Nothing had been said, it was true. But then the friend^ ship had been interrupted so sharply—so prematurely—by his going to America. There had always been the feeling that they would pick up the ends with perfect ease when he returned, and that afterward the friendship might develop into—anything.
Now he would come back to find her a married woman. Panic overwhelmed Thea at this reflection. But she fought her way through the cold wave, and determinedly regained calm again.
rm a very lucky girl, Thea told herself. '
And if that were not enough, her nurse came in and told her exactly the same thing.
Thea smiled and said—yes, she knew she was lucky, anc yes, she was very happy.
"You seem such a young little thing to be marrying someone so handsome and so famous," her nurse told her.
"You mean you wonder what he sees in me?" Thea
couldn't resist, because her sense of mischief came uppermost at that.
"Oh, no. I can imagine a lot of men falling for you,'* her nurse conceded generously. "You're so pretty, for one thing. Only you'd expect someone like Lindsay Varlon to go in for the frightfully sophisticated, back-chattmg type."
"I do give him some back chat sometimes,' Thea said. And her nurse laughed a good deal and said "No doubt that was what did it."
"I suppose you're not going to have a long engagement?" Her nurse's interested question broke m on her thoughts again.
"Oh, no. Very short. I expect I shall be married almost from here."
"Married from here? From the hospital? Why, how very nice and romantic. Everyone will be thrilled."
Thea thought that was very nice of everyone, and said so.
"You see, I haven't got a home myself," she explained carefully. "I was—staying with my cousin at the time of the accident, and—"
"But won't you want to be married from Miss Marven's place?"
"No," Thea said. "No, I don't think that could be very conveniently arranged." And she secretly shuddered at the very thought of the complications that would be involved in being married from "Miss Marven's place."
Geraldine wouldn't be pleased about this marriage. In fact, she would be absolutely furious.
She'll try to make trouble, of course, if she can, Thea thought. But it seemed so impossible to do anything now that would not increase Geraldine's enmity, that Thea gave up worrying about it. For one thing, she felt perfectly certain that Lindsay was capable of protecting her from the worst effects of Geraldine's spite. Tnat, at least, was one of the advantages of marrying a worldly and experienced man.
To her surprise, Thea found herself an object of considerable interest among the hospital staff the next morning. Her own nurse had hadtime to spread the story of her fame and a very comprehensive account of the romantic circumstances surrounding her.
Several nurses whom she did not know at all looked in to ask how she was feeling, and to give her good wishes and
inquire whether she really was going to be married from the hospital.
"Well, I don*t know. We haven*t actually settled anything yet/'Thea explained. "But if I stay here until Tm well enough to walk around, I think I probably shall be married from here."
Everyone seemed to think it such a splendid idea, that Thea felt it would be cruel to disappoint them now. And when Lindsay arrived in the late afternoon, she immediately asked him eagerly, "Can I be married from here?**
He laughed a good deal.
"Come, this has a gratifyingly eager sound about it," he said teasingly. "Why? Is tharwhat you want, child?"
"Well, I can't really think of anything else very suitable," Thea explained. "Don't you have to live a certain time in one place or something before you can be married? I would think I'll have lived long enough in the hospital to qualify by the time I leave here. And there—there really isn't anywhere else where I can live for a time between leaving here and getting married, is there?"
"No, Thea. I suppose there isn't," he agreed. "A hospital wedding would be quite good publicity, too."
"Good what?"
"Good publicity."
"Do we have to bother about that?"
"I think that with Geraldine on the warpath, there is no harm in having a certain amount of publicity about our wedding. I confess, with some shame, that I am usually regarded as 'news' in a minor degree. A hospital wedding with a certain amount of journalistic chitchat about it would certainly put the whole thing on a highly respectable level."
"Isee.'^
He smiled, perhaps at her serious expression, and sat down on the side of her bed, which was against the rules but certainly made their conversation more intimate and friendly.
"Don't you want to see what I've brought for you?"
"Oh! Is it my ring?" Suddenly she was more excited than she had ever expected to be.
He seemed amused and a little touched by her pleasure.
"Yes. It's your ring." He took out a jeweler's box and
opened it for her, because she had still not got used to having only one hand she could use.
"Oh, Lin!" She cried out his name in eagerness and joy. "Is it—is it real?'*She^azed, awed, at the softly pink pearl.
He laughed and laughed.
"Did you think I'd give you an artificial pearl, darling?"
"No, but—oh, Lin, I've never seen anything so beautiful. What made you think of it? What made you choose a pink pearl? It's so—so romantic, somehow."
"Is it? Well, it's just the color of this little streak of pink down here," and he lightly drew his finger down her cheek. "Perhaps that's what made me think of it."
Then he took the ring out of its case and slipped it on her finger.
"There-it's a trifle big for you at the moment, but your fingers have grown a little thin, poor child."
"It looks lovely, Lin. I can't believe it's mine." She spread out her hand and looked at it with great satisfaction. "I'm afraid you didn't listen to anything I said about not being extravagant about it. But you can have it back when the—the show is over and—"
"Don't be a little fool," he exclaimed, much more sharply than he had ever spoken to her. "That ring isn't on loan. It's yours. I want you to have it."
