the same for them—I’d probably have to relocate them. I wouldn’t have a great deal of time for them although I suppose I could always get another governess for them.’
‘Stop,’ she whispered then cleared her throat. ‘This is the most arrant blackmail I’ve ever heard—why?’ she asked intensely.
‘Why?’ he mused. ‘I should have thought that was obvious—I want you, Arizona!’
‘There’s a saying about hell and fury and women scorned—are you sure you’re not suffering from being scorned, Declan?’ she asked scathingly.
He laughed. ‘It could be a bit of that, too, I guess.’
‘On the other hand what would you have thought of me if I had responded to your eyes across the fence?’
‘Well, I probably wouldn’t have had to marry you, would I?’ he said placidly.
‘That doesn’t make sense—it’s worse,’ she declared bitterly. ‘It puts me in a no-win situation, which is simply crazy!’
‘Well, now, that remains to be seen. Being married to me won’t be nearly so bad as you’re cracking it up, Arizona. At one stroke you’ll retain Scawfell, you’ll retain four children you’re very fond of and who need you—think of that if nothing else.’
Arizona closed her eyes and for the life of her couldn’t help thinking of it. Thinking of Daisy, whose natural mother had died when she was two, Daisy who didn’t remember her and didn’t understand about stepmothers and thought Arizona was her mother, Daisy who worried... Thought about Sarah and Richard, charming twins so long as you understood the full extent of their dependence on each other, and Ben. Poor, tortured Ben who was still bereft without his father, who now viewed the world with cynicism and disenchantment and was increasingly disruptive ... She opened her eyes and stared blankly at Declan Holmes.
‘Also,’ he said quietly, ‘you’ll have your sex life taken care of—and an awful lot of pin money to spend, Arizona.’
‘If I didn’t hate you before, I do now,’ she responded equally quietly.
He smiled briefly. ‘But you’ll do it?’
‘Only because I have no choice.’
‘Not entirely true,’ he drawled, ‘but nevertheless, when?’
‘Oh, I think I’ll leave it to you to name the day, Declan.’
‘Is that some kind of a cop-out, Arizona?’ he murmured.
‘No,’ she said baldly. ‘Merely an indication of my lack of interest.’
His Lips twisted but he said only, ‘How about a month from today then? It will give the kids a bit of time to get used to the idea.’
‘If you say so—me, as well, I suppose.’ She grimaced.
‘You’ve had a lot longer than that,’ he remarked softly. ‘If it’s so repugnant I’m surprised you haven’t left the country or something equally dramatic.’
‘But you knew damn well you had me here as some kind of a hostage, didn’t you, Declan?’
‘Did I?’ he reflected. ‘Exactly what kind of a hostage, is what one wonders, to be honest. While I don’t doubt your devotion to the kids—oh, well—’ he gestured with one long, strong hand ‘—time will no doubt tell. Why don’t you invite me for the weekend, Arizona? We could start the process of apprising the world of our intentions.’
‘Come, by all means,’ Arizona replied with utterly false cordiality. In fact her stance and the look in her eyes said something quite different—come and do your damnedest, in other words.
To which, after a long, challenging moment, he merely smiled gently as if to say, We’ll see, we’ll see...
‘Dearest Mother,’ Arizona wrote that night. ‘I suppose it’s still all right to call you that and not Sister Margaret Mary, but I digress. The news is that I’m getting married again—now I know how you opposed, from the seclusion of your convent, my first marriage but from a purely materialistic sense, this one is even better. You’ve probably heard of Declan Holmes—who hasn’t? Yes, the same one who took over his father’s media empire (small media empire) at the age of twenty-six and now, at about thirty-three, could probably be justifiably termed a media magnate. Well, he was a good friend of Peter’s, he’s the children’s trustee and guardian and as I’m the children’s stepmother, it seems like a good idea. So far as your objections to my previous marriage go, he’s only ten years older than me, he’s not a father figure or anything like that, he’s a mighty marriageable man, but no, I’m not in love with him and I don’t think he’s in love with me. What else can I tell you? It’s to be a month from today...’
Arizona lifted her head and stared into the middle distance. Can I tell you that I’m incredibly confused, desperate and afraid? That I’m wondering whether I should leave the country or something like that—but how to leave the kids?
She closed her eyes then impatiently tore the sheet off her notepad and threw it into the wastepaper basket. A moment later she reached down and tore it up into little pieces, which she let fall like confetti into the basket, thinking at the same time that it was a cheap shot writing to her mother like that, that it was continuing a feud that should be over, that if the one thing her mother had done right in her life, it seemed she was making a good nun.
The next morning as she dressed, she observed the slight shadows under her eyes, grimaced then tossed her head. She pulled on jeans and a blue sweater, tied her hair back and went on her rounds of waking the children. And when they were dressed and assembled at the big table in the kitchen, she went out of her way to be as normal as possible over breakfast, served by Cloris.
‘Let’s see, Sarah and Richard, you have drama this afternoon after school. Daisy, you’re going to play with Chloe straight from school and I’ll pick you up at five o’clock and Ben—’
‘I know exactly what I’ve got on, thanks, Arizona, you don’t have to treat me as a child,’ Ben interrupted intensely.
‘Okay!’ Arizona smiled at him and got up to give Cloris a hand with the school lunches. ‘Oh, by the way,’ she said casually over her shoulder, ‘Declan is coming to spend this weekend with us.’
‘Yippee!’ the twins chorused, and Daisy followed with a similar exclamation.
It was Ben who said moodily, ‘What’s he coming for? I thought he was here yesterday.’
Arizona narrowed her eyes. ‘And I thought you liked Declan, Ben.’
‘He’s all right,’ he said ungraciously. ‘But what is he coming for?’
‘It doesn’t matter what he’s coming for, Ben,’ Daisy said earnestly. ‘What matters is that he’s nice and we should be nice back, shouldn’t we?’
‘For God’s sake,’ Ben entreated, ‘can’t you make her stop lecturing us, Arizona? She’s only six—’
‘Ben—’
