Wife Without Kisses

by Violet Winspear

  “Has he, Tolliver?” Rea examined the butler’s polite face, a moment of panic sweeping through her. “Were my husband and his brother not alike to look at, then?” “Only about the eyes, madam. Mr. Philip resembled his

  grandmother.”

  “I see.” Rea took up a fork and made patterns on the tablecloth. “His death must have hurt Mr. Ryeland a great deal. My husband says they were very attached to one

  another.”

  “Yes, indeed, madam! Mr. Philip always took such a pride in King’s Beeches, you see, right from a boy.”

  “It is a beautiful house, isn’t it, Tolliver? And so big! I know I shall get lost, again and again.” Rea’s smile was slightly rueful as she laid down the fork and rose to her feet. “I’m holding up your work, Tolliver, sitting about here. You will send Moira to me, won’t you? I’ll be in the garden.”

  He inclined his head, stepping to the glass doors and holding them open for Rea. She made her way down into the garden, where the sun had grown a little warmer, spreading across the lawn and bringing to glowing life the scarlet of salvias, the reddish-purple of hydrangeas, the massed rainbow tints of a great bank of chrysanthemums.

  Rea stood by the sundial in the middle of the lawn, tracing out the inscription with her forefinger. “Time walks before me and Fate treads my heels,” she read. She smiled, in a wistful, slightly hurt fashion. She felt as though the very open contempt and dislike of old Philip Ryeland were treading her heels, casting their shadow over this new life she had undertaken. It was only in Burke’s tall presence that she knew a lessening of tension, a small measure of confidence, but once cut off from him, she became a ridiculous intruder in this house. Regarded with amused incredibility by the servants and dismissed as a hateful joke by the master!

  Yet without the shyness and the self-effacement they so scorned, she wouldn’t be here. They were the attributes Burke liked. He had made her Mrs. Burke Ryeland of King’s Beeches, but he knew she would never presume on her position; she was, and would continue to be, Rea Glyn, the little shy typist he had met in a seaside hotel.

  Suddenly she became aware of somebody standing behind her. She swung round, and found herself gazing at a tall, wonderfully built girl in khaki riding-breeches and a dark green, high-necked sweater. Her hair, which was a glistening chestnut, was cut close to her head, but it in no way gave her a masculine appearance. She wasn’t exactly beautiful, but her tanned features were undeniably striking, possessed of that self-assured haughtiness that so distinguished Burke and his grandfather.

  The girl was frankly examining Rea, negligently swinging a riding-switch against the side of her leg as she did so. “Who the devil are you?” she suddenly asked, in a deep, clipped voice.

  “I—I’m Rea Glyn.” Then Rea remembered and a vivid blush mounted into her face. “I mean—I’m Burke’s wife. We—we only came last night.”

  “Good God!” The girl drew closer to Rea and her dark, jade-green eyes expressed a flash of shock that was almost immediately replaced by a gleam of arrogant, confident laughter. “Come off it. Burke wouldn’t marry a baby like you!”

  “Well—well, he did.” Rea stood small and childlike before this handsome creature, her fair fringe tossed by the wind that was coming across the garden, bringing with it the green tang of high and open places. She looked about sixteen, and pale to the point of being washed out. She hadn’t an ounce of assurance to set against the flaunting vividness of the girl before her; she felt ridiculous, laughable, naming herself Burke’s wife. She wanted, suddenly, to go sinking through the close-cut grass at her feet. Here, she knew, in one sweeping moment of revelation, stood the girl Polly Wilmot had referred to—the girl Burke’s grandfather had wished him to marry. Here she stood, pagan and proud, chestnut hair gleaming in the sunshine, chiselled features taut with scorn and dismissal.

  “Burke likes his little joke, I know,” came the clipped, contemptuous voice, “but he was never one to subscribe to a farce. You’ve thought this little farce up on your own— Miss Whoever-you-are.”

  And then, in a brisk, solid fashion Rea couldn’t help but appreciate, Moira, the maid, added her brisk, solid person to the scene. She came out upon the lawn with little Peter in her arms and as she approached Rea, she said, with a broad smile: “T’baby can’t wait to get to you, ma’am, see how he fights me?”

