Marry a Stranger (15 page)

“I can manage,” she assured him, in her youthfully dignified voice. “And if necessary I might be able to get someone else to live in the house. Hannah might know of someone.”

“Hannah is not much more than a schoolgirl.”

“But she’s very capable—and willing to learn.”

“From whom?” he enquired, with a faintly lifted eyebrow, and the merest suspicion of his old smile stealing to the corners of his lips. “Don’t tell me you pass your time instructing Hannah? Or has Jane decided to make a more polished job of her?”

“No, I don’t think Miss Fountain is interested in housework, and certainly not in Hannah. But as this happens to be my home I do take a certain amount of interest in it
—
” pausing to let this sink in
—
“and I’ve found Hannah very willing. And it’s quite possible she has friends, or even relatives, in the village, who might be willing to help.”

“It is,” he agreed, “and you can find out, if you like. But I think it would be a good thing to insta
l
l Mrs. Elbe at the head of things here, and it would be someone you know to have about the house.
”
He did not add, as he looked at her and saw that all the pleasure of her evening had been wiped from her face, and that she was now facing him as if she was on the defensive—a pale-faced, inscrutable-eyed defensive which was a new aspect of her to him—that he realized that she must sometimes be rather appallingly lonely, with only Miss Fountain for company, and that it concerned him a little. “After all, you like Mrs. Elbe, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” she admitted. “I like her very much indeed. But what will you do without her?”

“Find someone else to look after my simple wants. And that shouldn’t be so difficult.”

No, thought Stacey, the pulse in her throat beating with such wild rapidity that she felt certain he must see it, it shouldn’t be in the least difficult to find someone who would regard it as a pleasure to look after him! This man who was her husband!

“If you think you can manage without her
...
”
she murmured, and knew that it would be good to see Mrs. Elbe again, who was so kindly and human, and inspired her with a confidence in herself she sometimes was far from feeling.

“Then that’s settled,” he said. He looked at the tray of coffee. “Would you like anything more to drink before you go up to bed?”

“No, thank you,” she answered immediately, feeling herself dismissed, and moved towards the door. “Good night,” she said, rather stiffly.

“Good night,” he called after her. He watched her struggling for a moment with the heavy handle of the stout oaken door, and then before she could succeed in turning it he was across the floor and behind her and had encircled her slim fingers with his lean and virile ones. The handle turned smoothly, and the door opened. “Good night,” he repeated, looking down at her.

Stacey did not venture to look up at him again. She crossed the hall in her filmy grey dress, as light and insubstantial as the gauzy grey wings of a moth, and with her head of dark, soft hair held rather stiffly erect began to ascend the stairs. The light from the old-fashioned chandelier shone down upon her bare white arms and shoulders, and if they were just a little immature as yet the gentle radiance did nothing to call attention to the fact. She was as graceful as a willow-wand, and there was something dignified about her straight, slim back.

But under the flimsy material of her dress her heart was laboring heavily. She thought: “Vera Hunt!
...
And coming here!
...
”

What did that mean? What kind of interpretation would Jane Fountain, for instance, place upon her coming
...
?

Nevertheless, during the next few days Stacey threw herself almost heart and soul into the preparations for the visitors. She antagonized Miss Fountain by insisting on something resembling an annual spring-clean of the entire house, which Miss Fountain chose to regard as an affront to her own house-keeperly instincts, and decided to allot the Yellow Bedroom to Miss Hunt, as the one room in the house which would almost certainly please her. Miss Hunt’s aesthetic instincts would be more than gratified by the white carpet and the satiny sheen of the walls, and the ample wardrobe space for her choice collection of garments would probably please her still more. For it was unlikely that she would arrive without something new and striking in her suitcase, or so Stacey decided, after knowing her for only a very short while.

The new dining room curtains were got up in good time, and new rugs laid on the polished floor. Stacey undertook the filling of all the vases herself with the best that the garden offered at that late season, and as these were mostly chrysanthemums and some wonderful spiky dahlias which had so far escaped the frosts, they looked well against the background of ancient oak.

In the kitchen, too, she supervised the preparation of appetizing foodstuffs. As she had told Miss Fountain, she was really interested in cookery, and with the aid of an old French cookery book which she found in one of the shelves of the library, and Hannah’s willing assistance, she concocted some tempting-looking confectionery and feathery light pastries which Miss Fountain viewed with a jaundiced eye, and refused to sample. But not so Stacey and Hannah. They sampled them with appreciative looks, and then smiled their satisfaction at one another. Hannah giggled delightedly.

“And such fancy names, too!” she declared, consulting the cookery book. “Even if I’d been taught French at school, which I wasn’t, I couldn’t make out these names, but they do
look
exciting, don’t they?”

