Wife Without Kisses

by Violet Winspear

  Sympathy was in Rea’s quick glance at his profile, upon which cynicism was stamped hard in this moment. “Now you’ve had to give up your travelling and your writing, haven’t you?” she murmured.

  He shrugged. “Phil loved the cows and the turnips; the estate and Somerset. I love Somerset—with time the rest will come, I hope! One thing is certain, I couldn’t have borne giving myself entirely to the demands of King’s Beeches, hence this marriage idea. My grandfather gets what he’s always wanted—Phil’s son; and I shall cease to be regarded in the county as a likely candidate for the marriage stakes.” He shot a grin at

  Rea. “And you, my child, acquire freedom from drudgery, therefore the few necessary lies we shall be obliged to tell will be well worth the telling, in my opinion.”

  That evening, just before dinner, Rea told Laura that she wouldn’ t be going back to London with her the following moving. Laura looked staggered, and then a heavy frown came down over her face like a storm cloud. “I’ll be damned if you’ll walk out on me like this!” she thundered. “A little chit like you! You’ll go when I say so.”

  Rea drew back from this display of nasty temper; though partly expected it still had the power to set her nerves jumping. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Damien,” she said, “but I’ve been offered another job, one that—that suits me better. I’m sorry to give you such short notice, but it can’t be helped.”

  Laura’s lowering stare was thick with suspicion. “Who the hell have you met?” she demanded. “Who has offered you another job?”

  But Rea stood dumb before her, her face pale, her eyes wide with a frightened but quite determined defiance.

  Laura stepped to her and gripped her shoulders, giving her a shake. “You underhanded little snip;” she growled. “You’ve been playing about with some man, haven’t you?”

  Rea shook her head, rather wildly. “No! That isn’t true! I’m—I’m tired of typing work, that’s all. I want a change. I’m going into the country to look after a little boy.”

  Laura’s wide, lush mouth expressed a frank and scornful disbelief. “There’s a big boy involved here, I can tell by the way of you.”

  “You’re—you’re insulting!” Rea gasped. The nerves that were drumming hard under her skin and in her throat were making her feel a little sick—she wanted to run from this room, from Laura’s horrible insinuations. “I’ve told you the truth,” she cried, “I’m going into the country to look after a little boy. You’ve no right to think—what you’re thinking.”

  “Is that so?” Laura slowly turned from the dressing-table and leant against it, her eyes travelling up and down the slight figure of Rea. She looked heavily malicious. “I’ll tell you what right I’ve got. I could hold you to a weeks’ notice.”

  “Why, I’ve not been paid any wages for three weeks, Mrs. Damien,” Rea flashed back. “You can’t force me to abide by a contract you’ve already broken.”

  Laura stared, and then, quite unexpectedly, she broke into a husky hoot of laughter. “Hell’s bells, whoever the guy is, he’s woken you up with a vengeance. I’ll say that for him.” With a rustle of cerise silk she moved to the bed, where her handbag lay. She took it up, opened it and drew six five-pound notes from her wallet. She brought them to Rea, took hold of her hand and laid them in her palm, closing her fingers over them. She was smiling in her old complacent way. “Take a tip from me, honey, have your bit of fun, but don’t cry when the morning comes—and it always comes.”

  Rea stared at the money in her hand. “What you’re thinking is—is quite wrong,” she muttered.

  “Is it?” Laura laughed again. “Look, sweetie, you can’t fool me! I’m Laura Damien, remember! I’ve been around! I know you’re mixed up with a man, you’ve got all the symptoms. So what? I’m broadminded enough to think it about time, to tell you the truth, even though you’re leaving me in a bit of a hole.” Abruptly she reached out a large hand; took hold of Rea’s chin and jerked her head up. She searched Rea’s confused and guilty eyes. “You’ve worked damn quick, haven’t you, honey? I shouldn’t have thought there were many Romeos for you to get involved with in this one-horse town.” A malicious grin split open her large, painted mouth. “You little sly boots, you! With all that big-eyed syrup about not being interested in men!” She gave Rea’s chin a mocking brush with her fist. “Well, have fun, honey; eat your cake, but as I’ve already advised, don’t cry when you wake up one morning and find that all you’ve got left is the cake-stand. Cake, my little innocent, has a way of packing its bag and vanishing

  with the dawn. All the same,” her mouth held a sudden lush curve, “I say that cake is nice while it lasts. I hope he’s nice and plain— plain cake can go stale. Is he plummy?”

