Tell Me My Fortune

by Mary Burchell

  Leslie smiled.

  “I’d just come round to thinking the same thing, and trying to decide what the future looked like. By the way”—and she admired the casualness of her own voice as she spoke—“I forgot to tell you all, with so much more going on in the family circle, Oliver has just become engaged.”

  “Oliver!” Katherine sat up and gave her sister an odd glance. “To whom?”

  “A girl in Pencaster of whom I’ve never heard. She’s called Caroline Frenton, and her uncle’s taking Oliver into partnership.”

  “How extraordinary. I always rather thought he might marry you.”

  “Did you? So did I when I was about seventeen,” Leslie said, and laughed quite naturally.

  “Oh, it was like that, was it?” Katherine dismissed the affair carelessly. “I’m glad it went no deeper.” Then she rolled over on her back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. “Now the family fortunes have failed, I suppose you and I are going to have to think seriously about finding rich husbands.”

  “Or good jobs.”

  “I’m not the stuff of which career women are made, myself,” Katherine said, and laughed. “I shall concentrate on the rich husband.”

  Leslie was silent. And in the silence they both heard a car coming up the drive.

  “There’s one rich possibility approaching the house at the moment,” Leslie remarked dryly, thinking of what her mother had said.

  “I know. But I don’t think I could fall in love with him.”

  “You’re asking rather a lot, aren’t you?” Leslie said with a smile. “A rich husband and a love match.”

  When Katherine finally rose to go, and declared that she was suddenly very sleepy, Leslie got up too and said,

  “I think I’ll run downstairs for ten minutes. If Mother and Father haven’t been talking to Reid, he’ll think it queer and unfriendly that no one bothers even to say good night to him.”

  “All right. You go and look after his wounded feelings,” Katherine replied with a laugh, and she departed to her own room.

  Leslie went rather slowly downstairs. The house was very quiet now, but there was a light still on in the drawing-room and the door stood half open. For a moment she thought the room was empty. But when she came in, she saw that he was standing by one of the big windows, looking out into the darkened garden.

  He could not have noticed her footsteps, or else he was very deep in thought, because she was half-way across the room before he turned rather sharply to face her.

  “I’m sorry. Did I startle you? I’m afraid my steps didn’t sound much on this carpet.”

  “No. I saw your reflection in the window-pane.”

  She came over to stand beside him, and looked out into the night.

  “Did you have a nice drive?”

  “Very, thank you.”

  She felt, rather than saw, that he was looking down at her with amused attention and, though she would not glance up at him, her social conscience stirred a little within her, so that she said,

  “I hope you haven’t been all on your own since you came in.”

  “No. I had a talk with your parents.”

  “Oh?” She did glance up then. “With any result?”

  He smiled wryly.

  “I discovered you were right when you said your father had his pride if you call that getting results.”

  “You mean he wouldn’t listen to your proposition about the money?”

  “No. But I hardly expected him to at first. I suppose I can consider that I won a minor victory, however, in that he pressed me to stay on here some while. As he gets to know me better, he may change his mind a little.”

  “And you’re prepared to stay on here, just in the hope that he will presently agree to accept some of your money? You’re an extraordinary man,” she said slowly.

  “That isn’t my only reason for wishing to stay.”

  “No? I’m afraid you’ll find it rather dull here. We’re nearly twenty miles from a town of any size.”

  “I know. Pencaster, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” She glanced enquiringly at him. “Did you go there this evening?”

  “No. But I knew it was near here when I came.”

  “How odd you should have heard of it. It isn’t of any special importance, you know. Just a rather nice market town, with a slightly smarter population than that usually implies.”

  “Is that so?”

  “How did you hear of it?”

  He hesitated a moment. Then he said,

  “I was engaged to a girl who came from there.”

  “You were—were you?” Somehow it surprised her profoundly that he should have been engaged, or that, having been so, he had not piloted (or driven) the affair to a successful conclusion. “Is that the other reason why you are interested in staying on here?” she enquired, before she could stop herself.

  He smiled, but again he hesitated.

  “It could be. I have a certain natural curiosity about her, let us say,”

  “Was it all a good while ago?”

  “About a year.”

  Something hard in his voice told her that he was recalling a period which had meant a great deal to him, and which even now could not be resigned without pain. With her own unfortunate experience so fresh in her mind, she felt a little throb of sympathy for him, and perhaps that sounded in her voice as she said,

  “Did she leave you?”

  He nodded.

  “I’m sorry. It hurt a lot, didn’t it?”

  “Like hell,” he said, but. he grinned at her ruefully.

  Leslie sighed.

  “I know. It does.”

  “Do you mean that you really know?” he enquired. “Or was that just a general comment?”

  She withdrew quickly into her shell again.

  “Oh, I wasn’t thinking of any personal experience, if that’s what you mean.”

  “That’s what I meant,” he agreed.

  She was anxious to shift the talk from her own affairs, and so she asked with more curiosity than she might otherwise have displayed,

  “Are you hoping to win her back?”

  “My dear, I’m taking this admirable opportunity of exploring the position, that’s all.”

