“I’d love to have dinner with you, Stephen,” she got out in a little rush.
He turned away. The smile had faded from his face, and his manner was once more brisk.
“All right. I’ll telephone you some time tomorrow and fix a date. Of course I’ll drive you home afterwards. As a matter of fact, it might be a good plan if we had dinner at some country inn, not far from Grangewood. That would save you travelling up to town.”
“But I have the car,” she said quickly, “and my aunt’s permission to use it whenever I want to do so.” He glanced at her so bleakly that she felt rebuffed. Of course, she thought afterwards, he would not want to take her to any of his favourite London haunts where the image of Veronica would rise up between them and render the evening intolerable from his point of view.
As she had accepted his invitation—and probably he was regretting his impulsiveness already, since he looked so bleak—he would almost certainly take her to somewhere that was entirely new to them both, where Veronica would not sit at the table and torment him with memories of a truly memorable evening.
He telephoned the following morning, somewhat to her surprise—for she had been quite prepared for him to forget his impulse of kindliness, and count upon her forgetting it, also—and arranged to call for her at eight o’clock.
She spent the rest of the day frantically trying to make up her mind which of the limited number of suitable dresses in her wardrobe would recompense him in some small degree for taking her out to dinner. And in the end she decided that a cloudy black chiffon which she had bought herself, and which had not been handed down to her by Veronica, would be ideal for the occasion—since there was no point in attempting to compete with her cousin, and he would probably hardly notice her in any case. And with it she wore a bright flamingo-pink stole, with some sequins attached, which her Aunt Heloise had given her for a birthday present.
When Stephen arrived she was waiting nervously in the hall. After taking the dogs for a walk she had had a leisurely bath, and then taken an even longer time over her dressing, although she was not at all satisfied with the result when Stephen’s long black car came creeping up the drive. She had touched the lobes of her ears and the insides of her wrists with perfume, and she had had one dreadful moment when she remembered that the bottle had once graced Veronica’s dressing-table, and had only been handed over to her because it was nearly empty.
What if Stephen should be upset when a faint wave of it was carried to his nostrils, and it called up visions of Veronica...?
But Stephen didn’t look as if he were in the mood to be either upset or moved to appreciation when she opened the front door to him. His face might have been carved out of lightly tanned rock, it was so devoid of expression, and his blue eyes were hard and impenetrable.
“Ready?” he said, although it was very obvious she was ready and waiting, and he handed her into the car and slipped back into the driving seat. Then they were moving, with that effortless movement she so appreciated—although it was very infrequently she had been permitted a drive in the fashionable doctor’s car—away down the drive, with a young moon climbing into the sky above them, and a soft spring wind stirring the branches of the still partly bare trees on either hand.
The road wound like a ribbon between darkling woods and meadows when they emerged from the drive gates, and Stephen turned left and announced that he had booked a table at the Crown, in Hardingbridge, and he thought they would make it in time for a not-too-late evening meal.
Hardingbridge was nearly twenty miles away, but at the rate the car travelled they had arrived at the Crown, and were being shown to their table, before Penny had properly recovered from having her breath partially taken away when the speedometer touched eighty.
Stephen could certainly drive, and she was quite certain there were moments when they were actually travelling at a hundred miles an hour. Yet when they arrived at the Crown he looked cool and bored as if they had only just started out.
Penny never afterwards clearly remembered how they got through the early part of that evening. She had had very few men friends in her life, and she had never been out to dine—a deux—with anyone who looked like Stephen. He was wearing a dinner jacket that was so beautifully tailored that she could hardly take her eyes off it, and tucked in at the end of one of his sleeves was an unorthodox crimson silk handkerchief. Whenever she found her eyes attracted by the brilliance of the handkerchief she also took note of his hands, slender and perfectly shaped ... the hands of a born surgeon.
