Bride by Arrangement (5 page)

“These things happen suddenly,” he explained to the astounded visitor. “Sometimes very suddenly! Ten days ago Chloe and I had never even met, but once we did meet we recognised the futility of trying to avoid something that was inevitable. My aunt could not have been more delighted, and I
think she died happy in the knowledge that we would live here together at Trelas. And, in order that we can live here together at Trelas, we must go through the essential formalities without any loss of time!”

Eunice stared at him so strangely that Chloe was certain—for one long-drawn-out moment, at least—that she was not taken in. Then, recovering completely from her surprise, she offered them her gloved hand and her congratulations.

“But how wonderful!” she exclaimed. “On such a sad day, it quite cheers me up to hear such news! Completely unexpected, as I’m afraid I’ve already rather given away!” She wagged a finger at Chloe. “You’re a deep one, my dear—an astonishingly deep one. To catch a man so quickly! I’
d
never have believed you were the type. I don’t know what David’s going to say...
”

“Eunice, I—” Chloe was beginning, but Pierre interrupted her.

“David is your brother?” he said smoothly, to Eunice. “We have met, haven’t we? But is there any reason why his reactions to Chloe’s engagement should be of overwhelming importance?”

“Well, I—” Eunice shrugged, looked with veiled admiration and reproach at Chloe, and then went up to her and lightly stroked her cheek. “If there was a time when I rather hoped you might become a member of
our
family, that’s past, isn’t it? Poor old David doesn’t seem to find it easy to stumble upon the right kind of
girlfriend
, and you and he did seem to hit it off rather well—or so I thought! With that handicap of his he is a little bit sensitive, and with you he was never sensitive
...
However,” she sighed, “these things happen, as the Vicomte has just said.”

“They do indeed,” the Vicomte murmured, with rather a cool gleam in his eyes. “But he is a foolish man who lets the grass grow under his feet when there is a rival in the district!”

Eunice put back her head and gazed up at him, and her eyes had that vivid gleam of the kingfisher between her excitingly long eyelashes.

“Who said anything about rivals?” she demanded softly. “Where Chloe is concerned, at any rate! Where you are concerned, Monsieur le Vicomte, there
could
be a certain uneasiness on Chloe’s part. That enchanting young woman who is still putting up at the King’s Arms did strike me as feeling a bit possessive towards you when we met! Or does Chloe understand these things? Perhaps Madame Albertin—whose husband, I believe, was also French—imbued her with a few notions of her own that will prevent her being unreasonably jealous sometimes. And jealousy is so destructive of happiness,
isn’t it?”

Pierre offered her his cigarette-case, and carefully lighted her cigarette for her. He looked down at her almost gravely as he said:

“Unreasonable jealousy can be very destructive, Miss Pentland. But Chloe has a wide intelligence, and my aunt was not unintelligent either, you know! And, so far as I know, Fern is doing no harm at all at the King’s Arms.”

Eunice exhaled smoke languidly. Her eyes gleamed at him appreciatively.

“You must forgive an old friend of your future wife having her interests at heart,” she murmured. “Chloe isn’t wildly sophisticated, you know, and her father was a clergyman.
He
would have wanted that little bit about the King’s Arms cleared
up!”

Pierre moved away—all at once he seemed extremely thoughtful—and Chloe decided that now was the time to say something decisive. To explain the true position. But Eunice whirled upon her with a sudden wide smile on her face, and an enthusiastic note in her voice.

“Darling, there’s nothing I love so much as a wedding, and you must allow David and me the right to give you a perfect one! Oh, nothing terribly fussy, of course. It wouldn't be quite decent with poor Madame Albertin so recently departed from us. But
she
would have insisted upon a few trimmings, and of course you must have some sort of a trousseau. We’ll go up to town and collect one! How soon do you plan to be married?” turning once more to Pierre.

“Immediately,” he answered, as if that was what he literally meant.

Eunice considered him thoughtfully, that strangely provocative gleam in her eyes.

“Impatient man!” she commented, with a touch of dryness. “How thrilling to have a man who simply can’t wait! But you will have to wait at least three weeks for the banns to be called.”

“We can have a special licence.”

“Three weeks,” Eunice repeated, as if it was she who made the decisions. “That will give us time to fit you out nicely, Chloe dear, and the local inhabitants will think it rather more suitable. After all, you’ll be living here among them once you’re married
...
The Lord and Lady of the Manor!” She surveyed them both speculatively. “I suppose you will settle down here? What about your estates in France, Vicomte?”

