wouldn’t think so. It’s been over three years now.’
Three years since the Thailand government had unexpectedly pardoned a few foreign prisoners during a national celebration—one of them being Jake—and Ashleigh had still foolishly started hoping he’d come home to her.
Well, he had come home all right. For less than a day, apparently, his visit only to ask for money before he went back to the very country that had almost destroyed him! He hadn’t come to see her, even though she’d been home at the time.
One would have thought that such callous indifference should have made it much easier for Ashleigh to see other men in a more favourable light. But somehow...it hadn’t.
A type of guilt assailed Ashleigh. James deserved better than a bride who spent her wedding-day thinking about another man, especially his own brother.
She gave herself another mental shake. She wouldn’t do it any more. Not for a second! And if tonight there were fleeting memories of another time, and another lover, she would steadfastly ignore them.
I will be a good wife, she vowed. The very best. Even if I have to resort to faking things a little...
‘Well, what do you think?’ Kate asked after one last spurt of hair-spray.
Ashleigh swallowed, then glanced in the mirror at the way her wayward blonde hair was now neatly encased in a sleek French roll. ‘That’s great,’ she praised. ‘Oh, you’re so clever!’
‘You’re the clever one, Dr O’Neil,’ came her friend’s laughing reply.
A hurried tap, tap, tap on the bedroom door had both women glancing around. The door opened immediately and Nancy Hargraves, James’s mother, hurried into the room.
‘Goodness, what are you doing here, Nancy?’ Ashleigh exclaimed, getting to her feet. ‘Has something gone wrong? Don’t tell me it’s raining down at the park!’
The actual ceremony was to take place in a picturesque park down by the river, James having vetoed his mother’s suggestion they have the wedding at a church neither of them attended. Ashleigh had happily gone along with his idea of a marriage celebrant and an open-air wedding, choosing the local memorial park as a setting. Nancy, though not pleased, had acquiesced, warning them at the time that if it rained it would be their own stupid fault!
‘No, no, nothing like that,’ she muttered now in an agitated fashion.
Ashleigh was surprised at how upset James’s ultra-cool and composed mother seemed to be. Her hands were twisting nervously together and she could hardly look Ashleigh in the face.
‘Could I speak privately to Ashleigh for a minute or two?’ she asked Kate with a stiff smile.
‘Sure. I’ll go along and check that the others are nearly ready.’ The others being Alison and Suzie, Ashleigh’s cousins—the second bridesmaid and flower girl respectively.
‘Thank you,’ Mrs Hargraves said curtly.
Kate flashed Ashleigh an eyebrow-raised glance before leaving the room, being careful not to catch the voluminous skirt of her burgundy satin bridesmaid’s dress as she closed the door behind her.
Ashleigh eyed her future mother-in-law with both curiosity and concern. It wasn’t like Nancy to be so flustered. When she’d offered to help with the wedding arrangements Ashleigh had very gratefully accepted, her own mother having died several years before. She imagined not many women could have smoothly put together a full-scale wedding in the eight weeks that had elapsed since the night she’d accepted James’s proposal. But Nancy Hargraves had for many years been Glenbrook’s top social hostess, and all had been achieved without a ruffle.
Ashleigh got slowly to her feet, taken aback to detect red-rimmed eyes behind the woman’s glasses.
‘What’s happened?’ she said with a lurch in her stomach.
‘I...I’ve heard from Jake,’ came the blurted-out admission.
Ashleigh felt the blood drain from her face. She clutched her dressing-gown around her chest and sank slowly down on to the stool again. It was several seconds before she looked up and spoke. ‘I presume he rang,’ she said in a hard, tight voice. ‘There’s no mail on a Saturday.’
The other woman shook her head. ‘He sent me a letter through a courier service. It arrived a short while ago.’
‘What...what did he say?’ she asked thickly.
‘Apparently the wedding invitation only just reached him,’ Nancy said with the brusqueness of emotional distress. ‘He...he sends his apologies that he can’t attend. He...he also sent this and specifically asked me to give it back to you today before the wedding.’
Ashleigh stared at the silver locket and chain dangling from the woman’s shaking fingers. Her own hand trembled as she reached out to take it, a vivid memory flashing into her mind.
‘What’s this?’ Jake had asked when she’d held the heart-shaped locket out between the bars of his cell the night before the verdict had come down.
Her smile had been pathetically thin. ‘My heart,’ she’d said. ‘Keep it with you while you’re in here. You can give it back to me when you get out, when you come to claim the real thing.’
‘I could be here for years, Leigh,’ had come his rough warning. Jake always called her Leigh, never Ashleigh.
‘I’ll wait...I’ll wait for you forever.’
‘Forever is a long time,’ he’d bitten out in reply. But he’d taken her offering and shoved it in the breast pocket of the shabby shirt he’d been wearing.
Now she stared down at the heart-shaped locket for a long, long moment, then crushed it in her hand, her eyes closing against the threatened rush of tears.
‘I’m sorry to have upset you, Ashleigh,’ Nancy said in a strained voice. ‘I know what Jake once meant to you. But believe me when I say I wanted nothing more than to see you and James happily married today. I did not want to come here with this. But I had to do what my son asked. I just had to. I...’
She broke off, and Ashleigh’s wet lashes fluttered open to see a Nancy Hargraves she’d never encountered before. The woman looked grey, and ill.
Anger against Jake flooded through her, washing the pain from her heart, leaving a bitter hardness instead. How dared he do this, today, of all days? How dared he?
Ashleigh pulled herself together and stood up, the locket tightly clasped within her right hand. ‘It’s all right, Nancy,’ she stated firmly. ‘I’m all right. I have no intention of letting Jake spoil my wedding-day. Or my marriage. You haven’t told James about the letter, have you?’
Nancy’s blue eyes widened, perhaps at the steel in Ashleigh’s voice. ‘N...no...’
‘Then everything’s all right, isn’t it? I certainly won’t be mentioning it. By tonight, James and I will be driving off on our honeymoon and he’ll be none the wiser.’
She was shocked when her future mother-in-law uttered a choked sob and fled from the room.
