A Paper Marriage

by Jessica Steele

  He came over to her in the general standing around afterwards, though, and asked how she was. `Fine,' she answered, and he was still next to her when her father walked over to them.

  The two men shook hands. 'You'll come back to the house?' Wilmot Pearson asked Jonah.

  To Lydie's surprise Jonah accepted. He was a busy man and Thursday was a work day. `Perhaps I could see you at some convenient time after today?' Jonah suggested to him, and Lydie started to get all churned up inside. Plainly Jonah had put his thinking cap on and had come up with something.

  `No disrespect to Miss Gough, but today would suit quite well,' her father replied, a further en dorsement, if Lydie didn't know it, that her dear father was likely to have heart failure if he had to wait much longer to have a talk with Jonah.

  `Whenever you say, Wilmot,' Jonah agreed.

  `Until later,' her father said, and went on to talk to family members who, until Oliver's wedding not two weeks ago, he had not seen for some while.

  `You've thought of something?' Lydie asked Jonah the moment her father was out of earshot.

  `All in good time,' Jonah murmured, and Lydie knew at once she was going to get nothing more out of him.

  To show her disgust she walked over to Muriel Butler, whom she just then noticed, and thanked her for attending.

  `Such a sad day,' Muriel answered, and they chatted for a few minutes, then, deciding that Jonah couldn't leave her not knowing, Lydie went back to him. By then, though, he had been annexed by her beautiful cousin Kitty.

  `I was just telling Jonah how I saw him at Oliver's wedding but you'd whisked him off somewhere before we could be introduced.'

  Lydie had always envied her cousin her selfassured air, and wished some of it had brushed on to her. `You've introduced yourself now, I hope?' She smiled, her manners holding up despite the green-eyed spears that were prodding. Jonah did not look to be at all put out that the beautiful, self-assured Kitty was batting her big brown eyes at him.

  At that moment, however, a general move was made to where everyone had parked their cars. The cortege had left from Alice Gough's home, but the family, in the absence of her having close friends, were assembling back at Beamhurst Court. No matter what, on their uppers though they might be, Hilary Pearson was going to have things done properly.

  `Want to drive back with me, Lydie?' Jonah asked as Kitty trotted off.

  Lydie had come in the lead car with her parents, but it would suit her quite well to drive back to Beamhurst Court with Jonah. `I'll just tell my father,' she accepted, but discovered that she did not have to tell her father anything. Somehow, and she rather thought she had no one to blame but herself, her parents seemed to believe that she and Jonah had something 'going'. Her father must have assumed she would be driving back with Jonah anyway, because he waved to them and turned and, with a hand on her mother's elbow, escorted his wife down the church path.

  Much good did it do Lydie to drive with Jonah. `What are you going to say to my father?' she asked as soon as they were in his car and moving.

  `For the moment,' he replied carefully, `that must be between your father and me.'

  `Don't be mean!' she erupted. `I've as much right...'

  `Stamping your foot, Lydie?' Jonah mocked. But, perhaps bearing in mind that they had just come from her beloved aunt's funeral, `I don't want you to be more upset-I just feel I have to speak to your father first.'

  Not be more upset! Lydie fumed. `You won't distress him? If I...'

  `I hope not to distress him,' Jonah answeredand with that she had to be content.

  But she watched. At her home, with her relatives assembled in the drawing room, Lydie watched. She chatted and looked after the more mature members of the family group, but the whole time she knew where Jonah was and where her father was.

  She was talking to her mother's cousin when she saw her father look across to Jonah. Kitty had annexed him again but, whatever unspoken signal had passed between her father and Jonah, when a minute later her father left the drawing room she saw Jonah skilfully excuse himself from Kitty and, casually, he strolled from the drawing room too. She knew he would meet her father and they would go to his study.

  They were gone for a half-hour. She knew because she had spent that half-hour in either looking to the drawing room door, watching for them to come back, or looking at her watch. What on earth were they talking about all this while?

  With her insides churning, her heart seemed to somersault when, together, the two men dearest in the world to her came and stood in the drawing room doorway. She tried to read something, anything from their faces. Jonah's expression was telling her nothing. Her glance went quickly to her father. His expression was telling her little more other than that whatever proposition Jonah had put to him it had not depressed him. He looked more thoughtful than anything-though certainly not down. She started to hope.

  Lydie was by then on the other side of the room from where she had been half an hour ago. She went to move across the room, but as she did so, without looking at her but just as if he had known from where he stood just exactly where she was, Jonah moved forward and blocked her way.

  She halted, looked up, her glance moving worriedly from him to her father. She opened her mouth, but Jonah, taking a restraining hold of her arm spoke first. `Let's go for a stroll, Lydie,' he said quietly.

  She stared at him, her lovely green eyes still trying to read something in his expression. He was telling her nothing. She looked from him, looked around the room. Everyone seemed comfortable; no one was sitting alone staring into space.

