Wife Without Kisses

by Violet Winspear

  Which surmise proved a correct one.

  For the next six long days Rea was kept busy feeding the insatiable portable with yards of quarto paper, while her slender, mobile fingers hammered out an incessant bombardment of words. The rain that had seen their arrival on the Sunday departed in a gay flood of sunshine and the historical little town beyond the hotel windows turned so warm and inviting that there were moments when Rea’s fingers grew very, very rebellious on the keys of the portable.

  It wasn’t until the Saturday evening that a bleary-eyed, wrist-sore Rea won her release from the dancing keys that earned her bread for her.

  She made her way to the pier.

  All day the September sun had shone brightly and there was still a fairly large crowd out upon the pier, stretched in deckchairs, lounging at the railings, and wandering in and out of the fun arcade and the restaurant.

  Rea walked to the very end of the pier and stood at the railings, breathing deeply of the tangy air, grateful for the invigorating feel of it against her tired eyes and through her hair. There was noise and laughter all about her; the silky wash of the sea as it came in against the supports of the pier. There was, over everything, a gay warmth, a holiday release; something that quickened the blood and made of life, for these few precious moments, a gift to be held very closely, very lovingly.

  “So you’ve finally escaped?” a low, pleasant voice suddenly murmured in her ear, while a small cloud of expensive cigarette smoke drifted piquant and sharp to her nostrils.

  She stirred, dragging her tired eyes from the almost hypnotic dance of silver light on the slowly moving water. She stared at the large, lounging figure now at the rail beside her. “Mrs. Damien has been working mad on her new book,” she said. She watched Burke Ryeland through the gloom, startled and uneasy. There was about this man a lazy distinction: a cool, self-assured air that made her feel clumsily young—all feet and legs and straggly hair. Self-consciously she pushed her hair back from her face, her cheeks growing warm as he drawled: “Do you enjoy pounding Mrs. Damien’s terrible typewriter?”

  “She isn’t a bad sort of person to work for,” Rea replied, a trifle defensively.

  “She reminds me of a boa-constrictor,” he retorted, lazily, blowing his expensive cigarette smoke towards the sea, “wrapping her great painted self about you, Rea Glyn, and squeezing you dry of all youthful resilience. How long do you intend to be squeezed dry?”

  “I—I don’t understand you.” Rea was bewildered by him, a little unnerved by the wide stretch of his shoulders above her, the enigmatic smile playing about his well shaped mouth.

  “How old are you?” he asked.

  “Nineteen.”

  “That much?” He seemed surprised, his eyes travelling up and down her slender, boyish body in its rust wool suit, with a prim little white collar enclosing her throat, and a small butterfly brooch pinned above the slight lift of her left breast. “Does your mother know how hard you work for Laura Damien?” he demanded. “I have no mother,” she retorted primly.

  “Nor a father?”

  She bit her lip and turned from him. She was still feeling the loss of her father, and talking about him still hurt. “My father died nine months ago. He had a blood disease—there was nothing to be done for him.”

  “You sound as if you miss him very much.” Burke Ryeland spoke with a quiet kindliness. “Have you been working for Laura Damien ever since?”

  She nodded. “There was no money, you see. I—I was lucky to get such a good job, but I used to do a lot of typing for my father—he wrote articles for gardening journals in his spare time; he was an awfully good gardener—so I was fairly proficient. Anyway, Mrs. Damien seemed to think so.”

  “You consider you’ve been lucky, eh?” Burke Ryeland’s drawl held a smile. “My word, you’re easily pleased, Rea Glyn!”

  “Beggars can’t be choosers!” Rea retorted, again with a flash of defensiveness. “Anyway, I’m grateful to Mrs. Damien. A person in her position can afford to pick and choose and—and I think it was extremely kind-hearted of her to choose to employ me. My secretarial qualifications, nine months ago, were pretty thin.”

  “Oh, I think Madame Damien knew what she was doing,” Burke Ryeland broke in, his drawl at its smoothest, his reflections at their most caustic as he watched Rea. This, he thought, was obviously a kid who would work morning, noon and night without a murmur of complaint, and that qualification would far outshine any others for Laura Damien. Laura Damien, unaltered from the old days; still brassy and predatory and mammothly unconcerned that she had worked this child, Rea, until her great child’s eyes were ready to pop out of her head!

