Bonds of Matrimony (5 page)

That time she couldn't even bring herself to say 'yes.'

She nodded her head and made a dash past him into the house, pretending that she had thought of something urgent to do upstairs in her room. It was all the more ridiculous, therefore, to hide behind the banisters and watch his departure. He couldn't have known she was there, because she and Betsy had experimented several times at hiding there in the past, but it was strange the way he smiled right up at her, looking right at the place where she was, just as if he did know and was amused by her fright.

As a matter of fact, she thought him decidedly good-looking as he went out the front door. She was conscious of the muscular sweep of his back and his shoulders as he replaced that terrible hat before going out into the sun. Heaven help her, but it wouldn't do if she were to start to find him handsome! But he did have a rather attractive, distinctly masculine quality, if one liked that sort of thing. It was that something that had made Betsy refer to him as being 'simply super', Hero supposed, and there was no doubt that Betsy knew about things like that. Had Betsy taken him out for one of her romantic interludes before she had decided to turn him over to Hero? It was hard to imagine Benedict submitting meekly to being used like that, but then where Betsy was concerned, men had submitted to very much more than that!

Perhaps it was the thought of having to compete with Betsy's cool good looks that gave Hero the idea that she would wear her mother's wedding dress to her own wedding. She forgot for the moment all she had had to say about the ceremony being a farce and that she would wear what she always wore for the occasion. All she remembered was Benedict asking her to wear white for him, and she found she was eager to oblige him. She did have in her wardrobe a white dress, but its severely tailored look would hardly have appealed to him. No, when it came to pleasing Benedict, the more frills and furbelows the better!

Her mother had made her wedding dress with her own hands, embroidering the veil with Greek love-knots, like so many links in a chain of eternity. Hero wondered briefly if it was suitable when she and Benedict were destined to part almost immediately, but she smothered down her doubts, thinking only of the way he would see her, dressed like an old-fashioned romantic dream, and that it would help to counteract his first impression of her, as adventuress and cheat.

By nine o'clock she was fully dressed and ready.

'Don't you dare sit down!' Betsy's mother threatened her. 'You'll crease your skirt, and I won't have it.' 'What am I to do?'

'Anything you like as long as you stand still and don't breathe. I'm determined you shall look as nice as your

parents would have wished. Your mother was a friend of

• /

mine —

'I know,' Hero said quickly. 'You've been so good to me this last year. I'll never be able to thank you sufficiently.'

'You do, my dear, by being a friend of Betsy. I'm worried about her. I wish she had some of your stability

- but there, it's no use wishing for the moon !'

Hero smiled wryly. Marrying a man she didn't know, and didn't love, just because he was British and could transfer to her that magic nationality, was not what she would have described as stable behaviour!

'If we're walking, perhaps Betsy and I could leave

early? I want to show them my dress in the book shop —'

'Hero, really !'

'May I?' Hero persisted.

Betsy's mother broke into good-natured laughter. 'If you must, dear. I'll tell Betsy to hurry up.'

The jacaranda was fully out as the two girls walked along Kenyatta Avenue, Hero carefully holding up her dress out of the dust. The sun glinted through the mauve blossom, lighting the purples, reds, and salmon pinks of the bougainvillea by the side of the road. It was the prettiest day imaginable; sparkling, not too hot, and with a champagne quality that the altitude often brought to the city.

'You've picked a lovely day to be married,' Betsy exclaimed.

'Only Benedict picked it,' Hero reminded her.

Betsy chuckled. 'You look quite resigned to your fate to me! Still, he is rather special, isn't he? You know, Hero, I'm beginning to think you're a lucky girl. I wish I had been the one who had had to marry him! He only

had to smile that devastating smile at me —'

'And thinking something beastly!' Hero observed.

'I like his beastly thoughts!' Betsy declared with a sigh. 'He's so — so masculine!'

'A masculine beast!' Hero concurred, missing her step.

'Well, I think he's madly attractive,' Betsy insisted. 'I'd just love to be in your shoes. I can't think why I ever turned him over to you! And you can't kid me that you're not a bit keen yourself, Hero Kaufman, or you never would have worn your mother's dress to be married in!'