  Rea, with eyes that were suddenly sparkling, took the baby close to her. She turned in a quiet triumph to the girl in breeches. “Burke’s son,” she said, quite calmly, pulling the shawl away from the baby’s face. “He’s rather nice, don’t you think?”

  “Burke’s son!” The girl gaped at the gurgling baby, with his very blue eyes, his saucily dimpled chin, and his button of a nose pushed into wrinkles as he fought to take possession of a little black velvet bow at the neck of Rea’s white blouse. “Burke’s son!” The girl’s voice rose almost upon a note of wildness. “I don’t believe it!” She stepped close to Rea and her shocked eyes stared down at the baby, whose blue eyes drew away from Rea’s bow and met, with solemnity, the hard, brilliant stare above him. He blinked once or twice, the feathery fans of his black lashes sweeping down and then lifting in a fashion that, if it remained with him as he grew older, would be thought highly flirtatious, but none the less endearing, by the ladies.

  This tall girl, however, was in no mood to find little Peter endearing. “How old is he?” she demanded.

  “Five months.” Rea met the girl’s eyes, full of wonder that she could discuss Peter in such a calm, proud manner—as though she were indeed his mother. Anyway, she felt like his mother, with his small, body pressing to her with that primitive, rather lovely eagerness of all young things to know the softness and the gentleness of the female body. His head arched back against her breast and he gazed up at her with his enormous eyes, and Rea laughed eagerly, no longer quite as afraid of the tall girl in the breeches as she had been.

  “Do you—do you mean to tell me Burke has been married for well over a year?” The jade-green eyes flashed over Rea in an angry, wounded way. “Oh, no! I won’t believe it! He wouldn’t keep anything like that from me—he’d have told me! He—” She broke off, abruptly aware that Moira was standing respectfully to one side, awaiting Rea’s pleasure. “What do you want?” she demanded of Moira, her voice rising high and sharp with the humiliating knowledge that the maid had heard what she had just said about Burke.

  “Madam wishes me to help her prepare Master Peter’s nursery, miss.” Moira’s eyes were lifted in a blank politeness to the tanned, angry face above her. “I’m waiting for madam to give me my orders.”

  “Oh!” The deep breast, under the dark green sweater, rose and fell quickly, and the riding-switch in the girl’s hand beat regularly, agitatedly, against the side of her breeches. She stood a moment, glaring at Moira, then, with an extra hard thwack of the riding-switch, she swung on her booted heel and strode across the lawn, mounting the stone steps of the terrace and entering the house in the assured manner of someone who has had the run of the place for a good many years.

  Rea shivered, as though suddenly cold. This girl, whoever she was, belonged to King’s Beeches. She fitted into the grace and grandeur of the place; possessed the pride and the personality that would unfold glowingly in ancient panelled rooms. She wouldn’t look, and feel, a pale shadow, an unwanted guest.

  Rea said to Moira, almost whispering the words: “Who is she?”

  “Miss Iris Mallory, ma’am, from Mallory Court, three miles over t’hill. She comes and she goes, like; she always has. T’old master has always made a lot of her.” “I—see.” Rea stood gazing across at the terrace, at the half-open glass doors, through which Miss Iris Mallory, of Mallory Court, had marched with such angry

  assurance. In every way the sort of girl Philip Ryeland would strongly desire for a granddaughter-in-law. Handsome and arrogant; bred to the life of a house like King’s Beeches, and built to produce half a dozen lusty children. No wonder he looked at her, Rea, with suc
h malevolent eyes. She symbolized his broken hopes; and she did more, she embodied all the qualities his hard, unyielding, despotic nature would be bound to despise: shyness in place of proud self-confidence, the lack of a lineage to match Burke’s, a gentleness he would call callow meekness; instead of the strong, personal, sensual attraction that lay like a lush bloom over the tanned and statuesque Iris Mallory.

  She glanced down at Peter, whose happy fist had now won a hold upon her black velvet bow and was busily tugging it from its cotton moorings. Surely the old man wouldn’t include Peter in his hating—Peter was only a baby! Peter was the reason Burke had made his—his preposterous marriage. Peter was his gift to this house.