"Oh," Thea said very meekly. And then, "Thank you, Lin."
And, perhaps aware that he had spoken too sharply, he put his arm around her and kissed her.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to speak harshly. But you will keep the ring, won't you?''
She kissed him very gently in return, and he gave her a half-amused, half-perplexed glance that she found impossible to understand.
He was not able to stay long, but the ring caused a considerable sensation when she displayed it later, and the many congratulations so well sustained the engaged-girl feeling that Thea began to think she was growing quite used to the idea of being married to Lindsay.
During the next week, flowers and fruit appeared regularly, to the accompaniment of approving comments from her nurse. Lindsay was not able to come and see her more
than two or three times, but the evidence of his thought for her was not lacking.
"He certainly has a nice technique," was her nurse's comment, and Thea laughed more than the remark strictly merited.
Most of the time Thea was in very good spirits. She was feeling better each day, and it was impossible not to rejoice in the complete freedom from financial worry and the feeling of future security. If it sometimes came over her that the price she was paying for all this was likely to involve her in a curious, perhaps even dangerous situation, the vague feeling of panic was only momentary and she always assured herself that there was not much choice before her m any case.
It was perfectly obvious that in the eyes of her nurse and any other member of the staff who paid her flying visits, she was an amazingly lucky person. And it was not likely, thought Thea, that all of them were wrong.
Her stay at the hospital lengthened more than had been expected at first. In herself she was progressing well, but her hand needed
a good deal of attention. By the last week in May, however, she was allowed up in her room and even out on the wide veranda, where she could look over the Surrey hills and enjoy the sun.
"Isn't it time you thought about wedding dressesT" her nurse asked her one day. "I expect you're going to be well enough to be a June bride, and you'll wear white, won't you?^'
Thea was nearly betrayed into saying, "I don't know." But she had found by now that it gave a queer impression when she was vague about the details that were supposed to absorb the attention of every bride.
Not that she was superior to the interesting topic of what she was to wear, now that it had been introduced, but she always found it just a little difficult to believe that these things were going to happen to her, and that it was for her to make the decisions.
"Oh, yes, I expect I'll wear white," she agreed. "I wonder how I can arrange about gettng my dress. I couldn't very well go up to town yet, could I? "
"Certainly not." Her nurse was-€mphatic about that. "And anyway, if you were well enough to go up to town, we;
would have to regard you as well enough to be discharged, you know. And we don't want that."
By which her nurse meant that she and her fellow nurses didn't want to be done out of the romantic wedding from the hospital.
"Til think it over,'*Thea said.
But even the problem of the wedding dress was solved quite easily by Lindsay.
"I'll have a selection sent down for you to choose from," he said. "And—yes, of course you'll wear white, and look very young and virginal and enchanting."
Thea felt just a little bit like one of the figures in some theatrical production of his. But she saw that he couldn't help regarding anything like this from the point of view of the perfection of the scene.
So she agreed to his proposal, and she and her nurse (and, to tell the truth, as many others of the nurses as could snatch a few guilty moments from their duties) spent an entrancing afternoon selecting a wedding dress.
In the end, by almost unanimous agreement, a very youthful, appealing dress of silk organdy was chosen. There was nothing very startling about the design—in fact, it was quite extraordinarily simple. But, as one of the nurses said, You look such a darling in it. And that big cloud of veil that goes with it shows your yellow hair through it in the sweetest way."
It had been agreed between her and Lindsay that there should be nothing in the way of a official honeymoon. For one thing, his work prevented him from being away from London for very long, and for another, they both felt that the respective roles of devoted bride and bridegroom were going to be sufficiently difficult to sustain throughout the wedding, without putting them to the added test of a conventional honeymoon.
Instead, he was taking her for a long weekend to a hotel on the south coast, where he declared there would be enough to amuse her, without the joufney being long enough to tire her.
She would probably have agreed just as willingly to any other arrangement he cared to suggest, for she still found it almost impossible to realize that it was her life that was being arranged, and that she was the girl for whom these
various plans were being made. She was interested in them—almost painfully interested in them—but nothing could quite present to her the finished picture of herself as the wife of Lmdsay Varlon.
Not until she was, with the eager and kindly assistance of her nurse, putting on her wedding dress and pinning on her wedding veil, did she see with blinding clarity:
This is it! This is the moment of decision. After this I shall never be Althea Pendray again, I shall be the wife—and one day the sometime wife—of Lindsay Varlon.
"Are you cold, dear?" her nurse asked, because Thea had shivered suddenly.
"No, no. It*s just excitement."
"Of course. But don't you be nervous. We'll all be there— as many of us as possible, that is—to wish you well and cheer you afterward. Matron's been very kind and is letting all of us that can get away go. I think Mr. Varlon had a talk with her."
"I'm sure he must have," Thea agreed with a faint smile. "Otherwise we couldn't possibly be having the wedding breakfast in the nurses' dining hall. It's all been beautifully arranged."
