by Sara Seale
“Matron always said I was given to thoughtless impulses, and I suppose she was right,” she finished apologetically.
“Matron? Are you a young probationer, then?”
“A probationer?”
“A student nurse—a trainee in a hospital.”
“Good gracious, no! I’m just an orphan.”
“I’m an orphan myself, but it hardly constitutes a profession,” he retorted mildly, and she eyed him with growing uneasiness.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “Ogilvy Manor is an orphanage, and I was one of the inmates.”
“Good grief!” he exclaimed, and most unexpectedly began to laugh.
Harriet moved uncomfortably in the bed.
“There is nothing very funny about being an orphan,” she said with reproof, and his laughter ceased abruptly.
“You must forgive my hilarity, Miss Jones,” he replied with due gravity. “It was the thought of my cousin’s discomfiture which made me laugh. Had you led him up the garden with delusions of grandeur and wealth to come?”
“I d-didn’t,” she answered with a valiant effort to be truthful and excused herself at the same time, “mislead him intentionally. We only met that once when I’d been sent on some errand to the shops—and he was kind and attentive in a way I’d never known and he said he would write and cheer me up when I told him I never got any letters ... I didn’t think he’d remember, but when he did, I—I answered, of course, and—and I didn’t want to spoil the fairy-tale by confessing that Ogilvy Manor, was really an orphanage ... I didn’t, you see, ever expect the letters to go on.”
“Ah, yes, those letters. Were they so compromising?”
“Of course not! Just kind of pen-friend letters, only—”
“Only, as you’ve just said, you didn’t want to spoil the fairy-tale. If, then, this correspondence was such an innocent game of make-believe between you, what gave you this extraordinary notion that an invitation to visit Clooney constituted an offer of marriage?”
“He said,” she replied doggedly, because here at least was some tangible support of her hasty actions, “we should get better acquainted; that it was time he was settling down, and that Clooney needed a mistress.”
“Did he, indeed? From that I gather that my cousin also was indulging in a little fantasy if he gave you to understand he owned the castle. And what should you suppose, my gullible young friend, precipitated such an ambiguous suggestion which, if true, could be misleading, I’ll admit.”
“I can show you the letter if you still don’t believe me,” she retorted defiantly, then the unpalatable truth hit her in one humiliating moment of clarity.
“Could it—could it have been the legacy?” she faltered, and thought his sceptical regard altered to one of amused, if no less chilling enlightenment.
“Oh, I begin to see. There was a legacy attached, was there, and you proffered it as bait? Perhaps you understood my cousin better than I had supposed. An English heiress, now, might have proved suddenly very attractive to Rory,” he observed, and it was the unkindest cut of all.
“It wasn’t bait ... it was only f-fifty pounds ... but it seemed like a fortune to me,” she said, weeping afresh, and, expecting a further sarcastic comment on her propensity for tears, she surprised a flash of grudging tenderness in his hard face.
“And you innocently described your legacy as a fortune, I suppose.”
“I expect I did. But I explained when I accepted the invitation. Would you suppose—would you suppose that was why he went away in such a hurry, Mr. Lonnegan?”
He got up from the bed and stood looking down at her. How like Rory, he reflected with impatient exasperation, to get mixed up with a penniless orphan by indulging in his own rather childish histrionics.
“I would suppose that very thing, Miss Jones, so the sooner you grow up, the better for your own comfort,” he replied, and spoke harshly because the straight fringe and long, unsophisticated bob which framed her anxious face gave her such an exaggerated air of the unwanted foundling of fiction that he began to feel uncomfortable.
“Yes,” she agreed with polite acceptance of the obvious, then added on a faint note of panic: “But what shall I do now? My legacy’s all gone, you see, and I—I haven’t even the fare back to England.”
“What you’ll do now is go back to sleep and try to get some sense into your unbelievably gullible head by morning. You had no good reason, let me tell you, to be so sure of your own attractions that you could gamble on a one-way ticket,” he said unkindly, and left the room.
She could not sleep, however, for the problems which chased each other round and around in her head with a depressing absence of solution, and the bed grew hot and her ankle throbbed, and she longed, with an ache she would not have deemed possible, for her hard little bed in the orphanage and the certainty of waking to the precisely organised routine of life in a community.
She got up presently, aware that it was no longer necessary to he swaddled in that hot, rather scratchy dressing-gown, and opened her suitcase to find more becoming attire. But the new clothes which she had bought so lovingly to do justice to the visit looked cheap and meagre when hung in the vast bogwood press which could have accommodated a hundred dresses, and she fell out of conceit with her unaccustomed finery, remembering how much it had cost and how reckless she had been to save on a single fare in order to buy that very expensive nightdress and bedjacket with which to impress the castle servants. Both helped to restore her confidence, however, when, having sponged her face and combed her hair and splashed herself extravagantly with cheap toilet water, she put them on and got back into bed. At least she would no longer look like a scrawny chicken trussed up in a blanket should her unwilling host return to take her temperature and rebandage her ankle.
