Bachelor's Wife (2 page)

Once out in the March wind she forgot about them. She barely noticed the wind that frolicked in her hair, her mind then was only on what she had to say to Nash Devereux. Had he not been such a well-known figure there would be no need to contact him. She could more easily have filed for one of those quickie divorces she had heard about.

But with his every action reported in the press, or so it seemed, she couldn't risk the publicity. Publicity wasn't something she courted. She would hate it even if there wasn't Trevor to think of. Her breath caught as she had terrifying visions of the press somehow getting hold of Trevor's name and she knew then that it was essential that her divorce was kept quiet. Trevor would be horrified to see himself in print as 'the other man'; it would be an end to any plans he had for them. Her imagination went further as she saw in her mind's eye Trevor's mother, absolutely horrified, throwing a fit at the merest suggestion that her son might dare consider marrying a divorcee. Her name would be mud—Mrs Coleman would turn Trevor against her, she knew it. She would keep on and on at him until ...

Quickly she entered the telephone kiosk, a sick feeling inside of her as she hunted up the number of the Devereux Corporation.

With nervous fingers she dialled, urging herself to remember as the number rang that she had far more confidence now than she had possessed at eighteen. It would no longer be like it was six years ago when Nash's air of sophistication, that terrible cold way he had had with her, had frightened the thin, gawky girl she had been. She was twenty-four now, for goodness' sake, with most of her uncertain edges smoothed away. She was still slender, but had curved out in the right places. And what with her skill as a needlewoman she had a wardrobe that was smart and modern. She even possessed some clothes that could make her look as sophisticated as any of the females she had seen photographed with the man who in a very few moments she would be speaking with.

'Devereux Corporation.'

The voice was clear, just the right hint of warmth, a splendid advert for the big conglomerate that went under the Devereux name. .

'Mr Devereux, please.' She was glad to hear that confident note there. That it was in direct contrast to the way her insides were behaving the telephonist would never know.

'Mr Devereux is not available. Can anyone else help you?'

Perhaps she had been expecting too much to be put straight through to him, Perry thought.

'No,' she said, her voice still managing to sound confident. 'It's—Nash I wish to speak with. We're—er—friends. Close friends,' she added for good measure.

She knew her confident tone had fallen away as she brought out the last two words. The telephonist had noticed it too; she was sure. But before she could retrieve the situation, try to intimate to the girl that she would be in trouble if she didn't put her through, the way she thought any woman truly a close friend of the head of the Devereux Corporation might adopt, the girl was saying, almost purring as she said it, Perry thought:

'I'm sorry,' not sounding all that sorry, 'Mr Devereux must have forgotten to tell you—he flew to the States this morning.'

Feeling about as big as a ten-penny piece, Perry kept her composure only long enough to say, 'Oh dear, I've missed him. Never mind, I'll give him a tinkle when he gets back.'

She stumbled out of the telephone box,, a tinge of red in her cheeks that the girl at the Devereux Corporation must have thought she was chasing Nash. Obviously if she was as close a friend as she's tried to make out, she would have known he had left the country.

She made her way back to work, her mind teeming with things she could have said. She hadn't even asked when he was coming back, though she realised she couldn't have very well, not after having pretended she had forgotten he was leaving for the States that day. A fine fool she'd already made of herself without adding to it by pretending she'd forgotten when he was coming home. The girl on the switchboard had rumbled her anyway, had known she wasn't really a friend of his, would more than likely have fobbed her off saying he didn't say when he would be returning.

Her problem loomed large in her mind throughout the rest of the day. She tried to hide that anything was worrying her, but when Madge looking up from her work suddenly said, 'Something still troubling you, Perry?' her voice for once serious, she realised her face must be very expressive.

'Nothing that can't be resolved,' she said after a moment's thought. If Madge could have helped, she might have told her, for often in the past they had exchanged confidences and she knew her to be the soul of discretion.

'Troubles shared...' Madge suggested, but Perry shook her head.

'Thanks anyway,' she smiled.   

