Wife Without Kisses

by Violet Winspear

  “What do you mean?” Tab nervously ruffled his sandy hair as he watched Burke.

  “I mean, Tab, that I mistook her for a child, with a child’s innocent knowledge. I stole her, as I thought, from the cradle. I did it quite deliberately, and now I’m kicking because I’ve got to pay the usual price such folly demands—the price of shattered illusions.” His eyelids lifted and he looked fully into Tab’s perplexed face. “Rea, old friend, went and fell in love behind my back. I knew it could happen—yet I thought it a hundred years away from happening. She seemed,” his big shoulders, clothed in a heavy maroon and white sweater, lifted on a shrug, “sort of enchanted, caught between the gauzy stages of turning from—from a bud into a rose.” He drew hard on his cigarette, his black brows arched in a quizzing self-mockery. “I’m doomed, I think, to make mistakes about the people—no, the women I get involved with.”

  “Not Rea!” Tab spoke quickly, his tone decisive, without a shade of doubt or defensiveness in it. “Don’t say of Rea that she’d ever betray your trust in her. She’s utterly straight—I’d stake my life on it.”

  “But, Tab,” Burke’s smile was now more wintry than sarcastic, “I’m not talking about what might happen, I’m talking about what has happened.”

  “I— I can’t believe—No, I won’t believe wrong of Rea.” Tab bent to Burke, his grey-blue eyes flashing. “Is it Larchmont? Are you thinking that he—”

  “Larchmont and Rea,” Burke said deliberately, “are in love. I don’t know just how far it’s gone, but, knowing Larchmont, I’d say pretty near the knuckle.” “Good God!" Tab straightened, staring at the windows through which dull sunshine was breaking and dying like dull waves upon the edge of a bleak beach. He thought of Larchmont’s face as he had pounded the flames from the slight figure of Rea, an ivory mask of desperation, the eyes silently agonizing. Tab frowned. And this morning, when he had gone to the Larchmont farm to renew the dressings on Jack’s hands, he had found him in a strangely subdued mood — for Jack Larchmont. No cynical comments, none of the caustic raillery he was notorious for. Tab had put his quietness down to the pain of his hands—but now—now Burke revealed a new reason for that quietness, a reason that bewildered and shocked Tab.

  He swung round, staring hard at Burke. “Is Peter really your son, Burke?’’ he asked.

  Burke’s head jerked up. His eyes narrowed. “That’s a peculiar question, Tab.”

  “I—I know.” Again Tab ruffled his sandy hair, biting his lip in embarrassment. His reserved nature baulked at this invasion of another’s privacy, yet, remembering Rea, lost and lonely in her big bed upstairs, forcing back tears as she said that Burke hadn’t been to see her, he felt compelled to go on, to get to the bottom of this mystery. “I know, Burke. It’s just—well, to put it quite frankly, certain aspects of your marriage are puzzling.

  I can’t quite cotton to the fact that Rea has ever been in Peru.”

  “She hasn’t,” Burke returned crisply. He studied Tab a moment, then he tossed the stub of his cigarette into the fire. “Rea and I met just over two months ago. It was at Hastings—and I had a very strong reason for wanting a wife in a hurry.”

  “Peter?” Tab put in quietly.

  Burke inclined his dark head. “Peter, as you say. Peter is Philip’s son.”

  Tab wondered at his complete absence of surprise. He knew now that he had always thought that Burke’s sudden and surprising yen for domesticity rang false, like an unsound coin. Marriage and babies—and Burke! Burke, who had always gone his own way, following the elusive will-o’-the-wisp of travel, and, if he ever paused by the wayside to enjoy the distraction of a pretty woman, pausing only long enough to ensure that the attraction didn’t develop into anything deeper. Even Dani Larchmont, that wild, lovely thing, had not possessed a strong enough attraction for Burke to keep him from his wanderings.

  Dani Larchmont! Tab’s eyes suddenly flew open in a startled comprehension. Only a few months separated her death from Philip’s—and why should a young creature like that die so suddenly? There was accident, of course, and fatal disease. There was also premature birth of a child.

  Tab said, already knowing the answer: “Dani Larchmont was Peter’s mother, wasn’t she, Burke?”