“Have you never heard of a vicomte without estates?” he replied.

“Yes,” she admitted. “But I’ve also heard about yours! Now you’ll be able to spend some of your aunt’s money on them, won’t you?”

Pierre moved determinedly in the direction of the door.

“I imagine you have a car outside, Miss Pentland, but I could drive you back to High Cross if you like? It’s good of you to say that you’ll have Chloe for a few weeks.”

Eunice blew a careless kiss at Chloe.

“I shall simply love it,” she said. “I’ll collect you tomorrow morning, darling, and we’ll get started on wedding plans straight away. No, Vicomte—or I must start calling you Pierre; it’s so much more friendly!—I won’t take you away from Chloe on a day like this. Besides, Mr. Venning had only just gone when I arrived, hadn’t he? You must have things to discuss!”

When she had gone, and they were once more alone in the library, Chloe seemed to awake from a trance, and she turned on Pierre and demanded his explanation.

“You know very well that there’s no question of my marrying you! How can I marry you?” she demanded.

“I have already made the decision for you,” he answered, with that annoying smoothness of his. “I realised that it was too much to expect you to make up your own mind, and my aunt really left you with no alternative. In your own best interests you must accept me as a husband, and I must accept you as a wife. That was why I told Miss Pentland that we are engaged. And, in any case, I couldn’t let anyone like her get the impression that the only reason I was marrying you was for your money. So I let her assume that when we met ten days ago we recognised the inevitability of our meeting!”

He was smiling at her mockingly, but Chloe was suddenly frightened.

Ten days ago they hadn’t known one another. And now Madame Albertin had placed them in such a position that they had to spend the rest of their lives together.

And what about Fern de Lisle at the King’s Arms?

“We have much to discuss,” Pierre said, with sudden strange formality. “Tonight I shall stay here for dinner, and we will go into the numberless snags, and eliminate them one by one!”

Chloe’s lovely green eyes hung upon his pathetically.

“I feel as if I’m not really awake!” she stammered. “Eunice wasn’t really deceived. She suspects that, for some reason, we’ve got to marry.”

Pierre looked at her over the flame of the match he had just applied to the end of his cigarette.

“Well, at least it isn’t the more usual reason why couples
have to marry!” he remarked, and saw her blush scarlet. He went across to her and took her face between his long, sensitive hands, and looked down at her almost broodingly. “So David Pentland thought he was going to marry you, did he?” he said. “You and he hit it off well together. Well, at least he will never marry you now. What I have I hold! It’s the motto of my house!” Chloe felt a wild desire to defy him.

“You haven’t got me yet,” she said. “Or Trelas!”

“We will leave Trelas out of it,” he said, smoothing the soft skin of her cheek. “But I will have you!”

They dined together that night, and he put off going to the King’s Arms until it was nearly ten o’clock.

Chloe, who had spent the last few nights alone in Trelas, welcomed his company. She even dressed herself in the navy blue tie-silk dress that she had bought when she was acting on instructions from Madame Albertin, and although a pang went through her at the thought that the old lady would never see it now, she knew that she looked unusually attractive when she surveyed herself in the mirror.

Because Madame Albertin had been so desperately anxious for her to look well—in order that she should make some sort of appeal to Pierre?—she used a touch of her arresting new lipstick, and attended to the rest of her make-up carefully. She was looking pale and slightly stunned, and a discreet application of rouge lent depth and strange brilliance to her eyes, and her hair framed her face in becoming soft curls. She wondered, as she peered at herself, what Madame Albertin would have thought if she could have seen her—whether, perhaps, she would have known a faint feeling of hope that her nephew would discover in this too subdued young woman someone from whom he need not turn in revulsion because it had become necessary to marry her!

And then she remembered that Pierre was half French, and that the French did not look for everything in marriage
—beauty
and
wealth,
pleasing companionship
and
security for life! A gay, amusing personality, and no financial troubles of any kind!

It was a violently disturbing thought, that they would live together under the same roof, and yet never know what really went on behind each other’s eyes. He could be preoccupied with violet eyes framed in burnished gold hair, and she would never know, unless his behaviour was very blat
a
nt.

She thought of Eunice and the unpleasant insinuation in her voice when she mentioned Fern. But Eunice was merely being very worldly-wise, and Chloe had not yet had an opportunity to
become worldly-wise. But she would have to learn, and not allow herself to be deceived because a situation had changed.

When she went down to join him at dinner the gloom that encompassed her showed in her face, and once more he put a drink in her hand and told her to dispose of it quickly, and not to toy with it.