Nobody came, however, and presently, tired of lying in the dark, she plucked up courage to investigate the mysteries of the oil-lamp by the bed, wondering whether it could burst or blow up in her face if she twisted the wrong knob. It did neither, fortunately, but being unused to such things, she turned the wick too high, and the lamp smitched, covering the new bedjacket with hundreds of fine black smuts, and Mr. Duff Lonnegan, surprisingly bearing a supper tray, would, she thought crossly, choose that moment to remedy his long absence.
“For the love of sanity, don’t you know better than that, girl!” he exclaimed, dumping the tray hastily on her knees and turning down the wick.
“It was new, and look at it now!” she wailed, trying to brush the smuts from her jacket and only succeeding in making smudges.
“Bought for the bridal visit, I take it,” he said rather tactlessly, she thought, and she replied, before she had time to think:
“To impress the servants, really.”
“Dear me, what an old-fashioned notion!” he remarked, and she was not sure whether scorn or amusement was uppermost in his voice. “You will have to revise your exalted ideas of Irish castles, I fear, Miss Jones. We have staff problems here no less than you in England, and no one entertains any longer, praise the pigs.”
“I’d thought,” she said, trying to explain and placate at the same time, “that a castle sounded terribly grand—flunkies and things, you know, like you read of in books.”
“Your orphanage brand of literature must have been a little dated, I fear,” he replied. “Cousin Rory should have warned you that castles abound in Ireland and have no more significance than your own manor house over there. Now eat your supper before it gets cold.”
He watched her eat in silence, and when she had finished, took the tray away and drew the curtains. Now, she thought, becoming oppressed by the continued silence, he surely must go, but he came and stood at the foot of the bed, looking down at her reflectively.
“Your change of attire has certainly made an improvement, smuts and all,” he observed. “Did they feed you properly at that place?”
“Of course—plenty of nourishing stews and suet puddings. Why?”
“You
seem very thin, but you’re probably just small-boned.”
“I’ve always been the skinny kind. Matron used to say I looked more like an orphan than the real thing. I think she took it as a personal affront.”
“H’m ... was she a decent sort?”
“Oh, very, and she had the highest reference for turning out well-educated and trustworthy girls. I was a disappointment to her, though.”
“Why? Weren’t you trustworthy?”
He asked the question with the first hint of indulgence she had remarked in him, and she smiled back at him shyly.
“Oh, I think so, but I was always wool-gathering,” she said, “and acting foolishly on impulse—and I read too many unsuitable novels.”
“And she wasn’t far wrong at that, judging by your latest escapade,” he retorted with a return to his old manner. “Incidentally, won’t they be expecting news of you, or did you run away?”
“Oh, no! No one’s ever ran away from Ogilvy’s,” she said, sounding quite shocked. “I was going to a new job, you see, so I let the people know I couldn’t come after all, and meant to write to Matron when I got here.”
“Acquainting, her, no doubt, with the glad tidings of your coming marriage, and scoring a bulls-eye for the least appreciated of the orphans. Really, Harriet, have you a most touching faith in miracles, or are you just plain stupid?”
“If you think I’m an adventuress and—and a b-black-mailer, I can’t be stupid as well,” she retorted, and his eyebrows lifted as they might at an impertinence.
“You could very well be both,” he countered coolly. “However, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, for you can’t be quite so stupid not to have realised that checking up with the orphanage is fairly simple. What will you write to this lady, now?”
She had no ready answer, for the problem had already begun to trouble her. This time there could be no question of turning up again like the bad penny of Matron’s little joke, for after such gross deception, Ogilvy’s would surely wash its hands of her.
“I can’t go back,” she said then. “It’s the third time.”
“The third time you’ve been led astray with a promise of marriage? How very unfortunate!”
“No, of course not. The third time I’ve been placed with a job and a home and not been satisfactory.”
“Oh ... and why weren’t you satisfactory? Do you drink?”
“It’s not a laughing matter for me, Mr. Lonnegan,” she said, near to tears again. “I wasn’t satisfactory because the work was beyond me, I suppose. I’m not clever, you see, not in the commercial field, and I’m no good at figures.”
“I see. And what had they picked for you this time?”
“A sort of home-help somewhere in Clapham.”
“Good God!”
“I’m good with children, you see. Matron says that’s all I really am good for, except for a misplaced appetite for reading, and that wouldn’t earn me a living.”
He stood jingling some loose coins in his pockets and frowned down at her discouragingly.
“So you like children?” he asked casually, and the solution to this unfortunate situation at once became plain to her.
“Yes, they understand me. Wool-gathering is only another name for day-dreaming which, of course, I can see isn’t practical, but children have a world of make-believe which they know is perfectly compatible with everyday life if you don’t confuse the two.”
“But it seems you do.”
“Not really—it’s a kind of defence, I expect. Mr. Lonnegan, couldn’t you—couldn’t you find me a job with children in the district? You say everyone’s understaffed, and there must be families who would be glad of help. It wouldn’t matter then that I haven’t got the fare back to England.”