Stacey agreed with her. The only time she laughed, or felt any sense of amusement or enjoyment in Fountains, was during those moments in the kitchen, when Hannah shared them with her, and when they also shared what Hannah called “elevenses,” and frequently afternoon tea, too, if Miss Fountain decided to absent herself from it, and shut herself up in her room as she sometimes did until very nearly dinner time. It saved carrying a tray to the library, and in any case the library was not the most cheerful corner of the house when one was alone, as Stacey was on those occasions. It was a room which brooded, or seemed to brood, upon its past, and required an enormous fire, and voices—and, if possible, laughter—to dispel the gloom. Even the drawing room, with its portrait of Fenella hanging above the fireplace, was a happier room than the library.

Stacey spent a lot of time thinking out her dinner menu for the evening of the guests’ arrival, and when once she had decided upon it she spent even more time making absolutely certain that no possible failures would be brought to table. That would have been too humiliating, with Vera Hunt’s smiling, cold blue eyes watching her from the seat of honor beside her host.

About an hour before they were due to arrive Stacey went up to dress, taking as long as possible over her bath, and attending to the careful setting of her hair. She had decided to wear her black evening dress, as it was a trifle more sophisticated than anything else she possessed, and made her look rather older—and, perhaps, what was more important, made her feel older. She knew, too, that she suited black—or black suited her—and it certainly provided an excellent foil for the purity of her complexion. She wore her pearls, and the plain gold wedding ring on the third finger of her left hand was her only other adornment.

Just before the car drew up outside she returned to the hall. She heard the noise of car wheels on the drive, and a moment later there was the sudden slowing down of fat tires which had travelled all the way from London, and then the opening and shutting of the car doors, and the sound of voices in the deepening dusk. Vera’s light and rather empty laugh came clearly to her, and a man’s laugh echoed it. Then she realized that it was her duty to get the front door open, before Martin found it necessary to pull the bell chain, and she stood in the opening looking forth into the night, with a background of brightly lighted hall behind her.

Vera Hunt came tripping lightly up the steps, swathed in a coat which was soon seen to be mink, and she had a tiny hat like a blown leaf constructed of emerald velvet on her striking, colorless hair, with a glittering diamond pin struck through it. She put out hands encased in gloves of emerald suede and took Stacey’s extended one, and stood looking down at her with a curious expression on her face.

“Well, well!” she exclaimed. “So here you are in your own home at last, and here am I your first visitor!”

Dr. Carter’s voice behind her broke in heartily: “And I’m your second visitor, Mrs. Guelder, and if not quite as important, at least, I hope, just as welcome?”

“Of
course
,”
Stacey exclaimed, and felt the tide of color flood into her face under his kindly, twinkling eyes, and the close pressure of his hand which was more or less what she had expected.

And then the astounding thing happened which very nearly rendered her speechless, and did nothing to abate that crimson tide of color in her cheeks. Martin, carrying one of Vera’s light, specially constructed snakeskin-covered suitcases, came up the steps behind them and dumped the suitcase in the hall, and then turned to his wife and caught her by the shoulders and drew her right into his arms. Before she could make even a wild guess at his intention he had stooped his dark head and kissed her deliberately full upon her mouth, and as if not content with that, bestowed a second, lighter kiss upon the top of her carefully dressed hair.

“How are you, darling?” he asked, allowing an expression of tenderness to dwell in his eyes as he looked at her. “I hope you haven’t been too lonely, or too bored, while I’ve been away?”

Stacey made a determined effort not to allow the utter stupefaction she felt to show in her face, and summoning her voice to her aid with an even more supreme effort, answered him as casually as she could: “Oh, no—it hasn’t been too bad. But I expect you’re all tired after your journey? Would you like me to take you straight upstairs to your room, Miss
Hunt? Or would you prefer to come into the drawing room and have a drink first
—
?”

“I’d rather go upstairs to my room, if you don t mind,” Miss Hunt answered, and although her eyes were inscrutable as she looked at her hostess, she smiled quite charmingly with her beautifully made-
up lips.

When they reached the Yellow Bedroom she looked about it at first with obvious astonishment, and then looked at Stacey with a more appreciate smile.

“This is really nice,” she said, “
really
nice! Are all your other bedrooms as nice as this one?”

“Well—” Stacey hesitated. “Perhaps not quite as nice—”

“Not even your own?”

“I like it as it is,” Stacey told her, wondering why the other’s cold blue eyes were watching her with the glimmerings of a faintly amused smile in their depths. Vera put down her handbag on the dressing table, and then removed her hat and looked at herself in the Cupid-entwined, solid silver Venetian mirror, which was one of the most striking features of the dressing table.

“This used to be Fenella Guelder’s room, didn’t it?” she said.

Stacey could see now that her eyes were mocking her in the mirror, and the corners of her scarlet mouth had a kind of oddly satisfied, upward twist. She ran a comb through her hair, and patted the deep, soft waves back into place, and then drew forth her lipstick from her handbag and made a few skilful repairs to her mouth.

