Bride's Dilemma Read online

  Gaye shot a smile at her husband. “Well, you can’t stand there all day cuddling it, Tina,” she said. “If I don’t get you dressed, you’ll be keeping your bridegroom waiting on the register office steps.”

  Chuck said he reckoned the wait would be worthwhile, and as he made his exit he lowered Tina a meaning wink. Confidence spilled through her in a warm wave. The sun was shining. John had given her a mink coat, the traditional gift of a lover, and he wished her happiness on her wedding day. She smiled into the mirror at Gaye, who was working on her hair, and closed her mind to what her husband-to-be had omitted to add on the card—his love.

  She was finally in her bridal array, a borrowed lace hankie from Gaye in her handbag. John’s butterfly brooch pinned to her suit lapel, both blue and no longer new, and her glistening wedding gift over her arms as she made her way into the lounge.

  Gaye’s husband rose smiling from the settee and tossed aside a newspaper. He walked over and took a long look at Tina, then his fingers went to his tie, the Englishman’s involuntary compliment.

  “Will I do?” Tina gave him a shaky smile.

  “I should say so!” Chuck, like most Englishmen when they’re moved, gave a hearty laugh. “John's a lucky old sea-dog.”

  Gaye came into the lounge, pulling on her gloves and breathlessly remarking that they had better be on their way. She wore a smart Jacques Heim cloche, a straight beige chemise dress, and the triple pearls that best suit a mature woman.

  “Er—let’s wait for a few minutes, old girl,” Chuck said. “I’m expecting a caller—ah, there goes the door chimes!”

  He loped out to the hallway, leaving Gaye to raise mystified eyebrows at Tina. “What’s he up to?” she murmured.

  They soon found out, for when Chuck returned to the lounge he was carrying a spray of golden-yellow honeymoon roses. “I phoned round for them, Tina.” He blushed madly as he handed her the spray. “All the very best, old thing.”

  “Oh, Chuck!” She tiptoed and left a feather of pink-ice on his cheek. “Thank you—thank you both, for everything!”

  Despite Gaye’s anxiety, they arrived at the Chelsea Register Office before John. It was a rather gloomy building, with long corridors and a smell of wet mops rising from the parquet. Tina had left her coat in Chuck’s car, and she stood tongue-tied while they waited for John, gripping her spray of roses and feeling the thud of her heart and the fluid weakness of her knees. Then he came brushing through the door at the end of the corridor and her heart throbbed the mysterious signals of love through her blood. She wanted to run to him, but she waited, slim and demure in her blue-smoke suit and fragile rose hat.

  “Hullo, my dear!” He took hold of her left hand and squeezed it reassuringly. “How very nice you look.”

  “Gaye’s handiwork,” she laughed shyly.

  “You’ve done an excellent job, Gaye.” He slanted her a smile, but Tina couldn’t help noticing that as the four of them walked to the door marked Registrar, he ran a rather quizzical glance over her upswept hair and little flirt of a side-fringe. What was he thinking, that her smart hairstyle made a stranger of her?

  They entered the Registrar’s office and Tina felt a nerve jigging in her throat. This was it! No backing out now, no running from what she wanted yet feared, to become the wife of this tall, distinguished man in the dark suit with a cotton-fine stripe, the sun through the office windows picking out the strands of silver in his thick dark hair.

  “All right, Tina?” Gaye murmured.

  She nodded, but she was pale under her makeup, and her heart seemed to be thumping in every part of her.

  The crisp, unemotional ceremony began, and it came to Tina that had she been marrying John in a church, wearing an orange- blossom coronet and a cloudy veil over slipper-satin, it would all have seemed like a dream. But this cluttered office, worn desk, and rather crusty official were too down-to-earth to aid an illusion.

  When she said her simple yes, and felt John’s gold ring sliding over her knuckle, she knew she really was the second Mrs. Trecarrel. He gave her a smile, but it was Gaye who kissed her cheek and hugged her slight, trembling figure.

  They signed the Register of Marriages, the official shook hands with them, then they were out in the sunshine. They drove to Claridges in Chuck’s car. John had parked his in the vicinity of the hotel, already loaded up with his baggage, to which Tina’s was added. “You look as though you’ve got more than sixty-six pounds each,” Chuck said. “You’ll be paying overweight on that golfing gear, Johnny.”

  The name came out so naturally, flipping Tina’s heart right over. She glanced at her husband for his reaction, but he was bent imperturbably over the boot of his car, stacking Tina’s new cream and blue luggage on top of his own well-used coach-hide cases with their bright spattering of travel labels. He slanted a smile at his friend. “Couldn’t resist treating myself while I was in England, Chuck. You can’t buy gear like that back on the island—now is that everything, Tina? You haven’t left anything in Chuck’s car?”

