Leonie’s honey-gold skin, then she shrugged. ‘Curiosity, I suppose. Why would I be invited in the first place? Also—’

‘I can tell you that,’ Tattie interposed swiftly, ‘Irina organised this party. Alex was unaware until today that you had been invited. So was I. And Irina was definitely unaware of who you were, otherwise she wouldn’t have touched you with a bargepole.’

‘I see.’ Leonie looked fleetingly amused then oddly bitter. ‘Well, there’s no reason I shouldn’t be here, as it happens. I got my marching orders some time ago. And marching orders they were too—Any fuss, Leonie, and Constantin will cease to do business with you. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how deadly Alex can be when he sets his mind to it. But when his brief infatuation with you ceases, Mrs Constantin,’ Leonie added silkily, ‘I’ll get him back.’ And she turned on her heel and walked away.

‘What was all that about?’

Tattie jumped and found her husband standing beside her. ‘Probably an age-old ritual between mistress and wife, Alex,’ she said coolly, then her lips trembled and she laughed softly. ‘But how bizarre that you should use me to extricate yourself from her.’

‘What do you mean?’ he said rather grimly.

Tattie opened her mouth then caught sight out of the corner of her eye of his mother, radiant in pink silk that didn’t suit her at all but didn’t manage to dim her personality either, approaching them with a slight limp. She sighed inwardly and said, ‘Don’t worry about it, Alex, but I think you should dance with me in a very husbandly way now, if for no other reason than to let your mother think her party is a real success!’ And she melted into his arms.

Surprise kept him rigid for a moment. And he said barely audibly, ‘You’re going to have to explain later, you know, Tatiana.’ Then he drew her into his arms and, despite the implicit threat in the use of her proper name that always told her he was in a dangerous mood, kissed her lightly before swinging her round to the music.

‘I think I’ll go to bed now, Alex,’ Tattie said at two-thirty in the morning, after a swift silent ride home at the end of the party.

She had preceded him into the lounge, a lovely room she had created in their apartment—the apartment he had bought and presented to her as a wedding present in accordance with the contracts he and her mother had agreed upon—with a view through the wide windows to the terrace. The view was dark now, of course, but the oil rig anchored in Darwin Harbour for maintenance was lit up like a Christmas tree.

‘Oh, no, you don’t, Tattie.’

She stopped in the middle of the lounge and turned to look at him. She had her shoes in one hand, her pearls in the other and her face was shadowed with weariness.

‘Alex, this is no time—’

‘Sit down, Tattie,’ he ordered, and came across to her with two tall glasses in his hands.

‘What’s this?’ she queried as he handed her one.

‘Something long, cool and delicious for someone who has partied as vigorously as you have. Don’t worry, I’m not planning to make you drunk and seduce you.’ He looked down at her wide eyes and slightly apprehensive expression.

Tattie took the glass from him, drank deeply as if she was very thirsty, then in a stiff little voice recounted her conversation with his mistress. And she sat down abruptly.

Alex lounged against a pillar and merely twisted his glass in his hands. ‘What she told you is not an accurate representation of the events.’

Tattie went to wave her hand and realised she was still clutching her pearls. She put them down carefully. ‘It doesn’t matter one way or the other to me, Alex.’

‘I would have thought it might in the light of how we go on, Tattie. You did say you wanted to discuss that with me.’

‘Well. Yes. But…’ She trailed off, looking almost ashen with weariness and strain now. ‘I can’t think straight.’

He took his time. He sipped his drink then he said quietly, ‘My suggestion is that we stop fooling around and get this marriage off the ground.’

Tattie’s mouth fell open as she sorted through this. ‘Fooling…?’ she said incredulously, picking on perhaps the least startling aspect of his advice.

‘Or whatever you like to call it.’ He looked briefly quizzical.

‘You know what I like to call it, Alex.’

He lifted an eyebrow at her. ‘You also gave me to understand that you knew what you were getting into, Tattie. But, for what it’s worth, your suggestion of a year’s grace was a good one. At least we know now that we can get along pretty well.’ His mouth quirked. ‘We don’t appear to have any habits that drive each other up the wall.’ He looked at her with a question in his eyes.

‘That’s…assuming we were brother and sister, Alex. Lovers could be a different matter.’

He put his glass down on a beautiful, inlaid pedestal table and came over to her. She stared up at him wide-eyed as he removed her glass from her fingers then drew her to her feet.

‘My dear Tattie,’ he murmured with his hands resting lightly on her shoulders and his gaze summing her up from head to toe, ‘I feel quite sure that it could only enhance our relationship to become lovers. Trust me.’

His fingers slipped from her shoulder to trace the line where his pearls would have lain and, despite her tiredness and confusion, she couldn’t help the reaction that came to her again, that trembling sensation any close contact with him brought to the surface.

‘But sleep on it,’ he suggested.

‘I…’ She bit her lip.

