Bargain Wife

by Mary Burchell

  ‘Have you seen anything of Charles lately?’ he asked her over coffee one day.

  ‘Not since just after the first week-end. He appeared at my hotel then, overcome with emotion and family responsibility, intent on bullying me or kissing me and ending by doing both.’

  ‘Charles did!’

  ‘Yes.’ She smiled mischievously. ‘Which bit surprises you more?’

  ‘We-ell, I must confess that the whole description is intriguingly out of character. Why did he want to kiss you?’

  ‘Oh, Earle! How ungallant!’

  ‘Well, I mean why, apart from the fact that any man would want to kiss anything as sweet and pretty as you?’

  ‘A noble if slightly overdone recovery,’ Tina told him. ‘As a matter of fact, there’s a distressingly prosaic explanation. He’d been phoning the hotel for news of me for two or three days, and the idiot of a phone girl went no further than to report that I’d gone out a few days before and not returned. I suppose he thought I was dead, and experienced a cousinly relief on finding me still alive.’

  Earle didn’t answer that, but stared at her so reflectively that after a moment she said:

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I was just thinking that isn’t sufficient in itself to explain Charles kissing you. I should have thought he would be much more likely to shake you.’

  ‘He did that first,’ Tina said. Whereat Earle laughed.

  ‘He must be a good deal attached to you, after all, my dear.’

  ‘On the strength of one shake and one kiss?’ said Tina, remembering then that it had been two kisses, but seeing no reason why she should give Earle that added information.

  ‘No. On the strength of so much apparently genuine anxiety for you.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t he be anxious about me?’ Tina smiled. ‘As he himself remarked, I am all the family he has.’

  ‘But a mere cousin whom he’s known for something less than a week.’

  ‘Earle, you aren’t in a very flattering mood today, are you? After all, it wasn’t like expressing anxiety over a cold or a headache. He thought I’d gone under a bus or something. I feel even the uncaring Charles may be allowed a few qualms.’

  ‘And suppose you had been dead purely for the sake of argument, of course.’

  ‘Oh, of course. Don’t mind my feelings.’

  Earle grinned.

  ‘I was going to say in that case I presume the famous “tidy fortune” would have come to friend Charles?’

  ‘Why, Earle!’ She looked astonished and impressed. ‘I suppose it would. Yes that was rather nice and disinterested of him to be so worried about me, in those circumstances. Though, as a matter of fact, I don’t expect he gave that aspect a thought.’

  ‘Think not?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘It seems a bit superhuman not to let the idea even cross one’s mind, however regretfully,’ Earle murmured reflectively. ‘Particularly if one needed money badly.’

  ‘But does Charles need money badly? What for? I had no idea!’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t mean that he’s in any financial embarrassment. Only that he’s full of some scheme that would take the deuce of a lot of money to carry out.’

  ‘Earle, do tell me! I didn’t know anything about this.’

  ‘No? Well, I don’t expect there’s any harm in my talking about it. I suppose he would have told you about it himself sooner or later.’

  Tina privately supposed not, remembering Charles’ amused but emphatic refusal to let her ‘come to an arrangement’ with him about her inheritance. He would hardly be likely to choose her as confidante for any plan which needed money.

  ‘Well, tell me,’ she urged.

  ‘It’s all connected with or rather, an extension of his work, of course,’ Earle explained, as he lit their cigarettes and, pushing aside the coffee-cups, leaned his arms on the table. ‘You’ll understand that in this business of well, practically re-making people who’ve been badly disfigured, there’s a psychological, as well as a physical, problem to consider.’

  Tina nodded, her interested gaze fixed on Earle.

  ‘Sometimes, even when a patient has been entirely restored, there’s a question of getting him or, even more often, her used to ordinary life again. There isn’t always this problem, of course. Some people are quite wonderful about it, and take the whole thing in their stride. But there are cases where the thing that’s most needed is a sort of transition stage between hospital life and their own everyday life again.’

