Harlequin Omnibus: Take Me with You, Choose What You Will, Meant for Each Other

by Mary Burchell

  "Oh, thank you!** The relief was so great that Harriet had difficulty in restraining her tears.

  But she managed, after that, to keep her share in the conversation gome very satisfactorily. Only, when she heard the sound oiLin's car, she rose, with nothing more than an inarticulate murmur, and fled upstairs, pursued by her own cowardly thoughts.

  She never knew in what words—tactful or otherwise-Mrs. Mayhew broke the news of her engagement to Lin. To Harriet the whole miserable episode was simply represented by an endless period during which she walkea up and down her room, murmuring disjointed sentences, which seemed to have little sense, even to herself, or flung herself on her bed and tried, by burying her face in the pillow and shutting out the light, to shut out the consciousness of everything else, as well.

  At times, a vague realization that she should have some regard for appearances and for reasonable behavior forced her to consiaer the dread necessity of going downstairs again. But each time the thought reached no further than the surface of her mind, so that it never prompted her to actual action.

  In the end, it was the sound of a tap on the door, followed by Priscilla 's voice, that roused her.

  "Could you come down, please, miss? Tve got the vegetables done, but it*s Mrs. Court's day off*, you know."

  Mrs. Court was the successor to the temperamental cook.

  "Oh, of course!'* Harriet jumped up from her bed, galvanized into action at last by a domestic conscience. "I'm just coming, Priscilla. Thank you for reminding me."

  Priscilla padded off* devotedly downstairs again, and a few moments later, Harriet followed her—using, however, the back staircase, which descended directly to the kitchen.

  "I don't know how I forgot. I must have been daydreaming," she told Priscilla, havmg joined her in the kitchen.

  And Priscilla—always one to understand, as even her mother put it—said, "It's easy enough, miss."

  Harriet set to work. But, even as she began to gather her materials together, the flash of her forgotten ring brought drama into the scene.

  *'Miss Denby! You haven't!" were the terms in which Priscilla greeted what she took to be proof of Harriet's imminent entry into matrimony.

  "Haven't what? Oh!*' She glanced down at her ring. Then she gave as convincing an imitation as she could of a happy laugh. "Yes—I'm engaged."

  Oh, Miss, how lovely! who is it?" asked Priscilla, to whom the state itself was lovely, without any reference to the sharer of that state.

  "Mr. Penrose, Priscilla."

  "Oh, miss, how wonderful." If Harriet had said, "Marlon Brando" Priscilla would not have been more congratulatory. "He's such a lovely man. Oh, you are lucky. Though he's lucky, too," she added, with kind impartiality. "You'll make a lovely bride, miss, if you don't mind me saying so. When is to be? And you will have a white wedding, won't you?"

  "I'm sure I don't know," exclaimed Harriet, with an uneasy felling of being wafted irresistibly toward a real weddmg, whether she wished it or not. "We haven't decided yet."

  "Oh, I do understand." Priscilla reveled at second hand in the delicious and foolish vagueness that she thought

  ?roper to any engaged couple. "It's all so sudden, isn't it? OM won't know hardly whether you're on your head or your feet."

  Harriet said—not quite inaccurately—that this was so. "It isn't a secret, is it, miss? I mean—I can tell my mum in the morning, can't I?"

  "Of course. There's nothing secret about it," Harriet assured her with what heartiness she could.

  And indeed, she thought, if Priscilla could supply a little of the excitement and glamor to the occasion, which she herself found such difficulty in imparting to it, that would be all to the good.

  During all the preparations for dinner, Priscilla kept up a congratulatory runnmg commentary. And by the end, feeling completely exhausted, Harriet thought; She*s done everything except choose the names for my children.

  But even if Priscilla was—in spite of her goodwill—rather aggravating, Harriet was too profoundly thankful for her temporary sanctuary in the kitchen to be critical. Never had the absence of Mrs. Court been more welcome. It gave her a perfectly adequate reason for being absent from the other part of the house, where Lin must surely be waiting to speak to her.