She refused an aperitif, but he insisted that she sip a light wine with the meal. The dining-room of the ancient hostelry was no longer as crowded as it had been earlier in the evening, and skilfully arranged lighting drew attention to the heavy oak beams and the panelling. At each end of the room a log fire blazed on a truly baronial hearth, and the atmosphere was warm and pleasant with the scent of good food and after dinner cigars.
Penny said how much she loved old houses, and almost instantly she would have bitten out her tongue if she could. For the house where Veronica and Stephen were to have lived—to which they would have returned after their honeymoon in Italy—was quite a gem of an old house, which Stephen had bought and had restored and furnished at great cost. Penny had never seen it, but she knew it was somewhere quite close to the River Thames, within easy reach of London, and it was called Old Timbers.
As she glanced uneasily at Stephen she wondered what he was going to do with it, and whether he would decide to live in it alone. And then she saw him smile at her a little strangely, as if he was not unaware of her confusion, and forgave her for reminding him so poignantly of all that he had lost.
“Tell me about yourself, Penny,” he invited. “Just what do you propose to do with your life? Or haven’t you any particular plans? You’re young, so it doesn’t really matter.”
“I’m twenty-four,” she reminded him.
“True.” His voice was sober, a trifle mocking. “A great age, but as I told you before you don’t look it. Therefore you can take your time over making up your mind what you would most like to do with all the years that stretch ahead.”
Penny’s brown eyes widened a trifle, as if she was making an effort to look down the vista of the years, but was not particularly hopeful of seeing anything about which she could grow enthusiastic.
“I expect I shall go on living with Aunt Heloise,” she said, quietly. “She has been very good to me all my life, and I feel I owe her something.”
“So far as my powers of observation have gleaned information for me, and I have very little doubt that they can be relied upon, you have made yourself very useful to your Aunt Heloise, so I wouldn’t get too accustomed to the idea that you owe her all that much,” he cautioned, refilling his own wine glass, although hers was still practically untouched. “Fair’s fair, my dear Penny, and you have your own life to live. You mustn’t be a doormat all your days.”
“I’m not a doormat,” she protested swiftly, disturbed because his eyes were so very blue, and they seemed full of mockery tonight. “I was an orphan when my aunt took me to live with her, and naturally I’m grateful for all that she’s done for me.”
“I’m sure you are,” he murmured. The mockery leapt and danced in his eyes, and then turned to irony. “And Veronica, your lovely cousin...? Was she always very good to you? Or were you the humble little cousin, worshipping at her shrine, to whom she condescended sometimes?” He glanced at the simplicity of her black dress. “The odd frock occasionally, the bottle of perfume?”
So he had recognized the perfume!
She turned faintly pink, wishing she had stuck to toilet water.
“Veronica was often very generous, too,” she said quietly and truthfully.
He glanced distastefully at a dish of trout when it was presented, although he encouraged Penny to work up an appetite.
“You’re too thin,” he said critically, his blue glance running once more over her black slender shape, but w
ithout even a flickering of admiration. “Too thin and too large-eyed.” Then he smiled at her gently. “But your hair is like sunshine ... I’ll grant you that!”
He lighted a cigarette, and then crushed it out in an ash-tray. She realized that he was not behaving normally, and although nearly a fortnight had elapsed since the breaking off of his engagement he was still seething with bitterness, and repressing a kind of deathly misery. Her heart twisted with pity for him, and she wondered whether Veronica quite realized what she had done.
How badly she had used this man!
“So you haven’t any ambition, and you’re not planning to get married,” he remarked, leaning a little towards her across the table. “Well, I think that’s very sensible of you, because you’re the type of girl who might get hurt. You’re young and ingenuous, and you’re also loyal ... loyal to your aunt and your cousin, which is commendable if nothing else.” The bitterness in his voice made her wince. “Loyalty doesn’t get you very far, and centering all your hopes on one person is bad. Although I’ve never really liked your aunt—she’s a stupid woman, who brought up her daughter in such a stupid fashion that she never acquired a set of values, and has no capacity at all for sustained affection—I’d rather you stayed with her all your life than become involved with a man who would one day open your eyes too wide for you, and rob you of that unawakened look.”