  ‘Yes, I can understand that. I think I should need it,’ Tina said.

  Earle smiled and shrugged.

  ‘Maybe. It’s a question of temperament and also the kind of home to which the patient is returning. And another problem is that quite often this plastic work has to be done in several stages, and there isn’t any reason why, in between, the patient shouldn’t return home and have a normal, non-hospital existence. In fact, it’s far the best thing, if the home is a suitable what you might call a “sympathetic” home.’

  ‘But they aren’t all?’

  ‘No exactly. They aren’t all. Charles’ idea is that he wants to run his own place. Not exactly a convalescent, home and not exactly a rest home, but a place where any specially difficult case can, so to speak, learn to come back to normal life again.’

  ‘Oh, Earle! That’s rather a super idea! He’d be so good at it too. There’s something bracing as well as understanding about Charles.’ And then she stopped, a little surprised, because she had realised that she based this view of him on nothing more than his attitude to her when she had come in worn out and dispirited.

  However, Earle seemed to agree with her.

  ‘I think so too,’ he said. ‘Of course he wouldn’t have a great deal to do with the actual running of the place he’s too busy on operational work but I think he has quite a lot of the details settled in his own mind already. The kind of person he wants to run the place, and so on. The only snag is he has nothing like enough capital, poor old Charles!’

  ‘Oh, Earle!’

  ‘So that brings us right back to my previous shameful assertion that it would be somewhat superhuman not even to think what one would do if a charming, but not very well-known, cousin no longer stood in the way of a handsome inheritance.’

  ‘Earle, you are absurd! You talk like the prologue to a murder mystery. But I know what you mean. Oh, I wish the money were his!’

  That came from the bottom of her heart, but it only had the effect of making Earle laugh.

  ‘Oh, come! That’s a bit too disinterested, isn’t it?’ he protested, and Tina realised that she was not keeping a sufficient guard on her tongue. Her exclamation must have sounded distinctly overdone to anyone who had no idea of the true state of things.

  She laughed nervously, and said quickly:

  ‘Oh, I meant that I wished I could help. Perhaps I can. I must think it over.’ And then she firmly changed the subject.

  But that night she thought and thought of Charles and his wonderful idea and the money which should have been his to carry out that idea.

  ‘It’s like cheating not only Charles himself but all those people who so tragically need his help,’ Tina thought wretchedly. ‘If only—’

  And then there came into Tina’s mind at least, she always thought afterwards that it must have been at just that moment the beginning of a wonderful idea of her own.

  Why should she not finance this project of Charles’? She could represent it as her contribution to a deserving cause—that much at least of undeserved credit she would have to accept and then Charles could have no idea that she was trying to force money on him personally.

  It was true that, if she became involved like this, she would have to remain Sonia Frayne for an indefinite period at least until the money had all gone, she thought recklessly but somehow that hardly mattered now. She would be making that money do what it should be doing spending it as Charles himself would have spent it, had he known it was really his. T
he complete abstract justice of that seemed more important to Tina than any risks or difficulties. And perhaps for the first time since she had taken Sonia’s passport from the drawer she experienced a feeling of extreme peace and content.

  As though Fate were playing deliberately into her hands, Tina had a telephone call from Charles the very next day, and the inquiry which he had to make, in that abrupt, incisive tone of his so different from Earle’s drawl was:

  Had she the afternoon free, by any chance, and would she like to spend it with him?

  ‘Charles, I’d love to!’ she exclaimed, a little more eagerly than the invitation warranted.

  ‘Good. Do you want to go anywhere special, or would you rather have a lazy afternoon after your strenuous time in the last few weeks? We could drive out into Surrey, if you like, and have tea somewhere down the river. We don’t have to go far, but I know a nice place.’

  ‘It sounds very attractive, Charles.’

  ‘Very well. I’ll guarantee to get you back for an early dinner.’

  And he rang off, leaving her to wonder pleasurably whether the early dinner was to be with him too.