  Burke nodded. “Nasty, eh, Tab? I, at least, had the decency, if nothing else, to keep my lovemaking to a few kisses. Even so, those few kisses pushed her into Phil’s arms. It was my fault, my fault, that he had his way.” Burke’s eyes were dark with self-condemnation, the muscles showing hard round his jaw. “I went away, Tab. I ran out on her because she said she loved me. Be damned to love, I thought, it put a man in chains. It binds him, demands that he give up his soul as well as his body. I wasn’t having that—for all that she was so lovely and gay. I ran out on her, went to Peru, left her a letter saying that it was best our friendship ended, because I could never marry her. I cold-bloodedly told her, in that letter, to find herself someone who would give her marriage. I think,” he drew a deep sigh, “I think she went quite deliberately to Phil after that— she went without scruple, and without scruple he took her. The rest you know. Phil died, Dani died, and I married Rea so that Peter could come here as my son. He is my son now, as a matter of fact. I legally adopted him.”

  Burke rose and walked past Tab to his desk. He took another cigarette, lit it. With his back to Tab, he said: “My marriage is an out-and-out fraud, Tab. I’ve no claim at all on Rea. When she comes to me and asks to be released, I shall release her.”

  “Because you think she loves Larchmont?”

  “Because of just that,” Burke retorted.

  “But—but how can you be sure?”

  Burke swung round, his dark face suddenly forbidding, the sapphire eyes blazing out of it. “I’ve seen them together. I’ve seen her in the fellow’s arms. I’m not having old-maid delusions or anything, don’t think it for a minute. I know what I’m talking about.”

  “Rea?” Tab shook a perplexed, unhappy head. “It seems hardly credible... ”

  “It’s credible. I wasn’t wearing dark glasses or blinkers. She was in Larchmont’s arms and he was kissing her throat.” Burke bit the words out “I thought at first he was taking advantage of her, knowing Larchmont. I was going to give him a thrashing, but Rea went as white as paper and begged me, literally begged me, not to do it.” Burke regarded the tip of his cigarette, a smile of deep cynicism breaking upon his lips. “The lady is my wife, so I obliged. I left her pretty little boy friend intact.”

  He glanced up at Tab, his mouth still wearing its smile of bitter cynicism. “You’re wise to love Iris, I think. She’s a pagan, and pagans never pretend to be angels. If you ever get her, Tab, you’ll know exactly what you’re getting; you’ll never up against a pile of shattered illusions, face first. Shattered illusions are nasty things— they cut, Tab. They cut like the very devil.”

  Tab had no answer to this. His own illusions concerning Rea had received a nasty jolt. No man, he knew, could look as Larchmont had looked last night, agonized with fear, unless the woman he saved meant the very breath of life to him. And a man didn’t get that way about a woman just by looking at her—not Jack Larchmont’s kind of man.

  With a sigh, Tab turned to the door. “I’ll be pruning along, old man, I’ve still got a few more calls to make.

  I’ve told Rea to spend the day in bed. See that she does, will you?”

  “She—is all right?”

  “Perfectly. She just needs rest.” Tab stood irresolutely by the door, one hand upon the doorknob. “Burke— has it ever occurred to you that Jack Larchmont might know that Peter belongs to Dani and Philip?”

  Burke, after a momentary look of surprise, shook his head. “Polly Wilmot, Dani’s aunt, assured me that Jim Larchmont was the only other person who knew about Peter. He couldn’t be at the funeral—Vera Larchmont had that stroke and he didn’t dare leave her, as you know—but directly he was able to leave her he hurried to Hastings to see Polly Wilmot, where, naturally, he found out about
Peter. But he didn’t dare take the boy home with him. He knew Vera would never have survived the double shock of learning that her beloved Dani had died having Philip Ryeland’s child.” Burke’s face twisted into a sardonic grimace. “Vera has always entertained rather high-flown ideas about the blue- blooded chivalry of the Ryelands.”

  “All the same,” Tab fiddled nervously with the study doorknob, “I still think Jack could have found out.” “Not possible!” Burke broke in curtly. “He wasn’t living at home at the time of Dani’s death, you know that. He was up in Ireland, helping to train greyhounds, or some such business. He didn’t come back to Somerset until weeks after Dani’s burial, when he got thrown out of his job in Ireland—where you can bet he was up to something shady.” Burke frowned blackly. “No, Tab, Jack doesn’t know about Peter. If he’d known, he’d have used that knowledge; he’s not the sort to baulk at blackmail, believe me.”

