Free The Primrose Bride by Kathryn Blair

Andrew. ”
    “ I wonder. Maybe I ’ ll experiment, to find out. ”
    He took a pace towards her. She backed, placed both hands flat against the wall and looked at him with eyes gone dark and staring.
    “ Don ’ t ... touch me. ”
    His eyes blazed, but somehow he kept his furious tones under control. “ We ’ re married, you and I, and I won ’ t let you forget it. We ’ ve sworn to love each other, and if that means rather more than you thought, you ’ ll have to change your ideas! Not at once, perhaps, but soon. I want nothing from you that you can ’ t give happily and without fear — don ’ t kid yourself that I ’ m different from other men, though. I ’ m flesh and blood, very much so. ” Breathing rather heavily, he ended, with sarcasm, “ Go to bed, child. And you needn ’ t lock your door tonight. We don ’ t have marauders in these parts! ”
    She swallowed on the harsh lu m p in her throat. Desperately, she wanted to tell him how she felt about the dreadful sense of let-down, the hurt within her, and the need. But he stood there, his hands fallen to his sides and clenched, his nostrils slightly dilated, his mouth sardonic while his eyes glittered. A man of dynamic passions and tremendous will; a man she had barely glimpsed in England.
    Hopelessly she turned from him and made her way through to her bedroom. She felt as limp and distorted as if she had been through a wringer.
    Subtly the atmosphere in the house changed from an oppressive electrical heat to an equally oppressive but less dangerous coolness. Without any verbal agreement the pattern of their behavior was temporarily set. Andrew had breakfast alone, they lunched and dined together, and spoke only when necessary or for the sake of politeness. A few times, during the following couple of days, Karen wondered at his fury the other night and his present constraint both were so unlike anything she had ever known about Andrew. Always she had found him forthright and companionable, keen to keep her smiling. There had been times when he had been lordly and debonair, when he had told her improbable stories just to make her throw back her head and laugh; they had done so much laughing together during those first three weeks, had found so many tiny bonds. They both liked asparagus and Beethoven, Dickens and hard-centred chocolates ; both detested mushy films and liver, the smell of chrysanthemums and the taste of swimming-pool water. True, Andrew had laughed at her as well as with her, but it had been kind laughter, the sort that went with a squeeze of her shoulder or a pat on her; hair, or even a light kiss on her cheek.
    And now it was all gone, bewilderingly and heartbreakingly. From a sweet friendly relationship that had been headily full of the promise of tremendous fulfilment, they had plunged into an enmity which made them worse than strangers. And it had come about because Andrew was not in love with her. He was fond of her, but he wasn ’ t in love with her. That was the stark truth she had to accept and somehow deal with. The friendship she had hugged and cherished, the tiny moments of intimacy, the shared fun, his capture of her aunts—he had arranged them all because he saw in Karen Hurst an embryo of the kind of wife he would need in a year or two. She didn ’ t have to wonder any longer whether it could possibly be true; in no time at all it had been confirmed from opposite sources. Unwittingly, she had become the wife of a charmingly merciless careerist; and to her utter desolation she was still in love with him. That was why she felt paralyzed, unable as yet to make a single move towards ending the mockery.
    How could one end it, anyway? The merest zephyr of scandal at this stage might ruin Andrew ’ s future, and at best she would have to endure a few weeks of Nemaka before wilting in the climate or being hurriedly summoned to Cornwall for some reason. But perhaps the time would arrive when Andrew and his career would become