Bride by Arrangement (10 page)

Pierre, who was driving, sighed suddenly.

“You are pale, Chloe, and you don’t look at all like a happy wife ... my wife!” He paused, as if he expected some responsive quiver in her face, some sign that she really was happy, but Chloe’s white-gloved hands remained tightly locked together in her lap, and her face was small, and somehow bleak. “Don’t tell me you’re already experiencing regrets?” with a sharp note in his voice, in spite of the fact that he intended the remark as a joke.

Chloe remained silent, then she said:

“It’s all been rather a strain
... I felt a little faint in church. And I still feel vague,
and ...
well, as if everything was unreal!”

“Of course. I understand, darling!” His hand promptly covered hers, and he gave them a warm and comforting sq
u
eeze. “For you this is an important day, and you can’t quite take it in. But later it will become real, and—perfect! I promise you
I’l
l make it perfect for you! And as soon as we get to Trelas I’ll see that you have a very large glass of champagne. I think you need it!”

Chloe moistened her lips. His concern for her had such a genuine ring, and his understanding would have been so comforting if everything had been as it s
h
ould have been between them; if Eunice had not decided on that visit to the
King’s Arms the afternoon of the day before. If Fern de Lisle hadn’t actually materialised before her eyes!

Pierre had no idea, yet, that she knew about Fern ...
that she knew he was hoping to have both of them in his life! A wife to provide him with financial security, and a woman who would give him happiness! A mistress, Chloe supposed she would, and should, be called.

An agony of jealousy took possession of her as they drove along the familiar cliff-top road. It made her feel sick inside. The night before she had felt so physically ill with that same gnawing, agonising jealousy, so incapable of speaking to anyone about anything at all, that she had been glad she would not be seeing Pierre again until she saw him next day in the church. They had agreed that it would be best not to meet for that last night before they became man and wife, and after her outing with Eunice, Chloe had known that, whatever arrangement they had made, she could not have faced Pierre that night.

There was no question of her not marrying him. She had to marry him, otherwise she would cheat him out of the solid substance he needed, and which she alone could bestow on him, and although Eunice urged more than once that at least she postpone the wedding, and give the matter a great deal more thought, she refused to do so. Eunice’s eyes grew hard with insistence, but she could do nothing against the adamantine wall that was Chloe’s made-up mind.

She would marry Pierre whatever she suddenly discovered about him, and she would reserve to herself the right to demand an explanation from him, after the marriage, of his continued affair with Fern. In any case, if he wanted an affair with Fern an explanation would be of little importance. The fact that he was having an affair was the only thing of importance!

Burton and Mrs. McClay between them had transformed the house into a bower of flowers, and the light meal that awaited them in the dining-room was quite perfect for the occasion. There was even a wedding cake, baked and iced by the cook, and the champagne was at just the right temperature.

Chloe cut the cake, and Eunice watched her with a strange, frustrated gleam in her eyes. Later she whispered in an aside to the bride:

“You'll have to go through with it now, but I think you’ve behaved quite crazily. There was no reason why you should marry Pierre. You could have married David!”

“David never asked me,” Chloe replied, staring stonily at the crumbled pieces of cake on her own plate—her wedding cake, that tasted like dust and ashes!

“No, but he would have done. You had only to wait.”

“I’m not in love with David,” Chloe said, speaking like an automaton. “And I never will be in love with him.”

“Meaning that you’re in love with Pierre?” Eunice laughed gratingly. “I was afraid that was the real explanation, and I’m even more afraid for you now that you’ve confirmed my suspicions. You stupid girl, don’t you realise what you’ve done? You’ve opened a door on a whole lot of misery that will defeat you in the end, for Pierre isn’t in love with you. I doubt very much whether he has the capacity for falling in love with any woman, but his interest at the moment lies with that empty-headed young girl who’s staying at the King’s Arms! How will you like sharing your husband from the very beginning of your honeymoon?”

“Don’t!” Chloe begged, as if she could only stand so much. Eunice’s painted mouth curved cruelly.

