by Anne Weale
“What’s so funny?” Jill asked huffily.
“You are. You see too many movies, my girl. People just don’t behave like that in real life, not even men like Justin who may look that part.”
“You’re always laughing at me. Anyone would think you were old enough to be my grandmother,” Jill retorted.
In the weeks that followed, Andrea went out with Justin Templar more and more frequently. She had an uneasy feeling that she was playing with fire, but it was very pleasant to be taken out by a man who could afford the best of everything, and she avoided thinking about the possible developments of their friendship. There was one side of Justin that she grew to know and like. He was a stimulating companion and had a sense of humor akin to her own, so that they often shared laughter that other people would have found incomprehensible. But of the man behind the charming, considerate escort she felt she knew nothing, and there were often moments when he looked at her in the enigmatic way that had disturbed her when they first met in Cornwall. He never attempted to make love to her, but she felt sure that he would do so eventually, and in spite of her raillery at Jill’s melodramatic suppositions on the subject, the prospect sent a faint shiver down her spine.
One evening, after they had been to a concert at the Festival Hall, Justin suggested that they should dine at his house the next night, and although she had no convincing reason to refuse the invitation, she was very much afraid that the evening would make a climax in their relationship.
She spent a restless night and found it hard to concentrate on her work the next day. For the first time in her modeling career she was fifteen minutes late for an appointment, and the photographer for whom she was posing complained that she was thinking about something else. With an effort she pulled her thoughts back to the vivid play clothes that were to illustrate a holiday plans feature in the April issue of a teenager’s magazine.
By the time Justin called for her she was inwardly tense with nervousness, but as they drove toward Mayfair his manner seemed so normal that she began to wonder if she was imagining a crisis where none existed.
She had often used Syon Place as a shortcut from Park Lane to Bond Street and had admired the tall Georgian houses, most of which were still privately owned and not, like so many Mayfair mansions, converted into offices and service apartments. During the day typists and clerks ate sandwich lunches on the benches in the square gardens and the curbs were close packed with opulent cars, but after dark it was possible to recapture the atmosphere of Regency London, when the blaze of chandeliers shone down onto the cobbled street and liveried flunkeys stood beneath the graceful porticoes, bowing to guests in the satins and silks of a bygone century.
Now, stepping out of the car and standing still for a moment, she could imagine herself in another age, arriving at a rout with the tinkling music drifting down from the ballroom and the clatter of hooves as a carriage lurched around the corner.
“What are you thinking?” Justin asked, seeing her absent expression.
“About this square; a hundred and fifty years ago.”
“Does the Regency period appeal to you?”
“Yes, although I would probably have been a kitchen maid in those days.”
“And I a merchant, so we’d both have been outside the bounds of polite society.”
“Oh, hasn’t the house always been in your family?”
“No, my grandfather bought it at the turn of the century.”
He led her up the steps and opened the front door. The hall was carpeted with dove-gray pile and dominated by the wide curving staircase. The paneled walls were painted white with gilded moldings. A magnificent crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling.
Helping her off with her coat, Justin said, “The drawing room is upstairs, but I think we will be more comfortable in the library.”
He indicated a doorway on their right.
The library was a long, narrow room with windows at either end, curtained with rich folds of pale gold velvet. A fire was burning in the hearth and the room was lighted by a lamp on the leather-topped writing desk and another on an elegant Sheraton console. The walls on either side of the marble chimneypiece were lined with bookshelves; most of them held sets of leather-bound volumes, but one shelf was filled with modern editions in bright dust jackets. It was more richly furnished, but in atmosphere the room reminded her of Mr. Everard’s study where she had first met Justin.
“Come and sit down,” he said.
She sank into a deep wing chair covered with faded turquoise velvet while Justin pulled an old-fashioned bellrope by the fire.
“I think this is one of the most peaceful rooms I’ve ever been in,” she said appreciatively.
“My sister has a mania for interior decoration. She wants to refurnish it in a contemporary style,” he said, handing a silver cigarette box to her.
“Oh, no! That would ruin it. Surely you won’t let her?”
“Certainly not. I prefer it as it is.”
There was a tap at the door and an elderly manservant came in with a decanter on a silver tray.
“This is Miss Fleming, Hubbard.”
“Good evening, madam.”
“Good evening.”
“We will be ready in about ten minutes,” Justin said.
“Very good, sir.” He bowed to Andrea and withdrew.
“What a delightful old man,” Andrea said when he had closed the door. “I didn’t know white-haired butlers existed nowadays.”
“Hubbard was here when I was a boy. He’s never admitted his age, but I should think he’s well over seventy,” Justin said, pouring two glasses of sherry. “I suggested that he ought to retire some years ago, but he was very offended, so I let him carry on.”
He handed her a glass and set his own on the mantelpiece.
“What a pity all the houses in Mayfair aren’t like this. It seems such a waste to turn them into offices,” she said.