  And then the tears she had fought on and off all the morning suddenly swam thick in her eyes. “Oh, Petey, I do love you!” she gasped.

  The baby responded with a chuckle and a wriggle and a long, slow blink of his eyelashes, just as though he understood her words and wanted to reply that he, too, was feeling affectionate.

  “Don’t you think he’s perfectly lovely, Moira?” Rea exclaimed, the tears spilling from her lashes even as she smiled her delight in the baby.

  “Aye, he’s ruddy and splendid as a September apple right enough, ma’am,” Moira agreed, smiling upon Rea in an indulgent fashion. Ah, but it was nice, and there was no denying it, to see this wee bit of a thing so eaten up with her babe. There were no uppish town ways about her, which was a blessing. But she certainly was a funny sort of fancy for t’young master to be having. Thin as a switch and not much to look at—until she smiled.

  Aye, when she smiled there was a sort of charm to the thin little face—a pixieish sort of charm in the way the huge hazel eyes went all crinkly and the cheekbones went slanting away from the soft young mouth and the delicately pointed chin. Maybe ’twas her smile t’young master had been caught by—and caught he evidently thought himself, from the way he had kept the whole business of his marriage so secret. A rather sly gleam darted in and out of Moira’s brown eye. Miss Mallory would have plenty to say to him, no doubt! She, as everyone in the county knew, had confidently reckoned on being mistress of King’s Beeches. But this bit of a girl, with her fringe and her baby, had swiped the prize.

  Moira knew a stirring of profound admiration. There was more to this wee creature, she decided, than met the eye. Miss Mallory might be handsome and bold and a rare sight to see in the saddle and upon the ballroom floor, but she had let Master Burke give her the slip all right, straight into the arms of a lass who looked as though she’d lift and drift on a gusty bit of breeze like thistledown.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE new nursery furniture, along with a wonderful zoo of enormous fluffy animals and a cream and brown perambulator, arrived from Taunton at two o’clock that afternoon. Rea and Moira then spent a couple of noisy hours arranging it in the big ‘sunny’ south room that had once been the nursery, and later the schoolroom, of Burke and his brother.

  It was delightful pastel furniture, with golliwogs and teddy-bears and all manner of fairyland creatures painted all over it, and by the time it was set out to Rea’s satisfaction the room had taken on an air of colour and enchantment, its old look of neglect quite banished.

  “Nice, Moira?” Rea queried.

  “Very nice, ma’am,” and Moira smiled at the way Rea had curled herself down in the window seat, a big pink elephant in her lap and a judicious expression of satisfaction on her face as she gazed round the nursery. “Master Peter is a very lucky little boy, ma’am.”

  “Yes, Moira, very, very lucky,” Rea said.

  “Well, I’ll be off to take t’baby for a blow round the garden in his new carriage, ma’am,” Moira said, lingering a moment by the door for one more look round the nursery. A complacent gleam settled in her brown eyes. She had been elevated to the position of nursemaid and the thought was a very pleasing one. “Aye, ’tis a real pleasant nursery now, ma’am,” she said, and her brown cheeks wore dimples as big as pennies as she hurried away to commence her new duties.

  Rea knelt up in the window seat, cuddling the elephant in her arms and gazing out over the big garden. It was quiet and somnolent under a surprisingly warm autumn sun, the paved walks looking very clean and swept, the box-hedges prim and neat above the bright banks of flowers. Beyond the garden, below wide stone steps, Rea could see the velvety stretches of a bowling green, edged by tall silver birches. Rea thought the scene as calm and lovely as the centrepiece on a porcelain plate.

  She was still sitting in the window seat, when the door swung open and Burke strolled into the room. He wore riding clothes, and seemed suddenly a stranger.

  His dark virility, that ordinary clothing tempered down

  into a dark distinction, was released almost alarmingly now by the way his white shirt was thrown open at his bronzed throat; by the corded breeches and the heavy brown riding boots. His hair, too, was dishevelled from his riding where always before she had seen him immaculately brushed and combed.

  He watched her for a second or two, as though expecting her to give him some word of greeting, but when she didn’t one of his black brows rose in a quizzing fashion. He strolled across the room to her and stood looking down at her. “D’you like the toys, Rea?” he drawled.