Penny stared at her plate. How did he know she was unawakened? How could he be sure of that?
“And unless you’re absolutely craving for experience—”
“I’m not!”
“Then stay as you are, little one. Not Penny Plain, but Penny Wise!”
She continued to keep her eyes lowered to her plate. “Is it such a good thing always to play for safety?”
“Perhaps not,” he conceded. “But for you ...yes! I wouldn’t want you to be hurt, Penny, you’re such a nice little thing, such a kind-hearted little thing.” His voice grew softer, warmer. “I haven’t forgotten how upset you were that day I broke the news to you that there wasn’t going to be a wedding after all. I remember that you clung on to my arm, and you saw quite clearly that I was practically stunned ... I was,” he admitted grimly. “But it passed!”
“Did it?” she said, and her gentle tone was sceptical. “You don’t think you’re still a bit ... well, a bit stunned, perhaps?”
“Perhaps,” he agreed. “But when I come to I’m going to be intensely relieved because I’ve had such a lucky escape. I came close to marrying a woman who would have let me down sooner or later, because although she’s lovely to look at that’s the way she’s made.” He stretched a hand across the table and touched her fingers lightly. “Penny, I’ve got an idea. Is there anything you want from life more than security?”
She stared at him.
“You value security, don’t you? That’s why you cling on to your aunt, and why you won’t cut loose and launch out for yourself ... why you prefer changing library books and exercising poodles to doing something exciting like earning your living in the great big world, and renting a bed-sitter like other girls.”
“I’m not trained to earn my living,” she attempted to interrupt him, but he squeezed her fingers.
“You could have been trained. Even your Aunt Heloise wouldn’t have stood in your way. But you’re timorous by nature, and you need roots ... and you need to cling! That’s why security is all-important to you.”
She pushed aside the vanilla ice with which she had been toying and sat up straight and stared at him—stared into his dark blue, magnetic eyes. All at once she paled. She had the feeling that something momentous was coming.
“I said just now that I’ve got an idea, Penny Wise,” he said distinctly. “It’s this. Marry me and ensure security for yourself for life ... I promise you that you’ll always be secure if you’ll become my wife in place of Veronica. I’ll make no demands on you, but I’ll keep you safe ... I think I’d enjoy keeping you safe!”
Penny heard herself give a gasp, but no words would pass her lips.
Stephen smiled in a quite extraordinary fashion, his blue eyes sparkled, and his voice challenged her.
“Say ‘yes’ before I change my mind, Penny! Say ‘yes’ for your own sake!”
CHAPTER III
Aunt Heloise stared at the telegram open in her hand, and the wording of it refused to make sense.
“Married to Stephen this morning. Hope you approve. Penny.”
Mrs. Wilmott sat down blindly on one of the hard white seats on the terrace. At the table in front of her her writing-pad was spread out, and her morning’s mail. She had been about to begin a letter to her niece at Grangewood, instructing her to collect some important items that had been left over at the cleaners, and asking her to make certain that the dogs had their vitamin tablets. She had actually removed her pen from her handbag, deciding that the look of Hotel Splendide on the hotel notepaper—particularly when she knew that she couldn’t really afford Hotel Splendide prices—was impressive, if nothing else, when the telegram had been handed over to her by a trim little page with shining buttons.
Down on the beach Veronica was acquiring a delectable golden tan with the aid of a good-looking American young man who was anointing her shoulders with protective oil. Veronica was obviously enjoying the process, and she was enjoying everything about the South of France—the air, the sunshine, the relaxed atmosphere, the company (particularly, Mrs. Wilmott was not too happy to observe, the company! Which meant the young men who danced with her every night, and lounged with her on the beach, including the young American who might, or might not, have a wealthy father back home in the United States).
