The Marriage Wheel

by Susan Barrie

  She heard Lestrode speaking softly:

  “A pretty girl like you ... almost any man would fall in love with you!”

  Rosaleen answered:

  “I don’t want any man to fall in love with me! You know perfectly well that there is only one man!” Frederica’s fingers bit into the edge of her window-sill.

  “We’ll have to see what we can do,” Humphrey Lestrode murmured. “Somehow we’ve got to convince your mother. I’ll have to work on her!”

  “She’ll listen to you,” Rosaleen cooed, with a kind of blissful contentment in her dramatically hushed voice. “I know she will! There isn’t really any doubt!”

  She’d be mad if she didn’t listen to you, Frederica thought, wondering at their astonishing simplicity. Electra would give her soul to have one of her daughters married to a man like Humphrey Lestrode, with his highly satisfactory income ... and of her two daughters she would much prefer that it was Rosaleen who should be permitted to grace such a house as this as its mistress.

  But the very thought of Rosaleen taking over as mistress at Farthing Hall—probably at no very distant future date—was like a piece of rough iron entering Frederica’s soul. She admired Farthing Hall, but she was not exactly in love with it as a house—too many people had tried to improve it in the last century, and she much preferred the Dower House as a place in which to live—and she never even thought of herself as anything but an employee at the Hall; but all the same the most vital parts of her anatomy, and the unplumbed depths of her being, writhed in a kind of torture at the thought of having Lestrode for a brother-in-law.

  No doubt he would be a very useful brother-in-law, but she would hate him taking over the role ... and she would hate him making the announcement that he was to become a member of her family when her mother had given her formal consent, and everyone would expect her—Frederica—to congratulate the happy pair.

  Lucille would look at her, perhaps, understandingly. She might even understand the situation better than Frederica understood it herself—certainly during those moments when she half hung from the window in the moonlight—and the reason why the prospect of a summer wedding in such a delightful setting, with her near relative as the bride, and her mother completely happy, appalled rather than intrigued her.

  A wedding! ... And would they expect her to be a bridesmaid? And would Robert Rawlinson give the bride away, and would her mother dissolve into floods of tears after the service in the local church, and when a slightly theatrical display on her part seemed called for...? And when the newly-weds went away on their honeymoon!

  From below a voice floated up, deep, comforting, consoling, masculine ... rather tender in a humorous kind of way.

  “You’ll just have to trust me! You’re an absurd little thing, you know, Rosaleen. You’re not a bit capable, and you’re a bit of a monkey in some ways, but I’ve no doubt most men would think you’re adorable. Contact with you deprives a man of his common sense ... and I’ve always rather prided myself on my extremely sound common sense!”

  “You’re a darling,” Rosaleen assured him, going closer and clinging to the lapels of his dinner-jacket.

  “You are, as I have said, a monkey! I ought to turn you down and have nothing more to do with you. But alas, I’m like putty in your hands, and your wish is my command! How soon do you think I’d better have the highly important word with your mother?”

  “Oh, not yet!” Rosaleen pretended to be alarmed. “It’s—it’s all rather sudden, and I’ve got to get used to the idea—”

  “If you’re not used to it by this time you never will get used to it.”

  “No, I know! But all the same, it is sudden!”

  “And South America’s a long way away?”

  “A horribly long way away! All right for a honeymoon—”

  “But don’t forget you’ve got a house to come back to! A house you like!”

  “Oh, yes, I like it very much indeed! It’s a charming old house—even nicer than Farthing Hall.” Frederica withdrew her head from the window, and a few minutes later the voices ceased, and from the sudden cessation of footsteps she gathered that the two who had been so completely engrossed below her had now returned to the drawing-room, where Electra and her old friend had been renewing their friendship.

  The only difference between Rosaleen and Humphrey Lestrode was that they were not concerned with either renewing or forming a friendship. They were planning to marry one another, enjoy a prolonged honeymoon in South America—which Humphrey might combine with a business trip—and then, since apparently they were not to settle at Farthing Hall, would begin their married life in the Dower House. That must have been the house Rosaleen had referred to as even more attractive than Farthing Hall.