“The only way out I can suggest for you is that you set about having this marriage annulled as quickly as possible. It can be done, you know.
”

“I—I don’t want to discuss the matter,” Chloe said, a trembling hand up to her head, as if it was either aching intolerably, or behaving in a manner that disturbed her thinking, and Pierre came across the room and looked at her sharply.

“What’s wrong, Chloe?” he demanded quickly.

“I think I must have had too much sun yesterday,” Chloe replied vaguely, and for the second time since they had known one another her eyes hung upon his in an agony of appeal. “It was rather hot, and ... and I didn’t have a hat. If everyone would excuse me, and ... I could lie down!”

“Of course,” her husband of such a short while said with an infinitely soothing note in his voice, rising to the appeal immediately. He looked round rather coldly at the guests, a mere handful of people ... amongst them Mr. Venning, the solicitor. Pierre looked at him with something rather more than dislike, and if his aunt had been alive at that moment he might have had a glance of dislike for her too. “My wife isn’t feeling very well, and I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse her. Thank you for coming to our wedding, and we hope to see you all again one day.” His nod included Eunice and David as well as the others, and there were no special thanks for what they had done for her, and the way they had put themselves out. He took Chloe by the arm and led her, like someone in a trance, up to her room, and it was not until she was actually lying on the bed, in all her wedding finery, that she realised it was a strange room, and that the bed was a huge four-poster. A room got ready for a
bridal couple, and smelling of beeswax and delicate white roses.

But the instant her head touched the pillow the deep peace of the room engulfed her, and she felt as if billows of soothing darkness were descending on her, and somewhere far off was the faint, monotonous surging of the sea. She knew the conscious wish that this delicious soothing lassitude would last, that the sea would go on lulling her and the scent of the white roses steal into her brain and act like a drug upon her mind and her senses, and make her forget everything for an unspecified period of time. All eternity, perhaps
...

And when Mrs. McClay tiptoed into the room and bent over her she was fast asleep. Later—much later—the room was full of the dimness caused by drawn blinds, and protective sun-blinds outside to deflect the glare of the sea, when she opened her eyes, and she didn’t at first realise that Pierre was standing near one of the big windows.

He came across to her and sat down on the foot of the bed, and through the dimness he regarded her somewhat curiously. There was a cigarette smouldering between his fingers, but he bent forward and crushed it out in an ash-tray on a little table beside the bed.

“I hope y
o
u don’t object to cigarette smoke in your bedroom,” he said evenly.

"Of—of course not,” Chloe answered awkwardly.

It was all coming back to her, and she felt agonised because she didn’t know how to deal with the situation.

“Well, out with it, Chloe,” Pierre requested, making it easy for her. “There’s something very wrong, isn’t there? You didn’t have too much sun yesterday, but you do feel as if the world has come to an end today, don’t you? You’ve been asleep for over four hours, which proves that you probably slept very badly last night. Now, what is it that is wrong?”

Chloe yearned to be able to say, “Nothing, nothing!” and hold out both her arms to him. There was a look on his face that somehow hurt her deep down inside, among the roots of her heart-strings. This was his wedding day, and he had been sitting alone for four hours, while she lay drugged by sleep! This was her wedding day, and it was the saddest day in the whole of her lifetime!

“Pierre,” she said at last, making no attempt to sit upright, for the pillows were like something protective against which she could lean, “I saw Fern de Lisle yesterday. You told me she had gone back to London, but she’s been at the King’s Arms all this time. She was there while Eunice and I were doing our shopping, and it was the reason why you didn’t join us in London, wasn’t it? You preferred to spend the time with Fern!”

“Did I?” Pierre asked, in a quiet, conversational tone.

“Yes. Oh, Pierre, you know that there isn’t any other explanation that you can offer!” Chloe half raised herself on her pillow, and because he wasn’t looking at her the appeal flashed back into her eyes. There was even a smothered note of appeal in her voice as she added, “There isn’t, is there, Pierre? You brought Fern to Trelas because you liked her very much, and perhaps you were planning to marry her? It was your aunt’s will that upset everything, but you couldn’t bear to let Fern go altogether! In France it wouldn’t be considered dreadful, would it, to have another woman in the background as well as your wife? I mean, the French are sensible
...”

