"Yes, Miss Thea. And many's the time I wondered when you'd come. If I'd known which hospital you were at, I'd have come to see you, if it wasn 't too far. But I thought— anyway she'll turn up when she's ready, poor child. Because Mrs. Dorley wrote that she'd sent a letter to you, too, telling you to come."
"Yes," Thea said. "Yes, she did. And I-I'd have loved to come. But there was some misunderstanding. Mr. Varlon thought ...." She hesitated.,"Mr. Varlon had some idea
that you were not here any longer and that the house was shut up."
"There's men for you!" Emma remarked with good-natured contempt. "Can't get the simplest thing right, but always making muddles. Well, I don't know where he got that idea, Miss Thea, because no word have I had with him since you said good night to me and went off with him that evening—nearly to your death," she added severely.
Thea joined Emma at the kitchen table.
"It's more companionable for you this way than having it by yourself in the dining room," Emma explained.
"Why, of course! Oh, Emma, how lovely it is to be back," Thea said with a sigh.
"And when are you coming here to stay?" Emma wanted to know. "Now you've cleared up the misunderstanding, you'd better come down here as Mrs. Dorley said. She generally knows best."
" Oh, but— " Thea put down her knife and fork and stared at Emma with something hke dismay "—I can't, you know. I'm married."
"Married, Miss Thea!" Emma was thunderstruck but congratulatory. "A little bit of a thing like you married! And you've been half an hour in this house and not seen fit to mention it. Why, where are my own eyes, though? I see now you've got a ring—two rings—on the right finger. Well, this is news. Is he a nice boy? But of course you '11 say he is. Married now? Who'd have thought it? And what's his name. Miss Thea, dear?"
Thea cleared her throat slightly and said, "It's Mr. Varlon, Emma."
It was Emma's turn to put down her knife and fork. But she just dropped hers with a clatter.
"Do you mean—Mr. Lindsay Varlon, Miss Thea?"
"Yes, of course."
"Well, I never," Emma said, but with a wealth of expression that said volumes more than her three words.
Slowly and rather embarrassedly Thea went on with her meal.
"You don't sound exactly as though you approve, Emma."
"I wouldn't say that," Emma returned hastily. "I'm sure you know your own business best." But her tone indicated
that she thought Thea could hardly have managed her own business more disastrously.
*'He*s been wonderfully kind to me," Thea said carefully. And thought of the lie he had told her about Emma. The lie that had finally forced her to see that there was no alternative but to marry him.
Why had he told that lie? But she would have to think of that afterward, because now Emma had recovered her full powers of speech and was asking all sorts of questions.
So with as natural and carefree a manner as she could achieve, Thea explained about the wedding from the hospital. This met with Emma's romantic approval, and she said that *'seemingly Mr. Varlon knew how to do things the right way.'*
Thea agreed that Mr. Varlon did.
"What will Mrs. Dorley say? And Mr. Stephen, too. He won't be too pleased. Miss Thea. Not if I know the signs," Emma said delicately.
"I've—written to them, of course, and explained."
"And what did they say?" Emma wanted to know.
"I haven't heard from them yet. But I'm expecting to hear any day."
"Well, there's no question of your coming here now to live," Emma said regretfully. "You've got your own place, I suppose. Miss Thea?"
"Yes. At least, Mr. Varlon already had a lovely big flat in Westminster, and we live there, of course."
Emmapressed her to stay all the afternoon. But, suddenly restless, Tnea found herself declaring that she would have to go back. After all, Lin might come home early that afternoon, and the sooner they had all the cards on the table between them, the better. If she thought too long about things, she might be nervous—indeed, already disagreeable little tremors shook her when she tried to visualize herself accusing Lin of lying.
So, though she stayed to help Emma wash up, and then a little longer to nurse Darry and hear what news there was of Stephen and Mrs. Dorley, by three o'clock she was bidding Emma goodbye once more.
Then Thea started off back across the fields, and at last she was alone, free from the demands of natural-sounding conversation, so that she could examine the extraordinary
thing which Emma had told her, and try to decide what it impfied.
Very carefully, she reconstructed to herself the scene when Lin had so coolly informed her that the Dorleys' home was no longer open to her.
He had already asked her to marry him, and she had accepted—she remembered that. In fact, she had thrown her arm around his neck and kissed him.
And then, suddenly, she had remembered the possibility of going to Emma—remembered that it offered an alternative to marrying Lin. And she had spoken about it at once, more because she was sorry for him, in his position of feeling he almost had to marry her, than because she saw in it a blessed escape.
But she had made it perfectly clear—she was sure she remembered this—she had made it perfectly clear that she would be quite happy to go to Emma.
And then he haa stated quite coolly and circumstantially that this was impossible, and even added an entirely fictitious conversation that he was supposed to have had with Emma.
All the way through the fields, and as she walked up and down the deserted little country platform, waiting for her train to come, she tried to make sense of it.
Apparently he wanted to force her into marrying him.
But he had never displayed any signs of an undying passion for her. In fact, nowadays he hardly ever kissed her and seemed amiably remote from her.
Then why want to marry m^.^Thea asked herself
At Waterloo she discovered that she had a great disinclination to go home, after all.
