Bride by Arrangement (4 page)

Never before had Chloe known the pleasure of just choosing what she wanted, not thinking a great deal about cost. Even the things she had bought herself had not been selected with any thought of durability, or because they were in any sense practical. None of her purchases were practical, and all could have been done without. And perhaps that was why her eyes continued to shine, and there was a glow in her cheeks like a drift of apple-blossom.

A young woman she consulted about beauty aids sold her a whole range of tested products—powder, lipstick, blusher, cream, even mascara, and some turquoise blue eye shadow. Chloe was quite certain she would never use the latter, but the young woman who persuaded her to buy it attempted very hard to convince her that, with her pale skin and unusual eyes, it was absolutely perfect.

“Try it,” she advised, smiling. “And more than once!”

Chloe came away from the shop feeling as if she had fallen below a standard that was low enough already by comparison with her father’s strict ideals—he would never have permitted nail varnish at his dinner table! And eye-shadow would have shocked him profoundly.

When the Daimler slid up the drive, and Chloe saw the stately shape of Trelas ahead of her, her pulses quickened with sudden admiration for the charm of the house. Trelas had been built in the days of gracious living, when carriages swept up to the front door, with its pillared portico, and men and women had plenty of time to stop and admire. Its windows were all beautifully spaced; it had the unrivalled elegance of its period in every line of the facade. And, now that the sun was slowly westering, each square-set pane of glass glistened in the gold of declining day, the ruby-red of the drawing-room curtains showed up against the white of the window-frames. Chloe knew that the carpet inside the huge room was a lovely Aubusson, with great blush pink roses on an off-white ground.

Jenkins, like the butler, had grown old in Madame’s service, and he was slow in descending from his perch and opening the door for her. She was reaching for the handle herself, and gathering up her parcels at the same time, when the front door was opened swiftly, and Pierre stood looking down at her from the top of the steps.

For a moment he seemed to remain there quite motionless, and then he moved slowly down the steps. He took a large number of the parcels out of Jenkins’ arms, and looked at them peculiarly. One box, tied with colourful cord, bore the label
Felicity for Go
wn
s,
and the boxes that contained shoes were obvious. A wisp of pale pink nylon had escaped from a paper bag.

“You’ve been spending quite a lot of money,” Pierre remarked, with strange stoniness.

“Yes.” Chloe looked at him in surprise. He hadn’t even noticed her new hair style, and the new bright lipstick. “I’ve had quite a day!”

Pierre tucked the wisp of nylon back inside the bag, and then he lifted his eyes to the girl.

“There’ll be others,” he said. “Plenty of them! This is just the beginning. You’ll have many a shopping spree from now on.”

Chloe gazed at him wide-eyed.

“What—do you mean?” she asked.

“What I say,” Pierre answered, in that new mechanical way of his that was puzzling. “I’m afraid you chose an unfortunate day to go shopping. My aunt will not see any of the things you’ve bought, which is a pity!”

Madame Albertin’s solicitor had just left—he had known her during the best years of her life, and his shoulders were a little bowed as he went down the steps—and Chloe and Pierre Albertin were alone in the quiet library at Trelas Manor.

Pierre, standing in front of the fireplace, regarded her with an expression which said plainly that he doubted her apparent dismay, and the disbelief in her eyes.

“You would like me to believe that you knew nothing—nothing!—of my aunt’s plans?” he said. “This is all a complete and unpalatable surprise to you?”

“But of course!” She rounded on him dully. “What else do you think it is? What else
could
it be?”

He shrugged. He looked very slender and dark in his sober grey suit, with a black tie and immaculate linen that showed up his distinctly swarthy type of skin.

“I’ll confess you’re a complete source of amazement to me. I don’t know whether to believe you, or to disbelieve you.” He regarded the tip of the cigarette smouldering away unheeded between his fingers. “I told you that you and I would never be able to believe one another, and this is the first proof that I was speaking the truth ... On that occasion, at any rate!” His velvet-brown eyes were intensely sombre as they gazed at her. “You live with my aunt for six months, it is obvious to everyone within this house that she has taken a terrific fancy to you, she sends for her lawyer
... And you suspect nothing!”

Chloe’s clear green eyes were dark and troubled. She wore no make-up, and her face was very pale.