'I'll make you a cup of tea,' said Madge, and it sounded so comical the way she said it, just as though she thought that in the absence of a magic wand to dissolve Perry's troubles a cup of tea might do the trick, that they both laughed.

Madge left early, not without receiving a sly comment from Mr Ratcliffe about part-timers, but they both knew he didn't mean it. They had an admirable working arrangement. Mr Ratcliffe, thought of fondly by all his staff, was easy about time off, knowing that any one of them would drop everything and work until midnight if the occasion demanded it.

 By the time Trevor's promised call came through, about ten minutes before she was due to go home, Perry had had time to reason, painful though it would be, that until she had this whole tangle sorted out, it might be better if she didn't see him so often.

'Sorry to be so late ringing,' he apologised. 'I've been out most of the day and only just got back.'

'That's all right.' There was nothing to forgive. Trevor worked as an insurance assessor and was often out of his office.

'I'd have rung you tonight before I went to see Mother,' he went on, and her heart warmed to him that not having a phone herself he would have put aside that he had no time for her landlady, would have rung asking to speak to her. Mrs Foster never minded calling her to the phone.

It was instinctive in Perry to be natural with Trevor, but as he chatted on, telling her about his day, his suspicions that the insured party he had seen was trying to lead him up the garden path, she was desperately trying to think up an excuse why she couldn't see him when he finally came round to that subject. At last he came to the end of how his claimant would have to get up early to fool him, and was asking the question she still hadn't got an answer to.

'We'll go to the cinema tomorrow night, shall we? I'll pick you up...'

.'Er—actually,' she stalled him, 'we're rather busy at work at the moment.' Trust Mr Ratcliffe to walk by at precisely that second! He made a face that said, 'I'm the last to know?' and rudely Perry turned her back on him, part of her wanting to grin, for all the matter in hand was so very serious. 'Er—could we give tomorrow night a miss?' And weakening rapidly at the sulky silence the other end, 'We can go to the pictures another night.'

At home, she made herself a light meal, only picking at it before deciding she didn't want it. Never having time to read the morning edition, she couldn't settle either to read the paper she picked up every evening. Trevor had been huffy that she put her work before him and said if she couldn't see him tomorrow, he was tied up himself until Saturday.

Well, it was what she wanted, wasn't it? But it wasn't. Had he suggested seeing her on Thursday she knew she

would have agreed. Now she was getting cold feet that he would ever propose at all. Oh, what a mess!

At seven she went downstairs to help Mrs Foster with the dress she was making. But at eight, having been invited to stay longer after Mrs Foster had declared she would learn more quickly if she did the next step herself when she had been put right on a facing she had cut incorrectly, Perry decided to go back to her flat. She didn't want Mrs Foster to see that same something in her that had prompted Madge to ask, 'Anything wrong?'

For a further hour she kicked against her ill luck that Nash Devereux was out of the country, knowing that she'd die before she would speak to that all-knowing voice on the Devereux Corporation switchboard again.

It was some time after nine when, fed up with her thoughts going the same round again and again, she decided action was the only answer. She couldn't verbally get in touch with Nash, just as she couldn't see a solicitor until that contact had been made with her paper marriage husband. What she could do, though, was write to him. If she wrote tonight, then whenever he got back, always hoping his visit to the States was for a few days only, and if she marked the envelope 'Strictly Private and Confidential', then he was bound to have it handed to him his first day back in business.

She got out her writing paper, musing that she didn't know where he lived. He no longer lived at the address shown on the marriage certificate,' the house he had been born in. That house had been left to Lydia, his stepmother.

Perry headed the notepaper with her address, and just in case he wasn't a letter writer, knowing Mrs Foster wouldn't mind, put her phone number too. She didn't want him ringing her at work, everyone would know her secret within five minutes if he rang there.

'Dear-' she penned, and came to a full stop. A spark

of humour flickered briefly—and died. She didn't know him well enough to call him Nash, but it was too ridiculous to address the man she had married as 'Mr Devereux'. She added 'Nash' and came to another full stop as she tried to recall if apart from the ceremony when she'd said 'I, Perry, do take thee, Nash' she'd ever addressed him by any name at all.

