Bargain Wife

by Mary Burchell

  ‘He is terribly busy, and it’s ridiculous to turn temperamental over personal details when he’s doing work that may save people’s lives,’ she told herself. ‘Besides—’

  But she couldn’t quite face going over what besides’ covered. It had too much to do with the fact that something which had become romantic and precious to her was nothing more than part of a business arrangement to him.

  Quite a charming business arrangement, of course but that was all.

  Choosing her ring was not so embarrassing after all, she found. Either the assistant was trained to a perfection of politeness which excluded every trace of curiosity from his manner, or else other busy fiancés had adopted this method of bestowing an engagement ring. The only really interesting point, it seemed, was that she should have exactly what she wanted.

  In the end she chose a fiery opal, set in a ring of small diamonds partly, she told herself, to demonstrate that she was not superstitious, and partly for the rather absurd and romantic reason that the hidden fire in it seemed in keeping with the man who was giving it to her.

  ‘A very beautiful choice,’ the assistant assured her, so politely that she wondered if he were going to put it on her finger for her. He refrained, however, and she left the shop with her engagement ring in its elegant little case.

  As she entered the hotel again, Audrey Unsworth hailed her.

  ‘I say, do come and have tea with me. Something perfectly frightful has happened!’

  ‘Has it?’

  Tina, more accustomed now to Audrey’s dramatic way of imparting almost all information, followed her, without any visible signs of alarm.

  ‘Yes.’ Audrey sank into the corner of a settee and regarded her with an abnormally solemn expression. ‘Do you know that Charles Linton’s gone and got himself engaged?’

  Tina’s hand closed a trifle nervously on the handbag where her ring lay concealed.

  ‘Well yes, I did know,’ she admitted cautiously.

  ‘Then it’s true? Lord! I don’t know what Eileen will do.’

  ‘I should think,’ Tina retorted crisply, ‘that there’s remarkably little she can do. Except mind her own business.’

  ‘Oh, but you don’t understand. It all looked like working out so well. Mr. Linton is going to have some sort of convalescent home of his own, and he’d asked Eileen if she would like to come and be one of the nurses on the staff and—’

  ‘Eileen!’

  ‘Oh yes. And you see it would have been ideal. She rang me up and told me all about it this morning. Only the rumour was going the rounds that he’d got engaged too. She didn’t know whether to be pleased about the convalescent home or wild about the rumour. I mean, a wife can get so terribly in the way, can’t she?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that,’ Tina admitted, extremely dryly. ‘You see, I happen to be going to be the wife in question.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Audrey’s pretty mouth positively dropped open, and she stared at Tina with a mixture of amazement and reproach which made Tina feel irritatedly guilty.

  ‘You’re going to marry Charles Linton? But you told me, hardly any time ago, that you weren’t engaged or anything, and you sounded as though nothing was further from your thoughts. And now, just because I told you too much about Eileen—’

  ‘Nothing of the sort,’ Tina interrupted briskly. ‘Please let’s have this quite straight. Eileen or anything you told me about Eileen had nothing whatever to do with my decision.’

  ‘But you told me—’

  ‘Yes, I know I did.’ Tina felt it was mean of her to be quite so much annoyed by the repetition. ‘It was true then.’

  ‘What was?’

  ‘Well what you said. That nothing was further from my thoughts than—’ she coloured slightly ‘than marrying Charles.’

  ‘You mean you just suddenly found you’d fallen for each other?’ The romance of the situation seemed to mollify Audrey slightly.

  ‘Something like that.’ Tina spoke a trifle hastily for one who had been overtaken by sudden romance. ‘Anyway, that’s how things are now, I’m afraid, and I hope Eileen will realise—’

  ‘Oh, she won’t,’ Audrey assured her with gloomy positiveness.

  ‘It really isn’t her business, you know.’ Tina tried to make that sound sweet-tempered and reasonable, but Audrey obviously thought the objection had little bearing on the situation.