  When she finally could find no other reason for remaining immersed in domestic duties, she found that an extraordinary calm had at last come to her aid. Lin must know by now. He must have known for two or three hours. The immediate shock would have worn off. They could meet each other at the dinner table, under the normalizing influence of Mrs. Mayhew's presence, without any terrible sense of crisis. The worst was over. She could even go into the dining room and receive his congratulations—if, indeed, he felt like offering anything so hollow.

  Fortified by a very distinct idea of how the meeting would take place, Harriet emerged, with only slightly beating heart, from the kitchen into the hall.

  Without a moment's hesitation—so suddenly that she felt he must have been sitting with his door open, waiting for her to pass—he came out of his study and said, "Harriet.**

  She turned toward him, trying, with all the self-control she had, to look as though the occasion were not very different from many others when he had said her name.

  "Harriet, is this true—about your engagement?'*

  He made no attempt to come toward her—merely stood there in the doorway, regarding her.

  "Yes. Yes, of course it's true." She took a step or two toward him. "It's—it's a great surprise, isn't it?"

  "Why are you marrying him?" He didn't even notice her foolish observation.

  "Why, Lin I-I- Why shouldn't I marry him?"

  "I can think of at least half a dozen reasons," Lin retorted grimly. "But what I'm asking for now is just one reason why you should marry him."

  / She had never thought of herself as having to reply coldly to Lin. But, unless she spoke now with something approximating to cold dignity, she was lost.

  "Because I want to. And I'm afraid that must be a

  sufficient reason, even for you," she heard herself say with chilly distinctness.

  "Harriet—" he had caught her by the wrist and drawn her against him so quickly that she had na time to protest or to think of resistance "—Harriet, you can't marry him! You know you can't! You don't love him! It's not Brent you love. What made you think of such a crazy thing? How have you let yourself be talked into this? Darling, you know what I want to say, and I'm damned if any twopenny-halfpenny engagement to Brent Penrose is going to stop me. It's I—"

  "No!" She had to stop him. She had to prevent the all-important, shattering admission from being put into words. Once he had said it, no threats, no promises, no thought of Brent would enable her to go on with this miserable deception. "No—please don't say—don't talk like this. It... it isn't any good. It—"

  "What isn't any good?"

  "What—what you were going to say?"

  "You mean that you love Brent?"

  She was silent, and afterward they were both surprised to remember that he shook her.

  "Do you love Brent? Isn't that a simple enough question to answer? Do you love him? "

  Just as once before, there was only one word necessary. In a desperate, toneless voice, she answered him.

  "Yes."

  It seemed to her that, one moment, she had been leaning against him, held there by a powerful, rigid arm that felt as though it would never let her go, and the next, she was standing there, swaying a little, without any support, moral or physical.

  He stared at her. She thought he was going to ask her to repeat the unrepeatable. But he didn^. He just looked suddenly as though all the fury and passion had gone out of him. And, passing his hand over his face, in a bewildered gesture, he turned and went back into his study.

  She was never quite sure how she reached the dining room. Still less could she ever recall in detail the rest of that unspeakable evening. That they all three met at the dinner table and exchanged some
sort of conversation, she knew. But of what they talked, or how they comported themselves she simply didn't know. She only knew that when she

  finally crawled away to bed, she was so utterly exhausted by the events of the afternoon and evening, that—incredibly— she just dropped into bed and slept deeply, not even dreaming of tne dreadful events that had overtaken her.

  For the first time since she had come to Fourways, she overslept. But that hardly mattered, for she had no intention of going down to breakfast until she heard Lin's car drive away.

  When she did wake, it was to an awareness that he was already leaving the house, and she lay there for a few minutes, listening to the sound of his voice sayine something indistinguishable to Priscilla in the hall. Then the front door slammed, and a moment or two later he drove away.

  For the rest of the day, until the evening at least, she was safe.

