LITMIR.BIZ

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herself as Venice ushered them into the drawing-room, having handed their coats to the uniformed maid who had been standing silently just behind her.

      Fern tried to think of anyone other than Venice who would give a small weekday dinner party for less than a dozen people and employ uniformed temporary staff.

      Not even Lord Stanton up at the Hall did that. But then Lord Stanton probably couldn’t afford to, and besides, he had the invaluable Phillips to take care of all his domestic arrangements. She had a feeling that Phillips would have been highly disdainful of Venice’s maid, uniformed or not.

      Venice’s drawing-room, like the rest of Venice’s house, had been decorated and furnished with one object in mind, and that was to provide the perfect backdrop for Venice herself.

      If, in the recessionary environment-conscious Nineties some people might have balked at such an obvious display of wealth and consumerism, such an unabashed love of luxury, Venice was plainly made of sterner stuff.

      The drawing-room had, Fern recognised, been redecorated since she had last seen it, and she blinked a little at the effect of so many subtly different shades of peach, layer upon layer of them, so that the room almost seemed to pulsate with the soft colour.

      If chiffon curtains were not exactly what one might have expected to find in a drawing-room, they certainly created a very sensual effect, and it certainly took very little imagination to picture Venice lying naked on the thick fleecy peach-hued rug, smiling that slant-eyed provocative smile of hers at her lover.

      And her husband? Fern wondered dully.

      ‘I must show you my bathroom… It’s wonderful,’ she heard Venice saying. ‘I’ve had a mural done of the Grand Canal with the bath framed so that it looks as though I’m looking out through one of the windows of one of those enormous old palazzos. So clever… and so naughty. Sometimes I almost feel as though the gondoliers are real and can actually see me.’

      She laughed, batting her eyelashes at Nick, and ignoring her, Fern recognised.

      Some of their fellow dinner guests had arrived ahead of them: the local doctor and his wife, both of whom Fern knew reasonably well. She had no really close friends in the town.

      She had looked forward to making new friends when they had first moved into their house after their marriage, but Nick had proved to be unexpectedly jealous and possessive; so much so, in fact, that she had found it easier simply to give in to the emotional pressure he put on her rather than endure the unpleasant confrontations her attempts to establish an independent life for herself provoked.

      Although she knew a lot of people, some through Nick’s business and others through the work she did for a variety of local charities—Nick approved of this unpaid help she gave to others, not because it helped the charities she worked for, but because it increased his esteem within the area—she had no really close confidantes… no one to whom she could talk about the crisis she felt she was facing.

      Was it her parents’ deaths—a final severing of the physical links with her childhood—which had prompted this agonising and soul-searching, this belief that her life had become an empty wasteland with nothing to look forward to; these traumatic feelings of panic which threatened to engulf her whenever she was forced to confront the reality of her marriage? Or was it because she was afraid of facing up to that reality; afraid of stripping back the fiction and the deceit and seeing her marriage for what it really was? Afraid of admitting that she did not love her husband?

      And if he was having an affair with Venice… She could feel her heart starting to beat faster, her throat starting to close up.

      Don’t think about it, she warned herself. Don’t think about it.

      Why not? Because she was terrified that, if she did, she would have to do something about it… that, without the necessity of protecting her parents to hide behind, she would be forced to confront the truth and ask herself, not just why, but also how she could bear to stay in a marriage that was so plainly a mockery of everything that such a commitment could be.

      A commitment… That was the crux of all her agonising. When she’d married Nick she had made a commitment… a commitment she had truly believed to be given for life; she had made promises, vows, which were meant to last for life, not to be pushed to one side the moment things went wrong. And surely, just so long as Nick continued to claim that he needed and wanted her, she had no right to walk away from that commitment?

      ‘Fern… how are you?’

      Dizzily she broke free of her painful thoughts, smiling automatically, her tension tightening her face into an almost masklike rigidity as she turned towards the doctor’s wife.

      ‘I’m fine, Roberta… and you?’

      ‘Relieved that the winter flu season is almost over,’ Roberta Parkinson told her ruefully. ‘It’s been particularly bad this year, as well. John lost several of his older patients as an indirect result of it. Are you sure you’re feeling all right?’ she added with motherly concern. ‘You’re looking a bit pale.’

      ‘It’s just the heat in here,’ Fern fibbed. In actual fact she was enjoying the warmth of the room. It was such a contrast to the cold chilliness of their own sitting-room at home.

      Because he himself was often working in the evenings, Nick refused to allow her to have the central heating or the gas fires on, claiming that she was extravagantly wasteful with heat.

      If it weren’t for the Aga in the kitchen—not one of the brightly coloured modern ones, but the original old-fashioned dull cream type which had been in the house when they first moved in, and which Nick had claimed he was unable to afford to replace—Fern reflected that most evenings she would have been forced to go to bed at a ridiculously early hour just to keep warm.

      Roberta excused herself, moving away to talk to the two other couples who had also arrived; Fern knew them both and smiled an acknowledgement of their greeting but remained where she was. One of the couples was a local entrepreneur and his wife, who had moved into the area in the last few years, and the other was their local MP and her husband.

      Fern liked all four of them, but tonight she was feeling so on edge and tense that she wanted a few seconds to herself before going over to join them. Because she was afraid of what her expression might betray?

      She could feel the panic welling up inside her again, and with it her increasing dread that she was losing all control, not just of her life, but of herself as well. Only yesterday, when Nick had ignored her request that they sit down and talk about their relationship, she had felt almost hysterically close to screaming her frustration out loud. Something… anything to make him listen to her instead of swamping her with his anger, his irritation, his indifference to what she was feeling.

      ‘Only one more couple to arrive now,’ she heard Venice saying from behind her. As she turned around, she noticed distantly that Nick was with her.

      ‘Oh, Fern, you don’t have a drink,’ Venice commented, all mock hostessly concern.

      ‘Fern’s driving,’ Nick announced before Fern herself could say anything. ‘And besides, she has no head for alcohol.’

      Fern was uncomfortably aware of the briefly appraising look Jennifer Bowers was giving them from the other side of the room; a look which said quite plainly what the MP thought of Nick’s attitude towards her.

      Hurt and humiliated, Fern could feel her colour rising as the anger and pain built up inside her, coupled with the knowledge that there was no way she could express what she was feeling; that even when they were back at home and on their own she would not be able to explain to Nick how his behaviour hurt her.

      And that was surely her fault and not his, the result of her early upbringing and the loving but old-fashioned parents who had taught her with gentle insistence that little girls, especially nice, well-behaved little girls, did not behave aggressively, did not argue with others, did not express views which contradicted those of others, and always went out of their way to make life easier for others. Being polite

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