Bride by Arrangement (8 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

When at last they returned to Trelas, Chloe was in a state of mind that made her dread the moment when she came face to face with Pierre again, yet the one person she looked for when the train drew in at the station was the slender dark man she was to marry.

But Pierre, although he knew all about their return, was not at Truro to meet them. A car from High Cross waited for them, and Chloe stepped into it with the others, and felt as if all her worst and secret fears were realised. Pierre hadn’t thought it worthwhile to put himself out and drive across Cornwall to welcome her back. He waited until the car passed under the arch of High Cross, and she was at journey’s end, before he stepped from the shadow of the church-like porch and assisted her to alight.

She felt stiff, and she was sure that her hat was askew, and there was a shine on her nose. She was wearing one of her new outfits, and she was very conscious of Pierre’s eyes roving over it, and then coming to rest on her face. She didn’t know it, but there was a question in her anxious eyes as they hung upon his.

Pierre took her by the arm and led her into the house. Eunice followed, her own eyes hard and rather amused as she pulled off her gloves and called to a servant to bring drinks.

“Why don’t you kiss her?” she demanded of Pierre. “You two don’t strike me as a normal engaged couple! You don’t fall into one another’s arms after an absence of nearly a week!”

Pierre stood looking down at Chloe, and it was to her he seemed to be making his reply as he said:

“Perhaps we prefer to reserve our demonstrations until we are without an audience. As a matter of fact, I’m going to suggest that Chloe comes back with me to Trelas for dinner. I’ve told Burton to expect us both, and he understands it’s to be in the nature of a celebration. Our reunion after an enforced separation!”

His eyes were still deliberately holding Chloe’s, and she felt as if the breath was catching in her throat. His warm fingers
were grasping her arm, closely, firmly, making her heart pound and her blood race, and as he went on looking at her her lips fell a little apart, and the green eyes grew less anxious.

When they drove home later, Chloe felt as if something brittle and precious, like a piece of blown glass, was between them, and a
n
uneasy vibration might shatter it. Pierre, with his slim brown hands gripping the wheel of his expensive car, his sleek dark head turned a little away from her, although his eyes were firmly fixed on the road ahead, was close to her again after a whole week, and his closeness made her feel weak with the longing to touch him. But she didn’t dare to do so, for that, too, might break the spell
... the sudden charm that held them. And, in any case, if Pierre was aware of her as she was of him, there was no need for any actual physical contact. Not in those moments while they climbed to the green top of the cliff, and the white shape that was Trelas.

Only when they came in sight of it did Pierre speak.

“You were away a long time, Chloe.”

“Only a week.”

“But it was a long week
...
I found it so!”

“You—you telephoned one night...?”

“And you were out! Were you enjoying yourself very much?”

She shook her head, so firmly that although he wasn’t looking at her he could feel the firmness that quivered all down the length of her frame.

“No. I didn’t really enjoy the week at all. But there was a lot to be done, and Eunice insisted on buying me masses of things. There were all sorts of fitt
i
ngs and appointments to keep, and in the evenings we dined out, and went to theatres and places. Eunice has been so terribly kind I don’t know what to do about it. I simply can’t let her pay for all the things we’ve bought.”

“I wouldn’t let it worry you,” Pierre replied. “We’ll settle all that later on, go into the whole matter. Just now I want to know whether you were, very pleased when David arrived.”

She was silent, wishing she could tell him how much she had longed for him to arrive instead, but the words wouldn’t pass her lips. She was too shy in his presence, and too unsure of him, to say things like that at that stage of their acquaintance. “Were you?” Pierre insisted, and his voice sounded sharp. Once more she shook he
r
head.

“No. Except that it was nice to see him
...
I’ve always thought it nice to see David. But I was hoping—hoping you would telephone again!”

One of his hands left the wheel, and she felt the warmth of his fingers as they covered hers.

“I wanted to,” he admitted, with a strange simplicity. “I
wanted to do so very much, but I didn’t want you to think I was pestering you. I also felt strongly tempted to follow you to London, but for the same reason I didn’t do so!”

