Wife Without Kisses

by Violet Winspear

  Rea shivered and told herself not to be a fool.

  She rose from the bed and approached the nearest window, pulling aside the curtain and gazing out into the darkness. The draped ivy below the window rustled in the night air and the yelp of a prowling fox rose sharply above the stamping of horses from the stables.

  There was no moon. The sky lay dark and impenetrable over the house and Rea felt very alone, very far from the busy, noisy world she had shared for nine months with Laura Damien.

  She thought of her father—and of the little house they had lived in at Chingford; the little square house, with the little square garden her father had so loved to potter about in. So different from all this—the tall trees, the acres of smooth lawn, the intoxicating cider smell that stole through the partly open window. There had been just gentle, familiar routine; her father setting off in the morning for the Town Hall, where he worked in the Housing Department; she setting off for her classes at the secretarial college. . . .

  But it had all collapsed, so suddenly, so finally—the long quiet evenings and the long quiet talks snatched out of her life; the world of love in her father’s smile lost to her. Now all she had left was the memory of them.

  Her breath caught on a sigh that was very close to a sob and she turned hurriedly from the window and set about preparing for bed. But the homesickness and the strangeness persisted like a spell. She turned out one of the lamps and lowered the other to a glimmer— telling herself she did this in case Peter should wake and need attention, but as she darted back to the big bed and climbed into it, her young, thin body was shrinking actively from the crowding shadows in the corners of the room.

  She was drifting on the kindly edges of sleep when the door of her room opened.

  It was a heavy door and it creaked slightly, the sound immediately arousing Rea. She lay against her mound of pillows, watching Burke’s tall figure emerge out of the shadows. He came to the side of her bed and stood smiling down at her. “I came to see whether you were quite comfortable.” His smile broadened. “Are you?”

  “I feel rather lost,” she murmured.

  “You look it!” He walked round the bed and took a look at the soundly sleeping Peter. “Tomorrow we’ll see about a nursery for this young man. Moira can have charge of him. She’s good with children, I hear—has about eight or nine brothers and sisters.”

  “Oh, but that isn’t necessary,” Rea broke in quickly. “I don’t mind looking after Peter. I—I’d like to look after him. It give me something to do.”

  “Nonsense!” Burke laughed. “I didn’t bring you here to turn you into a nursemaid—that would get Grandfather’s goat! He has the rather old-fashioned idea that mothers spoil their sons.”

  “You—you feel that he really has accepted me as Peter’s mother?” Rea spoke breathlessly, gathering a handful of the quilt in her agitation.

  Burke fingered his chin a moment in a reflective manner, then he sat down on the bed, leaned forward and smilingly eased her fingers from their clutch upon the quilt. He took them into his large hand. “It’s a little early yet to say exactly what he does think; he isn’t an expansive person, as you may have noticed. He likes the boy, though—I probed that much out of him.” Burke turned Rea’s hand in his, his smile deepening at the smallness of it; it looked lost and rather helpless in the brown expanse of his palm. “I know all about you!” he said. “You’re still worrying, aren’t you?”

  Her eyes wavered from his. “ I—I can’t help it. I don’t think your grandfather likes me. I think I’ve come as a bit of a shock to him.”

  “Very probably.” Burke’s drawl held a deep amusement. “You have a singularly innocent look, my dear, and he doubtless feels, in the rather suspicious circumstances, that you’re a case of hidden deeps under a deceptively quiet exterior. Do you mind so terribly— being thought a quiet jade?” Imperceptibly his fingers tightened on hers as he made this remark.

  Rea’s glance lifted tentatively to his face. It wore an amused indulgence, she saw; the same sort of indulgence he might show a perplexed child. “The point is,” she said, “I actually feel a—a quiet jade.” She grinned.

  “Laura Damien would be amused. She thought me a priceless goody-goody.”

  “Did she accept, without question, your explanation of another job?” Burke asked, looking curious. He had meant to question Rea on this before, but the few days intervening before their marriage had been fairly busy ones and it had slipped his mind. It occurred to him now, however, that the brassy Laura had probably had quite a lot to say when Rea had handed in her notice; it wouldn’t have suited Laura, losing the services of anyone as conscientious as this child.