  “Nice character!” Tab’s face was gloomy. “Yet you assert that Rea—”

  “Oh, lord, don’t let’s get back to that!” Burke spoke with an abrupt weariness. “Larchmont’s bad—but he’s what Rea wants. Maybe—maybe she’ll make a better man of him. He dared, last night, what very few men would dare, after all.”

  “That’s true.” Tab thought of the ugly, painful burns Jack now bore upon his hands and forearms for Rea, and he knew himself bewildered and out of his depth. Love—what was love? His own love for Iris had seemed real enough, strong enough, to him, yet it had burned right out in the bonfire at Mallory Court last night, even as Jack Larchmont’s had seemed to come glowingly alive.

  Burned out. . . gone out. . . and all he seemed able to feel for her now was an empty, disgusted sort of pity; an awareness that he had always secretly known that she’d finally do something he could never, never forgive. Among the ashes there merely burned a remnant of relief that Burke had no knowledge that it was Iris who had caused Rea’s accident. Burke wouldn’t spare Iris, as he, Tab, must spare her for the sake of what he had once felt...

  Then, with a rather defeated sigh, Tab pulled open the study door and plunged from Burke’s sight, calling out a hasty goodbye.

  Rea lay gazing up at the draped tester of her bed, her eyes too big in her face and shadowed by a fear that had no relation to last night’s fear.

  The bonfire at Mallory Court last night had been a nightmare, flaring into her life and then out again. Even the vitality it had taken from her had restored to her in the long sleep which had followed her tears, in Burke’s arms.

  This fear was real as the daylight beyond her bedroom casements, and as fast as her tormented mind ran from it, it caught up with her again.

  “You’d best go, miss,” Betty had said. “That Jack, he says he’ll come up to the house if you don’t go. He says he’ll wait in the wood, miss, all afternoon . . .”

  All afternoon? And if she didn’t go, he would come up to the house!

  Rea’s head turned restlessly on her rumpled pillows. How could she go? It was Sunday, and Burke was in the house. Burke! He hadn’ t been in to see her. He had sent Moira, instead, to ask how she might be feeling, much as Jack had sent Betty, but Jack had said: “Tell her I want to see her. Tell her I must see her.”

  Rea bit her lip, her eyes moving to the bedroom casements as they rattled in a testy wind, much as though a hand shook them and a voice, with an insolent caress in it, said outside them: “I’m here, Rea. I came.” Each time the stable clock struck the quarter-hours, the half-hours, then the hours, the wind carried the chimes to Rea, increasing her restlessness and her fear. Soon, soon, the afternoon would have worn away . . . Then, quite suddenly, she grew very still in her big bed. That was Rebel, surely, below in the stable-yard? Yes, it was Rebel! Rea lifted herself on her elbow, and plain, now, came those excited whinnyings Rebel always made when Burke was mounting him. Rea’s hand slowly took hold of the lace quilt covering her, her fingers clenching the lace, her heart feeling as though it beat in every part of her. Rebel’s hooves chattered on the kidney stones and Rea knew that Burke was now in the saddle, tall and breeched, his eyes very blue as he trotted Rebel round the side of the house, into the wind that came crying down off the Mendips. The wind brought the trot-trot of Rebel’s hooves to Rea, then, as the big horse was urged into a canter, the sounds soon died right away—and Rea was scrambling from her bed.

  She hurried into her clothes and combed her hair with a hand that shook. Five minutes later she had slipped from the house and was running across the meadow.

  Rea went into the wood and the old, ghostly rustlings followed her and the big trees seemed to watch her. She shivered and drew the collar of her coat up about her throat, and under her fingers there was the sudden slender feel of the chain holding Burke’s cameo. Her fingers touched and suddenly clung, as though to a lifeline ...

  “So you came?” said a quiet voice behind her.

  She spun round. She stared up into Jack Larchmont’s eyes, the cameo dropping from her suddenly nerveless hand, back into the pale hollow of her throat.

  “You’re pale, little Rea,” Jack murmured. “Did you sleep and forget the flames? I hope you did.”

