Greek Wedding
Page 35
Peter managed a sneer. ‘And I take it I am to languish in prison? A shade embarrassing for you, surely, my Lord Duke?’
‘That’s just what I thought,’ said Brett. ‘So I am hoping to persuade Alex here to take you away with him. ‘I,’ he emphasised the pronoun—‘shall arrange to have an annuity paid to you through him. While you live with him, it continues. Agreed, Alex?’
‘Agreed,’ said Alex. ‘Come, koumbaros, it’s time we were going. As for the money’—he smiled his heart-stirring smile for the last time—‘I trust you implicitly, milord.’
‘You can,’ said Brett.
They were gone. Phyllida, leaning against the rail, watched their boat pull away towards the Philip and tried not to cry too obviously. ‘Don’t.’ Brett’s comforting arm went round her. ‘You did your best by him. Now, I really hope, he’s ready to learn a little sense.’
‘Oh, do you think so?’ She smiled up at him, shakily.
‘Yes. There’s nothing like making a real fool of oneself. I should know. Lord, I wonder you didn’t take that passage on the packet after one glimpse of my Helena.’
Her smile broadened. ‘Depressed you, did she? Brett, how soon can we leave here?’
‘Just as soon as we’ve done our business with Biddock. You’ll let me handle it for you?’
‘Gladly. If he will.’
Now his smile was a little grim. ‘Of course he will. There’s something, I think, that hasn’t occurred to you, my love. I’m afraid when you married me you made me master of your fortune. I’m ashamed not to have pointed it out at the time, but there were more important things to think of. Will you mind very much?’
‘Mind? You mean the whole burden is yours now?’
‘If you want to put it that way, and as soon as Biddock accepts the fact of our marriage, yes.’ Could he really be looking at her nervously?
‘Delicious!’ she said. ‘You’ll make me an allowance—a paltry one, of course, and I’ll run up bills, and you’ll scold me. Do you realise, Brett, that I’ve been managing money since I was seventeen? Oh what a plague I’m going to be to you.’
‘Aren’t you just! But I shall have my redress. I shall shut you up, love, in a turret at Sarum Hall and feed you on bread and water until you behave yourself.’
‘Oh well.’ Cheerfully. ‘After some of the things we’ve eaten, you and I, bread and water will be quite a treat. But tell me, love, is there really a Sarum Hall?’
‘Well, of course. A Gothic ruin in the middle of Salisbury Plain so inconvenient that none of my relatives has lived there for years. And no money to keep it up. My cousin the Duke left nothing but debts, Biddock tells me. And my uncle is dead, so Helena is a rich woman.’
‘Good,’ said Phyllida. ‘Then we don’t need to trouble ourselves about her. I should think, shouldn’t you, that with what remains of my fortune we might make ourselves quite a snug corner in your Gothic ruin? If you approve, of course. Oh, won’t Aunt Cassandra be pleased?’
‘And you, love?’
‘Dear Brett, if I can be happy with you in an Egyptian dungeon, don’t you think I’ll manage in a Gothic ruin? Oh, look, there’s Price!’ She held out her hands warmly as Price approached, closely followed by Cassandra, with Jenny and her lieutenant (‘Now where the deuce did he spring from?’ said Brett beside her). ‘Price,’ said Phyllida, ‘I am so delighted to see you. You can see how I’ve missed you.’ An expressive hand drew his attention to her unusual garb.
‘Thank you, Your Grace.’ He was holding a bouquet of orange blossom. ‘They’re from us all, Your Grace. To wish you both as happy as we know you’ll be.’
‘Oh, thank you.’ She took the fragrant bouquet, her eyes suddenly full of tears. ‘But where in the world did you find them, so late in the season?’
He smiled suddenly. ‘Perhaps best not to ask, miss—I beg your pardon, Your Grace.’
She sighed, ‘I shall never get used to it.’ And then, eagerly, ‘Price, my things?’
‘I’ve taken the liberty of laying out a dress in your cabin. I’ve moved everything back there, now Mr. Vannick’s gone. That’s why I wasn’t here to greet you sooner.’ He looked, she thought, for once in his life, a little conscious, and she understood why when she hurried down to the cabin she had shared, for so long, with Cassandra, and found her own things and Brett’s neatly arranged there, and her best white muslin, exquisitely pressed, ready on the bed.
When she returned to the deck, Brett had vanished. ‘He’s gone to see old Biddock,’ Jenny explained. ‘To arrange your second wedding, I expect. Just think of having two!’ And then, as a logical connection. ‘May I present Lieutenant Chalmers of the Redstart.’
* * *
Brett did not return till supper time. ‘All’s fixed,’ he said. ‘Have you decided what you’re to wear at your second wedding, love?’
‘Good God, no. I never thought.’
‘There’s a Duchess for you,’ he said lovingly. ‘What a fortunate thing someone in our family has some sense. We don’t want to shock the natives by any lack of ceremony, do we? So I have arranged for the best dressmaker on the island to visit you first thing tomorrow with several miles of Valenciennes and all the seamstresses she can find. I expect, among you, you can produce something that won’t actually shame me by three o’clock in the afternoon?’
‘I expect so,’ she said meekly. ‘But, Brett!’
‘Yes, love?’
‘Price has put all your things in my cabin.’
He looked down at her, a smile in his eyes. ‘You’re sure you don’t mean that Price has put all your things in my cabin?’
‘Well,’ she coloured. ‘You could put it that way. But the thing is…’ She took a deep breath. ‘We’re being married tomorrow. So—what about tonight?’
‘What do you think?’ he said.
A Note on the Author
Jane Aiken Hodge was born in Massachusetts to Pulitzer prize-winning poet, Conrad Aiken, and his first wife, writer Jessie McDonald. Hodge was 3 years old when her family moved to Great Britain, settling in Rye, East Sussex, where her younger sister, Joan, who would become a novelist and a children's writer, was born.
From 1935, Jane Hodge read English at Somerville College, Oxford University, and in 1938 she took a second degree in English at Radcliffe College in Massachusetts. She was a civil servant, and also worked for Time magazine, before returning to the UK in 1947. Her works of fiction include historical novels and contemporary detective novels. In 1972 she renounced her United States citizenship and became a British subject.
Discover books by Jane Aiken Hodge published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/JaneAikenHodge
A Death in Two Parts
Greek Wedding
Leading Lady
Polonaise
Rebel Heiress
Strangers in Company
Wide Is the Water
Last Act
Red Sky at Night Lovers’ Delight
The Winding Stair
Watch the Wall, My Darling
Whispering
For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been
removed from this book. The text has not been changed, and may still contain
references to missing images.
This electronic edition published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square,
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First published in Great Britain in 1970 by Hodder and Stoughton Limited
Copyright © 1970 Jane Aiken Hodge
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eISBN: 9781448213993
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