A Deathbed Promise

Chapter 4—The Right Thing, The "Discreet" Thing

AN: A show of hands to all the people who want to kill me? That's what I thought. I am so sorry. Like sorry to the 100th power. Life happens people. And computers don't work. And sometimes, you just don't feel like it. And you forgot your login information. Here's the good news: I remembered! Also, I never lost the story. I found it on a thumbdrive, stuck in a drawer. I can finally finish this story, if you want me to. I hope you do, because I plan to finish. I am here to deliver the next chapter. Updates will be a bit sporadic but nothing like 3 years, I promise. I would advise you to start all over, then read this chapter. Review and let me have it. I can take it. I promise.

Bella woke up feeling exhausted the next morning. Yet the bedside clock showed after eight, which meant she'd had plenty of sleep. The state of the blankets, however, indicated a restless night.

Her groan echoed this fact. She hadn't felt this rotten since the day after Anthony's funeral, which probably meant it was more an emotional condition rather than a physical one.

Yes, she really gradually realized. It was. She felt terribly down. And awfully alone.

No. Not alone. Lonely.

Not even thinking about her baby made her feel better. He or she was not going to be born for nearly five months and, while Bella was absolutely certain she was going to enjoy being a mother, there was no baby for her to love and hold at that very moment.

At that very moment, she was just a grieving girl who had recently lost the man that she loved, who had yesterday married his brother for the most well-intentioned reasons, but who was now wishing whole-heartedly that she hadn't.

She should have refused, despite Emmett's deathbed promise to Anthony. She should have gone her own way, been her own boss, and lived her own life. Instead, she had weakly allowed Anthony's domineering brother to take her under his wing, to draw her into the bosom of his family and to make all her decisions for her.

Bella knew that she was not as submissive a creature as Emmett thought her to be. Though not normally given to the wild outbursts of temper she'd suffered from yesterday, she could still be very stubborn and willful, as her stepfather had found out in the end. That was why she was so astonished at how she always reacted to Emmett. It was testimony to his formidable personality that she went to mush in his presence, giving in to his demands most of the time without a sound.

Bella took some consolation from the fact that he'd now decided to divorce her once the baby was born. Also that he was going to get her a place of her own. She was sure she'd be a much more content and confident person away from Emmett. He did not have a good effect on her all around. She'd also be lying if she denied that what happened last night at the top of the stairs wasn't an added concern.

Emmett was nothing like Anthony and, while she didn't really see him as a potential rapist, the incident had blown apart her misconception that Emmett was cold and passionless. There had been nothing cold or passionless about the man who had held her and stroked her. Heck no! just thinking about the incident made her stomach flutter nervously. It was going to be difficult to face him today without making a fool of herself.

With a shudder, Bella threw back the blankets and climbed out of bed. At least she didn't have to worry about any awkward encounters till this evening. At this hour on a Monday morning, Emmett would already be in his big fancy office in North Sydney, wheeling and dealing, planning how to make his next million and giving Esme a hard time.

The man was a workaholic, Bella decided ruefully as she dragged herself into the bathroom for a wakeup shower. The hours he kept would kill a purple dog. Eight till six at the office six days a week. Home by seven, dinner at seven-thirty then into his study for more work. The light was always still on under the study door when Bella went to bed, which was sometimes quite late, if she'd watched a movie on TV or DVD. She didn't know how he kept it up. Sunday was his only day off, spent mainly on the golf-course.

By the time she was ready to go downstairs half an hour later, Bella felt a hundred per cent better. Things could be worse, she supposed. She could be throwing up every morning, as some women did during the early months of their pregnancies.

To be honest, sometimes she forgot she was pregnant, especially when dressed in something like the loosely fitting green tracksuit she'd chosen to wear that day. Maybe when the baby started moving it would be different. But up until now, all she had to show for her pregnancy was a disappearing waistline, slightly swollen breasts and a gently rounded tummy.

The house seemed very quiet as she made her way down the stairs. There again, Masen Mansion was often quiet, the double brick walls and heavy doors muffling any noise from within the individual rooms. The street was quiet too, with little traffic passing down the no-through road.

When Bella had first been brought here, she'd been very impressed by the grandeur of the house and its grounds. Since then she'd come to realize that all the neighbors' homes were similar in style and size, some being even larger and more opulent.

