‘So what’s your definition of happiness, Finn?’
He stooped down for a pebble and hurled it out at the blue sea before turning to look at her with eyes which rivalled the ocean’s hue.
‘It’s a way of travelling, Catherine,’ he said slowly. ‘Not a destination.’
So, was she happy at this precise moment? She thought about it. Actually, yes, she was. Though contented was probably a better description. She was healthy and pregnant and walking along a beautiful beach with a beautiful man. And if she defined happiness in a futile wish that their relationship went deeper than that, then she was heading for a big dis appointment. You couldn’t look for happiness in another person. First you had to find it within yourself.
She thought that to the outside world they probably made a very striking couple—both tall and slim, with matching heads of jet-black, and her gleaming and brand-new gold band proclaiming very definitely that she was a newly-wed.
But there were several giveaway signs that all was not as it appeared. Finn did not smile down into her face with the conspiratorial air of a lover, nor hold her hand as if he couldn’t bear to let it go.
Not, that was, until they arrived at his aunt’s house. Then he caught her fingers in his and squeezed them reassuringly. ‘It’ll be okay,’ he whispered.
The door was opened by a grey-haired woman in her late sixties, whose faded eyes were a blue a few shades less intense than those of her nephew. She only came up to the middle of his chest, but she flung her arms around him all the same and Catherine’s heart clenched as he hugged her back. She’d never seen him so openly affectionate and demonstrative.
‘Why, it’s the divil himself!’ she exclaimed. ‘Finn! Finn Delaney!’ She fixed him with a look of admonishment, but anyone could see her heart wasn’t in it. ‘And why haven’t you been round to see me sooner?’ Without waiting for an answer, she moved the blue eyes curiously from Finn to Catherine. ‘And who might this be?’
Catherine was feeling as nervous as a child on the first day of school, recognising how much this woman meant to Finn and desperately not wanting to start off on the wrong foot.
‘I’m Catherine,’ she said simply. ‘I’m Finn’s wife.’
Chapter Eleven
CHAPTER ELEVEN
FINN’S wife.
The first and only time she had said it had been to Finn’s aunt, but she thought it often enough, running the words sweetly through her mind like chocolate melting over ice-cream.
She had thought it the first morning he had driven back to Dublin, standing in the doorway just like a proper wife, watching his car disappear over the horizon, leaving her alone with her thoughts and her writing and her growing baby. And the big bed in which she slept alone.
The car had become a distant dot and she’d slowly closed the door on it, telling herself that she was glad he had made no move to consummate the marriage.
It would have only complicated things. Made the inevitable split more difficult—for her, certainly. Because women grew much closer to a man when they had sex with him. Even more so when that man’s child grew bigger with every day that passed.
But being off limits had forced them together in a way which had its own kind of intimacy. For what did you do when you were closeted together every weekend and unable to do the one thing you most wanted to do?
Well, they seemed to go for an awful lot of walks. Brisk, bracing walks along the unimaginably beautiful coastline. He would feed her cream and scones, and afterwards take her back to the cottage and insist that she put her feet up for the inevitable sleep which would follow. Sometimes she would wake up to find him watching her, the blue eyes so blazing and intent. And for one brief and blissful moment she would almost forget herself, want to hold her arms out towards him, to draw him close against the fullness of her breasts.
But the moment would be lost when he turned away, as if something he saw in her disturbed him, and she wondered if he felt uncomfortable with this masquerade of marriage. Did he find himself wanting to tell the aunt who was more like a mother to him that it was not all it seemed? That he had made her pregnant and was simply doing the right thing by her? Was he now perhaps regretting that decision?
He’d taken her to meet his friends who lived at the far end of the small town. Apparently he had known Patrick ‘for ever’, and Patrick’s wife, Aisling, was an energetic redhead who squealed with delight when they told her the news.
‘At last!’ she exclaimed. ‘You’ve done it at last! Oh, Finn—there’ll be legions of women weeping all over Ireland!’
‘And legions of men sighing with relief,’ commented Patrick wryly as he reached into the fridge for a bottle of champagne.
‘Shut up.’ Finn smiled.
‘So you went and got married without telling anyone?’ Patrick demanded as he eased the cork out of the bottle. ‘Even us?’
‘Especially you,’ murmured Finn. ‘We didn’t want the whole of Wicklow knowing!’ He paused. ‘Catherine’s pregnant, you see.’
‘Oh, Patrick,’ said Aisling softly. ‘Will you listen to the man? “Catherine’s pregnant,” he says. As if we didn’t have eyes in our heads, Finn Delaney! Congratulations! To both of you!’
She hugged them both in turn and Catherine felt a great lump rise in her throat, glad to have her face enveloped in Aisling’s thick-knit sweater. I don’t deserve this, she thought. I can’t go through with it. Pretending to these nice people that all is what it seems.
But she looked up, her eyes bright, and met a sudden warm understanding in Finn’s, and she drew an odd sort of comfort from that.