“I think today has been a very grave shock to you,” he remarked, looking down at her with that touch of gravity that set him apart at times.

She looked up at him and felt a sud
de
n absurd longing to weep on his shoulder. It was not particularly broad, but it struck her that it could be unusually comforting just then, and her defences seemed to be slipping very low indeed, and she felt strangely vulnerable. If she was someone like Fern de Lisle she would no doubt take the initiative into her own hands and make some sort of overture just then
...
Appeal to his masculinity by emphasising her own sudden helplessness, and perhaps even start to cry.

She felt like crying, because she was of no importance save in his aunt’s schemes for him, and her ego had been badly bruised, and she had lost a friend and an employer. For, whatever strange revelations had been made that day, Madame Albertin had at one time seemed to be her friend, and at least she had trusted her.

“I
have implicit trust in Miss Chloe Meredith, and I know she will not fail me—in this or any other matter!
”

One tear did hang for rather a long time on the edge of her lashes, and then spill over and run down her cheek, and Pierre saw it and wiped it away with his immaculate linen handkerchief.

“You are not to be upset like this,” he said, as if he was just a little agitated himself. “Chloe, I won’t have you upset! If it is because you think that my aunt has behaved unfairly
—
”

“She has, hasn’t she?” Chloe gulped.

“I don’t know. I’ll admit I’ve had the advantage of you, for I knew all about this from the night I arrived. My aunt insisted on seeing me. But if the thought of marrying me upsets you so much, I’ll go away, and we’ll forget the whole thing!”

“As if I would allow you to do that!”

“Nothing would prevent me, my dear child,” he told her with strange gentleness, and a very quiet firmness, “if I made up my mind that it was in our best interests. Yours as well as mine!”

“You can’t want—to marry me!” she got out, with a painful flush.

“Shall we say that I have not thought seriously of marriage up till now?” he replied, and led her into the dining-room. “Let’s
h
ave a meal,” he said. “Food is such a comforting thing, and as it’s also practical to eat, we can be practical while we eat! And there are quite a lot of things we have to be practical about!”

“Eunice,” she managed, when Burton had withdrawn with infinite dignity after serving them with the soup. “She’ll be coming for me tomorrow
...
”

“And I think it’s very sensible that you should be going with her. You need the society of someone like her to stimulate you, make you forget your own troubles. But the brother David doesn’t appeal to me a bit! This may be a marriage of convenience we are contemplating entering into, but it is marriage, and you must make him understand that his own hopes are dead as the proverbial doornail!”

Chloe glanced at him, as if he made her wonder.

“David and I have never been anything but reasonably good friends,” she said.

Pierre’s eyebrows ascended mockingly.

“So you say, my child, but still waters frequently run very deep indeed, and to me you are like still waters. And the way you look tonight I could forgive our worthy David—and I have a feeling that he is very worthy!—or any other man for having serious thoughts about you. That dress you are wearing—did you buy it when you went to Truro?”

“Yes.” She bit her lip, to still its sudden inclination to
tremble. “It was your aunt’s last wish that I—that I
—
”

“Should go shopping? Buy yourself some pretty things? Make yourself as attractive as she suspected you could look?”

“I think she rather hoped that I could be made to look attractive.” She lowered her head, and crumbled the bread on her plate. “It was all part of her plan to—to sell me to you!” with sudden bitterness. “She never saw Miss de Lisle, but she probably had a very shrewd idea of the kind of women you liked! She wanted to turn me into something from which you wouldn’t actively recoil, and to add to the bait she loaded me with her money!” She felt as if the soup she was attempting to swallow would choke her. “I wish she hadn't been so cruel.” Pierre put out a hand and laid it over hers.

“Shall I tell you something?” he said. “Even before you went in for this transformation—and it is a transformation because lipstick suits you, and your hair was meant to look like a soft gold cap, and it is every woman’s birthright to wear attractive clothes—you reminded me of something. You reminded me—and you still do!—of a perfume my mother used that clung to all the things she possessed, and the things she handled. The letters she wrote to me while I was at school, and even the parcels she sent me. A delicate, subtle perfume I never want to
forget
...
I never shall forget!”

Chloe’s eyes hung upon his, and for an instant they seemed to brighten. Then her eyelids drooped, and she looked down.

“Perfumes are like memories
...
They come back to you at intervals,” she said. “They are, never permanent.”

“But there are some memories that are more real than reality,” he replied. “You can never escape them.”

Chloe knew that they had to be sternly realistic, and she forced herself to mention Fern again.

