The Marriage Bed
An Ideal Marriage?
The Marriage Campaign
The Bridal Bed
Helen Bianchin
HELEN BIANCHIN was born in New Zealand and travelled to Australia before marrying her Italian-born husband. After three years they moved, returned to New Zealand with their daughter, had two sons and then resettled in Australia.
Encouraged by friends to recount anecdotes of her years as a tobacco sharefarmer’s wife living in an Italian community, Helen began setting words on paper and her first novel was published in 1975.
Currently Helen resides in Queensland, the three children now married with children of their own. An animal lover, Helen says her two beautiful Birman cats regard her study as much theirs as hers, choosing to leap onto her desk every afternoon to sit upright between the computer monitor and keyboard as a reminder they need to be fed … like right now!
Contents
GABBI eased the car to a halt in the long line of traffic banked up behind the New South Head Road intersection adjacent to Sydney’s suburban Elizabeth Bay. A slight frown creased her forehead as she checked her watch, and her fingers tapped an impatient tattoo against the steering wheel.
She had precisely one hour in which to shower, wash her hair, dry and style it, apply make-up, dress, and greet invited dinner guests. The loss of ten minutes caught up in heavy traffic didn’t form part of her plan.
Her eyes slid to the manicured length of her nails, and she dwelt momentarily on the fact that time spent on their lacquered perfection had cost her her lunch. An apple at her desk mid-afternoon could hardly be termed an adequate substitute.
The car in front began to move, and she followed its path, picking up speed, only to depress the brake pedal as the lights changed.
Damn. At this rate it would take two, if not three attempts to clear the intersection.
She should, she admitted silently, have left her of fice earlier in order to miss the heavy early evening traffic. Yet stubborn single-mindedness had prevented her from doing so.
As James Stanton’s daughter, she had no need to work. Property, an extensive share portfolio and a handsome annuity placed her high on the list of Sydney’s independently wealthy young women.
As