Harlequin Omnibus: Take Me with You, Choose What You Will, Meant for Each Other

by Mary Burchell

  Leaning back in her corner seat with her eyes almost closed, she surveyed Lin through her lashes. There was something reassuring about the strong, good-looking lines of his face, although something still was not completely comprehensible about that rather full-lipped mouth, which so often wore the characteristic faintly cynical smile.

  Well—there he was. Her husband. He represented security, luxury, kindly protection.

  Was there anything else one could ask? Was there anything else one should ask, in view of the dilemma from which one had escaped?

  She opened her eyes then, and although he had been looking out of the window, he seemed immediately aware of the change. He turned his head and smiled at her.

  "Feeling better?"

  "Oh, yes.'* She smiled, too. "Tm all right, really. It was just-"

  "I know. Rather a lot to manage at one go."

  "Something like that."

  "Well, you don't need to bother about anything more now. You've made your public appearance, and made it beautifully."

  She laughed.

  "It was a success, was it?"

  "You looked simply lovely, my dear," he told her.

  "Oh, thank you. Tm glad you thought so. I'm sure you're a very experienced j udge.''

  He looked at her quizzically.

  "Of how a bride should look, do you mean?"

  "Oh, no! Of how a successful piece of theater should look."

  There was a slight silence. Then he said, "Was that how it struck you, Thea—a successful piece of theater?"

  She wondered for a moment if he had disliked her describing it that way. She had intended to sound rather casual and worldly—to remind him that she quite realized all this was a mere expedient, a temporary solution to an embarrassing problem, and in no way bindmg on him.

  "Well, in—in a sense, it was, wasn t it?"

  He looked at her thoughtfully, though certainly without any rancor, and said, "I suppose one might calf it that." Then, before she could explain herself further, he added, "Oh, would you like your letters now?" and produced them from his pocket.

  She was glad of the diversion and took them eagerly.

  A little clumsily, because of her disabled hand, she opened the envelope that bore Stephen's writing and drew out his letter. She found herself hoping that he had not had time to receive her own letter with the news of her marriage, because at this moment she wanted no comment—approving or otherwise—on a situation that she was only just managing to handle with calm and composure.

  But a glance at the date reassured her. Geraldine had certainly delayed an inexcusable length of time before she bothered to see that this letter reached its destination, and it must have been written some while before he could have received her own letter.

  Then it would simply be his first friendly and concerned letter since he had heard of the accident. A nice soothing letter, which was just what she wanted at the moment, Thea thought contentedly as she settled down to enjoy it.

  And then it seemed to her that the very first sentence almost hit her between the eyes.

  "Darling Thea," Stephen had written, in his sprawling but perfectly legible handwriting, "will you marry me?"

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It was several minutes before Thea recovered sufficiently to go on with the letter.

  If, while she sat there with the sheet of paper half crumpled in her hand, Lin thought she looked strange, she could do nothing about it. At the back of her mind something urged her not to give way entirely—not to show the astonishment and dismay and joy that that one sentence had created in her thoughts. But more than that she could not manage.

  It was fortunate that at the moment, he seemed interested in something that he could see out of the window, and if he was aware that she had stopped reading her letter almost as soon as she had begun it, he probably put that down to the fact that she was tired, and even a little overwrought, and that it was difficult for her to concentrate entirely on anything just now.

  Minutes passed—Thea was not sure whether it was many or very few—and then she slowly smoothed out the letter and continued to read it. With unconscious understatement, Stephen had written:

  I expect this will be a bit of a shock for you, and it seems queer to put this first before I say how sorry and worried we are about your accident. But in point of fact, Thea darling, the proposal does come first—even if only because of chronological order— for I knew I wanted to marry you long before the news of your accident came.

  I wanted to tell you that evening we said goodbye—oh, and several evenings before that! Now I think I was rather a fool not to. But you were always so anxious—

  pathetically anxious, darling—to stand on your own feet and to demonstrate that you were perfectly capable of looking after yourself I thought that if I asked you to marry me right away, you might have some idea that it was partly because I was sorry for you and worried about your position. Once you'd shown yourself and other people that you could make your own way independently, I reckoned you 'd be more likely to listen to me. In any case, I thought it would be giving you a fairer chance if I waited until there were no practical considerations pushing you one way or another.

  But now I wish I'd spoken. It drives me crazy to think of you alone and ill. I tried to get a transfer back home as soon as I heard (and I didn't hear until two weeks later than I should, because mother and I had been up-country and our mail had had to wait for us), but there wasn't a hope. The firm wouldn't send out another man, after having made all the arrangements for me. I suppose that's reasonable—from their point of view. But it makes it darned difficult for me, having to do all this by letter.

  Will you try to imagine that I'm saying this, Thea? And not saying it as badly as I have to when it comes to putting things down on paper. I want you to marry me, darling—and I have almost ever since I met you. Now that you're ill, I want to have the right to look after you, so there's no point in my waiting before I speak my mind. I hope what I've written before will convince you that I was willing to wait, and to respect all your desire for independence. But now someone has got to look after you, and it's got to be me.

