Bargain Wife

by Mary Burchell

  ‘And does Eileen expect money to have an irresistible appeal to her vi—I mean—’

  ‘That’s all right, you can call him a victim, if you like. I know what you mean. And yes, she does. After all, he stated quite frankly that he intended to marry money.’

  ‘He what?’ Tina was really startled into interest at last. ‘When did he make this this frank statement, pray?’

  ‘Oh, you needn’t be stiff about it,’ her companion assured her cheerfully. ‘Lots of ambitious men intend to marry money, only very few of them are honest enough to admit it. He said it at some party Eileen was at—quite a small party. I suppose they were discussing marriage more or less seriously, and someone was all old-fashioned about marrying for love alone and that sort of thing. And apparently Charles Linton smiled in that outrageous way of his you know the way he does and said quite deliberately, “What a charming luxury! I wish I could delude myself into the same idealistic outlook, but being an ambitious and selfish creature, I shall marry quite frankly for money.”

  Tina laughed unwillingly, because she could quite imagine Charles saying something absurd like that.

  ‘He wouldn’t mean it seriously,’ she pointed out to her young companion tolerantly. ‘He was joking.’

  ‘Eileen didn’t think he was joking,’ Audrey retorted darkly. ‘And Eileen’s very seldom wrong about a man.’

  ‘And on the strength of this flippant statement’ Tina was amusedly incredulous ‘Eileen plunged into hospital life?’

  ‘I’ve told you you can’t imagine how determined Eileen is about anything she really wants.’

  ‘She must be,’ Tina agreed, and she stood up, to indicate that this interesting discussion on the joint future of Eileen and Charles Linton was really at an end.

  ‘Oh are you going?’

  ‘I’m afraid I must.’ Tina made that firm.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I was hoping you’d stay and meet Eileen. I’m expecting her any minute, as a matter of fact. She’s off duty today.’

  Tina could hardly have explained why, but a genuine aversion to meeting the much-discussed Eileen took possession of her, and she merely repeated her assertion that she must go with even greater emphasis.

  The whole incident had suddenly become distasteful and more than a little absurd. She had no wish to know anything further of the designs which this girl’s sister had on Charles. No doubt the incident was highly coloured by young Audrey’s way of dramatising most things. But, even allowing for that, the whole thing left a nasty taste in one’s mouth.

  With a firm goodbye she escaped upstairs to her room, and putting on her coat, she decided to go out. She had some vague idea about making inquiries and trying to find some way in which she could get a job, though of course there was nothing definite that she could do until her affairs with the lawyers were settled and her identity one way or the other was established.

  As she reached the lift she saw it already disappearing, and she decided to walk down the stairs instead of waiting. When she turned the last corner of the stairs, an irresistible impulse made her look over into the lounge and there, talking to young Audrey, was unquestionably the determined Eileen.

  Not that there was much family likeness between the two sisters, Tina noticed. At least, not at that distance. But Audrey’s air of bravado and ingratiation was very much that of an uncrushable younger sister towards one who made life somewhat difficult. Tina felt a sympathetic smile twitch the corners of her mouth as she watched for a few seconds.

  The other girl was undeniably attractive, though she was not wasting much in the way of smiling attraction on her young sister. She was slim and dark and for a girl of middle height indescribably elegant. She wore her simple, expensive clothes well.

  ‘Hm! I don’t know that I give so much for Charles’ chances after all,’ reflected Tina and told herself that she was amused.

  But as she stepped out into the sunshine, she found suddenly that she was not amused that she didn’t find Eileen a joke, after all. Not even a bad joke. It was no business of hers, of course, who tried to marry Charles nor even who succeeded. But she just hated the whole idea.

  She had not quite decided why, when Earle Morrison turned the corner of the street and greeted her with a cheerful wave of his hand.

  ‘Hello there! I thought I’d just come around and make sure you were all right after last night.’

  ‘Last night?’

  ‘That Charles took you home safely.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Am I going to have the pleasure of taking you to lunch?’ he went on.