  Rea wouldn’t answer, but somewhere below the guilt and the resentful embarrassment she couldn’t help feeling, a small flare of amusement shot up. Burke Ryeland, she thought, could certainly be called plum cake—with icing!

  CHAPTER FOUR

  BURKE’S grey car swung in between tall, elegant iron gates and he called out a greeting to the little man in breeches and gaiters who had come out from a stone house by the gates to unlock them.

  “’Tis a grand evenin’, maister,” the man replied, wiping grubby hands up and down the sides of his breeches, his eyes upon Rea as he spoke.

  “Fine evening, Simon,” Burke called back, laughing as the car turned a bend in the drive and they lost the little man and his staring, wondering eyes. “Our first encounter with curiosity, Rea,” Burke murmured.

  Rea’s heart was thumping wildly, and when little Peter stirred in her arms, wriggling in his shawl, she drew him closer to her, finding a small measure of reassurance and comfort in the plump, warm weight of him. He was exceedingly lovable; a laughing, contented baby, who already seemed to sense that though new arms held him, they were arms that welcomed him.

  The thought moved warm in her and some of the nervous tension she had been feeling all day began to steal out of her. Now, after all, there was no going back.

  Now she was Burke’s wife and well and truly joined with him in his game of deception—yet it wasn’t a deception to despise, she kept on telling herself that! He only wanted to give love and security to little Peter and he wasn’t cheating his grandfather in any way. Peter was entirely the Ryeland the old man so longed for; the key of the future; the small vessel who would ensure the continuation of the Ryeland line. . . .

  Then Burke murmured beside her: “We’re home, Rea.”

  She glanced up—and gave a breathless gasp of pure delight. King’s Beeches lay before her, its Tudor beauty

  serenely dreaming in an orange glow of fading sunset.

  The house had a grace that took Rea’s breath; a beauty of line and structure that was like the fine, indestructible bones under a truly beautiful face. It rose naturally out of the smooth, velvety turf of its lawns, stood warm and ancient and tawny against a perfect framework of autumn evening sky and rolling Mendip hills.

  The car drew in against wide stone steps to the front door and Burke turned to smile at Rea. “Well,” he asked, “all prepared to be possessed by this ancient mass of mere bricks and mortar?”

  “Oh, don’t! Don’t speak like that! King’s Beeches is superb!” Her eyes came rather dazedly to his face. “Surely you must love it? How can you not love it?” “I see a beautiful, indestructible building, Rea, but I refuse to let it possess me—in the way it has always possessed my grandfather. In the way it possessed my brother.” Then his smile softened as he studied the way Rea had little Peter cuddled against her, the very picture of young, serious motherhood. “I must say,” he said, leaning forward to peer down at the cooing and completely contented baby, “that you and young Peter have lost very little time falling deeply in love.”

  “Well, we’ve so much in common,” she smiled. “We’re both grateful orphans, sheltering under your wing.” And as she spoke the wide stretch of Burke’s shoulders above her and Peter seemed to lend a veritable truth to her wo
rds. Though this strange marriage she had made was one of mere convenience, still it was a marriage, and she bore Burke’s name, held the right to stand at his side, and call him husband. She felt her heart jump in her side like a startled bird at the thought. This distinguished and accomplished stranger was her husband—her husband!

  Then the great iron-bound door of the house came open and Burke called out to the stout, immaculately clad figure who stood in the arched aperture: “I’ve some surprising news, Tolliver; I’ve brought home a wife.”

  “Indeed, sir?” The butler came down the wide stone steps to the car and politely accepted the suitcases Burke handed out to him, murmuring a deferential welcome to

  Rea, no hint of surprise denting his suave impassivity.

  “How’s my grandfather?” Burke enquired, climbing from the car and taking the baby from Rea, who nervously swung her slim legs to the ground and followed him up the steps to the house.