  “I—I’m all right.” Her gaze fell to his heavily bandaged hands and her brow contracted, as though at a dart of pain. ‘I—I hope your hands don’t pain you too much.” Her eyes lifted again to his face, full of a sudden compassion. “Why—why did you do it? Why? Getting so

  hurt... ”

  “You know why.” Suddenly the slanting eyes burned as they watched her and a vivid flush dyed Rea’s throat, mounting all the way to her forehead. She half turned from him, throwing out an appealing hand. “Don’t! Please!”

  “Why, because you still hate me?"

  She shook her head quickly. “No—no, I don’t hate you. You saved my life. I can’t hate you.”

  “Can you love me?” The question came with great deliberateness, and the slanting eyes narrowed as he took a sudden step close to her. “Won’t you love me?” “I—I can’t!” She turned all the way from him, leaning the pounding ache of her forehead against the rough lichen of a big oak. She was shaking, as though with a fever. “I can’t! I love Burke. He’s all the world to me.” “And what are you to him? The little unquestioning cog in his big wheel of deception—nothing more. When it suits him to throw you aside he’ll do it. He only lives to suit himself, haven’t you learned that yet? Oh, he’s very pleasant and charming, quite the gallant, but don’t be fooled, Rea. His charm is all on his tongue. He hasn’t got a heart to feel with, like other people. I hold him directly responsible for my sister’s death. She was as pretty as paint, crowds of men after her, but he charmed her with that damn tongue of his, turned her silly with love for him, then ran out on her. She didn’t care after that. Didn’t care who she went to. And you say you love him! How can you love him?”

  “He—he’s always been kind to me.” A lump rose in Rea’s throat as she recalled the many times Burke had comforted her with a smile, with reassuring words in that deep, pleasant voice of his. “He once spoke to me about your sister, about how lovely she was. He didn’t mean to break her life—he didn’t do it maliciously.” “Don’t give me that!” Jack exclaimed. “He’s rich and spoiled, and Dani was just another toy he’d grown tired of. He dropped her and strode off and that was that.” “Not quite!” In sudden passion Rea turned to Jack, her hazel eyes blazing out of her pale face. “Burke has ensured that one day King’s Beeches and everything pertaining to it becomes the property of your sister’s child. It’s immaterial to him that if ever he should have a child of his own, that child

  take second place to Peter.”

  “And who give him that child—you?” Jack demanded. Then he gave a harsh, insolent laugh. “Don’t tell me he’s your lover! You’ve never had a lover!” “No,” Rea shook her head, her gaze falling away from the insolence burning in Jack’s eyes. “No, I’ve never had a lover.”

  “But you have one, Rea.” His voice suddenly vibrated with. feelin
g, and insolence was banished from his eyes, replaced by a warm, lambent glow. “You’ll come to me in the beginning because you must, but you’ll stay in the end because you can’t help yourself. You’ll catch fire from my love, Rea, but I’ll not put those flames out.”

  “Oh, don’t! I won’t listen to you!” Rea put her hands over her ears, her face anguished. “I could never love you—never—never—never!”

  “Never can end in a night, Rea.” Jack gave a soft little laugh. “In a night, you innocent baby. Now, when do I come up to King’s Beeches to see that husband of yours? Tonight? The sooner we talk divorce, the better, I think.” “Divorce!” Rea looked at him as though he had gone mad. “What are you talking about?”

  “Your divorce, honey.” Jack’s smile was indulgent. “Naturally you must get divorced. I want to marry you. I want you for always. What else did you think I

  wanted?”

  Rea stared at him, searching his dark, gipsy face with bewildered eyes. Marriage? With this man? Her heart burned cold inside her. Her mind reeled. The wild possession of her heart and her body, which he envisaged, which he called love, seemed to open a pit of horror in front of her eyes. “You’re mad!” she gasped. “I—I’d rather be dead than married to you!”

  Jack’s dark brows rose in two taunting peaks above his dark eyes. “You’re hardly complimentary, little Rea, but I was never a man to appreciate an easy conquest— the apples that don’t fall into the grass are always the tastiest.” He glanced down at his bandaged hands, a rueful smile curving his lips. “Tell me, though, what makes love so repugnant to you? Don’t you believe that it is love?”

  “I—I believe that you think it is,” Rea cried back. “But love—love isn’t greedy and demanding. It doesn’t devour.” She faced him in a trembling defiance, her face a small colourless triangle, the violet smudges under her eyes grown suddenly deeper. “Love is wanting to give, not to take.”