Hero was saved from having to decide if there was any justice in this accusation by a group of people coming along the pavement towards them. The young men whistled and cheered, and the girls giggled, making much of Hero's unexpected appearance.

'You getting married today! Pongezi!' they called after her.

'Oh dear!' said Hero, beginning to run, 'I'd forgotten there would be other people around.'

'When isn't there?' Betsy retorted. She was enjoying the fuss as she enjoyed any admiration. 'They're not doing you any harm by congratulating you on getting married!'

Hero slowed her steps. 'I suppose not. Oh, how I wish today was over!'

Betsy favoured her with a wide, innocent stare. 'Am I to draw the obvious conclusions from that remark?' she asked.

Hero went scarlet. 'Betsy, please don't! For two pins I'd run away here and now, only I couldn't do that to Benedict, could I? It isn't his fault I've got myself into this mess!'

'He tore up your letter—'

'He thought I was writing to thank him for lunch. And I should have done, but I didn't even think of it.' She was still reproaching herself inwardly when they reached the bookshop. 'I wish I hadn't come,' Hero said flatly in the

doorway. 'It was silly!'

'Silly or not, we're here now, so we may as well go in,' Betsy encouraged her. She flung open the door and pushed Hero into the shop in front of her. 'Your favourite customer has come to show you her wedding finery!' she announced in a loud, trumpeting voice, 'Doesn't she look lovely?'

The assistants gathered round, wiping their black hands shyly on their khaki trousers. 'You look beautiful, Miss

Kaufman! Mr. Carmichael was here a few minutes ago. He bought many books, most of them for you. He asked particularly what kind of books you like-'

'Did he indeed?' said Betsy.

Hero wished more than ever that she hadn't come. She stretched out a hand and took down the book she had been about to look at the other day when Benedict had taken it from her. Then her eyes widened as she stared down at the title. No wonder the shop assistant had laughed at her! The Problems of Drought and Erosion in African Farming by Benedict Carmichael! Her Benedict Carmichael? It had to be!

'I'll take this with me,' she said in a quite unrecognizable voice.

'But you can't want that!' Betsy objected. 'It looks as dull as ditch-water!'

'I want it. Will you lend me ninety-five shillings, Betsy? I haven't enough to pay for it myself. I'll give it back to you some time.'

'You can put it on Mr. Carmichael's account, Miss Kaufman,' one of the assistant's suggested.

'No, I couldn't do that!' Hero looked uncomfortable at the thought. 'You'll have to hide it, Betsy, until I can put it in my suitcase out of sight. I don't want Benedict to see it.'

'My dear, the things you ask me to do for you! Just where, do you suppose, am I going to hide a tome like that?'

'I don't know,' Hero said helplessly. 'Only please do! Couldn't you put it in your father's car?'

Betsy's lack of enthusiasm showed clearly on her face. 'I suppose I can, if I must,' she complained. 'Though if it were me, and I bought it at all, I'd make him carry it around all day for me. Dash it all, he ought to be complimented that you want to read at all!'

'I don't want him to know.'

Betsy shrugged and produced a hundred-shilling note out of her handbag, throwing it down on to the counter with a nonchalant air. 'You'd better wrap it,' she said to the African. 'Miss Kaufman will only have hysterics if I walk out with it as it is.'

The African smiled, his eyes sliding shyly over Hero's face. 'Mr. Carmichael was surprised that we had his book in stock. He says most of it is theory, but that he was hoping to try out some of his ideas right now. Would that be on your farm, Miss Kaufman?'

A feeling of despair suddenly attacked Hero. 'But that will take ages!' she murmured.

'So what?' said Betsy, frowning.

'So when do I get to England?'

Betsy shook her head at her. 'Look,' she said with a firmness that at another time would have made Hero laugh. 'I'm prepared to make allowances for pre-wedding nerves, but this is getting out of hand! What did you suppose he wanted with your farm in the first place? It won't make any difference to his taking you to England.'

'But it will! He said he'd have to finish his business here first - and it might be years!' Hero picked up the now wrapped book and clutched it to her. 'What am I going to do, Betsy?'