  “Your grandfather is quite well, sir. His rheumatism has hardly troubled him these past two weeks. Possibly owing to the fine spell of weather we’ve been having.” The butler stood to one side to allow Rea to precede him into the hall, and as she did so, she met the fleeting glance he cast at her and then at the baby in Burke’s arms. An hysterical desire to laugh suddenly spiralled through her. Poor man, having to look polite and unsurprised when he was very likely wanting to drop his lip and say, “Oh!”

  The hall was immense, with big bronze wall-sconces throwing golden light along the oak-panelled walls, and a pyramid of sweet-smelling pear logs glowing and leaping in the wide mouth of a big stone fireplace. Light was lost overhead, however, in a vaulted mass of heavy black beams, but right at the end of the hall Rea could see the carved balusters of a handsome double staircase.

  Rea knew a sense of stepping back into time. A door seemed to close on all she had known of the busy, hurrying modern world and another seemed to open, showing her how a house belonging to a past era, and a way of life belonging to that same era, could continue quietly down the years like an unbroken, powerful thread, never snapped through the long, long years.

  Then she jumped, hearing the butler say: “Mr. Philip is in the library, Mr. Burke.”

  “Come along, Rea,” Burke said, and she crossed the hall with him. She was quite cold, though the hall was warm, and her legs felt strange and rubbery, moving automaton-like beside the long legs of Burke. She childishly, nervously brushed at the fringe as Burke paused before a door, rapped a tattoo upon it with his knuckles and then swung it open in a lordly fashion, holding Peter in one arm and propelling Rea into the room with the other.

  The only light in the room shone from a reading-lamp, for the fire had burned down to a steady red glow. Pipe smoke lay thick over the room, dancing blue round the bowl of the reading-lamp, round the white head of the man who sat reading before the fire.

  He glanced up slowly, taking his pipe from his mouth. His eyes, Rea thought, must once have been as blue as Burke’s, but now their blue was dimmed by great age, The fine bones, of his face stood out sharply, the hawk nose giving him an arrogant, unfriendly look. He stared hard at Rea, and she gulped under that stare, pressing back for reassurance against the solid warmth of Burke’s arm.

  “So you’ve come home!” the old man grunted at last, his glance moving with abrupt sharpness to the shawl-enveloped bundle in Burke’s arm. The sounds issuing from that bundle were unmistakably the cooings and chuckles of a baby talking to itself, and the pale, hard eyes watched, startled, the small gloved fist waving about in the air above the shawl.

  “I’ve brought you home a great-grandson,” Burke said quietly. “Is it—all right?”

  A strange quality of stillness lay over that silver haired, proud and upright figure then. His stillness, in fact, spread right round the room, gripped both Rea and Burke, and all that was left was the faint splutter of the low-burning fire and the chirrupings of little Peter.

  Then the old man stirred, drew a deep breath. “You have your nerve, my boy, marching in here and proudly displaying your brat. And who’s this?” He threw out a hand towards Rea.

  “My wife, sir.” Burke smiled as he spoke—a curious smile, Rea noted, as she glanced up at him. It held an imperious quality, making his decisive nostrils flare slightly, as though he verged upon a display of anger.

  “Your wife, eh?” The pale blue eyes raked the slender figure so tense beside Burke, hazel eyes enormous in a pale, triangular face, straight child’ s hair cut to small ears with a pixie slant to them. She looked startlingly young and frail against the dark bulk of Burke. Barely a wife! Barely a mother!

  “Ye gods, Burke,” the old man exploded, “what have you been up to?”

  “Obeying your instructions, my dear grandsire— getting myself married—getting myself a son.” Now he carried the baby across the room and without further ado lowered him into the old man’s arms. “Say you’re pleased,” Burke murmured, a slightly rakish grin coming to his face. “I’ve done my duty by you now, sir.”

  The thick white eyebrows of old Philip Ryeland shot rapidly up and down. He sat stiffly, half scared, it seemed, of the wriggling bundle so suddenly in his arms. “A boy, is it, eh?” He carefully prodded Peter’s cheek, as though to assure himself that the baby was real. Then he shot a disgruntled glare at Burke. “Dash it all, Burke, why can’t you do things in a regular manner? You’re too dashed cosmopolitan, that’s your trouble. Too much like that flighty little French fool your father saw fit to marry!”