  “I— I understand you were a friend of Mrs. Damien’s,” Rea said, with a touch of youthful dignity, making him smile.

  “Let’s say we were once passing acquainted,” he amended. “She’s hardly an island I’d care to stay long on.”

  “That’s a curious simile, Mr. Ryeland,” Rea was moved to remark.

  “Writers are curious people, my dear. Even those wearing the ‘ex’ label.” He studied her through the gloom and she saw that his eyes were quizzical. “Have you no. rebellion in your young soul, Rea Glyn?” he abruptly queried.

  “ I—I don’t think so.” She fingered the smooth metal of the rail where she stood—then, honesty prevailing in her, she burst out: “No, I do rebel. I do long to break my chains—but I have to eat.”

  “Bravo!” Now he smiled. “I’m glad you said that.” Abruptly he tossed the remainder of his cigarette into the sea and straightened to his full six feet three. “Will you come and have dinner with me, Rea?” he invited.

  “D-dinner?” Rea’s eyes went large with surprise. “But—but Mrs. Damien is expecting me back.”

  “Mrs. Damien can go to the devil!” His large cool hands came to her shoulders and he drew her round from the pier railings. “You’ve earned a break from that booming, bedizened female, my child. She’s had you shut up in that damn hothouse of an hotel all the week.”

  “Well, I’ve been working,” Rea protested.

  “And now the working week is over and it’s time to play. Come on.” He grasped her hand and firmly led her from the pier, striding so freely that she had to run to keep up with him. When they reached his car, waiting sleekly in the kerb, he handed her in with a smile. “You can stop looking apprehensive,” he commanded, climbing in beside her and leaning forward to switch on the ignition. “I assure you I’m no bold seducer of shy young things. I outgrew that tendency years ago.”

  The car shot out from the kerb and Rea stole a tentative, rather puzzled glance at Burke Ryeland’s hard, fine profile. She was profoundly startled that he should approach her and ask her to dine with him; he hadn’t struck her as a particularly sociable sort of person.

  And from one or two remarks Laura Damien had let drop through the week, he had evidently been stringently avoiding her. A slight smile gleamed in Rea’s eyes. The complacent Laura would hardly feel flattered if she knew that her dull little typist had achieved the dinner invitation she had desired so strongly herself. She’d be as astounded by it as Rea was.

  Her eyes dwelt on the slight feathering of silver at Burke Ryeland’s temple and she found herself wondering how old he might be. Possibly thirty-six or seven, she decided; surely no more?

  The sleek grey car headed into St. Leonard’s and in about a quarter of an hour drew in before a quiet-looking restaurant down a side turning. They suddenly seemed cut off from the noisy holiday crowds and as Burke ushered Rea into the restaurant, the quiet charm and elegance of the place abruptly shocked her awake to the fact that this was one of those deceptively modest-looking places, catering for a moneyed and selective clientele. She drew back in alarm against Burke’s arm. “I’m—I’m not dressed for this!” she gasped.

  “Let me be the judge of that,” he retorted, and propelled her to a table, to which a waiter came at once, murmuring a deferential good evening and handing Burke a menu.

 
Burke opened it, his eyes upon Rea. “I hope all that hard work of yours has made you hungry,” he said. “The food here is very good.” His eyes scanned the menu. “Do you like lobster?” he asked.

  Her head gave a nervous little jerk and he grinned slightly as he turned to the waiter. “We’ll follow a light soup with the lobster mayonnaise, I think. Then breast of partridges, with foie gras, truffles and souffle potatoes.”

  The waiter inclined his deferential head and departed, and while Burke awaited the wine-waiter, he sat back to regard Rea with amused eyes. Her fair hair was tossed from their ride and she was self-consciously smoothing it back, her eyes travelled round the restaurant and taking rather awed note of its quietly distinctive decor and its quietly elegant diners.

  “You look perfectly presentable, my dear girl, so do stop fussing,” Burke murmured.

  Rea met his smiling eyes across the table, bringing her hand down from her hair. She sat up prim and straight in her chair. “Mrs. Damien doesn’t eat in this kind of place,” she said.

  “I’m not Mr. Damien!” he retorted crisply.

  A grin jumped about Rea’s mouth. “She’d have a fit,

  you know, if she knew I was with you.”