  He arrived that afternoon punctual to the minute, as she had rather expected in a slightly battered sports car, which proved, however, to be unexpectedly comfortable.

  As he handed Tina in, he glanced with amused appreciation at her leaf-brown suit and the soft green scarf that was tied round her fair hair.

  ‘I feel that my ancient car should at least have had a new coat of paint in your honour,’ he told her. ‘You’re looking very charming, my little cousin.’

  ‘Well, I feel a washed-out rag.’

  ‘An exceptionally attractive rag,’ he assured her, and she laughed.

  She thought, as she settled back contentedly in her seat, that he was looking very nice himself in a light grey suit which emphasised his unusually warm colouring. She liked that clear, dark tan, and she noticed again with appreciation that his fine, clever hands, which held the wheel so confidently, were the same even brown.

  After the first conventional inquiries and answers had been exchanged they lapsed into comfortable silence, and Tina reflected idly that Charles could be restful as well as provocative. Perhaps he was intentionally giving her a chance to relax. At any rate, whatever the reason, he was certainly allowing her to enjoy the beautiful afternoon, the unaccustomed leisure, and his own company without making any demands upon her.

  Indeed, Tina was inclined to think afterwards that she had actually almost fallen asleep when suddenly she came back to consciousness with a start, and to the realisation that the car was slowing down. Charles was not looking at her. He was looking away to the left of the car with a slight frown of extreme concentration. And as Tina’s gaze followed his, she saw through a gap in the trees a square, sturdy, altogether enchanting house.

  A short gravel drive led up to a wide, porticoed doorway, with a knocker so large and so bright that even from where she was Tina could see how the light shone back from it.

  On either side of the doorway spread the many-windowed front, absolutely balanced, in perfect regularity, which was somehow amusing and endearing.

  ‘Charles, what a marvellous house!’

  He glanced at her amusedly and said:

  ‘Oh, you are awake?’

  ‘Of course.’ She had the usual unreasonable desire to insist that she had not been asleep, but there was something more important just then. ‘It’s ideal!’

  ‘What is ideal?’

  ‘Why, the house, of course.’ She was too much excited and too near sleep still to think much what she was saying.

  ‘Ideal for what?’

  ‘Why, for your my I suppose our purpose. Oh, Charles, I hadn’t explained. I do want you to have your convalescent home. It’s a wonderful idea. We—I mean I—couldn’t spend the money on anything better. Oh, I’m explaining so badly. But you must understand what I mean. Don’t you think that house would do marvellously?’

  She paused breathlessly, but he didn’t answer.

  He was silent so long that she began to see the absurdity of her outburst.

  ‘Well, one couldn’t tell from this distance, of course. Perhaps another house would be better—’ Her voice trailed away into the silence which was becoming so embarrassing.

  He looked at her with those bright, speculative eyes of his, and she saw that he was smiling very slightly. She was enormously relieved, and she exclaimed:

  ‘Oh, you’re not angry, are you? or embarrassed?’

  ‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘I’m not angry and I’m certainly not embarrassed. I was only wondering—’

  ‘Yes, Charles?’ She bit her lip with anxiety.

  ‘What you would say if I asked you to marry me.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘MARRY you?’ repeated Tina slowly. ‘But there isn’t any need for that.’

  It sounded a particularly silly comment to her, when she had made it, and it certainly seemed to cause Charles some amusement.

  ‘Need? No, I don’t imagine there is any need exactly. But then it wasn’t necessity, my dear, that prompted the suggestion.’

  ‘What did then?’ Tina felt impelled to ask, while at the back of her mind she was wondering if anyone had ever received quite such an odd proposal before.

  ‘First, I suppose, your sensational offer to finance my convalescent home,’ he admitted slowly, ‘and then the very obvious fact that for us to marry would be quite the simplest and most satisfactory way of carrying out the suggestion.’