The eager flush which had crept under her skin dispelled that regrettable look of a waif for a moment and with the lamplight turning her freshly brushed hair to an illusion of salver, gave her instead a look of rather charming delicacy. There was more than a hint of breeding there, he thought idly, whoever her parents might have been, and answered with a rather unnecessary touch of sharpness;
“Very ingenuous, thereby wholly avoiding the wrath to come. Do you imagine that an institution as jealous of its reputation as you make out would take no steps to satisfy themselves that you weren’t being exploited in an alien country? In their own interests they’d probably haul you back and find you another dreary but approved situation in Clapham.”
Her colour faded and the brief moment of charm with it.
“But if you wrote and satisfied them about respectability and all that, it would be enough, coming from the lord of a grand-sounding castle,” she said naively, and he gave a shrug of impatience.
“Why should I do your dirty work for you? How do you know I’m even respectable myself?” he asked, and of course she didn’t. Not if first impressions were anything to go by, she thought with belated caution, looking at this ugly, overbearing stranger.
“It isn’t very kind of you to make fun of my situation,” she said, a small quaver in her voice, and he retorted quickly: “Very likely not, but for heaven’s sake don’t start crying again. There’s a quite simple way to satisfy everyone and tie up all the loose ends, but as you’ll be chained to the house with that ankle for a few days yet, there’ll be ample time to consider these things.”
“I can’t,” she said with a rather forlorn attempt at relieving a total stranger of obligation, “impose on your hospitality indefinitely. I can hobble to the station, even if my ankle is sprained.”
“Seven miles by road, or five across the Plain?”
“Well, you’d hardly refuse to drive me as far as the station, would you?”
“And what would you do when you got there? Murphy wouldn’t let you on the train without a ticket.”
“All right, I give up,” she said, closing her eyes, “but if there’s a simple way out, wouldn’t it be kinder to tell me what to do instead of mocking me?”
“Very well, he said, and paused long enough for her to hear a fresh spatter of rain on the windows, “you came here hoping for the proverbial happy ending with wedding bells and orange blossom, so you’d better marry me.”
Her eyes flew open and she looked at him as if he had taken leave of his senses.
“What did you say?”
“You heard.”
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough fun at my expense?” she asked wearily. “I realise that to you my crazy impulse to jump on the next boat because I thought some young man meant to marry me is ridiculous—it even looks that way to me now—but where I’ve come from, lessons in sophisticated behaviour weren’t included.”
“We’re hardly sophisticated in that sense in the west of Ireland,” he replied rather dryly. “However, be that as it may, I was quite serious.”
“You were?”
“Why not? You have a problem and, possibly, I have one too.”
“How could marrying me solve a problem for you?” she asked, and there was a touch of surprise in his quick smile.
“Now you call my bluff by showing unexpected sense. No maidenly protestations or flutters of alarm—just a businesslike approach to a rather sudden proposition,” he said with humour, and she blinked back at him rather rapidly.
“You haven’t answered my question,” she temporised, suspecting that he was still mocking her, and he replied with that ironical little lift of the eyebrows:
“Neither I have. My reasons needn’t concern you for the moment, but if you must have one, then apply my ingenuous cousin’s suggestions where they really belong. Clooney indeed needs a mistress, but it’s I who needs to settle down.”
“But hardly with a complete stranger!”
“A complete stranger makes the whole thing possible. Now, Miss Harriet Jones, what other objections have you?”
“But the idea’s absurd—we don’t know each other!”
“An advantage on both sides; no romantic preconceptions to wither in di
sappointment, and for you, the assurance of a job from which you can’t be sacked. After all, my impetuous young friend, you came quite prepared to marry a young man you’d only met once—where’s the difference in exchanging one stranger for another, when it’s really the castle you fell in love with?”
She considered this aspect of the matter. It was only too likely that she had been prepared to fall in love with Prince Charming and his castle no matter what manner of man he should turn out to be.
Duff Lonnegan had been watching her young, undisciplined face betraying her thoughts to him so innocently and said with gentle irony:
“You see, I was right. Think it over, Miss Jones, you might do a lot worse. Now I’m going to see to that ankle, then leave you to the night’s reflections. Turn back the bedclothes, please.”
He made the ankle comfortable without further reference to his extraordinary proposition, then took her temperature, informed her briskly that it was normal and she could get up on the morrow, and left her with a brief goodnight.
She awoke the next morning to find the same young girl depositing a breakfast tray on the bed, which made her think for the second time that she must have imagined the events of the night before. But when the girl, who said her name was Molly, drew back the curtains, letting in a flood of morning sunshine, Harriet knew that yesterday’s lassitude had left her, that her host’s flight of fancy was no more sensible than her own, and her awkward situation must be dealt with practically and at once.
“Are there families round here needing home help with the children, Molly?” she asked, tackling her breakfast with the zest of a returned appetite.
“That’s a quare question, and you from the wather,” the girl replied with vague surprise. “Would you be wan of thim maiden ladies you hear tell about that sticks their long noses into other folks’ business—do-gooders, they call thim?”