  Mother is writing to you, too, explaining how we want you to go home to Emma when you leave the hospital, and to regard us as your family and responsible for you, financially or in any other way. I guess she can put that part of things more tactfully than I can. All I want you to feel about me is that I love you and I want to marry you.

  Write me, darling, as soon as you can—or cable me if it can be managed from hospital. But Don't Say No because I don't know what it means.

  My love to you—but no kind wishes for Lin (blast him!) until I know whether he was responsible for the accident cy not. Yours—and I mean it—Stephen.

  Very carefully Thea folded up the letter again, creasing the paper as though it were a matter of great moment that it shoula be restored to its original folds. Then she put it back in its envelope, glanced at Lin to see that he was still not bothering to observe her with any special attention, and extracted Mrs. Dorley's letter from its envelope.

  This letter was much shorter but, like Stephen's, entirely to the point.

  My dear child, I am terribly distressed to hear from Lin about your accident, and I do hope that by the time you receive this, you will have reached a comfortable convalescence. You would have heard from us sooner if we had not been away, but never mind about that now.

  Stephen has told me something of what he is writing to you, and I want you to know that nothing would please me better than to have you as a daughter. I don't intend to urge my views on you one way or another, because this is a matter entirely between you and Stephen. Only, if you do agree to marry him, I shall be very happy about it.

  What I want to make perfectly clear is that we regard you very much as "ours, and if there is any unpleasantness wifh Geraldine—or even it there is not—I hope you will regard our home as yours and go straight there from hospital. I am writing to Emma, telling her t
o expect you. Also, I am making it clear to her that you will draw on the sum of money I left with her for the general running of the place, if you need anything.

  You must not mind my being quite frank about the money situation. I would be very sorry to think you were put to any inconvenience or distress for lack of a little plain speaking.

  Now, my dear, whether you accept Stephen's proposal or not, please make yourself at home in our house, and I hope we shall be back sooner than we expected, to help you through your convalescence. Look after yourself and give my love to Lin. I will write to him later. Yours most affectionately, Jeannette Dorley.

  Long after Thea had finished reading the letter, she continued to look at it as though there were much more to absorb her attention. From minute to minute she put off the

  inevitable inquiry that Lin was bound to make—however casually—as soon as she had obviously finished both her letters.

  What was she to say? How much was she to conceal from him? If Mrs. Dorley wrote to him before hearing that he and Thea were married, might she not mention Stephen *s hopes and intentions? In the ordinary way, she would no doubt keep those to herself, but she might well explain in some detail why they were expecting Thea to live in their house.

  On the other hand, if she said nothing, how much better that he should never know of this tragic complication.

  For tragic it was. Thea saw that now, with a clarity that frightened her.

  If Geraldine had been a little less casual or a little less spiteful, and if that letter had been delivered when it should have been, there was not, she knew, the slightest doubt that she would have accepted Stephen's offer rather than Lin*s.

  Stephen was her own kind. He talked her own language, saw things as she did, neither puzzled her nor caused her vague misgivings. He wanted to marry her—not just as a whimsical (albeit kindly) solution to an otherwise insoluble problem, but because he loved her and knew her for the girl with whom he wanted to spend his life. There was something right and normal about it all, as Stephen explained it.

  Thea felt as though she inhabited a world of rather rich make-believe at the moment, and was now being permitted to catch glimpses of the world of reality, which she recognized with nostalgic and frightened longing.

  To have married Stephen would have been to follow a wide, clear, straight path, knowing that sunshine and shadow would alternate in the reasonable proportion that all happily married couples might expect. To be married to Lin was like wandering in a maze, never quite sure what one might find around the next bend in the path.

  But it was done. The decision had been made. There was no going back on the words that had been said in church that morning. She was, as Geraldine so sptefully emphasized, Mrs. Lindsay Varlon. It was not for her to consider the proposal of one man while she was on her honeymoon with another. And even if, in the future—

  "Have Jeannette or Stephen any news?"

  It had come. The question she had been expecting and for which, after all, she had prepared no answer. Entirely on the spur of the moment she said,

  "They don't say very much about themselves. These are really their first letters since they heard about the accident Geraldine ought to have let me have them long ago. They— they don't really say much more than how sorry they are."

  "I see. They hadn't yet had my letter telling them about our marriage?"

  "No."

  She wondered if the little silence meant he Was surprised that she said no more, or whether she was just imagining that. Rather hastily she rushed into further explanations.

  "They are mostly concerned about what was to happen to me when I left the hospital, and very kindly made me free of their house. They—they didn't know yet, of course, about Emma having to close the place."

  Watching him, she thought he very slightly narrowed his eyes, but because she could see no reason for his doing so, she dismissed that, too, as nervous fancy.

  "No, of course they wouldn't know about that yet," he agreed. And then, to her inexpressible relief, he changed the subject and, leaning forward, indicated various points of interest in the country through which they were passing, and told her that they would not be very much longer on their journey.