  “I see.” She looked out of the darkened window again, and then back at him. “If it’s any help to bring her here, or use us as a background—”

  He interrupted with a slight laugh. “That's sweet of you. A family background might certainly give me a little more stability in Caroline’s eyes, I suppose. She. disapproved of my independent, lone-wolf existence.”

  Leslie swallowed slightly, and a faint, superstitious chill touched her.

  “Did you say her name was Caroline?”

  He frowned.

  “Did I mention her name? I didn’t mean to. But it is Caroline.”

  “Not Caroline Frenton, by any chance?”

  For a long moment he stared at her, his eyes slightly narrowed, as though he suspected some sort of trap. Then he said,

  “How did you know?”

  “I didn’t. It just seemed inevitable,” Leslie murmured under her breath.

  “I don’t understand.” His voice was cold, and no longer friendly. “Do you know Caroline?”

  ‘No. Only of her. She became engaged today to someone I know very well.”

  “I see,” he said. And then, almost casually, “Was that why you were crying so bitterly when I found you this evening?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  FOR a few moments Leslie said nothing—stunned by the terrible accuracy with which Reid had guessed her feelings for Oliver.

  “No one knows,” she gasped at last, catching her breath in her anxiety. “Except Mother. And even she doesn’t know quite how important he was to me.”

  “All right. I shan’t tell anyone, if that’s what you mean.”

  He looked rather moodily away from her into the darkness.

  “So Caroline is engaged,” he said slowly, as though he were f
orcing the words into his own consciousness. And then she realized that what she had said must have been a blow for him.

  “I’m dreadfully sorry! I was so surprised that I didn’t think what I was saying—didn’t prepare you for what I was going to say. I’m afraid it was a shock.”

  “Well, I guess what I said was something of a shock for you too,” he returned, with a slight grimace.

  “Not so much as what Oliver said,” she murmured. And then she was surprised and dismayed afresh to find that she seemed unable to keep herself from saying just what came into her mind. “Please forget that,” she added urgently.

  “Honey,” he said, and he put his arm round her with an unsentimental good-humour impossible to resent, “you and I know a little too much about each other now for either of us to risk telling tales. I’ll forget whatever you please about your Oliver if you’ll undertake not to remember too much of what I’ve said about Caroline.”

  “One doesn’t actually forget these things, of course,” she said with a sigh. “But I promise not to speak about them, and you’ve already done the same.”

  “Fine.” He smiled down at her. “Are you feeling a little better for having someone else in the same boat?”

  “Oh! That wouldn’t be either kind or logical,” Leslie declared, avoiding a direct answer, because she was a trifle ashamed to realize that her heart had felt curiously lighter ever since he had told her that he had once been engaged to Caroline Frenton.

  “What is he like, Leslie?”

  “Oliver?” She looked up, startled. “Why, he’s dark and good-looking and clever.”

  “The kind most girls would fall for, in fact.”

  She smiled faintly, but with a sort of obstinate courage.

  “I can only say that I fell for him. But then I’d known him most of my life.”

  “Poor kid! I hadn’t realized that.”

  She frowned, because she didn’t think that, even in this new mood of shared confidences, she could bear the pity of a stranger, when her own mother’s compassion had hurt.

  “Why did you ask about him?” she said curiously.

  “I was wondering whether the whole thing could be a temporary infatuation. Something I could get Caroline over.”

  “Do you mean try to take her away from Oliver?”

  She was shocked and showed it. But he laughed without contrition.

  “She was mine first,” he reminded her.

  “But that’s over now.”

  He looked at her humorously and said, “Here, whose side are you on?”

  “Neither! At least—I mean—”

  And then she was silent, because she was realizing, with the clearness given to a scene revealed by a flash of lightning, just what it would mean to her. if Reid carried out his threat, and carried it out successfully.

  “But Caroline is happily engaged to Oliver now,” she protested, with a tenth of the conviction she had shown before.

  “How do you know she is?”

  “He told me so! It’s his happiness too,” she cried, with remorseful fervour, remembering how bemused and enraptured Oliver had looked as he talked of his engagement. “You mustn’t interfere now, Reid, between two people who love each other.”

  “Or think they do,” he retorted. “Suppose I tell you that she loved me and that I still love her.” He smiled, but in a curiously obstinate way that tightened the line of his jaw and made his eyes seem light and brilliant.

  “I’m sure she did once and that you still love her. Just as I love Oliver,” she said with an effort. “But we’re outside the present framework, Reid. We’re just the unlucky ones. We must accept the fact—resign ourselves to—”

  “My sweet, I never resigned myself to anything in my life,” he broke in dryly. “I am not resigned to the present situation.”

  “But you can’t do ‘things like that. There are some decencies that one observes!”

  “Good lord! he isn’t married to her yet,” Reid retorted carelessly. “I’m not setting out to snaffle another man’s wife.”

  “But they are engaged. It’s the first step towards their marriage.”

  “People can retrace first steps.”