"Mr. Varlon's used to getting his own way, I don't doubt,'' the nurse said approvingly.
"I suppose he is," Thea agreed, and wondered whether he considered he was "getting his own way" over this marriage of theirs.
She was not being married actually in the hospital chapel, but in the small country church nearby. Ancl to Thea it seemed, somehow, entirely in keeping with the strangeness of it all that she should be married in a church she had never seen in her life before.
But it was a beautiful little church, a church that might have been built especially for weddings. And the sunlight streamed in through the clear elass windows high up, and seeped in rich colorings through the stained glass windows on the ground level.
Several of the nurses had come over from the hospital and decorated the church the evening before, and as Thea came rather slowly up the aisle it seemed to her that the place was full of smilmg flowers, and smiling faces undei white caps.
Really, it was sweet of them all to wish her so well, and to take such an interest in what they believed to be her romance!
She hardly noticed the few people who were not in nurse's uniform. Presumably they were one or two of Lindsay's friends from London, with a sprinkling of newspaper people. No one she knew. Geraldine—superb in leaf green with a little mink shoulder cape—was standing in the front pew.
This discovery gave Thea such a disagreeable and unexpected thrill of fear that for a moment her smile disappeared, her eyes widened and darkened, and she had the most preposterous desire to turn and run away from all this fantastic scene, which had suddenly become something in the nature of a trap.
But even as her heart sa..k with a sickening little sensation of despair her frightened gaze came to rest on Lindsay as he stooa at the end of the aisle, smiling quite calmly and looking toward her.
And then—all in one confused impression, as it seemed to her—she remembered that he had come to meet her at the station that dreadful day, that he had refused to let Geraldine turn her out, that he had solved the terrifying problem of her future, that he had been sweet to her over her engagement ring, and that here he was—prepared to marry her and look after her.
She smiled at him and, without even knowing it, she quickened her pace, and a moment later her hand was in his and she felt astonishingly secure.
After that, strangely enough, the wedding held no terrors for her. She even made her responses in a clear tone that the nurses insisted afterward *'was lovely to hear," and when she came out of the church with Lindsay to face a battery of cameras, she was able to laugh and look happy just exactly as a bride should.
There was only one further moment of uncertainty and discomfort for Tnea, and that was when Geraldine came up to her afterward at the informal reception and kissed her lightly—but in some way menacingly—and said, '*Clever girl. You have managed everything beautifully."
And then, as Thea seemed unable to find any reply to this peculiar form of congratulation, she laughed ana, taking a
couple of letters from her handbag, said, "Oh, these came for you some little while ago. Tm afraid I forgot to send them on. They're from the States. *'
Thea looked down at the letters in her hand.
"Why, they're from Stephen—and Mrs. Dorley. When did they come, Geraldine?'
"I don't remember exactly. I meant to send them on and forgot," Geraldine repeated, but still without any expression of regret for the omission. "I don't expect they're especially important, are they?"
They probably were not, of course, but Thea was suddenly sicK of Geraldine and her casual, spiteful ways.
"One's friends' letters are always important," she said, more curtly than she had ever spoken to Geraldine before. "Much more important than the kisses and congratulations of one's enemies, incidentall
y."
And she turned away, but not before her cousin murmured amusedly, "Oh, you are feeling your feet now that you're Mrs. Lindsay Varlon, aren't you?
Thea didn't answer that. It would have been undignified, and in any case, she had nothing to say. Besides, there were other people and other matters to claim her attention.
For a while she kept the letters clutched in her hand, but presently, as she found it impossible to keep her one sound nand engaged, she gave them to Lindsay and whispered, "Put these in your pocket for me until afterward. Tney're from Stephen and his mother. Geraldine says she forgot to send them on."
He smiled and nodded.
"All right. You're not feeling tired, are you?"
"No." But she was, really, and in spite of the atmosphere of festivity and kindness and congratulation around her, she felt disproportionately chilled by that encounter with Geraldine.
She was elad when her own special nurse whispered, "It's time you slipped away now. You don't want to have to change in a hurry."
In the room that had been her private ward for so long, Thea changed into her smoke-blue eoing-away suit with the little sable collar and cuffs. AII paid for by Lin, she thought wryly. No wonder Geraldine thinks I "managed everything beautifully.'*
And then there was nothing else to get through but the rather tumultuous send-off.
Perhaps because he thought Thea might justifiably feel nervous about a long car ride, Lindsay nad arranged that they would drive only the short distance necessary for them to pick up the main-lme train to the coast. But even this was sufficiently far from the hospital to prevent any station farewells, and as the car drove away from the hospital, Thea leaned back in her seat and knew she could relax at last.
He seemed to sense that all she wanted was to be auiet for a while, and he said hardly anything to her during tne short drive.
At the station, a judicious mixture of bribery and diplomacy secured them a first-class compartment to themselves, and the pleasant conviction stole over Thea that at least her marriage was going to mean being looked after to a degree she had never before experienced.
Harlequin Omnibus: Take Me with You, Choose What You Will, Meant for Each Other Page 53