The pen went slack in her hand and it was effortlessly, as though it was only yesterday, that she recalled that first meeting with Nash Devereux and all that had followed.

CHAPTER TWO

IN her mind's eye Perry saw Nash Devereux the way he had been that first time she had clapped eyes on him— tall, immaculately suited, a cold, embittered look to him. A man she had thought then totally out of place on the small landing with its faded wallpaper outside her step-aunt's marriage bureau.

She had probably been looking a little grim herself, she thought, for she had been an exceedingly worried eighteen-year-old. She remembered how she had telephoned Sylvia that morning asking if she could come and see her in her lunch hour.

'What about?' Sylvia had asked without too much enthusiasm.

'I can't really say over the phone,' she had answered, already aware that Sylvia wasn't in her most sympathetic frame of mind.

'Ralph, I suppose,' guessed Sylvia, bang on target. Perry had said nothing. 'I helped him out last time,' Ralph's sister had gone on. 'Don't expect...'

'If I Could just come and see you,' Perry had said quickly, even then knowing it was hopeless. But who else was there to turn to? Everything that was of saleable value had been sold the last time, there wasn't an item of her mother's jewellery left. Nothing at all left that was likely to come anywhere near to realising the five thousand pounds that was the figure Ralph had last night confessed he owed to his bookmaker, his promise never to gamble again broken in the face of the compulsion that came over him.

'I'm busy right now,' Sylvia had said. 'Please!' she had heard herself pleading.

'Oh—come if you want to.' And with that ungracious invitation, Sylvia had put down the phone.

But there had still been hope in Perry's young heart when, counting every second until one o'clock, she had eventually left the place where she was employed as a trainee seamstress, and rushed round to the Perfect Partners Marriage Bureau Sylvia ran.

All hope in her had died when, rattling on Sylvia's office door on the first floor landing, she had found it locked. She had had to accept then that not only did Sylvia not want to see her, nor want to help Ralph, but she had deliberately, after agreeing to see her, gone out to avoid being drawn into what she. must have guessed was some monetary crisis.

Not that she could blame her, Perry thought, turning disconsolately away from the door, barely aware of the tall figure of a man coming up the stairs. She had helped out the last time Ralph had got himself into trouble, though the amount then had been nowhere near the amount this time. Sylvia had sworn 'Never again' when she had handed over the money last time. That Ralph too had sworn 'Never again' when vowing he would never gamble again was without foundation, for within a very short space of time he had broken his vow. Why he consorted with the type of people who were threatening dire consequences if the five thousand he owed wasn't paid within two weeks, Perry didn't know—or perhaps she did. No bookmaking company of any repute would allow him so much credit.

She started down the stairs. Vaguely she heard the sound of the door she had tried being rattled, and turned three stairs down to offer, not very enthusiastically, she had to admit, 'Mrs Wainwright is at lunch.'

What kept her attention on the man she was afterwards never quite sure. Probably because he was the sort of man no one could overlook. Something in him had her still looking at him anyway when she meant to turn and go on her way.

It was then she noticed the cold, ruthless look of him, the look that said something had displeased him. It couldn't be just because he had been hoping to find the marriage bureau open and was put out because it wasn't, she found herself thinking—-and then found she was wondering why he had called at a marriage bureau at all. Even with that sour expression on his face he had a certain something, she recognised that in him even if his air of there being little that surprised him made him a man she would have been terrified to date. As if she'd have the chance, she thought, and turned to carry on down the stairs.

His voice halted her, a pleasant voice she couldn't help thinking. It had a nice ring to it, for all there was a touch of grimness in it.

'It would appear we're both out of luck.' " She turned, about to put him right in the fewest of words that her visit to the marriage bureau was not for the business of finding herself a mate. But the sharp look that came to him suddenly took the words from her. She felt alarm at the way his stone-hard grey eyes flicked briefly over her before his look became calculating, a look that told her clearly he had thought of something, and that something had some connection with her.