When she asked Maria about Masen Mansion's history, the housekeeper had revealed that the house had originally been built in the thirties by Emmett's great-uncle Garry, with Emmett's father Edward Sr. inheriting it during the war when the old man died, childless. It was two-storied and Victorian in style, and Edward Sr. had allowed Elizabeth to renovate and refurbish the house considerably during their marriage, which accounted, Bella thought, for its air of quiet elegance.

The house was still Elizabeth's to do with as she pleased till she died, a fact Elizabeth had reminded Emmett of last week when she removed some of the original artworks from the walls and replaced them with the paintings of Anthony's which Bella had brought with her and given to his mother.

Bella had found the incident—and Emmett's angry objections—quite distressing. The last thing she'd wanted was to cause dissension in the family. At the time she'd thought Emmett insensitive and lacking in compassion. Now, in light of other incidents and comments, she felt some sympathy for him. After all, they weren't even good paintings.

Bella ground to a halt at the bottom of the stairs, shocked by this new insight into Anthony's artistic talent. Or lack of it.

For a few seconds, she felt terribly disloyal to his memory. How many times had she lavished praise on him for his paintings? How many times had she told him that one day he would be a famous artist, that his work would hang in galleries and on the walls of millionaires' mansions?

Had she always known she'd been lying?

No, she accepted with a sigh of relief. She hadn't. It had only been when she'd come here to Masen Mansion and seen truly magnificent paintings on the walls that she'd recognized Anthony's work fell far short of genuine talent. His paintings were, at best, very mediocre, their amateurishness only obvious after she'd been able to compare them with the works of truly fine artists.

Bella frowned. Had Anthony known? When he'd shaken his head at her compliments, smiling that soft sad smile of his, had he been acknowledging the hidden truth? That he wasn't really good at anything…except perhaps making her love him and need him.

Tears pricked her eyes.

Oh, Anthony…

For a few moments Bella allowed herself to wallow in a type of remorse before growing impatient with herself. Enough of that, she decided staunchly, and began to blink madly.

Once she was totally under control, she turned and marched along the downstairs hallway, past the various closed doors on either side and down to the door that would bring her into the room which was the hub of the household.

At the back of the ground floor, and approachable from several angles, the kitchen/family room was where dinner parties for twenty were prepared, informal meals were eaten, TV was watched and company was sought. It was large and sunny and warm, and Bella loved it.

Bella opened the door, relieved to find the room empty except for Maria. For a second there she'd worried Emmett might have stayed home for some reason. But it seemed their marriage yesterday was not going to change his daily routine in any way, for which she was grateful. Even in the few short weeks she lived at Masen Mansion, she knew his presence brought a different atmosphere into the home. Tension vibrated in the air. Conversation was stilted. Elizabeth withdrew into herself even more than usual, and Maria, who was the sweetest of old ladies, became a little short, her delightfully dry sense of humor turning slightly caustic, especially with Emmett.

The lady herself spun round at Bella's entrance, an instant smile further creasing her wrinkled face.

"Well, if it isn't Mrs. Rip Van Winkle herself," she teased.

Bella smiled back. "I did sleep in, didn't I? Elizabeth up yet?"

"She's in the morning-room with a pot of tea and the newspaper."

"Then I'll leave it to her." Elizabeth could spend the whole morning reading the newspaper, and then doing the crosswords. Mostly she finished it, but occasionally the answer to one or two clues eluded her. Only rarely could Bella or Maria ever help her with these, because they were always the most difficult and obscure.

Sometimes—but not often—Elizabeth would ask Emmett's help when he came home in the evening, and he would invariably have the answer for her within seconds. Once, he had filled in the blank squares himself when he saw the unfinished crossword lying on the kitchen table, only to have Elizabeth complain that he's spoiled the page with his big ugly handwriting and that he was just like his father, with a heavy hand and no natural neatness.

Remembering that incident again now sent a frown to Bella's face. Why did she keep thinking of things that made Emmett appear the wronged person in this family? Surely Anthony had been the son who had drawn the short straw? Emmett had it all. Looks. Drive. Intelligence. He'd shone as a student and an athlete, according to Esme. He'd had girls running after him. His father had apparently lavished praise and approval on him by the bucketful.