Probably Lin would not come back until the early evening, and there she would be, waiting and waiting in the flat, growing more and more nervous. Much better to go and have tea out somewhere, and try to take her mind off what was worrying her.
As a rather weak compromise, she telephoned from a public call box, and ascertained from Donkins that Lin was not yet home. Then she took a taxi to Park Lane and went intoGunter's.
The ground floor was nearly full, but she found a table, and for a while she even persuaded herself that her atten-
tion was distracted by several parties of schoolchildren, evidently on holiday and making the most of unlimited cakes and ice cream.
But her interest began to flag. And then, just as the familiar problem was beginning to creep back into her mind, a well-known voice exclaimed:
"Why, hello, Thea! Have you been lucky enough to get a table? And may I join you?"
And the next moment she found Geraldine, in a deceptively simple but perfectly cut navy and white dress, sitting down opposite her.
Thea made a heroic effort to rise to the occasion. She recollected the last time they had met—at her wedding—and the rather gauche way she had snubbed her famous cousin. This time she would be very good-natured and unruffled and casual.
So she smiled at Geraldine, somewhat fortified by the knowledge that she was almost as well dressed as her cousin these days, and said, '* Why, how nice to see you, Geraldine. I've been meaning to ring up and ask if it would be convenient for me to call in and collect my luggage one day.*'
"Any afternoon you like," Geraldine said affably. "How is married life?"
"Well, don't you think I look a good advertisement for it?" Thea smiled back just as affably.
"Ye-es." Geraldine studied her with a critical air that Thea found difficult to sustain.
"How is the new production going?" Thea rushed rather hastily into another subject. "Your first night is next week, isn't it?"
"Um-hm. It's going to be
all right, I think. But this stage is always hell. It will be, now, until the dress rehearsal is over."
"I think Lin got seats for the first night."
"He's not producing it, you know," Geraldine said carelessly.
"No. I know that—of course." Thea found she greatly resented the implication that Geraldine might know more about her husband's activities than she herself did..
She had never thought of Lin just as "her husband" until
that moment, and was surprised that the phrase sprang to mind on this day, of all days.
"How is Lin?"
Geraldine *s question caught her curiously off her guard.
"Oh, he-he's all right."
"Also enjoying married life?" Geraldine smiled maliciously, while she studied her face in the mirror of her gold compact.
"He seems to."
There was a slight pause, which made Thea uncomfortable though she was not quite sure why. Then Geraldine snapped her compact shut and said conversationally, "You know, none of us can understand how you did it."
"How I did what?" Thea asked coldly. "And who, incidentally are'us?* "
"Why, all the theater crowd who thought they knew Lin as well as they knew themselves. Not one of us ever imagined him marrying. *'
"No?" Thea said politely, and longed to add that he had apparently gone to quite extraordinary lengths to ensure that he married her.
"What was it, Thea? Glamor?" Geraldine's pretty mouth twisted with contemptuous unbelief "Pathos? brains? Or just plain good luck?"
"Tm afraid you'll have to allow me the pleasure of leaving you guessing," Thea retorted, and was pleased to find that the coolness of her smile could hardly have been improved upon by Geraldine herself.
Again there was a short silence, while Geraldine regarded her young cousin speculatively.
"My guess is that he found your ingenue type rather new and piquant," she said at last. "And since he knew you were not tne kind to fall for an affair, pure and simple (or should one say, impure and complicated?), he made it into a legalized affair and called it marriage."
"Oh, be quiet, Geraldine!" Thea had forgotten that she meant to be affable and suave. "What odious things you do say."
"Particularly as they have a ring of truth in them?" Geraldine suggested.
"I don't see why I should sit here and have you try to dissect my married life with dirty instruments," Thea said
sharply. "And since I believe you literally aren't capable of any other type of conversation, I 'm going."
And summoning her waitress, Thea paid her bill, aware all the time that Geraldine watched her amusedly, and even noted that her hands trembled a little as she fumbled for change.
*'Goodbye. Nice to have seen you," Geraldine said as Thea stood up to go.
**Goodbye, Geraldine. Fm sorry I can't return the compliment, but there's something refreshing about a little crude truth sometimes," Thea retorted.
But once she was outside, she told herself that she had not organized that retreat particularly well. It was one thing to be able to give back an answer that relieved one's feelings. It was another to be able to baffle anyone of Geraldme's malicious perspicacity. And in that she had failed.
Disconsolate and irritated with both herself and Geraldine, Thea decided to walk home, and perhaps walk off her ill feeling.
The grass in Green Park was already beginning to look a bit faded and scrubby from the summer heat, but the trees were friendly and shady, and by the time Thea reached the corner of the Mall, she felt better.
After all, the Geraldines of this world only mattered as much as one allowed them to. No more and no less. If Geraldine derived immoderate pleasure from being catty, let her go her own way. To pay too much attention to her was to give her an importance beyond her worth.
If only one didn't feel that she had known Lin so much longer—and presumably so much better—than oneself Did she really speak with authority and knowledge about him? Thea woulcl have given a great deal to know.