  She shook her head, feeling the first strange thrill at being treated with proprietorship by John. After he had locked the boot, then the other doors, he dropped her mink coat round her shoulders and lightly held her arm as the four of them walked into the hotel.

  A delicious wedding lunch had been laid on for them, with white flowers on the table, a vintage champagne, and quiet, charming service with a smile for the bride and bridegroom. There was even a small iced cake with silver shoes on it, one of which found its way into Tina’s handbag—for luck.

  Chuck lifted his champagne glass towards the end of the meal and said with sincerity: “Here’s all the very best to both of you. If your partnership turns out as happy as Gaye’s and mine, then you won’t have much to grumble about.”

  Tina and John looked at each other. For a long moment—during which she held her breath—his face was still and unreadable, then lines fanned beside his eyes and he was giving her the smile that had won her heart up on the headland at Chorley.

  “I’ll try not to make Tina regret our partnership,” he said.

  You could never make me regret my love for you, she wanted to reply. But John had not asked for her love. He wanted only her tolerance and companionship; in exchange he was giving her a home of her own ... a journey over the horizon she used to watch so longingly.

  A quarter of an hour later they had said goodbye to Gaye and Chuck and were heading out of London. Tina, pleasantly drowsy from the champagne, snuggled down into the softness of her mink coat and watched the rows of shops slowly merge into streets of houses, then the houses became more spaced out and there were fields, road hoardings and factory sites. She had not, after all, been part of the big city for long.

  “Did you write to tell your aunt about your marriage?” John suddenly asked.

  “No, she wouldn’t have been interested,” Tina replied, catching her lip between her teeth at the bleak remembrance of her goodbye to Aunt Maud.

  “Poor little Tina,” John shot her a look that was both shrewd and tender, “robbed of a lighthearted childhood, and now an orange-blossom wedding.”

  “I didn't want orange blossom,” she protested.

  “Nor an organ playing Oh Perfect Love?’ he drawled.

  “N—no.” She glanced away from him, bathed in the heat of youthful confusion. Had he guessed how she felt about him? Was he mocking her? His funny, shy little bride . . . who mustn’t take too seriously the role he meant her to play in his life?

  A minute or so later the car suddenly coasted on to a lay-by and sighed to a standstill. John turned to look at her, an arm resting on the steering wheel. “This is our first real moment alone for several days,” he said. “Do you feel strange, Tina? Or hasn’t it hit home to you yet that you’re a bride?”

  A bride . . . with all its implications, added the silence that followed his words.

  She gazed wordlessly back at him, her eyes the color of shaded hyacinths, her mouth innocently pink beca
use she had forgotten to replace her lipstick after their lunch at Claridges, her little model hat no longer centrally placed on her up-swept hair.

  “Oh, let’s take off that ridiculous thing!” Laughingly he moved closer to her and searched for the pin that secured her hat. On to the back seat flew hat and pearl-tipped pin, then with a grin cutting the edge of his mouth he withdrew the clips from her upsweep and released her hair in a white-gold mist to her shoulders. His fingers touched it, then he drew her against his chest and laid his lips to the throb of an artery in the soft pool of her throat. It was a gentle but searching kiss, his lips tracing the artery’s movement round to the silky curve of her neck. When he lifted his head, his eyes were lazy in their regard.

  “Still nervous of me, Tina?” he murmured.

  The soft collar of her coat framed her triangular face, with the wide eyes that knew so little of men and their passions. “Not of you—a little of myself. I—I've never had a boy-friend, you see—” Color stormed into her cheeks. “I don't know what a girl does to—to—”

  “Please a man?” he enquired gently. “What do you feel like doing right now? Lovemaking is an instinct, Tina, so just follow it.”

  Unsure but eager to please him, she lifted her hands to his lean, quizzical face and shyly touched the dented chin, angular jaw and silvery temples. Her fingers stroked the silvery wings and she loved the air of distinction they gave him.

  He evidently assumed something quite different, for he said wryly: “Are you realizing the big gap between our ages? Does it worry you that I have grey hairs, Tina?”

  She shook her head and softly quoted Thackeray to him. “No lace as handsome as silver hair.”

  An expression of quick tenderness filled John’s blue eyes. “You’re really rather charming, aren’t you, my child?” His lips brushed her pink cheek. “Perhaps I should have left you wrapped in your chrysalis until some equally charming young man came along to awaken you—”

  “I don’t like young men,” she protested quickly. “I like your—your kindness and goodness to me.” “Don’t run away with the idea that I've married you out of a sense of kindness, Tina.” He turned from her and started the car. “It’s a wife I want, not a little girl to dandle on my knee. You understand me, I hope?”