  “What if I am, sir?” Burke’s eyes met and held the old man’s. “I’ve not done a bad job with this laddie, have I?” His tone was half jocular, half proud, and Rea was full of wonder at the ease with which he had convinced his grandfather that the child was his. She watched the tableau before her with large eyes, the collected group that represented three generations of the Ryeland line. She felt very much an intruder in that moment. The old man had looked at her with such scornful eyes; no wife for a Ryeland, those eyes had said. No fit mate for the big, dark Burke Ryeland, who could have had any woman he cast those flame-blue eyes over. She shivered and drew back into the shadows by the door, wanting to run from those faded blue eyes that scorned her, that looked for the maturity of a real wife and mother in her—and found it not.

  The arrival of a child in the house created quite a stir. Two of the maids were hurriedly despatched upstairs to prepare a room for Rea and Peter, while out in the kitchen the elderly cook, under Burke’s authoritative direction, sterilized the baby’s bottle and carefully tested the temperature of the milk. Then Burke carried the bottle to the library, where Rea was installed upon a big couch in front of the fire, soothing the baby, who was now demanding his supper, Burke handed the bottle to Rea. “You know how, I suppose?” he murmured, leaning over the back of the couch and watching the tentative way she approached the bottle to the baby’s mouth. “Let him gobble a little of it, then let take a breather. Do it in stages.”

  Rea nodded, and he straightened up as his grandfather came into the room, announcing that dinner was being held back until the baby had been fed. Then Moira, one of the maids—a sensible young thing— would put him to bed for Rea.

  “You’re being awfully decent about all this, sir,” Burke said, watching his grandfather approach the fireplace and stand before it, his eyes upon Rea and the child.

  “Did you I wouldn’t be?” the old man shot a sharp glance at Burke, his white brows merging in a quick frown. “Got yourself involved with a chit and thought I’d be annoyed, eh?”

  Burke was looking quizzical as he played his game of repentant rake, one eye, at the same time, marking the flush that lit Rea’s cheek. “I’d be grateful if you’d extend your kindness to Rea, sir.” He smiled slightly. “After all, she isn’t only my wife, she’s Peter’s mother.” The old man’s glance went again to Rea. His frown was very heavy. Without her coat she was thinner than ever. She looked as though she’d blow away in the first strong wind that came down from the Mendips! No
, he couldn’t pretend he was pleased with this pale chit, but the boy was fine, a real Ryeland—and devilishly like young Philip. He drew a harsh sigh.

  Philip Ryeland stared hard at Rea—and Rea shivered under that stare. She knew what he was thinking; it was almost as though his mind had opened in that moment to let her read what was written there. He was plainly rejecting her appeal to Burke in any physical sense, but that rejection, she saw, was brought up sharp against the indisputable evidence of Peter in her arms. Beautiful, plump, very real Peter, his blue eyes fixed upon her face as he sucked himself drowsy with milk, his dark, warm

  head cradled against the slight curve of her breast.

  Then she stiffened, a curious little tremor wending its way through her, for Burke had leant over the back of the couch and lightly tweaked her hair. She glanced up at him and tentatively reaturned his smile. “You look tired, my dear,” he murmured.

  “Oh, I’m all right.” She was confused by his concern for her.

  “I think you’d better get to bed as soon as you’ve had your dinner,” he said.

  Rea’s bedroom was huge. The light of two oil-lamps didn’t penetrate the whole of it and the flare of the log fire threw long, goblin shadows up the walls, whose paper bore great bunches of cabbage-roses, looking more like lopped heads in the dancing light.

  Peter’s cradle, which Burke had brought down with them in the car, stood beside Rea’s bed, a big four-poster, complete with a draped tester. The posts of the bed were ornately carved, the dark wood matching the beams of the ceiling. Also heavily carved were the chairs, the chest of drawers and the enormous, cavernous wardrobe with its heavy double doors and silver handles.

  Rea sat on the edge of her big bed and peered into Peter’s cradle. He was soundly sleeping. This strange house didn’t trouble him. He wasn’t aware of the weird country noises beyond the casements; he didn’t feel that at any moment the doors of that monster wardrobe would open and a mailed knight would step forth into this room—a ghostly descendant of this ancient house, who walked again its vast rooms and shadow-haunted galleries when night shut day from the sky and owls stared and hooted in the tall trees of the park. . . .