‘I’m off on a tour of the pearl farms early tomorrow,’ he continued. ‘I’ll be away for a few days. So you’ll be able to do more than sleep on it.’ He kissed her lightly on the top of her head. ‘I thought, after that, we could spend a little while at Beaufort. I have some ideas for it.’

Sheer blackmail!

Tattie sat up, saw it was nine o’clock in the morning and clutched her head as the blackmail thought raced through her mind.

Tired as she’d been, sleep had been difficult, and when she’d achieved it weird dreams populated by Leonie Falconer resembling some sort of smug sun goddess had plagued her. So why had she woken up with blackmail on her mind?

Because apart from her mother only Alex knew how close to her heart Beaufort especially was. How could he not? True, she’d been fascinated by the cultured-pearl side of his business—she would have loved to be visiting the farms with him—but it was his cattle stations and how he handled them that she had attempted to absorb like blotting paper. All for the purpose of applying that knowledge to Beaufort and Carnarvon should she ever have to run them on her own.

But, more than that, perhaps only Alex guessed that twelve months had not been long enough for her to have the confidence to run them on her own and that was why he’d applied the sheer blackmail of promising her some of his time at Beaufort and mentioning the ideas he had for the station. What else could she think?

‘You could ask yourself why he wants to stay married to you, Tatiana,’ she murmured, and lay back with a sigh.

Had the impossible, the wonderful, the dream within a dream that she hadn’t dared to allow herself to dream, come true? Had her husband finally fallen in love with her? Or had the time come to amalgamate her inheritance with his into one big cattle operation, something that had not happened to date?

Why, she pondered gloomily, did that seem much more likely?

And she answered herself tartly, he made her feel like a kid, not—apart from one fleeting moment yesterday and she wasn’t even sure about that—a woman he found desirable. It was as simple as that.

On the other hand—she sat up again, struck by a new thought—why had he divested himself of his mistress? Because of a growing but hidden attraction to her—or so she would have no ammunition with which to continue the stalemate or base a decision to leave him on?

Her bedside phone rang. She stared at it, then lifted it reluctantly.

‘Hello?’

‘Tattie?’ her mother-in-law said down the line in a slightly overwrought way. ‘My dear, that was the best party I’ve ever given and all thanks to you!’

Tattie frowned. ‘No way, Irina. I didn’t do anything; you did it all.’

‘But you were there, you were so lovely, and the whole world could see that you and Alex are perfect for each other—I just wanted to tell you! Perhaps next year,’ she added, ‘we will have a little addition to the family to celebrate? Tattie…’ There was a slightly awkward pause down the line—an indication of a bull being taken by the horns as it turned out. ‘Are there any problems in that direction? Because I have the best gynaecologist in the country, the most understanding, most gentle, most kind, and he has performed miracles for several of my friends’ daughters.’

This time Tattie grimaced, then drew a deep breath. ‘Irina…’ But she couldn’t do it. She simply couldn’t dent her mother-in-law’s enthusiasm and her old-fashioned belief that her arranged marriage concept had worked blissfully—although it did cross her mind to say, Perhaps you should have found a Greek girl for Alex. A girl who would understand these things and know where her duty lies…

She cleared her throat. ‘Uh—Irina, no, no problems that I know of, but this is between Alex and me, I feel…I really feel, don’t you?’

There was silence, then, ‘My dear, forgive me,’ Irina said a little tremulously down the line. ‘Of course it is. It’s just that I have such a longing for grandchildren and, sadly, I’m not getting any younger.’

‘Irina…’ What to say? Tattie thought desperately, because in every other respect Irina had been a lovely mother-in-law. Nor was she getting any younger, and she was also plagued by a troublesome hip, but kept putting off a hip replacement because of her fear of hospitals and operations.

She was saved by Irina herself, who said bravely, with less tremolo, ‘I promise not to mention these things again, Tattie. I just… Last night…seeing you and Alex…I got carried away. Forgive me?’

‘Of course,’ Tattie said warmly. ‘Tell you what, why don’t we have lunch? I’ll ring Mum and see if she can make it as well and we can have a gorgeous gossip about the party. How about Cullen Bay?’ She named a restaurant.

She put the phone down eventually, wondering as she did if she wasn’t digging a deeper grave to have to climb out of one day. Then she lay back and switched on her television, only to be arrested as she flicked through the channels by a programme about an Indian family in Mauritius. What arrested her was the fact that the patriarch still chose husbands and wives for his family, even sending to India for them, and the whole family laughingly agreed it was still the best way to go.

She tightened her mouth, switched off and got up to take a shower. While the shower refreshed her body the circles of her mind ran around a familiar pattern. Why hadn’t the Constantins sought a Greek girl for Alex? She knew enough about the continental community in Darwin to know that it wasn’t only amongst Mauritian Indians that this practice was common. She could even see a certain sense to it. Same culture, same background—possibly the same expectations.