  Only when she got downstairs and found, contrary to all custom, that Mrs. Mayhew was already up, did she learn that her reprieve was to be even longer.

  Lin was returning to London that day.

  Mrs. Mayhew gave the information quite calmly. As though, so far as she knew at any rate, Harriet, and Harriet's engagement, had nothing to do with his decision.

  She spoke of the great press of work in the London office, and the necessity for Lin s presence. And she mentioned—as though it were a matter for congratulation—that the Barn-dale partner was now sufficiently recovered to do a certain amount of the work that Lin had assumed in his absence.

  All this was not entirely unexpected. There had been talk, for some days past, of Lin presently resuming his usual arrangements of work. The only thing that was remarkable was the complete suddenness of his departure.

  And on this neither Mrs. Mayhew nor Harriet remarked. By tacit agreement, they spoke as though Lin had merely done what they had been expecting him to do any day. And so excellent was their pretense that even Priscilla believed Mr. Lin had arranged to go back to London more than a week ago, only no one had happened to mention it to her.

  To Harriet, his departure was both a relief and an unbearable distress. It was true that she had felt she could never look him in the face again. But to have him miles away, removed completely from the pattern of life at

  Fourways made her feel inexpressibly melancholy. And that he should have gone in a mood of disgust and disillusionment because of her seemed to add a note of finality to his departure that appalled her.

  None of this, of course, could be allowed to show in her manner. Her role was that of the happy fiancee, who might be mildly put out that others could not realize the full virtues of her beloved, but who was so filled with inner joy that she could afford to ignore such blindness.

  The curious thing was that only with Brent could she drop the disguise and, therefore, to be alone in his company began to be something almost desirable.

  Once he said to her, *'What did Lin say about your engagement?*'

  "What should he say?*' She sounded cold and wary at once. *' He—he expressed the usual good wishes, of course."

  Brent looked at her speculatively.

  "Tell me candidly—was there anything in what Dilys wrote?"

  "Which bit of it?" Harriet inquired, rather bitterly.

  "About your being keen on Lin. And still more—on the possibility of his reciprocating presently."

  She bit her lip.

  "Do you really expect me to confide in you?"

  "Not really—no," he conceded with a grin. "Anyway, you needn 't. I told you once that I had excellent powers of observation. I can draw my own conclusions." And then, after a moment—"I'm sorry, Harriet—I mean really sorry— that I had to put a spoke in that wheel. But later on you'll be able to make up lost ground again, you know."

  She looked at him, scornfully and incredulously.

  "What extraordinary ideas you have. Brent, about relationships between people, and—and one's power of retrieving a situation,'' she said impatiently.

  "No situation—absolutely no situation—is irretrievable, Harriet. Remember that," he told her quite seriously. "It's because I've always been a rather shameless optimist in these matters that I've floated so long on troubled waters. I commend the attitude of mind to you. Not the shameless-ness—the optimism. If you have an inner conviction that things will go right, you're always on the lookout for that

  tiny, tiny chance which lets you out, when your pessimist shuts his eyes in gloomy resignation and sees nothing."

  "I don t think that has much to do with my present situation,*' Harriet said, but more gently. Sometimes she thought she disliked Brent least when he was being frankest about himself.

  *'No, maybe not. It was a passing reflection,*' he agreed amiably. "But, so far as you and old Lin are concerned, once you and I have dissolved our engagement by mutual agreement, you'll be able to have another try at him, and you'll probably pull it off next time."

  Hariet winced at the cheerful crudeness of this. Then she slightly shook her head and sighed. One couldn't explain to Brent, of course, that everything there might have been between herself and Lin died in that moment when she said she loved Brent.

  And yet—so strange and indestructible a thine is hope, that there were times when Harriet allowed herself to imagine that there might come a day when she was free, and all the misunderstandings were explained away, and Lin looked on her, not with hurt and furious bewilderment, but with understanding and tenderness. She never visualized the steps by which this was to be brought about—indeed, if she even tried to, she became depressed by the wretched realities of the situation—but, just as one hopes illogically and baselessly to draw the lottery ticket that will win a fortune, so Harriet hoped that one day everything would somehow come all right.