  Frederica felt absolutely assailed by dismay. It wasn’t that she didn’t want Rosaleen to marry— or to marry well. But why, oh, why had she had to pick upon Humphrey Lestrode?

  There was no light in Frederica’s room, but the moonlight filled it with a gentle radiance, and in that gentle radiance the truth was revealed to the girl who had taken on a man’s job, and become hopelessly involved with the man who employed her.

  For although she had disliked him very much at first— and still disapproved of him very frequently— she knew that there was something about Humphrey Lestrode that ... well, she didn’t want him to marry her sister. She didn’t want him to marry anyone! She wanted to go on driving him, and being bullied by him, and unfairly treated by him—even to be made small and rather foolish by him.

  He treated her abominably at times, but what did that matter? He treated Lucille abominably, but she didn’t mind. Between them they would be able to form the Humphrey Lestrode society! And it served them both right that, while they toiled contentedly in his service, and she collected grease stains and Lucille was frequently daubed with smudges of flour while making drop scones in the kitchen, and batches of cakes and tarts and pies for the head of the house and his guests to consume, Rosaleen—who was a bit of a monkey, and couldn’t even sew a button on for him—was the one who was going to marry him!

  Frederica wondered whether to steal away to Lucille’s room and pass the intelligence she had gleaned on to her.

  But Lucille was a very proper person, and no doubt she would think she had been wrong to eavesdrop. She might even point this out to her, and Frederica was in no mood to be criticised in addition to having learned by accident that without a shadow of doubt she was to acquire a brother-in-law.

  Without quite realising what she was doing she moved over to the window again, and as she leant a little numbly on the sill and looked downwards at the moon-bathed terrace a voice called up to her casually:

  “I forgot I was standing under your window, Wells! You seem to have bagged for yourself one of the pleasantest rooms in the house! By the way, I shall want you fairly early tomorrow morning. We’re driving over to have lunch with the Dillingers, and I promised Lady Dillinger I’d get there early because there’s a matter of business she wants to discuss with me.”

  Frederica was silent for a moment. Looking directly down on him his head looked very sleek and dark in the moonlight, and his dinner-jacket was edged by moonlight. She could see his face quite clearly, and his eyes appeared to be smiling up at her a trifle mockingly.

  “What a way to pass an evening,” he commented. “You ought to have been out here taking the air!”

  “Will Rosaleen be going with us tomorrow?” she enquired in a curiously stilted, colourless voice.

  Lestrode shook his head.

  “No. She doesn’t know the Dillingers yet, and, as I said, it’s a matter of business.”

  “No doubt she’ll be making their acquaintance before long.”

  “Of course.”

  “Rawlinson already knows them, but he’ll stay behind here to deputise for me as host.”

  “I see,” she murmured mechanically.

  His mouth twisted sideways, and he smiled up at her crookedly.

&nb
sp; “You look depressed,” he said. “Care for a moonlight stroll with me?”

  “No! No, thank you!” And she withdrew her head hurriedly.

  Humphrey strode off into the moonlight. He was smoking a cigar, and he left a delicate fragrance behind him on the terrace.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  They set off next morning about an hour after breakfast. It seemed an extraordinarily early hour to Frederica for paying calls—even confirming one’s appreciation of an invitation to lunch—and she was quite sure Lady Dillinger, whose frailty must prevent her being an early riser, had not meant to be taken quite so literally when she said “Come early”.

  But Humphrey Lestrode directed Frederica to make a wide detour before arriving at Appleby Manor, and they did in fact arrive there at a reasonably respectable hour—in good time for a cup of excellent “elevenses” that was served to them in the library, and caused no raised eyebrows on the part of the host and hostess.

  But before reaching the Manor they saw quite a bit of the countryside, including various aspects of it that were new to Frederica, and Lestrode, who was in an expansive mood, drew her attention to various features of the landscape, and retailed for her benefit quite a string of historic anecdotes and even one or two legends in connection with it, occupying the vacant seat beside her in the car while he did so.