  Their arrival at their destination and the short drive to the hotel saved her from any return to the subject she dreaded, and with relief, though hardly with surprise, she discovered that the arrangements at the hotel would secure her a good deal of privacy. Probably Lin was no more anxious to enjoy her exclusive companionship than she was to be under his constant supervision.

  They were to occupy, she found, the most beautiful suite in the hotel, where she had her own bedroom; and there was a private sitting room, also, if she preferred not to go downstairs too much to the public rooms.

  "We call this the honeymoon suite," the pretty chambermaid informed her, regarding her with thinly veiled interest.

  "It's a beautiful suite," Thea said gravely, and supposed

  that few brides could have inhabited it with stranger thoughts for company than she had.

  As she assured Lin that she was not tired, they dined downstairs on the glassed-in veranda of the great dining room overlooking the sea. She preferred that to a tete-a-tete, which might lead to the discussion of awkward subjects.

  "This is a little bit like the day we lunched together and went on the river, isn't it?" She smiled at him. "We were out on a balcony then, only of course it was open. '*

  "It's a little reminiscent of that time," ne agreed, and studied her thoughtfully. "You were very carefree and young that day," he said suddenly, as though the thought had struck him so forcibly that he had to remark on it.

  "Was I?" She laughed. "Well, I'm carefree and young this evening, too," she asserted, trying to make that sound gay and convincing.

  But he shook his head slightly, though he smiled.

  "No. I'm trying to decide whether you've grown up, or whether the accident—or marriage—has made the change in you."

  "But—is there a change, Lin? Such a change, I mean."

  "A subtle one, but a real one," he told her. And then, quite abruptly: "Are you happy, child?"

  She was a long time answering that. Longer than she wanted to be. And when she finally spoke, it was not in direct reply to his Question.

  "Happy?" She looked thoughtful and hoped she looked sophisticated and experienced. "Why shouldn't I be? I have a good deal to make me happy. A kind husband, a return to health, the knowledge that—

  "I didn't ask you to enumerate the reasons, darling. I simply asked you if you were happy," he interrupted, with a slight smile.

  "Well, then-yes."

  "But not entirely carefree?"

  "That's rather a lot to be able to say of oneself, isn 't it?"

  "There was a time when you wouldn't have made that reply," he said thoughtfully. "Although, on the face of it, you would have had much more reason to make it. That's what I meant by saying there was a subtle change."

  She looked at him a little helplessly and said, "I'm sorry, Lin."

  But he Quickly covered her hand with his.

  *'There s no reason to apologize, child. I only hope that, in thinking I was solving your problems, I haven't presented you with a fresh crop."

  "No, Lin.*' But she bit her lip quickly because, unaccountably, it had begun to tremble.

  The pressure on her hand tightened.

  "Listen, my dear. I'm going to do the talking for a few minutes. You don't need to answer. You don't even need to look at me, if it makes ^ou feel less like crying to keep your lashes down." He received a swift, rather steadier smile for that. "I want you to know that nothing that was said or done today—nothing—binds you or commits you in any way. Get rid of the feeling that you 've been trapped into something strange and unmanageable—"

  He stopped for a moment, because she had turned her hand and clasped his with nervous fervor.

  "So there was that feeling, was there?" It was almost more statement than a question, an
d required no specific reply. "Well, you don't need to feel that way. It's true that, to all outwardf seeming, you are Mrs. Lindsay Varlon, and that a certain number of people will make much of the fact and be troublesome. But don't let that underline the situation for you. You are your own mistress, just as you were when you were in Geraldine's apartment—more so, I sup-

  f>ose. You have not got a tiresome husband on your hands, f you wish to look at it that way—you haven't got a husband on your hands at all. Does that makes things better?"

  She nodded. But almost immediately she saw that a wrong interpretation might be put on that.

  "I didn't imagine you were going to—going to take advantage of the situation in any way. Please don't think that.

  "Didn'tyou?"

  "No, of course not, Lin. I have enough confidence in your sense of decency, your—your chivalry, I suppose is what I mean."

  He made an odd little grimace.

  "I wouldn't count on an exaggerated sense of chivalry, darling," he said. "There's nothmg of the Galahad about me."

  She laughed.

  "Well, perhaps not that. I've always thought Galahad an overrated Dore, in any case. But—oh, well, put it at its lowest, if you like. I know you don *t regard me in that light. **

  "What light?"

  She hesitated a moment, and then said with one of her devastating flashes of candor, "Well, I know you regard me more as a schoolgirl in distress than a desirable female."

  He laughed a good deal at that, which somehow reassured her quite astonishingly.

  "Having excellent eyesight and, I venture to think, pretty good judgment, I consider you an extremely desirable female, Thea. But that doesn't mean I shall make unwanted passes at you, simply because I happen to have you at a disadvantage. I hope this display of candor does something to clear the air, because I can't see any other useful purpose it has served."

  "It has cleared the air." She smiled at him. "And it also, as you intended, served the very useful purpose of getting me over a silly minute or two when I felt like crying—why, I'm not quite sure."

  "And now the impulse is gone?"