  ‘Well, anyway, she will be nursing under him,’ she observed with a somewhat tactless air of drawing comfort from that.

  Tina bit her lip with vexation.

  ‘I should have thought, in the circumstances,’ she said, a little coolly, ‘that it might be more tasteful for Eileen to find some excuse for refusing that position. That is, if she really feels as strongly as you make out.’

  ‘Oh, Eileen wouldn’t dream of refusing something she really wanted. Actually, when the first shock is over, she probably won’t take any notice of anything so unimportant as a mar—Oh! Well, I didn’t quite mean that, of course.’ Even Audrey seemed to feel that silence might have been better than this.

  ‘Then in that case,’ Tina spoke extremely dryly ‘perhaps I had better arrange that Charles withdraws that invitation for her to nurse in his convalescent home.’

  This was said with a great deal more confidence than she felt. She very much doubted if she could possibly bring herself to make any objection to Charles in connection with his work. Still more did she doubt that he would take the slightest notice of her if she did.

  Audrey, however, seemed to think this not a bad idea.

  ‘It might be the best thing,’ she conceded, sucking her underlip thoughtfully. ‘Of course, don’t, for heaven’s sake, let my name appear in it anywhere! Eileen would kill me by inches if she knew I’d taken a hand. But it would much better for her and all concerned if she just had to switch her plans on to someone else.’

  Tina agreed, with more emphasis than she intended that it would.

  ‘Only don’t tell him I told you about her.’

  ‘I shouldn’t dream of telling him anything you’ve told me,’ Tina assured Audrey rather curtly. ‘You would hardly expect me to discuss your sister’s somewhat extravagant feelings with him. That really would be wrong.’

  ‘Then what excuse are you going to give for suggesting he doesn’t take her on?’ Audrey wanted to know.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Tina confessed. ‘I’ll well, I suppose I’ll think of something.’

  ‘You’ll have to think pretty hard,’ Audrey told her sceptically. And Tina, well aware that this was the unpalatable truth, retired to her room in a not very good temper.

  Even by the time Charles came to see her, two days later, she had not thought of a tactful way to approach the Eileen problem, and decided, not very wisely, to leave it to the inspiration of the moment.

  However, there were plenty of other things to be discussed.

  Charles admired her ring, took it off her finger, and then put it back there personally, so that she should feel, he told her amusedly, that at least part of the usual procedure had been followed. She felt like asking him then why he could not have waited until today, so that they could have bought the ring together. But she soon found that during the short times they were able to arrange to be together there were more important things to be done than the choosing of engagement rings.

  That day they went to see Mr. Medway, who was delighted to find that, on emerging from the throes of obtaining probate of Aunt Maggie’s will, he was immediately to engage on the buying of a house for his client.

  Later, Tina and Charles drove down to the house once more, to make necessary notes and lists, and to consult with the little black-clad housekeeper.

  ‘Consulting’ was perhaps hardly the right word, for Mrs. Ardingley (which it appeared was the small creature’s name) seemed prepared to argue firmly over almost any arrangement which did not repeat more or less the state of things which had existed in the days of ‘Sir Thomas and his lady
’.

  Tina was beginning to despair of their ever arranging anything when, to her amusement, Charles firmly but quite gently took the housekeeper by the arm.

  ‘Now look here, Mrs. A. You aren’t going to be able to open up this place without us, and we certainly aren’t going to be able to manage without you. We’ve got to come to some working arrangement. I’m sure Sir Thomas and his lady had the best private house in Christendom, but that won’t do for a convalescent home, you know. You don’t want the place to look a poor copy of its old glory, do you? Let us have things our way, and you’ll be surprised how much you like it as a new place.’

  Tina guessed from Mrs. Ardingley’s astonished and doubtful expression that neither Sir Thomas nor his lady had ever used this method of approach. For a second she stiffened all over, in the suspicion that some affront was intended to her and her one-time employers. But one glance at Charles’ vivid, coaxing smile told her that there was no question of this. Slowly her expression relaxed into the first real smile Tina had seen from her.

