The Disobedient Wife. Elizabeth Power

had married the first man who had come along shortly before her eighteenth birthday. And, with Ralph being ten years older and therefore more mature, it might have worked out, Kendal thought—eventually. If it hadn’t been for that cold, calculated act of Jarrad’s…

      ‘So what if you win?’ Chrissie was leaning back against the cushions, playing with an overhanging leaf from one of the plants that grew in abundance around the room. ‘You’ll just be a single mum in a strange country. And, looking at it from a rather selfish point of view, when will I ever get to see you?’

      Kendal gave her a dry smile. ‘You can come with me,’ she invited gently—tentatively—but Chrissie merely grimaced.

      ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ she stated in a rather flat tone, and, sadly, Kendal realised that all her sister wanted—hoped for—was a reconciliation with Ralph.

      ‘You’ll be working flat out. You’ll have to—to keep yourself and Matthew, ’cos I know you’ll never accept a penny from Jarrad. You’ve said so often enough,’ Chrissie expressed. ‘Though I can’t think why! He’s rich enough to keep you, Matthew and half of London besides!’

      And clever enough to know that if I take anything from him I’ll be surrendering my independence to him, Kendal thought, which is what he wants. But she didn’t say it.

      ‘I don’t mind working. I need it,’ she tagged on, unable to add, I need it to help me forget him. To stop driving myself mad with thinking about him. And if I’m abroad he can’t find me so easily. Can’t hurt me any more.

      ‘It’s not just Matthew. He wants you as well. You know that, don’t you?’ Chrissie interrupted her thoughts as if she had read them. ‘Oh, Kendal, you could have so much if you’d only swallow your pride and give him another chance.’

      Her cup suspended in mid-air, Kendal stared at her sister aghast. ‘Go back to him, you mean? Take him back? Like Mum did with Dad!’

      ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! Jarrad’s nothing like him!’ the younger girl stated adamantly. ‘You could do worse, you know. And it would be a proper family life for Matthew. I don’t suppose you can blame him for wanting that.’

      Kendal looked down at her son, who was chewing the cover of his book and gurgling contentedly to himself. Wasn’t that what she wanted for her child? A stable home? She wanted it more than anything. Did her sister imagine that it had been easy these past twelve months? Because it hadn’t been. It had been hell…

      ‘And what about me? What are you suggesting, Chrissie? That I shouldn’t have left him? That I should have been content to be his housemaid and his dutiful little sex slave while he carried on with that patronising Lauren Westgate behind my back?’

      ‘Of course I’m not suggesting you should be that,’ Chrissie was quick to respond. ‘Although I don’t think you should pretend you didn’t enjoy the role, or that part of it at any rate—sleeping with him, I mean—because you were besotted with him. Everyone could see it. You worshipped the ground he walked on!’

      A flame, which Kendal had thought successfully banked down until she’d faced Jarrad in his office today now leapt to sudden, vibrant life again, way down in her loins.

      ‘More fool me!’

      ‘And you were hardly his housemaid.’

      No. There had been the long-standing Teeny Roberts to cook and clean. He hadn’t intended her to do all that—even if she had had the time. And perhaps that might have been the problem, in part…

      ‘As for Lauren, she did rather throw herself at him,’ Chrissie reminded her. ‘And a man with his looks is going to get that every day of the week! It would take a monk to resist that constant barrage from the opposite sex. And I’m not prepared to believe he was even having an affair with her. He’s never actually admitted it, has he?’

      No, he hadn’t, Kendal thought. But she had found those receipts in his study from the hotel where they had stayed when he had told her simply that he was away working, had led her to believe he’d gone alone. Oh, they’d been under separate names—and in separate rooms—it was true. But then anything else wouldn’t have looked too good if those receipts had wound up in his accounts office for Ralph to find! Only they hadn’t needed to. Being caught together in Jarrad’s office, as they had been by her brother-in-law that night, was all the evidence that mattered!

      ‘He’s never actually denied it either.’ How could he? When such a denial would have been a blatant lie! ‘I don’t know how you can defend him, Chrissie! After what he did to Ralph!’

      Chrissie lowered her gaze, looking so unhappy suddenly that Kendal wished she hadn’t said anything.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ was all she could utter, wishing she could wave a magic wand and make everything all right, for her sister at least.

      ‘Oh, that’s all right. I’m getting used to it now,’ Chrissie expressed resignedly, although Kendal knew she was just putting on a brave face. ‘Perhaps he did fire Ralph because he thought he was checking up on him. I don’t know,’ she went on to remark disconsolately. ‘But I think a lot of the blame for what happened has to rest with Ralph himself.’

      She glanced away, picking distractedly at the edging of one of the plump multi-floral scatter cushions, looking decidedly uneasy. ‘I think it got to the stage where he couldn’t—couldn’t cope with—things…’

      ‘What sort of things?’ Kendal enquired, frowning. She knew her sister wasn’t the easiest of people to live with.

      ‘Oh…just things in general,’ Chrissie remarked evasively, continuing to pick at the blanket-stitched cushion with unusual agitation. But then Matthew ran up to her, waving one of his little striped socks, and laughingly she hauled him up onto her lap.

      ‘Anyway, what I’m saying is I don’t think you should blame him entirely for Ralph losing his job—even if you’d like to.’ She was bent in concentration over the gurgling Matthew, diligently pulling the sock over a tiny foot. ‘And what if he did have one fling? It isn’t the end of the world. And perhaps he did feel neglected. After all, the more he told you he didn’t like you working, the more contracts you seemed determined to take on just to show him—out of sheer defiance.’

      Kendal bit her lip. Did Chrissie really think that?

      ‘I did it for my own sanity,’ was all she could say. Because the truth was that if she hadn’t resumed her profession after Matthew had been born—plunged herself wholeheartedly into her work—she would have gone mad, crazy with doubt and suspicion.

      It had been bad enough that she hadn’t felt needed in the home, without Lauren constantly flaunting her success and her very enviable working relationship with Jarrad whenever Kendal, with silent reluctance, had had to preside over dinner parties that included the other woman. It had only just been bearable at first, when she had had her own job, her own career. But those years of domesticity and studying when she had been looking after her sister hadn’t prepared her for the condescending confidence of women like Lauren Westgate.

      Consequently, when she’d surrendered her self-sufficiency to have Matthew, and had been insecure as a new mother, Lauren’s belittling remarks about women who were ‘stuck at home’, and Kendal being ‘just a housewife’—coupled with Jarrad suddenly spending more and more time away from home—had all helped drive her back into the safe, secure world of her beloved decor and design. She had wanted to prove herself, and not only to herself but to her husband and the world that she could be just as shining and successful in her own way as Lauren Westgate could. And not only that, but that she could be a success—needed—as a wife and mother as well. And all she had got for her trouble—her foolish, impetuous naivety—was the proverbial slap in the face when her efforts only succeeded in driving her husband right into the other woman’s arms!

      ‘Anyway,’ she attempted to say lightly. ‘I suppose it’s only natural you should defend him, knowing what you think of women with children working!’

      Chrissie