  `Yes,' she murmured, and was more churned up than ever. The only reason Jonah could be suggesting a stroll was so that he could tell her what she wanted to know: what the proposition was that he had put to her father.

  They left the house and walked up the long drive. They went out through the gates. Jonah seemed to be more deep in thought than ready to let her know of his discussion-his half-hour discussion-with her parent in the study. She did not want to be again accused of `stamping her foot' and, having learned that she was going to get nothing out of Jonah until he was good and ready, with more patience than he could know, she waited.

  They were walking her favourite walk, and she waited until, having strolled down a picturesque lane, the air scented with honeysuckle, they left the lane and turned to where a five-barred gate led into a meadow. It was then that Lydie could wait no longer. She stopped walking; Jonah halted too.

  `So?' she asked-a shade belligerently, she had to admit-and realised that the stresses of more than one kind that day were getting to her. `What have you got to tell me?'

  His reply was not at all what she had been expecting. And was in fact totally staggering when, turning to face her, he looked down into her eyes, and, after a moment, very clearly said, `I've decided-it's time I married.'

  Lydie wasn't sure her jaw did not drop. `Butyou don't want to marry,' she argued, feeling sick inside. But, rapidly getting herself together-this would never do-she forced a smile. `Let me congratulate you, Jonah.' He was going to marry Freya, that lovely blonde creature! Though hadn't he said something about not seeing the blonde again after that theatre date?

  `Thank you,' he accepted.

  `You've obviously known the lady in question some while?' she fished.

  `You could say that,' he replied, adding, when Lydie knew that it was nothing whatsoever to do with her, `I hope you approve of my choice.'

  She didn't; she wouldn't. In fact just then she was ready to stick pins in his choice! Somehow, though, when what she wanted to do was to run and hide herself away to get over this awful blow, Lydie managed to keep control; even her father was for the moment forgotten as she fought to mask that she was falling apart. `Do I know her?' she asked casually. She was going to hate him if it was Freya.

  Lydie had felt staggered before. But his answer this time was to shake her to her very foundations, when, looking nowhere but at her, `You,' Jonah replied succinctly, `are her.'r />
  Lydie stared at him, disbelieving her ears. Then her jaw very definitely did drop open-it almost hit the ground. `Me!' she gasped, and, her eyes saucer wide, she just looked at him. `Are you serious?"

  'I wouldn't joke about something like this.'

  `Y-you're saying you want to-marry me?' Was that squeaky voice hers?

  'That's my plan,' he confirmed, set, determined, everything about him brooking no refusal.

  Well, she'd soon see about that! Just because he had now decided it was time he married, he thought he'd have a pot-shot at her-well, could he think again! 'I'm not marrying you!' she told him in no uncertain fashion. Love him she might, but really!

  `Yes, you are,' he countered, not a bit abashed.

  `Give me one good reason why I should,' she challenged hostilely.

  `I can think of fifty-five thousand reasons,' he returned coolly-and on that instant her hostility immediately evaporated.

  A soft gasp of `Oh!' escaped her as thoughts of her father rocketed in. 'You've...' Her voice failed her. `This isn't the proposition you put to my father. It can't be.' It wasn't making sense. `What sort of proposition would that be? To marry...' She ran out of steam; her brain seemed to have seized up.

  Jonah came in to help her out. `Let's put it this way. We both know that your father is a proud man, an honourable man. Now, you tell me-who would he rather owe money to? An acquaintance or a member-albeit a son-in-law-of his family? An outsider-or an insider?'

  Lydie looked from him. She needed space, some time to think. Jonah had out of the blue just hit her with this notion that they marry to make him a member of her family, an insider, and thereby make that money all within the family.

  `The debt is mine, not my father's,' was the poor best she could come up with.

  `That's not the way he sees it,' Jonah replied. `Nor will you be able to convince him any other way.'

  Lydie knew that he was right, but, `I can't marry you,' she insisted.

  `Your father's peace of mind isn't worth it?"

  'Oh, don't, Jonah!' she cried. `Of course it is,' she said fretfully.

  Jonah smiled kindly. `I wish I could give you time to think about it, Lydie, but your father's expecting us to go back with happy smiles.'

  `You've told him you were going to ask me?' She stared at him open-mouthed.

  `He has a problem. He has thought and thought and cannot come up with a solution. To my mind this is the only solution for your father. For the moment we leave it that he owes a close family member a sum of money which, in time, I hope he will learn to live with. For my part I have no interest in having that money repaid.'

  `But you don't want to be married. You said as much.'

  `Can't a man change his mind?'

  She supposed he could. 'But-why me?"

  'Why not you? Ignoring the fact, for the moment, that by you marrying me I'm hoping to relieve the terrible stress and strain of a man I hold in the very highest regard, for myself I'd be getting a most beautiful wife. And, from what I've witnessed in today's sad circumstances alone, I shall also have myself a most admirable hostess.'