  Impossible to stand out against so much friendly good will or to try to decide whether this were good or bad policy. Tina threw doubts and caution to the wind, and went off to enjoy her lunch with Earle.

  He took her to some pleasant, exclusive little place where the food was good and the atmosphere ideal for talking. ‘Aren’t you and I spending rather a lot of our time just idling about and enjoying nice meals?’ Tina said with a smile as she sat down opposite him.

  ‘At the moment yes,’ he agreed. ‘But when we both settle just what we’re going to do, I guess we shan’t be having much of this idling about that seems to worry you. An occasional lunch and a hasty exchange of news will about cover it.’

  ‘I hope so. At least, not about the few chances of meeting, of course. Just that I’d like to get a job.’

  He smiled reflectively.

  ‘No great urge to do nursing?’

  ‘Under Charles, you mean?’

  ‘I didn’t say so.’ Earle smiled reflectively. ‘But how would you like working under him?’

  ‘I’d loathe it,’ Tina replied promptly.

  ‘No really?’ Earle seemed astonished and concerned. ‘Don’t you like Charles?’

  ‘In a way yes, of course. But not to work under.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘For one thing, he’d be deadly superior. He would always be cheerfully right, and I’m afraid “admiring chorus” is not my best role.’

  ‘I think you do Charles an injustice, you know! I know one or two people who worked with him, and they all liked him and thought well of him.’

  ‘I dare say.’ Tina was rather contrite by now, and a little surprised to find she had been so hot about the question.

  She realised that her unkind reference to ‘admiring chorus’ probably arose more from an acid recollection of Miss Unsworth than from anything Charles had said or done. ‘I’m probably just being the horrid critical relation,’ she explained to Earle with a smile, ‘refusing to accord the prophet honour in his own family circle.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Earle smiled too, but doubtfully. ‘But I believe, all the same, that you don’t like Charles very much, for some reason or other.’

  ‘I don’t know him very well yet,’ Tina protested. But Earle brushed that aside.

  ‘I suppose it’s his positive manner that offends you. Charles always knows so darned well just what he wants.’

  ‘Yes,’ Tina said, recalling, slightly against her will, the sidelight which Audrey Unsworth had firmly shed on him. ‘He does know his own mind almost ruthlessly well, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Ruthlessly?’ Earle’s eyebrows went up.

  ‘Well—’ Tina hesitated. Then she said abruptly, ‘I heard something not very likeable about him today. I suppose that was what made me rather catty just now. Apparently he says or rather he did say once that he quite frankly intends to marry for money. That isn’t a very nice thing for a man to say outright.’

  ‘But you’re quite willing to believe that Charles said it?’

  ‘Well,’ Tina admitted, ‘perhaps I shouldn’t, except for the fact—’ She stopped, and suddenly looked very directly at her companion. ‘Don’t you think it’s somehow in character?’

  Earle laughed, but a trifle uncomfortably, she thought.

  ‘Look here,’ he said protestingly, ‘are you asking me this as his friend, or his disapproving cousin, or’ he cocked a quizz
ical eyebrow ‘merely as a young woman who has just inherited quite a tidy fortune?’

  CHAPTER SIX

  TINA stared at Earle in astonishment for a moment. Then the first thing she thought of saying was:

  ‘Who told you I’d “inherited quite a tidy fortune”?’

  ‘Well Charles did, as a matter of fact.’ Earle laughed, but the slightly uncomfortable air deepened.

  ‘He seems pretty free with his information about—’

  ‘No really. We weren’t indulging quite so outrageously in gossip, though I know it sounds like it. I don’t think he meant to tell me, in quite so many words. It was that first evening just after we had left you at the air terminal. It was quite natural we should speak about you and the coincidence of his meeting you at the station. I said if you’ll pardon the candour how pretty you were, and Charles laughed and added on the spur of the moment, “Quite a little heiress, too.’

  Typical Charles,’ murmured Tina, but with less annoyance this time, particularly as there was quite a pleading expression in Earle’s nice, worried eyes.