So what if his mother hadn't loved him? So what if his wife had left him? So what if he'd had to marry a girl in name only, just so that his brother's child could achieve legitimacy?

Something moved within Bella that felt awfully like pity, yet not quite. It was stronger, more emotional, more…what?

"How was Emmett this morning?" she demanded of Maria, so abruptly the housekeeper shot her a startled look.

"Why do you ask that?"

Bella shrugged the action an echo of her own inner confusion. "I just wondered," she said.

"He was like a bear with a sore paw. Frankly, I think he had a hangover."

"A hangover?"

Maria nodded. "He's been hitting the bottle lately. Has been ever since Anthony died. He did the same when that bitch of a wife left him for that movie producer."

"What movie producer?" Bella pounced, eager to know about the break-up of Emmett's marriage.

Maria scowled. "Some rich American who was out here on a talent-scouting trip. She went back to the States with him. Dear Irina always had acting aspirations, though for my money she couldn't act her way out of a plastic bag. Had a great body, though, I'll give her that. Her face was passable as well, I suppose, though her hair was obviously a fake blond. Maybe her boobs as well. Who knows these days?"

"How long was Emmett married to her?"

"Just on two years. Frankly, I think he wasn't thinking straight when he got mixed up with that floozy. His father had just died, Anthony had done a disappearing act, and he'd been working twenty-four hour days to salvage Masen Property Developments when she walked into his life. The poor devil never stood a chance."

Bella was startled by Maria's unexpected sympathy for Emmett. She'd always thought Maria didn't like her employer very much. "Did he love her?" she asked.

"He was crazy about her, the deluded fool."

"Oh…"

"She used to spend hours and hours on her appearance, bathing in perfumed oil every afternoon then whisking Emmett off up into the bedroom the second he got home. It was disgusting, the way she kept him bewitched through sex. She made him think he was her life, then up and dumped him, just like that!" Maria snapped her fingers.

Bella grimaced.

"Yes, that's exactly the way his mother and I felt," Maria agreed. "But there was nothing we could do or say against her. Love is blind. Or lust is. Emmett is just like his father in that regard. Edward Sr. was a very physical man too. Maybe I shouldn't be saying this but Emmett's father was not the most faithful of husbands. Elizabeth pretended she didn't know, but I'm sure she did. She…"

The telephone ringing interrupted Maria's gossiping, Bella feeling rather relieved about that. She really didn't want to hear the personal and private details of Elizabeth's marriage, though the bit about Emmett's first wife had been informative. What a bitch!

"Masen Mansion," she heard Maria say in the background. "Oh, yes, Esme… He is…? Where…? For how long…? I see…Yes, it'll be ready…Bye, dear. See you soon."

Maria hung up with a sigh. "Speak of the devil," she muttered.

"What was that about?" Bella asked.

"I have to pack an overnight bag for the Lord and Master," Maria said drily. "Esme's on her way to pick up. He's going away for a couple of days."

"G-going away?"

"Yes, flying up to the Gold Coast this afternoon. On business. Or so he says," she muttered.

Bella fell silent, knowing in her heart that what Maria had just implied was probably true. He was not going away on business. He was going away to rid himself of the sexual frustrations that had caused what had happened last night. Logic told her he was doing the right thing, the "discreet" thing. There was no reason for her to feel upset in any way by his very sensible decision.

So why was she?

Bella finally decided she wasn't. It was Emmett's going away without having the common decency to say goodbye to her personally that was irritating her. She might only be his wife in name only, but he could still have asked her to speak to her. He could have said goodbye to her, not to mention his mother as well. The man was downright rude!

A slow-burning resentment simmered within Bella the rest of the day, especially after Esme dashed in and out like a whirlwind, on instructions from her boss not to stay and chat but to get back to the office, pronto. Bella revised her opinion about Emmett's not being an unfeeling machine. He most definitely was. She decided his betraying his sexual needs the previous evening had nothing to do with real feelings. Real feelings came from the head and the heart, whereas what Emmett was suffering from came from directly below the waist.