  ‘Well, of course, sir, it’s just as you say,’ she told Charles primly.

  And thereafter it was.

  When they were driving back to London, Tina laughed and said:

  ‘It was nice of you, Charles, to take all that trouble to win over Mrs. Ardingley.’

  ‘Was it?’ He looked surprised. ‘We had to make her pull in harness somehow.’

  ‘Some people, I suppose, would have sent her away, and taken another housekeeper,’ Tina said thoughtfully.

  ‘Oh no. It would probably have killed the old lady.’

  ‘Charles!’ She smiled protestingly at what she considered a piece of picturesque exaggeration.’

  ‘I mean it. Oh, not the shock exactly. Just the fact that there was no longer anything left to live for. That house is her world. If she had to go away from it, her heart would break. Hearts do break, you know much more often than non-medical people believe. Or, if you like it better, the spring breaks. She had to stay. We couldn’t have sent her away.’

  He was not sentimental about it. He was simply final. And Tina laughed and found she wanted to hug him.

  ‘You’re rather a darling, Charles.’

  ‘Am I?’ He looked amused, but not displeased, she thought, and on impulse she said:

  ‘I hear you’ve already been picking your nursing staff.’

  ‘Oh? From whom did you hear that?’

  ‘The sister of one of your nurses. She’s staying at my hotel. Audrey Unsworth is her name.’

  ‘Oh Nurse Unsworth?’ He smiled reflectively. ‘Jolly good nurse she is too.’

  Tina felt unreasonably that that was the last thing she would have expected Eileen Unsworth to be.

  ‘Is she?’

  Perhaps her surprise and something else showed in her voice, because Charles glanced at her with raised eyebrows.

  ‘Yes. Any reason why she shouldn’t be?’

  ‘Oh no. I just imagined somehow that she was a bit frivolous and self-centred.’

  ‘She may be, outside her work.’ Charles sounded indifferent. ‘But what made you think so? Do you know her?’

  ‘No. I gathered a general impression of her from her sister’s attitude, and—’

  ‘You shouldn’t judge people by other people’s comments,’ Charles told her equably.

  I don’t. I saw her for myself once and I thought—’ Her voice trailed off, because she was not quite sure what she had thought, apart from the fact that she didn’t like Eileen Unsworth at all.

  ‘Oh you mean she’s so astonishingly pretty?’ Charles sounded amused and unusually indulgent.

  ‘I didn’t mean that at all,’ Tina retorted crisply. ‘Though of course she is extremely pretty,’ she added, in a tone of strict fairness.

  ‘Extremely,’ Charles agreed.

  And there the subject rested very unsatisfactorily, Tina couldn’t help thinking. But it was difficult to see how one could continue the argument without appearing either catty or else much more interested in Charles’ professional affairs than a mere fiancée was entitled to be.

  Somewhat to Tina’s relief, Audrey refrained from asking her whether she had been successful in her efforts to change things, and after a while Tina told herself that the whole situation had probably been exaggerated by Audrey’s highly coloured imagination. Charles probably never thought of this girl as anything but an efficient and attractive nurse. Any romantic feelings she had for him would surely die a natural death.

  The arrangements for the convalescent home went forward without a hitch. It was as though some charm rested on the place and nothing could go wrong there.

  ‘It’s a lucky house,’ Earle told Tina, when he had driven out one day to see the place, not long before the actual furnishings and fittings had been finished.

  ‘Oh, Earle, I do hope so!’

  Tina spoke with more anxiety than she knew, and Earle Morrison glanced at her with shrewd, kindly eyes.

  ‘You sound as though that takes some believing,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, no,’ Tina laughed nervously. ‘I only meant—I suppose every girl marries with the idea that everything is going to be happy ever after. Only quite often things go wrong even then.’

  ‘Only if the seeds are there already. Unhappiness doesn’t just blow up of its own accord, you know.’ Earle spoke with unusual seriousness and his drawl was more than ordinarily pronounced. ‘What are you anxious about?’