  ‘He didn’t mean anything offensive,’ Earle hastened to assure her. ‘But of course, I expressed a little natural curiosity and he well, he—’ His voice trailed off in some dismay, and Tina saw with amusement that he had recollected Charles’ exact words and quite palpably they were not very suitable for repetition.

  ‘Yes? Do tell me what he said.’

  She smiled mischievously, and Earle rumpled up his hair worriedly.

  ‘The devil of it is that you’ll probably take offence again,’ he said ruefully. ‘I wish I’d never started the subject.’

  ‘No, I won’t.’ She laughed outright. ‘I’m beginning to be amused, and that means that I can’t remain annoyed too. Besides, I’ll remember it was a special occasion. After all, two friends meeting after so long what could they be but frank?’

  ‘You’re laughing at us both now, I suppose?’

  ‘A little. But you mustn’t mind. Do tell me. He said I was an heiress adding gratuitously that I was little, which I’m not. You expressed surprise, of course, and he said?’

  ‘I’m afraid he said “And well I know it! The little devil’s done me out of sixty thousand personally.” ’

  Earle looked so genuinely scared after admitting the unfortunate comment that Tina had to laugh again, though she flushed in her turn.

  ‘Horrid of him! But there is a certain amount of truth in it, as a matter of fact,’ she admitted. ‘I’m terribly sorry he feels like that, but I do understand it. I wish he’d let me do something about it, but he won’t and—Did he explain the circumstances to you?’ Tina asked suddenly.

  ‘Not really.’ And Earle looked so much interested, as well as relieved, at her lenient reception of his account, that Tina felt bound to give him an explanation of how it was that she the stranger from America had walked in and collected every penny from someone who was supposed only to have known her as a baby.

  ‘Yes, a bit tough for Charles, I admit,’ Earle said thoughtfully at the end. ‘But there isn’t any need why you should feel uncomfortable. Old ladies do these things—particularly old ladies with money, somehow and a legacy’s a legacy, when all’s said and done. The old girl was perfectly entitled to leave her money where she pleased, and Charles couldn’t ever have had dazzling expectations from her, since the big sum was never involved until after her death.’

  I know, I’ve thought of all that too,’ Tina agreed. ‘But it’s a pretty maddening position, to hear of a fortune coming into the family and going out again immediately! Particularly if money means rather a lot at least, I mean—’ She hesitated. Then she smiled rather quizzically at Earle in her turn.

  ‘You didn’t answer my query about the marrying for money question, you know. You just sidetracked me.’

  ‘Did I now?’ Earle smiled back at her. ‘And the query was?’

  ‘Just “Do you think Charles is the kind to marry for money?” I suppose.’

  ‘I can imagine him doing so.’

  ‘In cold blood?’

  Earle wrinkled his forehead in some perplexity.

  ‘I don’t think Charles has ever had his affections aroused at all, you know,’ was what he said. ‘It isn’t that he’s cold-hearted or cold-blooded, or whatever you like to call it. Not at all. He’s a good friend and a marvellous doctor, and you can’t be either of those unless you’ve got real feeling. But I’m sure he’s never been in love with anyone to use the standard phrase and Charles is very much inclined to be amused by anything he has never had to take seriously.’

  ‘I’ve noticed that,’ murmured Tina.

  ‘And until someone really bowls him over, I can quite imagine he would half laughingly assure himself that it was wiser to marry for solid material advantage than for any romantic mirage.’

  ‘And even do it?’

  Earle shrugged. ‘Why shouldn’t a man act according to his views even if they’re mistaken views?’

  ‘And find out the mistake too late?’

  He laughed.

  ‘I guess some of them never find it out,’ he said, slightly emphasising his drawl.

  Tina didn’t say anything to that. She was thinking hard about Charles Linton. Earle was right, she thought. It wasn’t that Charles didn’t possess feelings—he had never had them roused. Well, one could only hope that no predatory Eileen would catch him before the rousing process had taken place. Pity that sixty thousand hadn’t come to him. It would have placed him beyond the temptation to do anything as silly as marry for money. One always came back to mat, reflected Tina with a sigh. And she was glad when Earle turned the conversation to another subject.