'Do?' Betsy retorted. 'Do? You're going to get married, Hero Kaufman, that's what you're going to do!'

He had followed her instructions to the letter. His shirt was a crisp white and his tie in a conservative stripe that could have been an old school tie, it was so unremarkable.

'Will I do?' he asked her as she went to take her place

beside him before the registrar.

'Oh, Benedict!' was all she could say.

'Well?' he prompted her, producing a bouquet of flowers from behind his back and putting them in her hand.

'You'll do, if I will,' she whispered back, blushing madly because she couldn't think what had got into her to ask his opinion on her appearance. She didn't care what he thought of her!

'Oh, you'll do, Liebling, indeed you will!'

Her eyes stung with tears. In all her life, only her father had called her that. Indeed, it was about the only word of German that she knew. She rather suspected that it was about the only word her father had known too, that and a few swear words he had used under extreme pressure, hoping that his wife wouldn't object as strongly as if she had understood what he was saying. It had been a joke between them for, although he had spoken no German, her mother both spoke and thought in her native Greek and had often threatened to make the rest of her family learn to talk to her in that language. But she never had, and Hero spoke only English with any fluency.

It was a strangely impersonal business getting married. To Hero, it was almost an anti-climax. Betsy held her flowers and pulled at the long skirts of her dress at intervals and Benedict thrust a ring on her finger when she was least expecting it. The registrar spoke quickly and with such a blurred pronunciation that she couldn't understand him and, when he called upon her to repeat her part of the ceremony, she was hard put to it to stumble through the formal words that were to make her Benedict Carmichael's lawful wife.

'So unlike you,' Betsy's mother said as soon as she had Hero to herself, 'to choose not to be married in church. Now

Betsy I could understand, but I always thought you were too much like your mother not to want to be done properly. Still, I suppose it's none of my business and as Benedict made all the arrangements, I suppose it was he who objected.'

Hero buried her face in her bouquet. She was sorely tempted to throw the blame on Benedict's broad shoulders, but she couldn't quite do it. 'It wasn't the same without my parents,' she muttered. 'Perhaps - later on — we may get the marriage blessed, or something.'

'Oh, but of course I quite understand,' Betsy's mother said hastily, glad to find a sentimental reason for Hero's lapse from grace. 'Though I must say, dear, that I don't think your mother would have entirely approved, but then you know best! And you do look lovely, just like I imagine Helen of Troy must have looked!'

'Oh dear,' said Hero, 'I hope I don't cause as much trouble to my husband as she did to hers!' She became aware of Benedict standing close beside her and could not stop herself blushing. 'I mean, I don't think I could cope with instigating a war, and Paris, or whoever it was, as well as Benedict!'

'I'll make it my business to see that you don't get the opportunity,' Benedict assured her gravely.

By keeping her imprisoned on the farm? 'It's only the dress that gives me the illusion of looking beautiful. In my jeans and shirt, no one would look twice at me anyway.'

'I may,' he said.

Betsy's mother gave a high-pitched giggle. 'Of course you will! You can't expect Hero to dress on the farm as she does in Nairobi. She'll change in the evenings, I suppose, to look nice for you, but she'll have other things on her mind

besides pleasing you! You don't know what work means until you've visited the Kaufman farm, I'm warning you!'

Benedict smiled faintly. 'That'll be my job to run the farm. I don't intend that Hero shall work herself to death on my behalf. It'll be quite enough for her to keep my house and look beautiful for me!'

Hero gave him a quick glance, meeting his bland expression with a frown. He had no business to say such things. How did he know that she wouldn't take him seriously? Look beautiful for him, indeed! And, worse still, keep his house! Did he think she was going to give up her time to seeing to his comfort? She would be in England, earning her own living, and undoing the knot they had tied that morning. She wouldn't be his wife for an instant longer than he had to be. She would not!

He bent his head and kissed her pink cheek, making her blush all the more. His lips felt warm and rather nice and, for one idiotic moment, she thought she might return the caress as any other wife would have done, just to see what it would be like to put her face against the clean-looking tanned skin of his.

'Shouldn't we be going?' she said loudly. The sound of her own voice sounded unreal and Benedict put an arm right round her and drew her tight against him.