  Rea gave a breathless little laugh. “No, she didn’t! She thought I had suddenly decided to count the world well lost for love. She wished me well and told me not to cry when—” Then Rea broke off, colouring as she remembered Laura’s bawdy implications.

  “Go on,” Burke murmured.

  But Rea shook her head. “It’s nothing. She—she chose to think I intended doing something disreputable, that’s all.”

  “I see.” Burke, frowning, fingered the ring upon the small hand he held; the ring he had put there that morning.

  There had been a little rain and then a little sunshine and the Registrar’s office had been quiet and solemn and rather dusty and he had felt Rea actually shaking beside him as she had made her barely audible responses, her eyes over-large in her pale face. When he bad put the wedding-ring on her finger she had looked ready to burst into tears. He had thought that she was suddenly afraid of him and he had said to her, as they drove to Polly Wilmot’s to collect Peter: “Look, Rea, that marriage ceremony was only a necessary formality. You mustn’t let the fact that I am now your husband worry you.”

  “It’s just—I—I feel rather guilty,” she had replied, and glancing quickly sideways at her he had realized that he had put the wrong interpretation upon her nervousness. She wasn’t afraid of him as a man or a husband, he saw; she barely comprehended him as a husband, and as he watched her, she quickly pulled her glove on over the gleaming ring on her left hand

  and he knew that she was attempting to thrust her feeling of guilt out of sight: attempting to forget that they intended the promises they had just made,

  one to the other, in that dusty, impersonal office, into a series of deliberate lies. To him the marriage was just a means to an end, that end being Peter’s acceptance at King’s Beeches without question and without suspicion. But he saw now that to Rea it was a dark step into the unknown, one she had not taken with ease, despite the release it afforded her from Laura Damien’s exacting employment.

  He remarked to her now, rather abruptly: “It’s proof of your innate niceness, my child, that you’ve remained nice after nine months of that Damien woman’s company.” He released her hand and rose from the bed; stood very tall and broad beside it, glancing round the big, dim room. “Are you quite happy with this room, Rea?” he asked.

  “Yes, thank you.” She gave him a polite smile.

  “I believe you think it a bit of a ballroom.” A grin broke on his lips. “You’ll get used to it. In about a week you’ll be thoroughly at home here. You mustn’t let my grandfather, or the servants, unnerve you. You won’t, will you?”

  “I’ll try not to.” Again her smile was the polite smile of a guest to her host. The gold ring glittering upon her finger meant nothing. She would never feel herself the mistress of this enormous and beautiful house; official wife to this tall, smiling, self-assured man—this stranger! She felt her own inadequacy acutely, turning her eyes from Burke’s querying blue ones. “ I— I hope I don’t disappoint you,” she mumbled—and felt desperately like a greenhorn typist mumbling to her new boss: “I hope I give satisfaction.”

  Again Burke bent over her, turning her face to him with a gentle hand. His smile now was grave. “Everything’s going to be fine, little one. Now go to sleep. Goodnight.” He left her then, moving away into the shadows,
quietly letting himself out of the room.

  And somewhat reassured, Rea curled herself into a warm little ball and drifted into sleep.

  CH AP TER FI VE

  IT was Peter who woke Rea, woke her from deep, lost sleep, in the great bed. She sat up, startled, not quite knowing where she was for a second or two. Then Peter gave another lusty yell and Rea came completely awake to her surroundings. She scrambled from the bed and stood shivering in the early morning cold, lifting the crying baby from his cradle. She studied his red and angry little face with concern, the great tears sliding down his cheeks. “What is it, Petey boy?” she whispered.

  “Oh, I do wish you could talk, darling. I do wish you could tell me what to do. I’m a poor sort of a mother for you, aren’t I? Are you hungry, then?”

  He gulped on a sob, choked a little, and Rea’s anxious heart came into her throat.

  Would Moira be up? Moira would know what to do! Hurriedly Rea laid the baby back in his cradle and scrambled into her dressing-gown and slippers. Then she took him up once more, wrapped him in his blanket and carried him from the room. She stood in the quiet corridor, gazing right, then left. How did one get to the kitchen? She took half a dozen tentative steps along the landing, pleading quietly, worriedly with the sobbing Peter. Everything was so quiet! And the light beyond the oriel window she was approaching was still the pale grey of very early morning.