  ‘I don’t think it would be anything of the sort,’ Tina replied, a trifle tardy. ‘I should call it complicating things quite unnecessarily.’

  He turned to face her then, putting his arm along the back of the seat, and she noticed that his eyes were dancing, and she could not suppress a suspicion that at this moment he was taking life even less seriously than usual.

  ‘And I don’t think this is a very good joke,’ she said firmly.

  ‘My dear girl, it would be a frightful joke and in the worst of taste if it were intended for a joke. But it’s not. I’m perfectly serious.’

  ‘About wanting to marry me?’

  ‘About wanting to marry you.’

  She looked into his eyes and said:

  ‘I don’t think I altogether believe that.’

  Whereupon he took her in his arms and kissed her and said:

  ‘You’re rather a little goose, then. But quite the most attractive goose possible.’

  The kind that lays golden eggs, in fact,’ Tina retorted somewhat caustically, because she was annoyed to find how very much she liked being kissed by him.

  ‘Of course,’ he assured her lightly. ‘Don’t you realise that I’m trying to marry you for your money?’

  ‘Charles, can’t you be serious for just one minute?’

  ‘I am serious I’ve told you so.’

  And suddenly she saw that he was.

  ‘And you’re seriously asking me to marry you, for the sole reason that you think you we can run your convalescent home better that way?’

  ‘That’s not the sole reason.’ He smiled down at her. ‘There are as there should be for all great decisions a variety of reasons.’

  ‘Perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling me about some of the others?’ Tina said, a little dryly.

  ‘Not at all. What shall I put first? That I like you very much, I think.’

  ‘It is quite important,’ Tina murmured.

  ‘Second, that you like me very much.’

  ‘How do you know I do?’ Tina demanded quickly.

  ‘If you’re prepared to deny it, I’ll try to believe you,’ he told her.

  She looked at her big, handsome cousin who was not her cousin, of course, when one came to think about it and she knew with a sudden sensation not unlike alarm how very much she did like him.

  ‘No.’ Her eyes fell unaccountably. ‘We’ll let that pass.’

  ‘Good.’ He lightly touched her cheek with those
strong brown fingers of his. ‘Next, let me remind you that you are the innocent and appropriate heiress of fiction while I am the mercenary creature on the lookout for a rich and credulous wife.’

  She laughed irresistibly and said: ‘You’re quite absurd!’

  ‘Oh no. I’m merely giving much more serious thought to the important question of matrimony than most men do. Weighing the pros and cons seems to me a much more likely way to happiness than taking romantic headers into unknown waters.’

  She didn’t answer that at once, because she was hardly listening. What she was thinking was that here, in this half-absurd, half-serious proposal of marriage, lay the real solution to the problem of letting Charles have the handling of his own legacy.

  ‘Of course it would mean that the money became yours at last,’ she murmured, more to herself than to him.

  ‘My dear child, it wouldn’t mean anything of the sort,’ he assured her briskly. ‘It would still be yours. You seem to be in a perpetual state of trying to hand on your fortune to someone else.’

  ‘Not at all!’ Tina was a good deal frightened to find she had so clearly revealed her true feelings. ‘Only you said you were trying to marry me for my money,’ she reminded him. ‘I naturally thought—’

  ‘Yes, of course you did. I understand.’ And he actually kissed her lightly again.

  ‘Don’t you think you’re kissing me rather a lot, considering I haven’t said that I’ll marry you?’ Tina inquired.

  ‘That was just a cousinly kiss,’ he assured her. And she immediately found herself wondering with something like pleasurable excitement what kind of kiss he would give her if she did say ‘yes’.

  ‘And what,’ he inquired, ‘does that extremely sober look mean?’

  ‘I was thinking.’

  ‘About me?’

  ‘In a way yes. But don’t be so self-satisfied. I was wondering what I should have said if you’d made this offer sensibly and less frivolously.’

  ‘You would have turned me down flat, my dear,’ he assured her promptly. ‘And richly should I have deserved it.’