“Oh, very sensible,” Pierre agreed.

Chloe swung herself off the side of the bed, and stood clinging on to one of the bedposts.

“It’s not your fault if you feel you must have Fern in your life. But there was no need to deceive me ... to pretend that you’d fallen in love with me!”

“No need,” Pierre agreed woodenly.

“Then why...?”

Her husband stood up also and faced her. There was a creamy-pink rosebud in the buttonhole of his excellently tailored jacket, but it was wilting a little, and the bright sparkle of the morning had gone out of his eyes. They were dark and deep and lustreless, and his mouth looked faintly drawn, with lines etched at the corners. For the first time since she had known him Chloe thought he looked every one of his years, and she was not surprised to notice the powdering of grey at his temples, also for the first time.

“You have just said that I couldn’t put Fern out of my life, and we’ll leave it at that, shall we?” Pierre suggested. "Whatever I did as a result of my desperate infatuation for Fern needn’t be discussed now, in fact it would be rather vulgar, and quite pointless. We all pretend on occasion, and let’s get it firmly established that I wanted my aunt’s money! Now, wouldn’t you like to lie down again?”

Chloe felt as if he had slapped her deliberately across the face, and she needed the support of the bedpost. Her face was utterly revealing as she stared across the bed at her legal lord and master.

“I
—
”

“I’ll ask Mrs. McClay to bring you a tray, and you needn’t go downstairs again tonight. Perhaps, after a good night’s rest, you’ll have got over the touch of sun that affected you yesterday,” and he walked towards the door. “Anyway, I hope so!”

He glanced at her indifferently before he turned to leave her alone once more.

She swallowed, all the muscles of her throat hurting her.

“What about—the guests...?”

“They’ve gone, including your close friends the Pentlands. David was very upset because you seemed near to collapse, and asked me to telephone him tonight to let him know how you are. If you feel like it, you can telephone him yourself ... have a cosy little chat on your wedding night with the man you might have married! I assure you I won’t mind in the least, so don’t bother about me. There’s a telephone beside your bed.”

She felt as if the world was full of unbearable misery that was pressing on her, and the tears of utter misery rolled down her cheeks. She clung to the bedpost and hid her face on her hands.

Pierre opened the door, and was utterly unmoved by the picture of her grief—grief because their life together was ended before it began!

“And if you’re ringing High Cross you can remember me to Miss Pentland,” he said, with a hint of viciousness in his voice. “You can tell her I hope I’ll never see her again, because if I did I might behave badly! Very badly!”

The house was very still, and the clock on Chloe’s bedside table told her it was after ten. The sleepy surge of the sea against the foot of the cliff had died into an occasional light splashing sound, and from the cliff road came the infrequent noises of a car.

Chloe had never known a house could be as silent as Trelas Manor was tonight—her wedding night! It reminded her of a silent pool from which all life had fled, and she found herself lying in the darkness of her room and straining her ears for some faint echo of a movement that would shatter the unnatural stillness. Even the ponderous ticking of the grandfather clock at the end of the thickly carpeted corridor off which her room opened would have given some comfort to her just then, but since Madame Albertin’s death it had been behaving erratically, and had recently been sent away to be dealt with by an expert.

Chloe slid out of bed and pulled back her curtains, admitting the pearly reflected shimmer of the sea. There was no moon, but the sky was full of stars, and she found herself gazing up at them with a hungry desire to find solace in something, even if it was only the splendour of the firmament.

And then the door behind her opened, so quietly that at first she didn’t realise what was happening, until some sixth sense warned her that she was no longer alone in the big room with
the huge four-poster bed. There was a soft click as Pierre closed the door, and while Chloe stood clutching at the curtain behind her he stood leaning up against the door and regarding her with dark, unfriendly eyes through the star-pricked dimness.

“Sorry if I startled you,” he said casually. “If you’d really wanted to remain undisturbed you should have locked your door.”