  —Why?”

  “She—she thinks I’m scared of men.”

  “Well, you are, aren’t you?” His black brows rose quizzically above the piercing blue of his eyes. “Aren’t you a little weak at the knees right this very moment?” The laughter in his eyes made her lower her eyes, while a quick, defensive pink flooded her cheeks. “I—I suppose I am a bit funny and gauche and therefore a good form of amusement,” she muttered.

  “Good lord!” Abruptly Burke was leaning across the table. “Good lord, child, I didn’t bring you here to laugh at you. What an idea!”

  “Why—did you bring me, then?”

  “When we’ve eaten I’ll tell you,” he said.

  But she was suddenly possessed by the rebellion he had questioned. So she was alone in the world and inclined to be shy—of men. But that, she thought hotly, didn’t turn her into a complete fool. She wasn’t fooled into thinking that this rich stranger saw anything very attractive in Laura Damien’s typist. “I want to know now,” she said, her chin lifting.

  “Do you?” His eyes amusedly travelled her flushed young face. “Still suspicious of me, Rea Glyn?” “Why shouldn’t I be? I hardly know you—Mr. Ryeland.”

  “Hasn’t the boa-constrictor enlightened you as to my family background?” He laughed softly, turning from her as the wine-waiter came to the table. He studied the list and finally ordered a bottle of Montrachet. Then he sat in a small inscrutable silence until the waiter brought the Montrachet, but once it was poured and Rea was holding her glass, with its delicate, cool stem, he said: “Drink up and be merry, Rea, for in just five minutes I’m going to propose to you.”

  Rea just stared, and all the colour fled from her face as she absorbed the utter incredibility of his remark. The man was mad! Mentally deranged by that mysterious sojourn of his in Peru. Why, oh, why had she come here with him? She should have gone back to the hotel, to dine in the noisy but comparatively sane company of Laura Damien....

  “No, I’m not out of my mind, Rea,” Burke said, the sparkle of the wine he was sipping reflected in his eyes.

  “You must be!” Rea retorted. “Asking—asking someone you hardly know to—to marry you!”

  “Asking someone I think I could trust and depend on to marry me,” he amended.

  “But—why?” Rea was caught in bewilderment and shock like a small fly in a web, her eyes imploring a sane explanation of him. “This is crazy—crazy!”

  “Not so, my dear.” Burke shook his head. “I’ve a perfectly sane and straightforward reason for wanting a wife, believe me. We’ll discuss our nuptials after the feast, shall we?”

  With the arrival of coffee, Burke was ready to present Rea with an explanation for his curious proposal. He leant his elbows on the table, watching her with eyes that had gone so serious he suddenly seemed older, even rather tired. “As I said, Rea, I didn’t bring you here to make fun of you. You do believe that, don’t you?”

  “I—I don’t know what I believe, to tell you the truth,” Rea replied. “This is quite the most fantastic thing I’ve ever had happen to me.”

  “I can well believe that,” he agreed. “On the face of it, a proposal of marriage from a stranger is fantastic. But I’m hoping that after I’ve explained the situation to you, you won’t feel it so fantastic after all.” Then he sat back, searching his breast pocket for a cigarette-case. “Do you smoke?” he queried. Rea shook her head, and he lit a cigarette for himself, shaking out the match with a rather impatient hand. Rea realized, with some thing of amazement, that he was almost as nervous as she was.

  He took two or three hard puffs at the cigarette, his eyes narrowing against the smoke as it wreathed up about his dark face. Then he said abruptly: “I’ve a grandfather, Rea, who is a throwback. He belongs to a past era; the sort of era when family pride and a selfless devotion to the demands of that pride were held above all things. It isn’t snobbery, exactly, but it’s something ineradicable. He feels that to be born a Ryeland carries with it certain obligations—obligations which I do not feel disposed to meet. In short, Rea, I’m expected to marry for the sole purpose of producing the next Ryeland. My grandfather, who is eighty-five and in precarious health, has presented me with a problem I highly resent, yet which, for sentimental reasons, I must appear to bring to fruition for him.”