“Have you told her yet about your aunt’s will?”

“How could I?” he asked. “I haven’t seen her.”

“There is always the telephone,” she pointed out.

“There is.” He picked up a piece of cutlery and examined it intently. “But, contrary to your expectations, I haven’t rushed to it.” His eyes met hers, and held them like a sword blade. “For one thing, it is not the sort of information one could pass on over a telephone.”

“No—but you will have to pass it on.” Her mouth felt dry, and her eyes were almost painfully confused. “How—how do you think that she will—feel about it?”

“I haven’t an idea.” He still played with the fork, but there
w
as a stern note in his voice. “I intended to mention Fern to you tonight, Chloe, but it was never my intention to go into details with you about her. All I planned to say to you was that she would not be staying on at the King’s Arms. I thought that would suffice.”

Chloe regarded him more steadily.

“So far as I’m concerned,” she told him, with a deliberately hard note in her voice, “there may always be a Fern de Lisle in your life, Pierre, but if I’m to marry you—and it seems I have no choice!—I should prefer it if I didn’t have to be brought into close contact with such a person. You mentioned David to me, but that was unnecessary, because as a married woman I hope I would know how to behave. But you have been brought up in France—you are half French.. . She floundered a little. “Your ideas are probably quite different from those of an Englishman on—on some subjects
...
”

Pierre looked at her most peculiarly.

“What a relief to know that you understand so much, and that you will enter into marriage—our sort of marriage!—with the right ideas,” he returned, with great dryness. “I would hardly have expected it from a vicar’s daughter, but no doubt even vicars’ daughters are emancipated nowadays.”

Chloe felt a slow flush dyeing her cheeks.

“I was only trying to—to be as practical as possible
...”

“Which is, of course, the one thing we must be—practical,” he
agreed, that touch of out-of-character gravity returning to his tones. “We know that we are marrying for sternly practical reasons, and under such circumstances it would be absurd not to be—practical!” He weighed the word, as if he was not quite certain it was entirely applicable. “You shouldn’t find that so difficult, little Chloe! You strike me as having a very practical streak, and at least you are not wildly in love with Pentland. Or are you?” more abruptly.

“I have never been—in love with any man,” she admitted, trying hard to meet his eyes as if the necessity for having to make such an admission didn’t fill her with a strange feeling of confusion. “And I have already told you that there is nothing more than friendship between David and myself. In spite of his limp, he’s very attractive, and very rich, and almost any girl would be glad to have him if he showed enough interest. It’s absurd to suggest he would ever think seriously about me!”

“You are too modest, Chloe,” Pierre told her, and she couldn’t be sure whether he was mocking her or not. “But once married to me you will be a woman of means—don’t forget that! You will no longer be a paid companion and the knowledge will give you poise. I have no doubt at all that once you come out of your shell many men will find you attractive, but you will have to remember also that you are married to me! There will be a closed door between you and anything in the nature of romance, for even allowing for the fact that I am half French I will not permit my wife to have affairs! It will not be a case of you going your way, and I going mine, do you understand? You will be the Vicomtesse de Ramballe, and you will have to keep it always in the forefront of your mind.”

She tried to protest indignantly:

“I have told you I shall know how to behave!”

“It isn’t a question of behaviour, Chloe. Or not only that. It will be a life sentence, for I do not believe in divorce, and if you are toying with the idea of approaching me about an annulment once you have handed over to me my share of the money, then there will be no point in your doing so! Once married we stay married, do you understand
?
It was what I meant when I said I must talk to you tonight.”

She felt her throat go tight, and her mouth felt drier than ever. He was taking her future into his hands, and it was no longer hers ... unless she backed out now. She could back out! ... It wasn’t too late!

“Well, Chloe?” he said, with no expression at all in his voice. “I am suggesting that you forget Trelas, and my aunt's money, and myself
... and that you think only of yourself. You can say ‘No; I can’t do this thing!’ and we'll forget it. You’ll have your
thousand pounds, and I shan’t starve. I never have, and I never will. And we can go right away out of each other’s lives...!”

Chloe suddenly felt breathless, tremulous, frightened
...
But only because they could go right away out of one another’s lives and never see one another again! If they married they would stay together always
...
Or so he had said!

“Backing out, Chloe?” he asked, regarding her queerly. She shook her head. She tightened her fingers about the ones that were holding hers, and holding them very strongly.

“No
...
No, Pierre! I don’t want to back out! Let us ... be married. It was what your aunt wanted above everything else, apparently!”