  ‘I’m not anxious,’ Tina said immediately and wished with quite passionate intensity that she could tell Earle the real state of affairs. How she was living a life of complete deception how, in a way, she was putting that right by marrying Charles, and how, though Charles was marrying her more than half as a matter of convenience, she was finding herself more and more in love with him every time he turned his smiling, indifferent eyes on her.

  But of course one couldn’t tell that to anyone not even to such an understanding person as Earle. He just had to go on thinking that everything was quite all right and that the quiet wedding at which he himself was to be best man would usher in a life of regulation calm and happiness for his two excellent friends.

  It was by no means all the time that Tina had misgivings. Often she was much too happy enjoying the arrangement of her new home and the bright, energetic planning of her fiancé for any shadow to trouble her.

  Less than a fortnight before the wedding Charles telephoned to her one morning with the urgent request that she would be free to come down with him to the house that afternoon.

  ‘Yes, of course, if you want me.’ She smiled instinctively, because Charles always sounded so boyishly excited on these occasions. “What is the special reason?’

  ‘Earle is bringing along one or two American fellows who want to see the place. It seems they’re tremendously interested in the whole idea and want to see the lines on which we’re going to work it. There’ll be a couple of doctors, and I think there’s a journalist among them and—’

  ‘But you don’t want a lot of press publicity, do you?’

  ‘No of course not. It’s not that kind of stunt. I think this fellow is writing a book or something. I don’t mind his seeing the place. He’s a Canadian, by the way, I believe. Anyway, if he’s the wrong sort, we can always run sticky and professional and refuse to have anything written.’

  ‘All right,’ Tina laughed. ‘Will you collect me here or shall I meet you at the house?’

  ‘Oh no! I’ll fetch you. We want to be there at the same time. After all, it’s a joint affair.’

  He sounded quite shocked at any other notion, and Tina experienced one of those warm little rushes of happiness and relief which always came over her when Charles rather ingenuously let fall the fact that she had a place in his thoughts and plans.

  She was ready for him when he came that afternoon, and they drove down through the autumn sunshine to the house which was fast becoming ‘home’ to Tina. Mrs. Ardingley welcomed them with a warmth which suggested
that they might even one day rival Sir Thomas and his lady in her esteem. And Tina felt that everything was well with the world.

  Their visitors had not yet arrived, and she and Charles strolled round, noting one or two additions since their last visit.

  ‘It’s perfect, isn’t it?’ Tina drew a deep sigh of satisfaction.

  ‘Yes, it’s perfect. Just the sort of place I always longed to have.’ Charles put a careless affectionate arm round her. ‘Did I ever tell you that you were the dearest and most generous person in the world?’

  ‘I, Charles?’

  ‘Yes, of course. You always behave as though this place belongs to me.’

  ‘Oh, but it does!’ She thought of all that money which was really his and not hers. ‘At least—’

  ‘At least?’

  ‘‘Charles, can’t we just think of this place as ours, without bothering about how we came to have it or who bought it or whether the money should have been yours or mine or half and half? It’s the only way to be really happy here.’

  He smiled, and she thought for a moment that he was going to tease her, but instead he bent his head and kissed her.

  ‘All right. I don’t know quite why it’s so easy to accept that from you. I wouldn’t take it from anyone else.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Tina said, a little timidly, ‘I’m rather different from “anyone else”.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he agreed briefly. He was obviously going to say something else when Mrs. Ardingley came in to say ‘the gentlemen’ had arrived.

  ‘Oh, come along then. Let’s do the honours of our new home.’ And Charles, still with his arm round her, took her out into the big, square, light hall.

  Half a dozen people were there, and as they came forward Earle detached himself from the group and came up to them. While he greeted them, Tina glanced beyond him to the unfamiliar faces, and for an odd and disconcerting moment it seemed to her that one of the faces was not so unfamiliar. That man in brown, with the thin, over-keen face surely—