  “Reid, I can’t understand your talking like this. I haven’t known you long, it’s true, but I could have sworn you were not this sort of man.”

  “What sort?” he wanted to know with genuinely amused curiosity.

  “Why, the sort who would try to upset someone else’s love story, of course. You’ve lost. Can’t you be a better loser than this?”

  He frowned thoughtfully and, since she had moved from him a little in her indignation and earnestness, he took his arm away from her.

  “Look, Leslie,” he said at last, and his tone was as earnest now as hers. “The circumstances of our parting weren’t exactly simple, or above-board. I found out recently that someone told her lies about me—it doesn’t matter now who or why. It was because she thought something quite wrong about me that she manufactured a quarrel and broke the engagement. As soon as I heard the real story, I came after her—it coincided very well with my coming to see your people too, incidentally—to find if I could mend things. And, in the circumstances, I’m damned if I’m going to stand aside for a day-old engagement to someone else. Someone you might well comfort if he lost out, I might add.”

  “No! Don’t add that! Leave me out of your calculations,” Leslie cried agitatedly, because the leap of her heart frightened her. “Oh, I don’t know what to say. If what you say it true, it’s terribly hard on you, of course. But then there is Oliver and his happiness.”

  “Which is genuinely the most important thing to you in all this?” he said curiously.

  “Of course.”

  He smiled dryly and said, “Oliver seems to have all the luck.”

  “He won’t, if you take Caroline away from him,” she retorted a little sullenly.

  He smiled at her.

  “Don’t you feel capable of consoling him?”

  “Oh, Reid please!” She put her hands over her face. “God, I wish I knew what was right. If it’s really rather a sudden business between Caroline and Oliver, and if she truly loved you, it makes a difference, of course. And I could make Oliver happy—I know I could—if only she were not there.”

  “You see?” He took hold of her hands and gently drew them down from her face, so that she had to look at him. “And I know that I could make her happy, if only your Oliver were not there. It’s one of those rare occasions when the values and the personalities have got themselves hopelessly mixed. Don’t you think we owe it to ourselves, and possibly to them too, to unmix things?”

  “I don’t know. It sounds so plausible, of course. But its very plausibility makes me suspect it.”

  “Darling, you do make heavy weather of your own happiness, don’t you?” he said amusedly.

  “And you take things much too lightly,” she cried accusingly. “You stand there calling me ‘darling’ and ‘my sweet’ and things like that, while you’re supposed to be dying of love for another girl. It doesn’t sound very—”

  “Oh, no! Not dying of love,” he assured her. “Very, very much alive and determined to fight for it. And as for calling you ‘darling’ I think you are a darling, and I see no reason why I shouldn’t put the thought into words occasionally.”

  She laughed vexedly, defeated by his unshakable good-humour.

  “You have an answer for everything—like Satan,” she declared.

  “I hope you think the likeness ends there.”

  “I don’t know.” Leslie looked at him reflectively. “I’ve always thought Satan sounded attractive and full of vitality.”

  He laughed a good deal at that, and said it was no wonder he called her “darling” when she said such charming things. Whereupon Leslie suddenly realized just what she had said, and frowned and coloured a little.

  ‘“Well, let’s leave this soul-searching for tonight,” he suggested. “Tomorrow you may see things more as
I.”

  “Or vice versa,” she countered quickly.

  He shook his head.

  “No, my dear. I have my mind made up about this. But it’s too late for us to pursue the discussion further. I’m sure you have a lot of courage and staying power, but today must have been a whale of a day for you, and if you’re not feeling exhausted by now, you ought to be.”

  When he said that, Leslie became aware that she was indeed dead tired, in an excited, agitated way, and that, try as she would to look at the new problem in a fair and objective way, she simply could not do so. He was right. In all fairness they must break off the discussion now. “You’d better go on ahead,” she told him. “I know where the light-switches are.”

  But he smiled and said that if he were going to live there, the sooner he found out these things, the better.

  So she went on ahead. And as he put out the lights, and came up the stairs behind her, she had the odd feeling that, in little or big things, one would very easily get into the habit of leaving responsibilities to Reid Carthay.

  In the rather dim light of the upstairs landing, she looked at him with a flash of mischievous humour in her eyes and, because the rest of the household were probably asleep by now, it was in a whisper that she said to him,

  “Do you do things for people because you’re kind, or because you’re arrogant?”

  “ ‘Bossy’ was the word you meant,” he returned, also in a whisper. “And the answer is neither. I do things only when I like people. Good night, my sweet.” And he patted her cheek rather sharply and left her.

  Leslie went into her own room, shut the door and leant against it. For almost a minute she made no attempt to put on the light. Only gazed almost absently round the palely moonlit room, while her mind drifted idly from point to point of her conversation with Reid Carthay.

  Next day, when she was in the kitchen garden gathering peas, she saw Reid coming towards her with an air of purpose which suggested a deliberate seeking of her society, rather than any chance encounter. She went on rather deliberately with her task, but she experienced a little flutter of excited anticipation—not, she assured herself, because of anything in Reid’s personality, but because one instinctively expected things to happen when he was around.