  Burke carefully flicked ash into the ashtray, his eyes steady on Rea’s small, intent face. “I had a younger brother, Philip, whom my grandfather worshipped. All his hopes and joys were centred in and around Phil— but just over a year ago, while Phil was helping with the harvesting on one of the estate farms, he was killed by a threshing machine. The shock nearly killed my grandfather. But following on top of that came something else, something that would have broken him completely if he had come to learn of it. As boys, both Phil and I used to be pals with a girl from one of the local farms, a girl called Dani. She was a lovely, quicksilver kind of kid, whose parents were ambitious for her.

  —Right from a tot they’d had her taught dancing, and when she was sixteen she left the farm to go and live in London with an aunt, so that she might attend a London school of ballet. She was quick and lovely and talented; with the passing of the years she achieved her parents’ ambition and became a successful dancer. I, in the meantime, was travelling the globe. Phil was busy farming, and loving every moment of it. Then, like a bolt out of the blue, finding me in the heart of Peru, came the news that poor old Phil had been killed.”

  Burke’s gaze dropped away from Rea’s face; he moodily contemplated the smouldering tip of his cigarette.

  “I came back to England, naturally. I came back to a very sick old man, and a letter from Dani’s aunt, now living here in Hastings. That letter contained a second shock for me - Dani was dead. She had died giving birth to my brother Phil’s child; only the aunt was aware that the two had been lovers. Dani’ s parents, she wrote, were not prepared to take the child. And she had plans of her own which did not include him; she wanted to go and live in Canada with her sister. In short, she wanted to know whether I’d be prepared to accept the responsibility of the child - if not, she thought he should be put in an orphanage.”

  Burke’s brows drew harshly together above the sapphire eyes. “I was appalled by such an idea. The boy was my nephew, Phil’s child - a Ryeland!” Now Burke shrugged, a small unamused smile twisting his well shaped mouth.

  “The child has been in my care ever since.” His smile deepened, losing some of its bitterness. “With this child ready made on my hands, Rea, half my grandfather’s whim is met. But to give the plot reality, I must produce a mother for the boy. So I’m asking you, in all seriousness, to consider the job. I promise you it will be a much more congenial one than the one you have at present. You’ll have no messy typewriters to contend with
, nor the Damien braying in your ears day and night. I live in the heart of Somerset, among apple orchards and field of wheat as high as your throat. And all I ask of you is that you marry me - in name only.”

  Rea drew a deep gasping breath, staring at this incredible stranger, who presented her with such an incredible proposal. He had promised an end to fantasy, but she felt more than ever that she was living a fantasy.

  “I—I don’t think I could agree to—to deceive an old man,” she murmured.

  “Not even an old man who isn’t in the best of health and who would be highly delighted to have a great-grandson—his very own, remember—placed in his arms before he dies?”

  “It—it still wouldn’t be right.” Rea’s eyes were large in her pale face; her small, thin hands were locked together on the edge of the table. “Supposing he found out? Think what it would do to him! You say he has pride. Why, he would feel that you had deliberately set out to injure his pride.”

  “I don’t think he’s very likely to find out, Rea. We’re quite cut off from civilisation at King’s Beeches, you know. Even so, who’s to dispute my word if I say this child is mine?” He stared straight into Rea’s eyes, and she flinched a little from the sudden flashing arrogance in his eyes. “It might interest you to know that as far as I’m concerned Peter is mine. He’s mine in that the girl who gave birth to him meant—meant rather a lot to me.” Burke ground out his cigarette with hard, angry movements of his hand. “On that count you accept my proposal? Where’s the harm? You’ll be making an old, tired man very happy, and you’ll be giving a grand little youngster someone he can call mother.”

  But Rea was floundering, bewildered, panicky. She was like someone who has swum out into unknown waters; she knew a desperate desire to turn back and find solidity and sanity again, but Burke held her in the deeps, dominated her with his blue eyes. “I—I don’t know what to say to you,” she whispered. “I don’t know how to answer you.”

  “Look,” abruptly he leant across the table and pressed her cold, clenched hands, “let’s suspend discussion of all this until you’ve seen Peter. Let him be the deciding factor. Tomorrow I’ll take you to see him. He still lives, for the present, with that aunt of Dani’s.” Then he turned in his chair to beckon the waiter. He settled the bill and he and Rea made their way out of the restaurant. It had grown colder and Rea shivered as they stepped into the street. “Will you come tomorrow?” Burke asked as he handed her into the car.