“After dinner I’ll show you the other rooms. The kitchen and bathrooms are the only ones that have been modernized.”
“I would like to live in an old house,” she said reflectively. “Modern ones have no atmosphere.”
“You are a curious mixture of materialism and idealism, Andrea,” he said, watching her.
She smiled. “Are you psychoanalyzing me?”
“Heaven forbid. I detest all this pseudoscientific jargon that people bandy about. Nevertheless, people’s attitudes to life are an interesting study.”
“Surely one’s attitude is conditioned by one’s circumstances.”
“Not necessarily. For example, you are not what one would expect of a successful young woman who must be the envy of thousands of less successful girls.”
“What did you expect?”
“That you would be conscious of your looks, for one thing.”
“But I am. Not in a vain way, if that’s what you mean. After all, it’s purely luck if one is born with a good face and figure. But I am well aware of my looks as a business asset. Although they have their disadvantages, too.”
“You mean people admire you for your appearance and overlook your other qualities?”
“Partly that, yes.” Her mouth curved. “For instance, would you take me out if I had spots and protruding teeth?”
An answering glint of humor lighted his black eyes.
“I doubt it. Would you come if I were a stout old party with a bald head and rheumy eyes?”
She laughed. “As you said, I am a materialist. A good dinner and pleasant surroundings might be sufficient inducement.”
“Is that why you come—because I can provide good food and entertainment?”
“That is one of the reasons,” she said frankly.
“You are refreshingly honest. What are the other reasons?”
Before she could reply, Hubbard reappeared to say that dinner was served. It was not until they had returned to the library that Justin said, “Now, tell me why I am permitted the pleasure of your, company?”
“Because, so far, I have always enjoyed myself,” she replied lightly.
He tossed his half-smoked cigar into the fire and stood up, a strange expression on his dark face. For a minute she wondered if she had annoyed him. Then he turned from his contemplation of the glowing logs and looked down at her.
“Andrea, will you marry me?” he asked softly.
CHAPTER TWO
Andrea stared at him incredulously.
“You seem surprised,” he said after a moment.
“I ... I had no idea...” She made a bewildered gesture, still too stunned by his astonishing suggestion to think clearly.
“So you thought my intentions were dishonorable.”
She flushed and looked down at her hands.
“I wasn’t sure that you had any intentions,” she said in a low voice.
“Do you mean you regarded me as a friend?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Then you deceived yourself, my dear. There is no such thing as friendship between a man and a woman, particularly when the woman is as beautiful as you are,” he said crisply.
There was an uncomfortable pause while she made an effort to collect herself.
“But... why me?” she asked at last, when it was clear that he expected her to make the next move.
“A number of reasons. The principal one being you have most of the qualities I want in my wife.”
She looked up at him. “But you’re not in love with me.”
“Do you believe in love, Andrea?” His eyes were unreadable.
She weighed the question carefully, wondering how he expected her to answer.
“No, I don’t,” she said quietly.
“Then we understand each other.”
He sat down again, crossing his long legs, completely at ease.
“Tell me, have you thought about getting married?” he asked.
“Yes, naturally. I don’t expect to go on working forever.”
“So, since you don’t believe in what people call falling in love, I take it you will marry for security.”
“Yes. And children. I would like to have some children.”
“Have you any brothers or sisters?”
“No, I was an only child.”
“When you think of security do you visualize a semidetached house in Wimbledon, with a husband who spends his Saturday afternoons mowing the lawn?”
At that, a glimmer of amusement lighted her green eyes.
“Not exactly,” she replied.
“Come here.”
After a momentary hesitation she went over and stood beside his chair.
“Give me your hand.”
She held out her hand and he clasped it lightly at the wrist, rubbing his thumb against the pale smooth skin and studying her polished nails.
“You wouldn’t have time to paint your fingernails if you had shirts to wash and floors to scrub,” he said softly.
“Perhaps not. But I do a certain amount of housework now, you know.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt your domestic capabilities,” he said casually. “I daresay you would run the villa in Wimbledon very well if you had to. But I think this house would be a more appropriate setting for you.”
She disengaged her hand and began to walk around the room, wishing she could be by herself for a while to review his fantastic offer in a calmer frame of mind.
It was an ironic situation. The only motive for his interest that she had ever considered was that he wanted to make her his mistress. It had never occurred to her that he was thinking of marriage. Years ago, when she was still in her early teens, she had made up her mind that she would marry for money, and yet now when the richest man she was ever likely to meet was offering her everything she had ever wanted, something made her hesitate.
“You know so little about me, Justin,” she said suddenly, turning to face him from across the room.
“Isn’t there a saying that one never knows people until one lives with them? I know all that I want to. You’re beautiful and intelligent and you have a rare ability to sit still and not chatter incessantly about trivialities,” he answered.
“I have a very bad temper,” she said.