And suddenly she realized what it was that had shocked her so unspeakably in the first moment of revelation about his deceit, and depressed her so profoundly as the discreditable explanation dawned on her.
It was the discovery that Lin was so much less than she had thought him.
/ admired him—I was so fond of him, Thea thought. He was different from everyone else. How could he do this? It seems so—so out of character.
And as the force of that struck her, Thea almost stopped in her walk.
It was out of character.
Then in that case, it probably isn V the true explanation, Thea told herself It may be Geraldine's explanation, or the explanation of that horrid gossip at the hotel. But it isn *t the true explanation.
Her spirits bounded upward in a way she could not have believea possible. The idea that Lin might casually clear himself with some perfectly decent and credible explanation appeared to her the most desirable thing on earth.
Thea started to walk quickly. She wanted—as she had not wanted for weeks—to run to him and throw herself into his arms and kiss him.
If Lin really still was the dear, kindly, half-cynical but wholly charming person she had once thought him, then everything was all ri^ht—well, nearly all right. She had to concede the comparative degree of "all rightness" when she remembered Stephen and what she had lost there.
She was almost breathless by the time she reached home. And as she let herself in, she called out in her impatience, "Lin! Lin, are you home yet?"
He came to the door of his study, smihng a little and surprised at her eagerness.
'™io. What's happened?"
"Oh—oh, nothing, really." She laughed and colored, realizing suddenly that her eagerness had rather outrun her discretion, and that she had received no explanation yet. "I just—hoped you were in. I've been out all day and—and—oh, well, wait while I take off my hat. I want to come and have a talk with you."
"Do you?" His expression changed a little. "Well, as a matter of fact, I want to have a talk with you."
"Oh."
That gave her pause for a moment, but only for a moment, because she had to pass him on the way to her own room, and on a sudden impulse of trust and generosity—an impulse she could not have explained—she stoppea and heM up her face to be kissed.
"Why, darling-"
He didn't put his arms around her. He just took her face between his hands, as he had once done when she was in
hospital, but he kissed her on her mouth, and she thought, / suppose no one kisses quite as Lin does. Is it Just experience?
In her present mood of frankness, she very nearly asked him. But at that moment, he put her gently away from him and said, "Hurry up, then, rif be in here.'*
And he turned and went back into his study.
Thea went into her room, tossed off her hat and hastily smoothed her hair. Now that the scene for which she had been waiting all the afternoon was upon her, she felt quite cool and collected.
Illogical and unaccountable optimism told her that it was going to be all right—that in half an hour's time she would be laughing at her own fears and suspicions, in a new-found friendliness and companionship with Lin.
She would tell him right away that she had been down to see Emma—present him with the fact before there could be any leading up to it—and she would know at once if he had any real feeling of guilt about the position.
So preoccupied was she with her own plans for opening the conversation, that she forgot his casual remark about his wanting to talk to her. But as she came into the room, he took the wind out of her sails.
Turning from the window where he had been standing, he said pleasantly, "Come and sit down over here and tell me—was it really Stephen whom you wanted to marry?"
Thea came to an abrupt standstill halfway across the room. Then she came on more slowly and quietly took the seat by the window that Lin had mdicated. He himself remained standing, leaning back a little against the folded-back sh
utter and looking down at her.
She forgot what she had been going to say about finding Emma at home, and she forgot about the friendly but penetrating questions she had been going to put to him.
Instead, in a rather small and not very well controlled voice, she asked, *' Why do you ask me that, Lin?''
"From a very real desire to know the answer," he assured her. "It's something we've got to have clear between us, Thea. I ought to have asked yoii before, of course, but—well, I *m asking you now.''
"Very well then, Lin. When I agreed to marry you, the question of Stephen didn 't enter into it. I would have told you if it had. But he hadn't ever suggested our marrying,
though I know now that he had often thought of it and hoped for it. Well, there—there isn 't very much more to it, Lin. When Stephen heard about my accident, he wrote asking me to marry him, and explaining why he hadn't asked me before. Geraldine didn't bother to send on the letter. I didn 't get it until I was married to you. It was one of the letters she gave me at my—our wedding."
"So that was what was in the letter you read in the train?"
"Yes. The other one was from Mrs. Dorley, saying she-she would be very happy if I said yes."
There was silence. And then he said, as though to himself, "So that is what has been the matter."
"The matter?" Thea looked up quickly.
"Haven't you noticed that, in a dreadfully agreeable way, we have become strangers?"
"Oh!" She hadn't thought of his seeing it as clearly as she did. "Wasn't that-alm.ost inevitable?"
"No, Thea. That isn't how I intended it to be."
She remembered then all the questions she had wanted to ask him, and the admission of what he had''intended it to be" seemed to hold the answer to them all. But before she could say anything, he spoke again.
"You still haven't told me what your own feelings are about Stephen. Is he the man you want to marry, now that the opportunity is there?''
"If... if I had had his offer in time, I should have accepted it," Thea said steadily. "Now it—it's a bit too late.^'
"Why?" He spoke rather carefully. "Didn't we agree that this was a purely temporary affair between us?"
Harlequin Omnibus: Take Me with You, Choose What You Will, Meant for Each Other Page 56