  Then, almost at her elbow, a door opened. Rea stood petrified, gazing at the silver-haired figure of the master of King’s Beeches. The white bars of his eyebrows were drawn down in a heavy frown, and his tall, bony frame, enveloped in a claret-coloured dressing-gown, was taut with harsh surprise.

  “That youngster’s making a damnable racket, miss!” He stamped across to her and stood over her, his eyes gimlet hard. “What’s up with him, then?”

  “He’s—he’s hungry, I think.” Rea—she couldn’t help herself—was terrified of the old, angry man. “I was going to the kitchen ... I thought someone might be there.” “There’s a bell in your room, miss,” the old man snapped. “Go back and ring it. One of the girls will come up to you.” Then he turned and went back into his room and Rea jumped as the door snapped shut.

  With burning cheeks and a throat that felt full of tears, Rea returned to her bedroom. She located the bell and pressed it and within minutes the brisk, brown-eyed Moira was bustling into the room.

  Her “Good mornin’, ma’am!” was respectful enough, but her smile was inclined to be inquisitive. Down in the kitchen last night she had said to Tolliver: “’Tis a joke the young master must be playing, Mr. Tolliver. He isn’t truly wedded to such a tiny, scrawny bit, now is he?”

  “They’ve a babe to prove it,” Tolliver—who was less impassive in the kitchen—had retorted.

  Now Moira took that same babe in her strong brown arms. “My, but he is in a paddy, ma’am!” she exclaimed, and the glance she cast at Rea plainly intimated that she thought her every bit as inadequate as Rea knew herself to be. Then Moira, seeing the blush that stole over the pale face of Rea, framed in the fine, straight, child’s hair, said with more kindliness: “I’ll take him down with me and see to him, ma’am, don’t you fret. T’young master said last night that I was to help you all I could with your baby.”

  “You’re very kind.” Rea’s smile was hesitant, for she was frankly intimidated by the very efficient Moira, with her glance that didn’t trouble to hide its unflattering summing up of herself.

  “I’m happy to be that, ma’am.” Moira gave a little bob, and then marched briskly to the door, carrying the baby off with a proprietorial air. Just before she closed the door, she said to Rea: “Early tea will be up in five minutes or so, ma’am.”

  The door closed and Rea was left alone in the big bedroom, still lit by the low glimmer of the oil-lamp she had not extinguished the night before. It gave the room a dull, yellow look, clashing with the thin bars of sunshine now striking through the curtains at the windows. Rea extinguished the lamp and drew the curtains open. The stable yard below was aflutter with brown and white hens, running before the inquisitive noses of two big dogs.

  And beyond the wall of the stable-yard a meadow, swathed in a slight mist, stretched to the dense, still green of a wood, above whose tall trees birds wheeled and dived in an abandon of early morning joy.

  Rea’s spirits began to revive. There was beauty here, and friendly animal sounds that she couldn’t help but respond to. And later on in the day, if she wished, she could wander in that meadow, make her way down into the green heart of that wood. She was no longer tied to the tedious wheel of employment—she was free!

  Came a tap at the door and she became

  guiltily still. She was smoothing her hair when the door opened and a maid appeared with her early tea. This girl was less bustling than the rather familiar Moira, but none the less curious. Her eyes, under a cap worn rather low down on her forehead, stared at Rea as she set the tea-tray down on the bedside table.

  Rea met the girl’s look and suddenly knew a desire to exert her authority as Burke’s wife; or at least to show that she wasn’t quite the tongue-tied ninny everybody here seemed to be thinking her. “I hope Moira has managed to pacify my— my son,” she said, coming to the bedside and helping herself to one of the biscuits the maid had brought with the tea. She bit into it, assuming a nonchalant attitude. “He’s really a very good baby. I think the strange country noises frightened him.”

  The little maid gulped, twisted her hands in her apron and then nodded. “’Tis very likely, ma’am,” she said shyly.

  Rea smiled at her. “What time is breakfast?” she asked.