  This was so unusual that at first Frederica thought he was being rather absent-minded when he opened the door to the passenger seat in the front. But he quickly disabused her of any idea that it was not his intention to sit beside her. He smiled in an unusually charming way that took the sting out of his remark that he actually felt safer in the front, because he could see precisely what she was getting up to, and if his nerves were tried too severely he could always take over.

  Frederica declined to be amused by this confession, and concentrated on her driving very purposefully, making no response when he said they might as well pass the gates of the Dower House. He caused her to slow outside the gates, and asked her lazily whether she didn’t think that even with weeds choking its drive it had a way of curving very attractively. And if the house was hers, and she was making any improvements, would she do away with the wistaria that clothed one side of the house beside the porch.

  “I would keep it,” Frederica replied, and then decided that if she had been speaking for her sister—which was, in fact, what he was inviting her to do—she would have said do away with it, because Rosaleen had a thing about insects living in creepers, and dropping upon you if you were unwise enough to stand beneath them.

  Besides, Rosaleen’s ideas on the Dower House would be entirely different from her own—all of them; and if Lestrode was planning to marry Rosaleen and settle down there the one person he should consult was his future bride.

  She would no doubt insist on a complete gutting of the place as it stood, and almost entire rebuilding.

  Frederica ventured to observe as much, and Lestrode turned sideways to her and regarded her with a faint smile curving his lips while he smoked a cigarette.

  “You are absolutely right, of course,” he agreed. “Rosaleen has very little time for the antique. But then she’s so delightfully modern herself one can hardly blame her.”

  “I don’t blame her,” Frederica replied, staring somewhat grimly ahead through the wide windscreen of the car.

  Lestrode leaned back against the sun-warmed leather of the seat, and after smoking reflectively for a moment asked her another question.

  “You do realise there are some things one cannot consult a person about if they are vitally concerned with a project,” he stated rather than asked. “You, for instance. If I wanted to give you a present I would ask your sister about it, not you.”

  “But you have no intention of giving me a present,” Frederica muttered glibly.

  “Perhaps not.” He flicked ash from his cigarette into the ashtray on the dashboard. “However, at the moment we are not discussing presents for you ... and I wanted to know what you would do if you were modernising the Dower House. What, if you don’t mind telling me, would you do?”

  She felt his strange eyes observing her with a quite unnatural interest.

  “Nothing very drastic. Leave it more or less as it is ... apart from overhauling the plumbing and putting in one or two more bathrooms. And of course, if it were mine, I’d like a new kitchen.”

  “You consider the kitchen is the hub of the house?”

  “It would be if it were mine.”

  “Ah, but I am merely asking you for suggestions! We know that the house is not yours, and other women have other outlooks. Women who are not particularly interested in kitchens, for instance ... where do you suppose they would concentrate their efforts?”

  “If you’re thinking of Rosaleen,” Frederica answered unwisely, “she’ll want a fantastic bedroom with lots of hanging cupboards, and that sort of thing, and a really wonderful drawing-room in which she can give outsize cocktail parties. She won’t worry very much about the gardens, so long as they’re neat and tidy, and you won’t have to spend much on the guest-rooms, because she hates entertaining when it involves people staying in the house and requiring to be fed, and that goes for my mother as well. They both love entertaining, but only when the visitors cars are brought round to the door after it’s all over.”

  “Well, that is not unnatural in a modern world,” Lestrode observed almost lazily. “Catering for guests is quite a complicated business, and you couldn’t expect a young wife to cope with it—not immediately after marriage, anyway.”

  “But I expect you’ll have a housekeeper when you marry, won’t you?” Frederica enquired, still answering him as if she understood perfectly what he was getting at.

  “I may, if my wife can’t cook ... and Lucille declines to stay.”

  “I don’t think Lucille will stay with you once you are married,” Frederica stated baldly.

  “Because in her opinion I’ll be marrying the wrong wife?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “But Lucille likes children ... and I hope to have lots of children!”

  Frederica started up the car, without receiving his permission to do so. It might have been the heat of the sun in the quiet lane, but she suddenly felt sick.