It particularly annoyed Bella to think of how exactly he was going to go about satisfying those needs. Did he have a little black book with names and addresses of accommodating ladies in it from all over Australia? Was he taking some secret mistress with him? Or was he contemplating picking up some woman from a bar somewhere?

Surely, oh, surely he didn't plan on paying for a professional services! Her eyes blinked wide, the very idea turning her stomach.

Revulsion plus common sense quickly discarded this last thought. Emmett would not have to resort to paying for sex. Neither was he the sort of man to take stupid risks with his health. The women he consorted with would all be intelligent, sophisticated females who would be concerned with their own well-being as their partners'. Safe sex would be the name of the game; mutual satisfaction their only aim.

She still shuddered at the thought.

By lunchtime Bella found herself so nervy and unnerved that she decided some physical work was the only antidote for her agitation.

"Why don't we start spring cleaning the house this week?" she suggested to Maria over a BLT sandwich. "You told me a few days ago that you always gave it a good going over every September. Since it'd a nice sunny day today, I could start in the windows."

Maria dragged her eyes away from her soap opera to give her an exasperated look. "For pity's sake, Bella. I defended your right to do a few chores around the place but you're hardly in a fit state to start climbing up on ladders, cleaning windows and such. Frankly, I'm too old for such nonsense as well; have been for years. We always get a cleaning service in to do the hard stuff like the blinds and the windows."

"Fair enough," Bella agreed. "But I could at least wash and iron the curtains. Or what about the floors? I could polish the floors."

"Definitely not! Emmett would skin me alive if I let you do such heavy work. No, I'll be sending the curtains out to be dry-cleaned as usual. As for the floors—there are far too many for you to do. It would exhaust you. If you must do something, there's a lot of silver to be cleaned. That's a nice safe sitting down job."

"What's a nice safe sitting down job?" Elizabeth asked as she wandered in, a folded newspaper in her hands.

"Bella's going to clean the silver."

Elizabeth smiled her approval. "What a good girl you are. Here, have a look at this last clue for me, Bella? I can't get it and Emmett isn't here to ask…"

By bedtime that night, Bella hoped never to see another piece of silver—or a cryptic crossword—again. Her poor brain had gone round and round for hours, only to have Elizabeth walk back in and do the damn thing herself in a sudden inspiration. Trying to untangle cryptic clues, Bella decided, was almost as tiring and tedious as cleaning endless pieces of cutlery. Frankly, she'd rather milk cows and she'd never particularly liked that job either.

The only reward for her day's labor was that she was blessedly tired and fell asleep without any of the restlessness that had plagued her the night before. The following morning, the cleaning service Maria had called arrived first thing, the blinds and curtains and rugs being carted away for cleaning elsewhere while a team of overcalled workers stayed behind. Two men set to washing the many windows inside and out, a very fit-looking girl waxing and polishing the wooden floors downstairs while a third male person steam-cleaned the carpets upstairs.

By the middle of Wednesday afternoon, all the blinds and curtains were back in place and the place looked and smelt fresh and clean. Bella was wandering through the house admiring everything when she spied a job that had been overlooked. The ceiling fans needed dusting.

Without saying a word to the others—Maria was fortunately busy preparing dinner and Elizabeth was resting upstairs—Bella quietly collected a small set of steps and a feather duster from the cupboard under the stairs and set about doing the fan in the study first, making sure she was extra careful when climbing the ladder and reaching up to stroke the duster along the first blade.

When a shower of dust landed on top of her head, Bella stopped, sighed, then climbed down and went to get a scarf to tie over her hair. She has remembered seeing an old plaid one on a peg under the stairs a few minutes before.

Back up the ladder again with the scarf securely in place, she resumed carefully dusting each of the four blades and was on to the last one when two large male arms suddenly wrapped around her waist and lifted her off the ladder into mid-air.

Bella dropped the duster, her gasp of shock forming into a scream just as Emmett's angry voice filled her ears.

"And what the hell do you think you're doing, you silly little fool?"

Well? Does that make up for my absence? I hope so! As for Emmett's first wife, I sure you were surprised it wasn't Rosalie! I was going to use her but the reason their marriage ended didn't fit Rosalie at all. Review! Tell me everything. Emmett is angry, Emmett was gone and Bella, well is Bella. Wednesday will be update day, I hope.