  When Lin had been away nearly a month, she began to wonder, with mingled hope and anxiety, just what his attitude would be during his customary few days at home,

  The matter was never put to the test. He wrote to his mother to say that the accumulation of work during his prolonged absence from London would prevent his leaving town for some time. He was very sorry—but there it was.

  And when Mrs. Mayhew told Harriet this, her face was unusually grave and stern. So that Harriet could not possibly escape some sensation of guilt and the knowledge that her employer thought her responsible for her son's absence.

  Mrs. Mayhew was a tolerant and understanding woman, but it must seem to her that Lin's behavior could only be explained by Harriet having raised his hopes and then

  dashed them. Besides, she had a strong vein of family pride, and Harriet guessed that it must seem to her incomprehensible and ridiculous that Brent Penrose should be preferred above her son.

  This being so, how much longer would she wish to have in her house a constant reminder of this absurd state of affairs? A reminder, moreover, which seemed to make the place unbearable to her son.

  When this is all over, and Brent has released me and given me the letter, I shall probably have to go away, Harriet thought, with sad realism. Mrs. Mayhew is too Just to blame me outright for what has happened. But if her son feels he can't return home while the mere companion is there, it*s asking a lot of her to expect her to keep the companion rather than her son. I suppose I shall have to pretend that Maxine needs me, or that I ve been offered a wonderful job elsewhere or something.

  But first, of course, she would have to go through the farce of breaking her nonexistent engagement, and to suffer the additipnal humiliation of appearing to be a silly, capricious creature who didn't know her own mind for three months together. By the time she had played out her distasteful role in full, the Mayhews would probably both feel that they would be glad to see the last of her.

  Meanwhile, on the surface, life went on pretty much as usual. Until one early afternoon in June when Harriet was summoned to the telephone.

  It was Brent's voice that addressed her—but with a quaUty of urgency in it that she had never heard before.

  " Is that you,
Harriet? "

  "Yes."

  **I must see you. I want to talk to you alone. Can you come over here to see me?''

  "Right away, do you mean?"

  "Yes. Right away."

  "Couldn't you come here instead?" she objected. "It's a little awkward—"

  "No. I can't be absolutely certain of having you to myself then, with no chance of interruption. Hurry up, there's a good girl. You can manage it all right, if you try. You don't often ask the old lady for time off."

  This was true, of course, and Harriet knew that it would

  be no more than a matter of form to ask Mrs. Mayhew if she could spare her for an hour or two. So she agreed. And, having told Mrs. Mayhew where she was going, she walked across the fields, by the short way, to the luxurious bungalow that the Penroses had managed to acquire—no one ever knew quite how—on a long lease at a phenomenally low rent.

  Brent must have guessed she would come that way. For before she had reached the garden gate he had come out to meet her.

  As she came up to him, Harriet saw that she had not imagined that note of urgency in his voice. Something in his expression confirmed it, and made her realize that there were times when the casual, philandering Brent could be very much in earnest.

  "What is it, Brent?*' Following his lead, she came over and sat down in one of the expensive cane chairs, which were grouped under the big cedar tree in the garden. "Have you had some—some disturbing news?"

  He nodded.

  "About Dilys and Roddy?'*

  "Dilys? Oh, no." He seemed to have forgotten that for weeks and weeks now the affairs of his sister and her husband had been the subject of rather anxious speculation. Then, as though suddenly recalling something or secondary importance, he added, "Oh, yes, as a matter of fact, I did have a letter from Dilys this morning. They're in Cape Town, and everything in the garden seems wonderful—"

  "Brent! I'msoelad."

  "But that wasn t what I wanted to tell you."

  "No?" Anxiety, which never lay far below the level of her consciousness, showed in her eyes. "What is it, then?"