“Then we will be well matched, for so have I.”
She could not imagine him in a rage, shouting and storming and banging doors like most irascible men. Somehow the whiplash of sarcasm seemed more in character, or the cold, silent displeasure that was often more terrifying than an outburst of wrath.
“Suppose ... suppose there was something disreputable about me?” she said slowly.
“Is there?” He looked amused.
“I don’t belong to your world, Justin. Everything I have I had to fight for. Even Jill doesn’t know the truth about me.”
“What is the truth?” he said quietly.
She made a restless movement, wondering how she could begin to make him understand.
“I told you that I was brought up in Liverpool and started work at fifteen,” she began slowly. “I suppose you thought my parents were hard up, but it was more than that. My father died when I was seven. He was a hopeless drunkard. My mother’s people didn’t approve of her marriage and wouldn’t help her, so she had to work in a factory, leaving me in the care of the neighbors. We lived in a basement in a street called Briggs Lane. It was a slum. There was a gas meter just behind us and everything smelled of gas, even the food. The women went about in carpet slippers with metal bobby pins in their hair and most of the children had skin diseases and nits. Do you know anyone who has nits, Justin? Well, that’s the sort of background I come from. My mother died just after I started work and I lived in a working girls’ hostel. It seemed like paradise after the basement.”
All the time she was talking she had not looked at him, guessing the distaste that must show on his face. To someone like Justin, who had never known what it was to be poor, the recital must have sounded doubly squalid.
“Is that all?”
“Yes, that’s all,” she said tersely. “The rest you know.”
She heard him move and a moment later he was beside her, turning her around to face him.
I “I asked you to marry me,” he said gravely. “Where you were born or how you lived as a child has nothing to do with it.”
“You don’t have to be chivalrous,” she said bitterly.
“When you know me better you will find that chivalry is not one of my virtues.”
“Supposing I accepted. What would your family and your friends think?”
“What other people think has never particularly concerned me.”
“It’s easy to say that now, but you might regret it later.”
“My dear child, the principal advantage of having a considerable amount of money is that it enables one to do exactly as one pleases, regardless of other people’s reactions. Besides, there is nothing particularly disgraceful about what you just told me. Poverty is a common misfortune.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s getting late. I think we’ll postpone our tour of the house till another night. I’ll take you home.”
He went across to the fireside and pulled the bell. While they waited for Hubbard to answer it, he said, “I’ll give you three days to think this over, Andrea. If you make up your mind before then, you can telephone me. If not we’ll have dinner on Friday.”
They did not talk on the way to the apartment, but outside her door he took her hands in his and said, “Take your time over it, my dear, and remember that you have just as much to offer me as I have you. As it happens, I decided to ask you to marry me some time ago, but I waited till tonight for you to get to know me better. We have a lot in common, and I think we could deal well together.”
When he had gone she climbed the stairs to the apartment feeling curiously exhausted, as if she had been through some physical ordeal. Jill was still out with Nick, and she made h
erself a cup of tea and sat at the kitchen, table thinking over all that Justin had said.
Once, when she was about ten years old, she had woken up in the night and heard her mother crying. Andrea had never forgotten the sound of those dreadful racking sobs, and it was then, at an age when most children are scarcely aware of sorrow and hardship, that she made up her mind that one day she would escape from Briggs Lane and everything that it represented.
When her mother had died there had been no one to whom she could pour out her misery, and later people often got the impression that she was callous because she never showed her emotions. They did not guess that she was often desperately lonely and forlorn.
By the time she was sixteen she was fiercely determined to achieve all the things she had never had, but it was not until three years later that she thought of fashion modeling as the key to her ambitions. She arrived in London with just enough money to pay for a training course and cheap lodgings, and at first the other students, who were mostly girls from comfortable middle-class homes, had raised their eyebrows at her shabby clothes and apparent lack of the attributes that would make a successful model. But the director of the model school, an astute, and experienced woman named Mary Lyall, had recognized that Andrea had something that prettier girls lacked. When she started her training, Andrea was a girl that most people would have overlooked. By the end of it she had developed that rare and indefinable star quality that prompted Mrs. Lyall, who also ran a model agency, to help her through the first few weeks before bookings began to come in in increasing numbers.
Andrea took her success calmly, saving most of her earnings and continuing to concentrate on her work as hard as she had at the beginning. She knew that, like film starlets, models often had a meteoric rise to fame and an equally sudden descent into obscurity. She knew, too, that however successful she might be, there were hundreds of other girls fighting for a front place and that her own popularity would not last forever. It was then that she thought about marriage as a means of obtaining permanent security in her new life. Her mother’s life had been ruined by a foolish infatuation for a weak, shiftless man, and she had seen many attractive, happy girls turned into embittered wives through living with relatives or in drab furnished apartments. Regarding love as an emotional delusion that soon wore off under the exigencies of day-to-day living, she had decided to marry for money.