Wedding Nights: Woman to Wed?. PENNY JORDAN

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      As her eye was caught by an unopened bottle of champagne, she reached for it, opened it deftly and poured the foaming liquid into three empty glasses, challenging the other two, ‘I’m willing to make a vow not to marry. What about you two?’

      ‘I certainly have no plans to remarry,’ Claire, Sally’s stepmother, agreed more gently.

      Tearfully Poppy nodded. ‘I shan’t marry now. Not now that Chris … Not now …’ Fresh tears filled her eyes as she solemnly joined the other two in a pledge of solidarity.

      All three of them raised their glasses, none of them aware that their conversation had been overheard …

      CHAPTER ONE

      CLAIRE MARSHALL gave a rueful look at the now empty, still confetti-strewn reception area of the hotel.

      Was it really less than a couple of hours since her stepdaughter and her new husband had run laughing down those stairs, trying to dodge the happy bombardment of rose petals?

      Most of the guests had left now, just a small nucleus remaining in the hotel lounge. She had only come back in here to check that nothing had inadvertently been left behind.

      It had been a lovely day, a perfect wedding, marred only by the fact that her husband, Sally’s father, had not been with them.

      It was over two years now since his death but she still missed him; he had been a good husband—kind, loving, protective. As she bent to touch the bouquet which Sally had so cleverly tricked the three women into catching, Claire acknowledged that the adjectives she was using to describe her husband were more those that she would use to describe a loving father.

      ‘You should marry again,’ Sally had urged her more than once recently. Sadness darkened her eyes. She had been lucky to find one loving and understanding man; she doubted that she would ever be lucky enough to find a second. And besides, she didn’t really want to marry a second time—to make explanations, excuses or apologies.

      She was distracted from her thoughts as both the adult bridesmaids came to join her. Poppy, the bridegroom’s cousin, glowered angrily at the bridal bouquet and curtly echoed Star’s earlier bitter comment.

      ‘No one pays any attention to those silly old superstitions these days anyway …’

      Claire gave her a gentle smile. Sally had confided to her that it was an open secret in her new husband’s family that his cousin had been hopelessly in love with him for years.

      Poor girl, Claire thought compassionately. No wonder she looked so pale and strained; the whole day must have been an unbearable ordeal for her, and the bridegroom’s brother hadn’t made things any easier for her. She had accidentally come across the pair of them deep in the middle of a very angry quarrel earlier and she suspected now that at some point in the day Poppy had been crying.

      ‘I never want to get married—never!’ Poppy announced savagely now.

      ‘A statement with which I fully concur,’ the third member of the trio murmured calmly.

      Claire turned her head to smile at her stepdaughter’s closest and oldest friend. Claire could remember quite vividly how as a young teenager Star had always insisted that she never intended to marry and that her career was going to be the most important thing in her life.

      ‘Such a shame that none of us truly appreciated Sally’s gesture,’ Claire commented ruefully as she picked up the bouquet and studied it.

      ‘Careful,’ Star warned her drily. ‘You don’t know what effect holding it could have …’

      Claire laughed but she still replaced the bouquet. ‘It is only a tradition,’ she reminded the other two.

      ‘Mmm … but perhaps for safety’s sake we ought to do something constructive to ensure that we stick to the vow we made earlier and remain unmarried,’ said Star.

      ‘Such as what?’ Poppy demanded, adding bitterly, ‘Not that I shall ever change my mind … if I can’t …’ Tears were already filling her eyes. Angrily she blinked them away.

      ‘Look, why don’t we agree to meet, say, once every three months just to remind each other that we intend to stay husband-free? Then if one of us does start slipping we’ve always got the others to turn to for support,’ Star suggested.

      ‘I won’t need any support,’ Poppy declared.

      But Claire, who could sense already how Sally’s marriage was bound to alter the relationship they each had with her and one another, said firmly, ‘I think that’s a very good idea. Let’s make a date to meet here three months from now. We can have lunch together … my treat.’

      ‘Great, I’ll put it in my diary,’ Star confirmed.

      Claire looked across at Poppy. She didn’t know her as well as she did Star, who had been Sally’s best friend ever since they had started senior school together, but she could sense how unhappy the younger girl was. It must have been hard for her, seeing the man she loved marrying someone else.

      Sally had confessed that when she had first heard about Poppy she had been inclined to feel very wary of her but that once she had met her, and knowing how strong Chris’s love was for her, she had simply felt desperately sad for her.

      ‘It must be so awful loving someone who can’t love you back in the same way,’ Sally had said. ‘Chris likes her, of course—she’s his cousin—but …’

      ‘But he loves you,’ Claire had agreed.

      Sally had come over to her and given her a quick hug. They had always got on well together from the moment John had introduced them. Sally had been a pupil at the huge comprehensive where Claire had done her teacher-training practice.

      She had often wondered if one of the reasons why Sally had accepted her so lovingly and so readily as her stepmother had been that she had never known her own mother. Sally’s mother, John’s first wife, had died just after Sally’s birth.

      ‘Paula will always be part of my … of our lives. I shall always love her,’ John had told her seriously when he had proposed to her.

      She had accepted that, felt warmed by it, almost reassured … Knowing how much he had loved his first wife and still loved her made her feel … safe.

      Sally had once asked innocently when Claire was going to have children of her own and when she was going to have a little brother or sister. Claire had had to turn away from her, leaving it to John to answer, to defuse the situation.

      She sighed faintly now. Of course she would have liked children, if things had been different. As a girl she had always imagined that one day she would have them.

      ‘I think we ought to be going now,’ she told the two bridesmaids. ‘I don’t think we’ve left anything behind. I can’t see anything, can you, Poppy?’

      ‘No. There’s nothing left,’ Poppy agreed drearily. ‘Not now.’

      Claire gave her a quick look but said nothing. It seemed kinder not to.

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