‘It was an old Tudor barn before it was renovated, and extended,’ Kieron informed her, stopping the car. ‘The garden’s a bit on the large side, although I’m given to understand that a gardener goes with the place. Apparently there’s even a swing in the back garden for Nicky. That should keep you climbing out of any more apple trees,’ he told his son.
They all got out of the car, Kieron producing some keys from his pocket and unfastening the gate, which Briony was relieved to see had a proper catch. Nicky was inclined to be over-adventurous at times, and she would have to watch that he didn’t stray.
She and Nicky followed Kieron up the path, Nicky tugging free of her restraining hand to run up to the basking cat, exclaiming with pleasure, ‘Pussy!’
The cat endured his attentions for several seconds with basilisk eyes before stretching and disappearing into the shrubbery, but by then a butterfly had caught Nicky’s fascinated attention, and he was toddling hurriedly after that. Kieron had unlocked the front door, and Briony made to walk past him, gasping with indignation as he suddenly swung her up in his arms.
‘What are you doing with my mummy?’
It was the first time Nicky had showed any signs of possessiveness, his dark blue eyes as stormily angry as his father’s could be as he stood in front of them.
‘I’m carrying her over the threshold of our very first home. Perhaps other aspects of our union haven’t been quite as custom dictates,’ Kieron drawled to Briony, ‘but I see no reason why this one shouldn’t be, do you?’
‘Put me down!’ Briony demanded.
‘Why?’ he mocked. ‘Are you frightened that I might carry you up those stairs and demand those conjugal rights you promised me yesterday? With my body.…’ he reminded her softly.
Nicky, impatient of these adult discussions, tugged impatiently at Kieron’s trousers.
‘Put my mummy down!’ he demanded.
With a mocking look at Briony Kieron complied. ‘Have you been teaching him to say that?’ he taunted.
To her relief the cottage had three good-sized bedrooms. Kieron came upstairs while she was unpacking Nicky’s things in the smallest of them.
‘Is it too much to hope that you’ll perform the same service for me?’
Briony pretended not to have heard him. It did odd things to her pulse rate to think of touching his clothes—clothes which had been worn next to his flesh.
* * *
The days fell into a similar pattern. Despite his faint stirrings of jealousy Nicky was devoted to his father, and Briony normally got up early with Kieron so that the little boy could see him before he left for work. Since their arrival at the cottage, Kieron had become far more distant and there were no more of those barbed comments she had come to dread. Often it was late when he got home, and then he started spending odd nights in the flat in London. Briony told herself that she was glad. She could sleep far more easily when he wasn’t there, and yet that wasn’t true. She found it ridiculously difficult to sleep when he was away, and Nicky got fractious, demanding to know when his daddy was coming back.
One evening the phone rang and a man asked for Kieron, introducing himself as the owner of the cottage. He sounded most anxious to know how they had settled in, and on impulse when he had rung off, Briony dialled the number of the London flat, intending to tell Kieron about the call.
The phone rang for a long time, and she was just about to hang up when someone picked up the receiver, and a female voice called, ‘I’ve got it, darling, I expect it’s the paper. What a time to ring!’
Briony recognised the voice instantly as Gail’s and hung up quietly. She didn’t know why the knowledge that Gail was with her husband in his flat should cause her such bitter pain that she wanted to scream with the agony of it, but it did.
‘Mummy sad?’ Nicky asked sorrowfully.
Kieron returned home the following night, and although Briony had told herself that she would simply behave as though the phone call had never happened, she found it impossible even to speak to him.
He flung his jacket over a chair, wrenching off his tie and dropping into a chintz-covered chair, with a weary, ‘God, I’m tired!’
‘Perhaps you should try sleeping more often,’ Briony said sweetly.
His eyes had been closed, and suddenly they flew open, nearly black with anger and exhaustion.
‘And just what the hell is that supposed to mean?’ he asked bitingly. ‘A red-blooded man has certain needs and tensions and if they aren’t satisfied he sometimes finds it damned hard to sleep—but of course you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?’ he taunted.