“I lived with your aunt, and I was very fond of her. I knew that she was fond of me. But why should that make me suspect that one day...” She swallowed, the muscles of her throat contracting convulsively. “A small bequest wouldn’t, perhaps, have been such a surprise. Madame Albertin loved giving things away. But to leave me all her money!...”

“On condition that you marry me!” Pierre reminded her, with a hard gleam in his eyes. “That you marry me and hand over to me half of the money, and that we own Trelas jointly. What a mind m
y
aunt had!”

Chloe looked down at her locked hands.

“It was a mind she kept secret from us all,” she said, with a strange hopeless feeling pressing on her because she knew she could make no impression on her hearer. “I, for one, never had the faintest idea
...
Do you think, if I had, I would have stayed?” she demanded, with a brightness in her eyes that was the brightness of antagonism, and near tears. “What—what do you think I am?”

“I don’t know.” He leant his shoulder against the mantelshelf, and all at once his voice sounded very grim indeed. “I have told you before that I know nothing whatsoever about you—nothing apart from the opinion my aunt formed of you, and which she passed on to me! She wanted me to think that you were something quite unusual, a girl without ambition, who could be moulded. She had made up her mind that you had few faults, that you were sweetly reasonable, and that you bore a certain resemblance to herself in her younger days. Because of all these things she thought about you she secured your future for you, and now you tell me that you would not have stayed if you had known! Don’t you value security?” with a tight smile.

“No,” she answered, striving to hold his eyes—appealing to him with her look. “I can always work and keep myself!”

“But if you decide to work and keep yourself, as you have been doing for the past two years, or so I understand, what is to become of me? Have you forgotten the terms of the will already?”

No; she had not forgotten. They had shocked and astounded her so badly that it would be difficult indeed for her to forget them
.
In a sense, Madame Albertin had behaved with base unfairness. She had traded on an association that was really very brief. Just six months, and yet
...

I have implicit trust in Miss Chloe Meredith, and I know she will not fail me, in this or any other matter
...
” That actual sentence was contained in the will, which the lawyer had just read out to them.
“From my own experience I know that a marriage can work that is not, in any sense of the word, a conventional marriage
...
It can lead to happiness deep and lasting. For marriage is a partnership, a question of give and take, and boundless faith, and without these all-important ingredients it must fail. Romantic love is not enough. Love itself is not enough.
”

Love itself is not enough
...
But surely Madame Albertin must have realised that her nephew and Chloe were absolute strangers, and strangers did not enter into business partnerships, let alone agree to a tie that would unite them for life? And simply to ensure security ... for them both! A fortune shared, a house lived in by two people who, at this stage of
their acquaintanceship, had no idea whether the other possessed a second Christian name, or had depraved tastes! Chloe had been handed over to Pierre with an excellent testimonial from his aunt as to her character, but that could be pure bias; and all she knew about Pierre was that he failed to arrive when he was expected, and he had a weakness for young women with violet eyes and a general air of pertness about them.

“We can refuse to have anything to do with it!”

“You can.” His eyes gleamed at her in a way she had never seen them do before, with strange humourless humour. “There is nothing I can refuse, for I have been left nothing—unless you condescend to marry me! If you don’t feel you can stomach me as a husband, you get, I believe, a thousand pounds; but there is nothing I can say or do to prevent the residue of my Aunt Abbie’s considerable fortune going to various charities she has named. Perhaps that hasn’t quite sunk in yet?”

Chloe stared at him.

“But it’s monstrous!” she protested. “It’s worse than monstrous!”

“Do you really think so?” he asked, as if he was interested. “You knew my aunt. You believed her a fair-minded woman, didn’t you? Not a woman to behave badly to her nearest and dearest?”

“I believed
... I was
certain
she was devoted to you! I still am certain!”

“Well, then—” watching her as if her reactions were suddenly of absorbing interest—“what do you deduce from all this?”

“I couldn’t possibly deduce anything. It’s too utterly puzzling,” she replied.

But Pierre wouldn’t have that.

“Not if you put yourself in my aunt’s position, and follow her reasoning. You forget that her husband was a Frenchman, and she knew that he married her for her money. It worked out—as it so often does in France—and she conceived the notion that history ought to repeat itself, and picked upon you to prove her point. She left you everything she possessed, on condition that you marry me
... And all you have to decide is how soon you can bear to become my wife!”

Chloe put both hands up to her face, and stared at him as if his unnatural air of casualness was too much for her.

