Bachelor's Wife (3 page)

'How old are you?'

The question was fired rapidly—so rapidly that she found herself answering, when all her instincts were telling her to run.

'Eighteen,' she said, and then began to obey her instincts. As she was about to turn away again that cool voice stopped her.

'You'll do,' he said, just as though, used as he was to making instant decisions, some problem had been solved, and that was an end to it.

'I'll do?' she queried, beginning to see why he needed her step-aunt's services. He must be some kind of a nut. No girl would willingly tie herself up to him, for all his certain something. 'Do for what?' she found herself asking, while her instinct to be away was becoming urgent.

He looked at her as though he thought she was being tiresome not to have kept up with him. 'I'll marry you,' he said distinctly.

'Marry me!' Her green eyes saucer-wide, she just stood and stared at him.

'Look, I haven't got time for pretence,' he snapped. 'You're here to find a partner, so am I.'

'I...' she began, then realised belatedly that she should never have turned back, and from somewhere found a coldness alien to her nature. 'No, thank you,' she said primly, and turned to do what she should have done earlier.

 She had descended no more than two stairs when the voice above her, supremely confident, said, 'I'll make it worth your while.' Momentarily she halted, about to throw over her shoulder what he could do with his money. 'I'll give you five thousand pounds to go through a marriage ceremony with me,' he added, and as she heard the amount he was prepared to pay, the words she had been ready to fling at him promptly died in her throat.

Five thousand pounds! Ralph needed five thousand pounds if, to hear him talk, he wasn't to be dumped in the river in a cement overcoat. Her mouth slightly open, Perry forced herself to turn and face the man who had just proposed that he be her husband, when what she wanted to do was take to her heels and run like fury.

'I thought that would get you,' the man said cynically.

'I...' she began, then as it came to her that she must be as mad as him to even think of doing what he was proposing, 'No,' she said firmly, and saw his lips twist in a disbelieving smile. Then he made another of those lightning decisions, making her wonder if he had even heard her refusal.

'We'll discuss the arrangements over lunch,' she was informed.

'But...' she began to protest, startled that he seemed to think the whole thing settled.

He moved, began to descend the stairs, and as he reached her she swallowed and moved too—and to her amazement found she was trotting along beside him on the pavement until they came to a restaurant that seemed to suit him.

Still feeling slightly stupefied that she didn't seem to be in charge of herself any more, she began to feel better on realising that not much harm could come to her with so many other people around. But her healthy appetite had long since disappeared, though rather than appear a ditherer she chose quickly from the menu, without thought to whether she was going to like what was placed before her.

Barely had the waiter gone than the man opposite her was introducing himself as Nash Devereux and enquiring her name. 'Perry Grainger,' she told him, her nerves settling down since for all there was an aggressive look to him, he no longer appeared to be the crazy individual she had first thought him.

'Right,' he said, 'I need to have paper proof that I have a wife—and though it's obvious since you're only eighteen that you feel—security—is more important than that cosy little word called love,' dear heaven, he was sounding cynical, she couldn't help thinking, 'your reasons for wanting a husband are of no concern to me.'

She bit down the urge to tell him she didn't want a husband at all—well, not until she fell in love anyway. But she could see he would scoff at her if she made any such remark, and could well come back with: what was she doing having lunch with him in that case? And then she recalled he had said he needed to have
paper
proof that he had a wife, and was glad her wits hadn't completely deserted her.

Hope sprang within her and with it sudden daring. Dared she, if it was to be one of those name only things, dared she commit herself to marrying him, to taking the five thousand pounds that was so vitally important to Ralph? Not giving herself time to think further, she was blurting out:

'You said you needed paper proof,' and jumping in before her courage failed, 'Does that mean you don't want to be married in the—er—real sense of the word?'

Her pale cheeks were crimson as she forced the last words through her lips. But Nash Devereux gave her very little time to feel embarrassed.

