Marry a Stranger
Page 18
Because a kind of confusion suddenly overcame her she poured herself a cup of tea, and sipped it. And when she had finished he took it from her and set it down on the tray.
“Stacey, why did you ring off the other night when I telephoned you?”
She stared down at the sheet, and crumpled it with her fingers.
“Couldn’t you think why?” she asked, in a voice scarcely above a whisper.
“I can think now,” he told her, and his voice was low, and deep. “Ever since last night, when your eyes looked up at me and you said my name as if it meant everything to you that I had come at last—and it was nothing to do with the fact that I had got you out of that ghastly house alive!—and again this morning, just now, when I came in, and you looked at me...”
She looked at him again, finding unexpected courage to do so.
“Stacey!” he exclaimed. “Stacey! Were you very disappointed because I stayed in London, and rang you from London on Christmas Eve?”
“I wasn’t disappointed,” she answered simply. “I thought I should die of misery!”
He took her in his arms, and held her with her head cradled gently up against his shoulder, and with one hand he stroked her soft cheek. The hand shook a little, because but for the fact that she had recently survived a tremendous shock, and the scars of her experience were on her arm and not healed yet, he would have crushed her up against him, and she would have learned from the fierceness of his hold how desperately, and how often, he had longed to do just that in the days when they seemed like polite strangers to one another.
“My darling,” he exclaimed, his lips buried in her hair, “if you only knew what terrific strength of mind it took to stay away from you all those weeks! You see, you didn’t make it clear to me about that fellow Hatherleigh—you didn’t even deny it when I more or less accused you of being in love with him!”
“But I was never in love with him,” she told him, clinging to him. “And he was never in love with me! He only came to tell me that he was going to be married, and I would have told you, only—”
“Only what?”
“You didn’t really give me much chance, and—and I thought you were in love with Vera Hunt!”
“I made use of her,” he admitted shamelessly. “I made use of her because I thought you might become jealous, and in any case she knew it was you I adored—and I do adore you, Stacey!” He groaned hollowly. “What a lot of time we’ve wasted, and it seems to me that the most sensible thing I could have done would have been to seize you in my arms and drag you off somewhere where I could marry you that first day when you came into my consulting room! Because I honestly could think of little else but you from that moment.”
She looked up at him wonderingly.
“You mean that?” she whispered.
“Of course I mean it,” he answered. Suddenly his lips came near to hers, and she turned them up to him willingly. The kiss lasted a long time, and it was incredibly sweet.
“Martin,” she whispered, at the end of it. “Oh, Martin, I love you!—and I’ve loved you from the very beginning, too!”
Later, she asked him about Fountains, and he had to admit that there was little enough left of it. Most of her possessions had gone up in smoke, too, but those could be replaced.
“And we’ll have another house, just as soon as we can get one, near to London—and, in the meantime, we’ll live in the flat. Will you hate living in the flat, in London, with me, Stacey?”
Her eyes reproached him.
“Hate it? Oh, Martin, you know I—” Her voice shook a little, and she could not go on.
His eyes regarded her with a sudden look of infinite tenderness.
“Well, I know you love the country, and as soon as we can we’ll have a country house. But I don’t honestly feel particularly upset about Fountains. Jane is the one who’ll mourn its passing, but no doubt we can find a niche for her. To me it was not a happy house—I was never happy in it, anyway. My first wife”—he paused—“Stacey, you’ve got to know that I was never deeply in love with my first wife, and I don’t think she was ever in love with me. She—”
“You don’t have to tell me,” she said, anxious to spare him. “Miss Fountain told me a lot—and I heard the rest from Vera. But, in any case, her end was so tragic that—that I think it will be best if we say nothing more about her.”
“I think you’re right,” he said sombrely. He stared at her for a moment, and then a thought occurred to him. “And to think that I might have lost you, too, last night!” He pressed her head down into his neck. “Stacey, I couldn’t have borne that!”
And then a lighter mood possessed him, and he put his fingers under her chin and lifted it, and smiled at her.
“And now I’d better start remembering that you’re an invalid, and that arm of yours requires dressing. But it’s not nearly such a bad burn as it might have been.” He kissed her, lingeringly. “In a few days we’ll go to an hotel, and then—and then, my darling, we'll begin to think about our honeymoon, shall we?”
THE END