  “Hadn’t we better be moving on?” she suggested rather huskily.

  Lestrode crushed out his cigarette very deliberately in the ash-tray.

  “We’ve loads of time,” he replied. “But perhaps we might as well be moving on.” He smiled at her sideways, a dry, cool, very much amused smile—rather cruelly amused, she would have thought it if she had dared to turn her head and look unashamedly in his direction. “By the way,” the lazy note very evident in his voice as he watched her handling of the gears through narrowed eyes, “I expect you’ll be able to follow me if I make a small, and entirely uncritical, observation. Little pitchers really do seem to have long ears!”

  Frederica felt the colour seeping up over her throat and ears, and as they bowled smoothly and silently down the lane it burnt fierily in her cheeks.

  She didn’t answer. She knew perfectly well that he was referring to the fact that she had listened the night before ... and listening she had heard perhaps more than he intended at this stage!

  Lady Dillinger and Sir Adrian were delighted to see them, and after the coffee interlude Sir Adrian bore Frederica off to the rose-garden while Lestrode closeted himself in the library with Lady Dillinger and the particular problem she had to cope with at the moment.

  It really was an exceptionally pleasant day for Frederica, and if only there had been no unhappiness grinding her spirits into the dust she would have enjoyed herself. The Dillingers put themselves out to treat her as if she was a very close friend of her employer’s instead of being merely his employee; and if they occasionally remembered that that was what she was it had no effect on their attitude towards her.

  Lunch was served in a charming, low-ceilinged dining-room, where the Georgian silver blazed on the sideboa
rd and the elderly butler cut a very dignified note as he waited on them. After lunch Frederica was requested to pour out the coffee in the drawing room, and she sat close to Lady Dillinger’s knee as if she was a favoured daughter, or even a very particular guest, and she listened to the lazy badinage that passed between her hosts and her employer and wondered, although she did not attempt to join in, why life was not always as exceptionally peaceful and pleasant as it was today ... and she felt inclined to shiver when the thought fell across her like a shadow that, once her sister was married, there would be no more occasions like this for herself and Humphrey, for she couldn’t possibly go on driving him once he was married; and in any case Rosaleen would almost certainly object, for already she showed a little jealousy when Frederica went off with the host for the day—that morning she had raised quite a lot of protests, in fact—and Rosaleen would see to it that she gave up the job that had made it possible for her to acquire a husband.

  But as yet Lestrode was not Rosaleen’s husband ... and as they were remaining for tea there were still a few hours during which she could pretend that the situation was otherwise, and that instead of being simply Lestrode’s chauffeuse she was something very much closer—something that entitled her to the warm regard of his friends.

  She lifted her eyes and regarded him secretly as he sat comfortably in a deep chair with an attractive flowery cover concealing its worn upholstery, and the fact that he was smoking a pipe seemed to separate him from Rosaleen, somehow. Rosaleen disliked pipes, and even cigars, intensely ... and if she were Lady Dillinger she would almost certainly object to anyone smoking them in her drawing-room.

  But Lady Dillinger had no objections to raise whatsoever, any more than she objected to her guest bringing his paid employee to lunch in her house. While the two men were surrounding themselves and talking—for Sir Adrian was a great cigarette-smoker—she put a hand beneath Frederica’s arm and guided her upstairs to her own room, where she talked to her for a time very much as woman to woman—an affectionate older woman and a younger woman—and it did occur to Frederica that there was something rather effusive in the other’s attitude, and every time she looked at her she was smiling. She was smiling when she showed her her jewellery and talked to her about her own life and her marriage ... the long and happy years she had spent with Sir Adrian, whom she obviously still adored. Marriage seemed to be a favourite subject of hers, and she seemed very anxious to find out whether Frederica hoped to be married in a church when the day came—preferably the tiny Norman local church. Frederica was quite certain she would be miles away when, and if, she ever married, and she was unable to give Lady Dillinger quite the amount of satisfaction and assurance she obviously required and expected, and when the two women went downstairs, again to join the men the hostess was looking just a little bit puzzled.