  “Half-past eight, ma’am.” The girl hesitated at the door. “Was there anything else, ma’am?” Rea took up her tea, stirring it rather quickly. “You —you might tell me how I get to the breakfast-room.

  This house is so vast—there are so many

  rooms!”

  The maid’s eyes flew wide open. “Why, ma’am, ’ tis the first door to your right as you go down the stairs— the stairs on the left-hand side of the hall, that is.”

  “Thank you.” Rea’s smile was half impish, half self-disparaging as she sipped her tea and watched the little maid go scuttling away. Doubtless she would inform the other members of the kitchen that she had had to give the new mistress directions on how to get to the breakfast-room. And doubtless there would be amused comment. “My, but she’s the quaint one,” someone would say. “How come young master married her?” And very likely Moira, that self-assured young creature, would hold Peter high in her arms and her knowing laughter would fill the kitchen!

  Burke didn’t appear for breakfast and Rea felt very shy and uncertain sitting alone with his grandfather. He ate very little, studiedly ignoring her from behind a rattling newspaper, and though Rea longed to ask him where Burke might be, she didn’t dare.

  The room they sat in had tall glass doors opening on to a terrace, where a great brown and black Alsatian dog was prowling. Every now and again he would pause in his prowling, peer in through the glass of the closed doors and yelp at his master, immersed so irritably in the morning paper. Rea watched the dog, smiling slightly as he lifted a paw and impatiently tapped upon the glass. He had a saucy, handsome face, with a big ruff about his neck and alertly cocked ears, and as he again tapped upon the glass, Burke’s grandfather turned sharply in his chair. “Be quiet, you old fool!” he ordered. The dog yelped in answer, his head slowly going over on one side.

  “What’s his name?” Rea asked shyly.

  The old man rattled his newspaper, seeming to debate whether to answer her or not. Rea bit her lip, feeling his hostility so acutely that she wanted to leap from her chair and go running from the room.

  “His name is Rafe,” Mr. Ryeland said at last, curtly. “But beware of him, miss. He looks friendly, but he won’t countenance any pretty pettings and pattings— he hasn’t been reared to them.” Abruptly he laid aside his newspaper. “That husband of yours, if you’r
e interested, has gone off to do a bit of surveying for me and won’t be back until this afternoon. He said something about some nursery furniture coming along from Taunton and he wants it put in the room he and his brother used to share when they were children. Get one of the maids to show it to you, you may want to clear some of the old stuff out of it.”

  She nodded, flushing under the old man’s gimlet stare. “It’s incredible!” he suddenly grunted, his cold blue eyes sweeping her from head to foot, scornful assessing, contemptuously dismissing. “The boy’s done it for a damn joke!” Then he rose, walked with stiff, fiercely offended pride to the glass doors and let himself out on to the terrace, where the big dog frisked around him like a puppy, eagerly following him down the stone steps and across the lawn.

  Rea sat forlornly at the table, nervously jumping when Tolliver came soundlessly into the room. She watched his impassive back as he busied himself at the sideboard. “Tolliver,” she spoke tentatively, but he turned at once, presenting a polite face. “Tolliver, when you return to the kitchen will you tell Moira that I want to see her. I want her to help me clear out my—my husband’s old nursery. A batch of new furniture has been ordered from Taunton and probably arrive here sometime today.”

  “Yes, madam.” He hesitated a moment, then a slight, surprising smile lit his rather saturnine face. “It’s a pleasant feeling, madam, having a child in the house, if you don’t mind my saying so. We in the servants’ hall are quite delighted.”

  “Really, Tolliver?” Rea’s smile was warm with surprise at this overture. Then with a rush she said: “Have you been with the family a good many years?”

  And the young wistfulness of her face, the unconscious revealing of how little she knew of her husband’s family, moved Tolliver to a sympathetic expansiveness —and the thought that Mr. Burke had brought back many a strange curio from his travels, but never a stranger one than this small wife, complete with a handsome Ryeland baby. “Since I was a young man, madam,” he said, “when the two boys were still very young. Their mother died when Mr. Philip was born. They were fine boys, madam, though Mr. Philip was always the quieter of the two. Master Peter has a look of his uncle, I think.”