  During the next few days Tina saw nothing of her supposed cousin but she thought about him a good deal, all the same. Then at the end of that week as she came into the hotel the clerk at the desk said:

  ‘Oh, Miss Frayne, I am glad to see you. There’s a gentleman waiting for you. He’s telephoned I don’t know how many times, and now he’s in the lounge writing a note to you because we didn’t know when you would be back.’

  ‘A gentleman?’ Tina repeated rather vaguely. And then: ‘Oh, heavens! It’s Earle, I suppose. I ought to have let him know—’

  She went at once into the lounge. But the man who got up from the writing-table and came to meet her with an expression of almost angry anxiety was not Earle.. It was Charles.

  ‘Charles!’ she began. But he took hold of her by her arms and exclaimed very rudely:

  ‘Good God, girl! Where have you been?’

  ‘Out—out sightseeing,’ stammered Tina, suddenly finding her lips unsteady. And then for some reason or other he kissed her.

  ‘Couldn’t you have let me know?’ he said, but more gently. ‘You’ve been out every time I rang the hotel.’

  ‘Not very well. You see, I—’

  ‘Yes, that’s all right.’ He had his arm round her now, and leading her over to the settee, he made her sit down, and had hot coffee brought for her and sandwiches.

  ‘Get outside that,’ he ordered. And she did very thankfully.

  ‘Enjoying yourself?’ he inquired laconically when he apparently judged she felt more like talking.

  She nodded. ‘It’s marvellous to see all the places I’d heard about.’ In her character of Sonia Tina remembered just in time that she was not supposed to know London.

  ‘It’s a great city.’ He smiled at her not as though he were amused, but as though something pleased him perhaps because he was relieved at seeing her.

  ‘Have you been very busy, Charles?’

  ‘Yes. A couple of emergency cases came up and I’ve had a lot of work on besides.’

  ‘Yes, of course, I suppose so.’

  ‘I couldn’t get along here before today. I telephoned several times, but the girl on the switchboard couldn’t say anything more intelligent than that you’d gone out two or three days ago and not come back.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Charles. I did leave a messa
ge at the desk to say where I’d gone.’

  ‘Yes, I got it when I came here today.’

  ‘I’ve been out every day at crack of dawn and not got back until late.’

  ‘So I gathered. You must be tired. I won’t keep you any longer.’

  She stood up.

  ‘Charles, it was nice of you to worry so much.’

  He smiled at her, and suddenly his dark eyes were very bright and unexpectedly kindly.

  ‘Well, you’re all the family I’ve got,’ he pointed out lightly.

  ‘Was that why you kissed me when you first saw me?’ she asked, a little stupidly because she felt so dead with sleepiness.

  ‘That? oh, that was just an emotional outburst.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound a bit like you.’ She smiled faintly.

  ‘It isn’t,’ he assured her coolly. ‘Put it down to a sort of angry relief.’

  She thought at first she would stay to ask him why ‘angry’? But, on second thoughts, she decided she would rather sleep.

  ‘Goodnight, Charles. Thanks awfully for coming to see about me.’

  ‘Goodnight, my dear.’

  She smiled up at him with sleepy vagueness, she couldn’t help feeling. And he coolly and firmly kissed her once more.

  ‘Not another emotional outburst, surely?’ Tina murmured.

  ‘No. Just because you looked up at me at the correct moment and you’re a good, worthwhile little cousin.’

  ‘I’m not specially little.’ It seemed enormously important that this matter should be set right. But he only laughed and said:

  ‘Go along to bed.’

  And because it seemed the very nicest thing on earth to do, Tina did.

  In the next week or two Tina grew very much used to setting a hectic pace of sightseeing. Since, until Mr. Medway straightened out the legal side of things, she could not set about finding herself a place to live or a job, Tina resigned herself to filling in her time as best she could, renewing her acquaintance with places and buildings that she had known before. Occasionally she had lunch or a leisurely dinner with Earle. But he was busy with his work now and had little time.