  She nodded jerkily, feeling her cheeks grow warm. She carefully set aside the pink elephant. “Peter loves them,” she said. “They’re like something out of fairyland.”

  “All successful toys should have that quality, Rea.” His slow smile etched deep, attractive grooves in his brown cheeks. “Now what have you been doing with yourself all day? Have you made friends with Grandfather yet?”

  She shook her head, smiling slightly. “Don’t expect him to like me—how could he? It isn’t in the nature of an eagle to welcome a sparrow into its eyrie.”

  “How about a dove?” Burke queried, and abruptly he reached for her hand and pulled her to her feet. “Come with me,” he said, “there’s something I’d like you to see.” He hurried her from the room, her hand held fast in his, marched her along the landing and ran her down the stairs. He crossed the hall with her and threw open the door of a room that made Rea’s eyes open wide with admiration. But Burke gave her no chance to stand and stare, he took her straight across the silken rugs, with their glowing jewel colours, and stood her in front of the carved oak mantelpiece. Above the mantelpiece hung the Ryeland crest—a bold, peering dove preening its feathers on the richly decorated handle of the sword. Below the crest was sprawled the Latin inscription, “Fortes Fortuna Juvat.”

  “Do you know what it means, Rea?” Burke murmured. “‘Fortune favours the brave.’” She laughed up at him. “I shall never, never preen my feathers on your grandfather’s sword. It’s too much to hope for. I’m not,” she glanced down, biting her lip, “I’m not Iris Mallory, you see.”

  In a moment he had released her hand. As he stepped away from her, he swore slightly. He paused beside a low rosewood table and threw back the lid of a cigarette box. He selected a cigarette, lit it carefully. Then he said: “So you’ve now met the redoubtable Iris? I take it you were suitably impressed?”

  “I thought her very handsome, naturally,” Rea said. He swung round, his blue eyes brilliant with what she took to be anger. “Listen to me, Rea,” he said. “Contrary to what people tell you, I’ve never given Iris Mallory any reason to think that I ever contemplated marrying her. I know my grandfather had hopes of such a marriage and very possibly that hope influenced Iris. I’m telling you this, Rea, because I don’t want you to go jumping to the misguided conclusion that I’ve been playing fast and loose with Iris.” He lifted his cigarette and drew hard upon it. “Only once in my life did I play that game—and lived to regret it.” He walked to the window and leaned his shoulder against the frame, his face suddenly moody as he gazed out upon the orchard, where red and gold apples gleamed through green leaves. “Do you think, Rea,” he said, “that one ever stops paying for one’s mistakes? Does God demand a lifetime of regret?”
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br />   His quiet, melancholy words seemed to pierce Rea. She watched his lounging figure, thrown into dark, vital relief by the gleaming ruby damask of the curtains at his shoulder, and she was moved to approach him, but shyness held her back. “Not if one’s mistakes are genuine, I shouldn’t think, Burke,” she said.

  “That’s just the trouble,” he turned his head and stared at her. “My mistake wasn’t a genuine one.” Then, with a shrug and a laugh, he threw off depression. He bent to undo the latch of the window where he stood and beckoned Rea to follow him out to the orchard. She did so, breathing the fragrant air with delight. The trees seemed to bend under their burdens of rich cider apples, shedding some of them into the grass, where they lay gleaming. Burke bent and picked one up, handing it to Rea. “For being a good girl,” he smiled.

  She tossed the sun-warmed apple in her two hands as she walked beside Burke through the orchard, and as he glanced down at her, prim as a schoolgirl in her white blouse and dark skirt, swinging above her long legs, he broke into a grin. “You look about fourteen,” he said. “I think I’ll buy you a tricycle and let you ride round the grounds on it.”

  “Oh, don’t!” Her eyes opened wide at him. “I’m sure I’m the talk of the servants’ hall already. Moira gives me the most peculiar looks.”

  “What sort of a look did Iris Mallory give you?”

  A smile danced impishly upon the corners of Rea’s mouth. “I believe she thought me an urchin who had strolled in from the village. She looked all prepared to take me by the scruff of the neck and bundle me out of the grounds. Moira saved the situation—she brought Peter to me.”