“But you don’t mean—you
can’t
mean—that you would marry me—a stranger!—for my money?”

“My aunt’s money,” he corrected her suavely.

“Are you so-so badly off?” Chloe heard herself stammer.

He shrugged.

“Why do you think I came here?”

“In order to borrow money?”

“That sounds crude—particularly as I was very fond of Aunt Abbie!—but you can put it like that if you like.”

Once again Chloe put her hands up to her cheeks. They felt hot—painfully, embarrassingly hot—yet her hands were cold as ice, and trembling, and she knew she had received something, in the nature of a shattering shock. It had never once occurred to her that she could become mistress of Trelas if she chose!

Mistress of Trelas, and completely independent for the rest of her life! Financially, that is, for a wife could hardly ask for complete independence
...
Or could she?

“What are we going to do?” Chloe asked huskily, one hand reaching out to him appealingly.

He took it and held it comfortingly.

“I’ve told you. Don’t bother for the moment. I’m going back to the inn
...
” He had stayed there since the late mistress of Trelas had departed from it, and Chloe found herself looking up at him with rather an odd feeling suddenly, and thinking of Fern de Lisle. Fern de Lisle was still at the inn, and they were together
...
It was extraordinary!

The whole situation was extraordinary!

There came a light tap at the door, and the butler, entered.

“What is it, Burton?” Pierre asked, a little impatiently.

“Miss Pentland would like to see Miss Meredith, if it is at all convenient,” Burton replied, bowing slightly in his best well-trained manservant manner. But he added with a mournfulness that gave away his own anxiety on the same score, “I think she is anxious to hear about Madame’s will. She saw the solicitor drive away.”

“But it’s nothing to do with Miss Pentland!” Pierre exclaimed, his brown eyes revealing a good deal of sudden irritation, and Eunice appeared in the doorway and agreed with him, softly.

“Of course it isn’t, Mr. Albertin. Or should I say, Vicomte? I understand that your real title is Vicomte de Ramballe? You forgive me if I made a mistake before, but we were never properly introduced.”

“We weren’t,” Pierre agreed, with his customary suaveness. “But a penniless vicomte finds it less complicated to forget that he has a title, Miss Pentland!”

Eunice smiled, her brilliant, caressing smile.

“I think you must be referring to days that are done with, Vicomte! We all know how your aunt adored you, and how eagerly she awaited your visits. All too infrequent, if you’ll forgive me for sounding just a little critical now that our dear
old friend has gone?”

“I forgive you,” Pierre answered, his eyes glinting with amusement. “But you shouldn’t leap to conclusions, Miss Pentland. You could be in for a surprise!”

Eunice’s dark eyebrows elevated themselves, but she remembered her excellent manners in time, and explained hastily why she had come.

“David and I are both agreed that you must come to us, Chloe,” she said earnestly. “We simply will not accept a refusal! You can’t prevent the Vicomte from occupying his own house, and it wouldn’t look quite right if you occupied it together, would it?”

“I wonder if you have the least idea how wrong you are?” Pierre murmured, and then turned to Chloe. “I think it would be an excellent plan if you accepted Miss Pentland’s offer of hospitality, Chloe,” he told her. “It is lonely for you here, and for the time being we can’t be together.”

“For the time being?” Eunice caught him up quickly. Her blue eyes grew bright and sharp with curiosity. “But Chloe will have to find another job.”

“Not necessarily,” Pierre returned, looking her over almost indolently. She was wearing a dress of heavy white silk, and all her accessories were expensive and white. Her jewellery was chunky and gold, and the bracelets on her wrists suggested costly fetters. “As a matter of fact, I think it is very unlikely that Chloe will have another job. We are thinking of getting married very soon, which is precisely what my aunt wished us to do!”

“Now I know I’m expected to smile at a jok
e—
” Eunice said, perfunctorily doing that very thing. "So far as I'm aware, you and Chloe hardly know one another.”

“My dear Miss Pentland,” the man reproved her suavely, “would I be likely to go in for jokes on the day that my aunt was removed to the churchyard? It would be in execrable taste, wouldn’t it? Particularly as it
was
her wish that we would marry very speedily!”

Chloe started to say something, but he laid his fingers on her arm and gripped it with steely strength. A looker-on would have received the impression that he was merely gently grasping it, but Chloe could have winced from the pain of those encompassing fingers.