“Oh!” she murmured, and he looked at her sideways and their eyes met and held. A little glow stole under her skin, and her long eyelashes fluttered. “It would have made the week bearable! ... In fact, it would have—made the week!”

His fingers crushed hers with sudden fierceness.

“In that case I’ll never let you go to London alone again! Or with anyone else apart from myself!”

Trelas looked very much as it had looked to Chloe on the evening of her return from Truro, but tonight the calmness without was repeated within, and Burton was unmistakably glad to see her. He bowed in his most formal manservant manner, but impulsively immediately afterwards he held out his hand.

“Welcome back to Trelas, Miss Meredith. Master Pierre has told me that you’re going to be married!” and he said it as if it was the best news he had heard for a long time.

Chloe flushed deliciously, and smiled with sudden happiness up into his face.

“And are you glad, Burton?” she asked, very softly. “And will you stay on with us here at Trelas?”

“If
that’s what you want me to do, miss,” Burton replied. “I don’t want to leave Trelas. I don’t think I’ll ever want to leave it, although the late mistress left me enough to retire on if I wish.” He brushed a hand across his eyes. “She was a good mistress. We were together a long time.”

“She was a good aunt,” Pierre murmured, as he led Chloe across the hall to the door of the big drawing-room with the Aubusson carpet.

Burton had decorated the dinner-table with an artistic arrangement of flowers from the garden, and as most of them were roses the room was delicately scented with them as they entered it. The sideboard gleamed with Georgian silver, the wine wavered in the glasses, and the deep peace of the room filled Chloe with a curious sensation like coming to the end of a long and lonely road. She looked around her and realised that all her life she had been lonely until now
...
And now there was Pierre, and this house that was their joint property—or would be soon!—and there was no reason why she should ever be lonely again if ... if Pierre wanted it like that. If he could find enough satisfaction in her society to compensate for the loss of other things.

His freedom, the life he had known!...

She looked across the flower-decked table and met his eyes,
and he waited for Burton to leave the room before he slid a hand across the polished surface that separated them and covered one of hers.

“Oh, Chloe!” he said, as he had said that night before she went to London.

After dinner there was no longer light enough for them to wander in the garden, and a cool breeze had sprung up with the going down of the sun. So they sat in the wide window embrasure of the drawing-room, the rose-red curtains undrawn so that the starshine could reach them, and Chloe poured out the coffee with slim hands that were not as steady as they might have been.

Pierre took his coffee-cup from her, and then set it aside. He laid both hands over hers and drew her nearer to him, bending forward to peer deliberately into her eyes.

“Chloe,” he asked, as if it was a question of the utmost importance, “how much did you really miss me while you were away?”

Chloe’s eyes began to swim, as if his touch melted her bones. At the same time she stared up at him appealingly.
“
How much did
you
miss me, Pierre?”

“Would you believe me if I told you the truth?”

“I only want to hear the truth!”

“Then I’ll tell it to
you!...” He
uttered a sound as if words were being choked in his throat, and then she found herself crushed in his arms, held against a violently beating heart. “I missed you so much that I’d never have believed it six months ago! ... Six weeks ago! Chloe, you’ve got a charm that winds itself about a man’s heart, and becomes entangled with his heart-strings. You’ve the strangest sort of appeal, and I knew it even in the beginning!
... I was afraid you’d make a slave of me, and I didn’t want to be a slave!”

“And now?” she whispered, feeling his heart pounding, and the hands that were holding her, trembling.

“Now I want to kiss you and kiss you and kiss you! Chloe, you’ve got the most adorable lips, like a pale flower without lipstick, like a burning temptation as they are tonight! Please give them to me, and don’t take them away!”