Mrs. Wilmott was so afraid that her daughter—experiencing a natural reaction after escaping the danger of marrying a man she had discovered a little late she did not love—might become involved even more disastrously while she was still revelling in her freedom. And by disastrously Mrs. Wilmott meant where there was little or no security for such a delicately reared girl.
Veronica saw her mother looking dazed on the terrace, and she picked up her wrap and beach bag and told the young American that she thought they ought to be returning to the hotel for something rather more stimulating than a bottle of coca-cola, with a straw stuck in the bottle, before lunch.
“Just as you say, honey,” the American agreed, and they approached the foot of the terrace steps with him carrying all her impedimenta, including the bottle of sun-tan oil.
Mrs. Wilmott held out the telegram.
“Read it,” she said faintly. “I’ve a feeling that the sun’s too hot, and perhaps I’ve had a little too much of it.”
Veronica took the telegram and read it while her escort vanished discreetly on the pretext of running to earth a waiter. Mrs. Wilmott waited for her daughter’s reaction to such an astonishing piece of news.
“Well?” she said, as Veronica stood with her lovely dark head bent, her scarlet sun-suit a gay blob of color on the terrace. She took off her dark glasses and re-read the telegram without them.
“Well, well!” she echoed her mother. “Well, well!”
“Darling, don’t be irritating,” Mrs. Wilmott begged. “This is an extraordinary piece of news, and you must feel very strongly about it. I’ll confess, I wouldn’t have believed it of Stephen ... and, quite truthfully, I don’t believe it now! It’s a hoax. Some mischievous person’s idea of a joke.”
“I shouldn’t think so,” Veronica returned, dropping into a comfortable chaise-longue and clasping her hands behind her head. She stared without emotion up into the blue, blue depths of the sky. “It’s happened before, you know ... marriage on the rebound after a bitter disappointment. And as Penny’s the very last person Stephen would contemplate marrying if he wasn’t half out of his head with misery, she’s the most likely one he would turn to in his present state of mind. Poor Stephen!” she added with belated sympathy, and stuck a cigarette in the end of a long ivory holder and lighted it with a gold lighter ... which, incidental
ly, Stephen had once given her.
Her mother clicked her tongue in impatience.
“And you’re not even upset?” she demanded, with amazement. “You don’t mind that a man who professed to adore you could be so disloyal—forget you so soon!—and marry the girl who was entrusted with the task of returning all your wedding presents before the first of the acknowledgements could even begin to come in? You take my breath away! I find it quite impossible to understand you, Veronica!”
Veronica turned her head towards her a little wearily. “Don’t try and work yourself up into a state of furious indignation, darling,” she begged. “You know very well that I was never the least bit in love with Stephen—well, perhaps a little, at one time!—and that it was almost entirely your own idea that I should marry him because he’s comfortably off, and you liked the idea of his being an important London surgeon. You were never very much concerned about whether or not I even liked Stephen ... so don’t go to the opposite extreme now and try and wish on me a broken heart!”
“Well—really!” Mrs. Wilmott spluttered.
Veronica directed at her a level look, tinctured very, very slightly with dislike and disapproval and a strong hint of criticism.
“As far as I’m concerned I say good luck, Stephen ... and good luck, Penny! She’ll probably need it, anyway.” she added thoughtfully. “And at least you can comfort yourself with the thought that we now have Stephen in the family! He didn’t marry me, but he has married your niece. That’s really quite extraordinary if you stop to think about it.”
Mrs. Wilmott exploded with a violence that actually surprised her daughter. The latter had had everything made easy for her these last few weeks, and it was the devoted mother who had borne the brunt of all the awkwardness and the planning to get away from it all. She had had to cancel arrangements, make things sound feasible to intimate friends, spend money like water after having spent too much already on all the splendid trimmings for a first-class wedding, and now with nothing but stilted letters from her bank manager likely to reach her, and a whole pile of bills still to be met, Veronica turned round on her and accused her of engineering the marriage that had not come off.
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