'God forbid!' shot from him, the violence of his words underlining their sincerity. 'It's a necessary evil, no more.' Then, his look sharp, 'If you have any idea in your head of making more out of this than five thousand, forget it. I shan't want you round my neck after the ceremony.'

Her sensitivities wounded that any man could speak to her so, be so aggressive to the point of rudeness, Perry wanted to tell him what he could do with his five thousand, tell him she didn't want it. She checked. But she did want it, and if all she had to do to get it was to put up with a few of his insulting remarks until the ceremony was performed and they went their separate ways, then since clearly no help would be forthcoming from Sylvia and there being no one else to turn to, she would have to swallow her pride and take it. But scary as she found him she couldn't resist a pride-wounded retort of:

'That goes for me too, only double!'

'Good,' he said briefly, and would have gone straight away into giving her information needed for the marriage. But though only eighteen she might be, and desperate to I have the money for Ralph as she was, there was a streak of caution in her that had her questioning before he could continue:

'Why is it so important that you can produce a certificate to say you're married?'

His expression was hard as he looked away. Then quickly his laser-beamed look was back on her, piercing through her, everything about him telling her she could mind her own damn business. And while she looked back at him, her eyes wide and apprehensive at the no-bones words she had been expecting, the rough words didn't come.

'Are you alone in the world?' he enquired, his face stern.   

There was Ralph. But loving Ralph as if he was the father who had died when she was a baby, she couldn't tell this hard-eyed stranger anything about him. Some fear gnawed at her that he might change his mind about the money if he knew it was to be spent on settling Ralph's gambling debts.

'My parents are dead,' she told him, her voice low.

'So you have no one to look out for you,' he stated consideringly. 'Though you must have your head screwed on the right way to be sitting here with me now, for all you're young enough to still bear cradle marks.'

And when she had thought he had decided she could run for her explanation of why he needed that marriage certificate, he unbent sufficiently to tell her:

'My father died two months ago,' and at her look of instant sympathy, 'It was expected.' His jaw firmed, and she saw then that expected or not it had hit him hard. 'What wasn't expected, not by me at any rate,' he went on, 'was that my father would disinherit me if I wasn't married within three months after his death.'

Perry gasped. So that was the reason! He had another month in which to fulfil the terms of his father's will, or lose his inheritance. She had no idea how much money was involved. But if he was the only son he had every right to expect his father to leave him everything. Unless there was some good reason why he shouldn't.

'Why would he want to do that?' she couldn't keep from asking—and received another look that told her he thought it none of her business". 'I'm sorry,' she apologised

at once, having seen from his look that he thought he had given her sufficient reason for him needing to be married.

But again he surprised her. Though afterwards she was able to realise that his only motive in telling her anything else was in order that she should see that when he had said marriage was a necessary evil and that he didn't want her round his neck afterwards, he had meant exactly that.

'Enter the wicked stepmother,' he said humourlessly, and as Perry ploughed her way through her meal, she learned, from what he said and what he didn't say—his cold cynicism filling in any gaps—that Nash Devereux knew all about women and then some, and the women he had met, gone around with, had left him with no rosy view of her sex.

Lydia, his stepmother, had been his girl-friend before she had married his father, Joel Devereux. Nash, she gathered from the way he spoke, had no illusions about women, having seen from an early age the succession of prize-hunters his father had entertained since his divorce from his mother. Lydia, thinking Nash more enamoured of her than he was, had lost complete control of her temper one night when no marriage proposal was forthcoming, and had furiously told him if he wouldn't marry her, then she intended to marry his father. Perry could only gather what Nash had told her in answer to that—-nothing very pleasant, she thought, imagining that he would be terrifying if he too had lost his temper. He had then had to watch while Lydia made a play for Joel, had tried to tell his father that Lydia was only after his money. But Joel wouldn't hear a word against her, and anything Nash said was taken to be sour grapes because Lydia preferred the much older man.

'So she married him,' Nash said, not a flicker of emotion in his face as he went on to tell her how his father's good living prior to and after his marriage had resulted in his first heart attack. 'He should have let up then, but he wouldn't. He was too anxious to show that bitch he could keep pace with any man half his age.'