  Some of her shock was starting to fade, but she still felt she needed time-time, space to think. She loved him, and now that the idea was settling in her head a little she could think of nothing she would rather do than marry him. But that did not make it right.

  And from her father's viewpoint, yes, perhaps he would feel better able to live with owing that money to someone whom she did not doubt he would be pleased to look on as a son. But from her viewpoint-that still did not make it...

  `Penny for them?' Jonah asked, and she realised she had been silent a long time and that he would not mind being let into her thoughts.

  `How did my father take it? I mean, I can't see him simply saying "Oh, yes" when you mentioned you'd marry me to make him feel more comfortable about his debt.'

  `I hope I wasn't that crude,' Jonah replied, going on, `From what you've told me you have already given your father the impression that we're keen on each other. I let him think we had grown to love each other, and that I was asking his blessing that I should marry you.'

  `Thank you for that,' Lydie said without thinking-she would rather her father thought she was marrying for love in preference to have him thinking she was marrying to make him feel better. Not that he would have stood for that anyway.

  `Is that a yes?' Jonah asked quietly.

  `No,' she said quickly, but could see how, from her thanking him for letting her father believe it would be a love match, Jonah would think she had agreed. `That is,' she qualified, `you've suddenly, in the space of three weeks, gone from running like blazes from the thought of marriage to deciding now that to marry would quite suit you? How do I know that you won't, three weeks into any marriage, just as suddenly ask for a divorce?"

  'How can you talk of divorce when I've only just asked for your promise to marry me? Divorce,' he told her firmly, `is not an option.'

  Lydie still needed time, though could quite well see that if Jonah had told her father he was about to propose to her then her father, having noticed their absence, was going to think she had turned Jonah down should they return with nothing to announce. Which in turn would send him tumbling straight down into a pit of stress and depression again.

  `Would it-um-this marriage-would it be a n-name only affair?' she asked, embarrassed, but needing to have a few answers now.

  'I'm family-minded,' Jonah replied. 'I'm afraid we'd have to do what we have to do to produce a few offspring.'

  Oh, heavens! `Um,' she mumbled, and, more to get herself over some hot-all-over moments than anything, abruptly asked, `What if-supposing-we find the money?' She was starting to feel confused. And no wonder! But remembering was it only last Friday?-the way he had aggressively taken exception at the thought of being cheated-'No one cheats on me-ever,' he had said-'Supposing you and I were engaged and, and we found we could pay back the money. I'd be cheating you to marry you then-and you wouldn't like that.'

  `You're wriggling, Lydie,' Jonah accused, plainly knowing as well as she that she and her father hadn't a hope in Hades of finding fifty-five thousand pounds and paying him back. `And you'd have to find it pretty quickly.'

  `I would?' She stared at him.

  He nodded. `Having decided it's time I married, I can't see any reason to wait.'

  Lydie looked at him helplessly. She guessed that was part and parcel of the man-decide upon something, decision made, expedite it. But this wasn't business, this was her future, his future, and while as more shock receded she knew that she could not think of anything she would rather do than be his wife, to see him most every day it still did not seem right.

  `You're sure you want to be married?' she questioned.

  `Totally sure.'

  `And I' m-"it"-?"

  'Don't sell yourself short, Lydie. You're a little bit gorgeous.'

  Her heart fluttered. `I'm trying to be serious here,' she told him sternly.

  `You think I'm not?"

  'What the alternative?' she asked. `From my father's point of view, I mean. What's the alternative if I don't marry you?'

  Jonah shrugged. `The money, as your father sees it, will still be his debt. When I spoke with him in his study a while ago, and acquainted him with my plans, I saw that spark of hope in him grow and grow the more we talked. I even felt as we left his study that there was a bit of a spring in his step that hadn't been there before,' Jonah added, then asked quite simply, `I've made my decision, Lydie, may I now hear yours?'

  She needed more time, only there wasn't more time. Her father would be watching for them to come back, would be searching their faces. Could she bear to see that ray of hope die from his eyes?

  Could she bear to see that hurt, that stress return to his eyes? As her father had said, he had thought and thought and could find no solution. He had great trust in Jonah and had said that if anyone could think up a way Jonah would be the one to do it. Well, he had, and, while it was true it mi
ght not be the proposition her father had hoped for, he would as the days went by, learn to live with the fact that his debt was not to a man he himself had once helped, but to his daughter's husband.

  Oh, grief. Husband-Jonah! Her legs threatened to give way at the thought. She turned and placed a seemingly casual hand on the top of the five-barred gate, gripping it hard. Then, decision made, she turned back to him.

  She looked up into his wonderful blue eyes and took a long steadying breath. `It seems a bit formal to shake hands on-um-my promise,' she began, `but I don't think I'm ready for k-kisses just yet.'