She lifted them eagerly, and their mouths became fused, clinging to one another as if nothing could ever induce them to part. The swimming behind Chloe’s eyes became a wild whirling in her brain, she no longer had any sensation of belonging to herself, or having any will of her own, and as Pierre’s arms locked her to him more and more securely she knew that this was the only reason why she had been born, in order that she could lie utterly helpless against him and dread
the moment when cruel reality would drag them apart.

At last Pierre lifted his head, and the expression in his eyes was as bemused as that in the eyes of the girl he gazed at.

“Chloe, you’re a siren!” he accused, his voice utterly unlike any voice she had ever heard from him. “You must always have lived on this coast, luring men to their doom. You wrecked their ships, and robbed them of their hearts, and now you’ve robbed me of mine!”

“I don’t know what’s happened to me,” she confessed, clinging to him. “I never tried to lure you, Pierre. I thought I
was too dull for you even to notice. And now I
—
”

“And now you what, my darling?” touching his lips to the bewildered green eyes.

“I love you, Pierre! I—love you!” and she hid her face against him because it was an admission that was forced out of her, and once she had said it she was aghast because nothing could ever make her cease to love him.

“And I love you too, my sweetest Chloe—my adorable Chloe!” He rested his cheek against her hair, and murmured into it. “You’re small and soft and shy, and there’s nothing at all to be shy about, because all this was bound to happen, and we’re the luckiest couple alive because we’ve got to marry and we love one another! Think of it, Chloe,” tilting her chin so that he could look into her eyes, “we might have been forced to marry without love—without liking one another. But now we have everything, and my wise old aunt was responsible!”

“Madame Albertin?” She looked up at him with a sudden darkening of her eyes. “Pierre, you once said—that we would never be able to—quite believe in one another
...
”

“That was before I fell in love, before I knew that I would have to believe in you if I was ever to be happy.”

“But I’m in love with you too! I’ve got to believe”—her fingers clutched at him—“always, Pierre! Are you sure that we’re not
making a mistake? That we’re not
—
”

“Hypnotising ourselves into believing that we’re in love?” He took her face in his hands and looked at her reproachfully. “Oh, darling, where is that sort of doubt going to get you—or me? Would you be in my arms now if you still felt about me as you did in the beginning? You were terribly hostile!”

“Because I knew so little about you, and your aunt thought so much of you. You—or word of you—was all she lived for, and you never came. It was so cruel! If I allow you to become the one thing on earth I live for, what is going to happen to me if—”
She swallowed, and her lips trembled—“If—if
—
”

“If?” watching her with intent dark eyes.

“One day I find out—that it was just the money!” Once more
s
he hid her face against him, and he could feel the shudder that shook her. “I still know so little about you, and you know no more about me. In the beginning you thought me colourless and stupid, I know you did. You thought me prim, and at heart I am prim, and loving you won
’
t change me! I’ll always be what I am, and make-up and new dresses won’t turn me into someone you can admire always. At the moment I’m a bit of a novelty
...
Eunice has spent a lot of money on me!”

“You and I are in love—in love!—in love!” he repeated huskily. “Say it after me, Chloe
...
I love you, Pierre!”

“I love you, Pierre,” she whispered obediently.

“And although I know so little about you I’m going to marry you and make you an adoring wife, and we’re going to be very happy!
...”

S
he repeated the words after him as if she was mesmerised by the very strength of her emotion, and he kissed her violently, and then more lingeringly—eyes, hair, cheeks, mouth, the lovely bare throat and shoulders—and then left her in the wide window embrasure and went over to the fireplace and lighted himself a cigarette. He stood staring down on to the stone hearth where logs had blazed in the winter time, and on that night they met for the first time—to have an impact on one another’s lives that set Chloe trembling in the window, as she allowed herself to dwe
ll
on it—and his voice sounded jerky as he spoke at last, and the hand that held the cigarette drew his own eyes, because it was not as steady as it might have been.

“Chloe, we’re being married soon. You know that? Very soon!”

“H-how soon?” she asked, wondering why he had left her so suddenly, and wishing he would come back. She had made the appalling
discovery that she was only happy in his arms.