“But perhaps you felt you would rather not have it for your own?” she suggested, smiling this time with a kind of brilliant sweetness at the girl who stood quietly watching her in her cloudy dark dress.

When she left her and went away along the corridor to her own room, Stacey caught sight of the tall figure of her husband just about to disappear into his bedroom, which adjoined her own. She went to her dressing table and automatically started to retouch her own make-up, when she heard his knock upon the communicating door. Without giving him permission to enter she stood and waited for him to do so, and as he quietly closed the door behind him she could see that his face was no longer transfigured by that amazing look of tenderness which had looked at her out of his eyes downstairs in the hall, when he had followed it up by sweeping her into his arms and kissing her. His face now wore an expression which it would have been difficult to describe, for although he smiled at her faintly there was a touch of formality in the way he did so, and his voice sounded formal, and a little curt, too, as he spoke.

“
I saw you come in here just now, and I wanted to have a word with you,” he said.

“Yes?” Stacey could feel the blood charging along her veins, and she wondered whether he could hear the nervous beating of her heart.

“I hope you’ll overlook the slight exuberance of my greeting just now in the hall, but I thought it better, in view of the fact that we are entertaining our first guests, to make it appear as if our marriage is altogether normal, at least.”

“I—I rather gathered that that was the reason
why you
—
” She broke off, biting her lip, and
pressing her hands down hard over the bosom of her dress to still that disturbing tumult within her.

“Why I saluted you quite so heartily?” His smile had a queer tinge of something almost derisive about it, and he was watching her closely. “But a mere peck on the cheek might have looked a little suspicious. And I must say you played up very well.
You didn’t look as horrified as I was afraid you might look, and as you might have been excused for looking. However, I’ll try not to embarrass you with too much of
that sort of thing in future.”

He moved into the circle of light cast by the pendant chandelier, and putting his hand into his pocket produced a small jeweller's box. She could see at once that it was a ring case, and when he snapped it open and held it out to her the sight of the superb stone nestling in a bed of white velvet made her eyes automatically open wider, and although she didn’t realize it a sparkle of appreciation lit them like a sudden ray of sunlight dissipating shadows.

It was a large, square-cut sapphire surrounded by tiny diamonds, mounted in platinum. When he ordered her quietly to hold out her hand she obeyed him meekly enough, and he slipped it on the appropriate finger, above the plain gold wedding ring, where its beauty was emphasized by the loveliness of her hand.

“Do you like it?” he asked. “You didn’t provide me with one of your gloves, so I had to guess at the size, but it seems to fit very well.”

“It fits—perfectly!” she replied, with a catch in the words. She stared down at the depth of blueness which might have belonged to a sapphire-blue sea, and she was slightly dazzled by the brilliance and sparkle of her new possession. “But you need not have bought anything quite so perfect. I mean”—conscious of sounding a little ungrateful—“this was obviously expensive, and it was not really necessary
—
not—not under the circumstances
—
”

“Whatever the circumstances,” he told her, almost grimly, “you are my wife, and I do not wish my friends to gather the impression that anything second-best is good enough for you. And I hope also that you really do like it,” he added, even more shortly.

“Oh, I do—I do!” She looked up at him almost eagerly, her wide eyes limpid violet pools anxious to convince him. “I think it’s absolutely lovely—absolutely perfect! And it’s the first piece of really expensive jewellery I’ve ever had given to me in my life!” She caught her breath and studied the ring again, her face suffused with color. “You’d like me to wear it this evening, of course?”

“Of course,” he echoed her. “That’s one reason why I couldn’t wait to get hold of one of your gloves. I didn’t want Carter and Miss Hunt to see you with only a wedding ring on your finger.”

“No; I suppose it would have looked rather odd.” But after that little uprush of gratitude, which had caused her to forget her shyness and pay tribute to his gift, she felt her heart sink like a stone at the realization that the only reason why he had bought the ring—and bought it in time for tonight!—was because it would have affected his pride if she had not appeared as the wife of a man in his position should appear, correctly attired and wearing the badge of their relationship for all to see above the less ostentatious wedding ring which was merely the religious symbol of their union. Except, of course, that it was not really a union at all!
...

It had not been merely to please her that he had bought the ring, and somehow that made it easier to accept it. She stood looking down at it with her eyes determinedly lowered because she could feel his studying her, and what the expression was in those eyes at that moment she could only guess. But she wished suddenly that he would cease looking at her—that he would go away—or say something!
...

“Well, I suppose I’d better go and dress,” he exclaimed suddenly, in a quiet voice. Still, she could not bring herself to look up at him, but a painful little flush was rising even on her neck, and she twisted and turned the ring nervously on her finger. “There isn’t a great deal of time.”