He broke off when the waiter came to serve the last course, and Perry knew, for all he wasn't showing it, that there was pain in Nash that any attempt he made to get his father to change his pace of life had been seen as him hankering for Lydia and not wanting her to be happy in her life with her husband.

'I couldn't bear to watch what she was doing to him,' Nash continued when the waiter had gone. 'I spent more and more time at the Works,' his expression became granite as he said, 'and that played nicely into Lydia's hands. On the day Joel was buried, purring with the pleasure of being able to tell me so, she told me she had suggested to him that I worked far too hard. That what I needed was a wife so I could enjoy life as they did, play and be happy as they were, otherwise she was dreadfully afraid I would drive myself into an early grave.'

'So your father, believing her, changed his will?' It sounded incredible, but then, thank goodness, she hadn't ever met anyone like the woman Nash was describing;

'I knew he intended to so Lydia should inherit the house. He altered it—and how!—
-a
few weeks before he died,' Nash said, his eyes flint-hard. 'He couldn't know I'd told his dear wife the night she'd been angling for me to propose, that not only did I not want to marry her, but that there wasn't a woman breathing I'd sacrifice my freedom for—I left her in no doubt that I meant it.'

'Oh!' The exclamation left Perry at the bitterness in him. 'But—but that's what you'll have to do if you want to claim your inheritance, isn't it? Within the next month too.'.

She wished he would smile, just once. She thought he might look rather pleasant if he allowed those wonderful teeth she had glimpsed when he spoke to have an airing. But no, his face was a cold mask as he answered:

'It's what I intend to do. I left my lawyers only a short while ago—the will is watertight. You and I will marry on Friday.'

Perry had been late getting back to work, but for once that hardly bothered her. Her head was teeming with everything that had happened, been said, her impressions many and varied, but only one clear fact loomed large. On Friday, three days from now, she was to present herself at the register office where once Nash had the means to prove he was married he would hand over the five thousand pounds.

It hadn't taken long for him to jot down her full name and all the details he thought he would need. He had asked for her phone number too just in case a need arose for him to contact her before Friday. It was then she had to confess she had a stepfather, having to ask him not to let slip any of what she was. doing should Ralph answer the phone.

'Don't you get on with your step-relative either?' Nash had asked. But she had kept quiet. To say Ralph was a love-—when he wasn't gambling—might have Nash wondering why she had been looking for a marriage partner at all if her home life was so happy.

Many times before Friday came Perry was to wonder if she was as crazy as she had at first thought him to be. But as she looked at Ralph as he sat stumped over the fire on Thursday evening, misery, dejection personified, her heart went out to the man who had so loved her mother he had gone utterly to pieces when she had died twelve months ago. She knew then that if Nash
had
been serious, and only now was she beginning to doubt it, then if that was the only way to get the five thousand she was going to go through with it.

Though longing as she was to see a return of the laughing, leg pulling Ralph, that small percentage of doubt that Nash might not be at the register office tomorrow, no

five thousand pounds forthcoming, kept her from telling Ralph that soon his worries would be over. As it was she was racking her brains to think up some good explanation of where she had got the money from. As unhappy as Ralph undoubtedly was, worried out of his mind, he would have a fit for certain if he had the smallest inclination of what she was contemplating on his behalf.

On Friday, solely to keep Ralph from suspecting that this Friday was different from any other Friday, she dressed exactly as she would if she intended going to work. Since she was still a junior in her job, seeming to spend half her time on the floor picking up pins, trousers were the most practical apparel.

'I'll try and get home early tonight,' she promised when Ralph glanced up as she went into the kitchen, the deeply etched grooves under his eyes telling her he had slept not a wink. Impulsively she went and put her arms around his bent shoulders, giving him a tight squeeze and having to hold hard on the urge to tell him everything would be all right. 'Try not to worry, love,' she said instead, which was no comfort at all, she knew, as he lifted his hand absently to pat her.