  “Of course, John.”

  He shot a look at her. She sat holding in her lap the golden honeymoon roses Chuck had given her, an air of meek acceptance about her that drew John’s brows together in a sudden harsh frown. They drove on to the inn in silence, a picturesque place nestling in a fold of the Surrey hills. They were shown to their adjoining rooms by the proprietor, a jovial, moustached man who was very free with R.A.F. slang. Tina noticed as they went upstairs that there were photographs of pilots laughing beside wartime aircraft on the wall of the staircase. John remarked on the photos, and the two men were indulging in service talk while Tina ran her glance round her charming bedroom. Oak furniture glimmered in its odd angles, the bed was a half-tester with a cretonne canopy and a floor-touching counterpane edged with a bobble fringe. The wood floor was scattered with tufted wool rugs, and through the tiny, chintz-hung casements there drifted the lovely scents of a country garden.

  “This is your room, sir.” The inn proprietor unlocked an adjoining door. “Dinner is at half-past seven . . . we’re early nighters in the country.” He slanted the edge of a service grin at Tina, then after laying the keys on the dressing-chest, he left them alone.

  As they were staying only one night, John had brought up their smaller cases and after dumping Tina’s on the foot of her bed he sauntered into his own room, calling back over his shoulder, “We could go for a stroll before dressing for dinner. Would you like that?”

  She caught that note of indulgence in his voice and felt her lips forming into a smile. “Yes, I’d love it,” she called back.

  “Okay. Just let me find my pipe and tobacco.” She listened to him sorting about in his case and whistling what she vaguely recognized as a calypso. He was looking forward to returning to the island, she reflected, as she secured her hair in an Alice band. Through the mirror, as she lifted her hands, she saw the glint of her gold wedding ring and the soft red glow of her other ring. She was a wife! How strange it felt, to see a tall man walking into her bedroom and to know he had every right to be there.

  “Ready?” he queried, tucking his briar into a comer of his mouth and holding out a hand to her. They ran down the stairs and as they passed the reception desk the clerk lifted his glance from what looked like a racing-form and gave them a stare. They intruded on the afternoon drowsiness that lay over the inn, and a curtain fluttered at the lounge window as they walked past on their way to the roadway. Tina glanced back and saw a woman at the window. Her eyes were avidly curious. Was she guessing that they were a honeymoon couple?

  They took a random path, where the strawberry-cream of hawthorn frothed on the hedges and honeysuckle twined. A big russet butterfly flitted ahead of them, fairy light on the warm air, which was filled with the scent of cut corn in the nearby fields. Catkins hung on the hazels, while the horse-chestnuts still carried their ruby and ivory candles.

  They came to a woodland, where bluebells lingered in company with brimstone cowslips and silvery drifting lady’s smock. Also, beneath a copper beech, a little patch of lilies of the valley nodded their delicate bells. A cuckoo called. This, Tina thought, was England at her happiest. This woodland was a place she would remember in the weeks to come, when she was living on the subtropical island of Ste. Monique.

  John lifted her into the fork of a tree, then while he packed his pipe and lit up, he surveyed the youthful picture his bride made with her Alice-banded fair hair, hands folded in her blue lap, and slender legs lightly swinging ... as though to music she alone could hear. “You look at this moment like a Kate Greenaway illustration,” he remarked. “Everyone’s going to say I’ve robbed the schoolroom.”

  “Do you mind if they say that?” she enquired, fully aware that she didn’t look her age and people might remark that she wasn’t much older than his daughter.

  “Not particularly,” he drawled. “Gossip can be irritating, but it’s rarely lethal.”

  Tina plucked a leaf and pretended to examine it. Though he said that gossip wasn’t lethal, there had been some talk about him and Joanna’s cousin. Had Joanna, that tragic day eight years ago, fallen into the sea with doubt and unhappiness clouding her mind and making her less careful than she would otherwise have been on her friends’ yacht?

  “Does it worry you, Tina, that people are going to refer to us as mutton and lamb?”

  He was grinning lopsidedly as she glanced up, the shredded leaf falling from her fingers. “I’m only worried about Liza’s reaction,” she said, which was partly true. “It’s important to a second marriage that the children aren’t resentful, a— and I’ve not had a chance to get to know Liza before partially taking her father away from her.”

  “Children are adaptable creatures, Tina. My Liza needs a mother, someone she can confide in as she can’t in a father, and in choosing to marry you I was also thinking of her. As a motherless child yourself, you already have a sympathy for others in a similar position. You know what it feels like to be without the affection only a mother can give. It’s a bond Liza will be aware of herself, for she’s an intelligent young thing.”

  “If she’s like you, John, then I’m sure I shall— get along with her.” Tina only just bit back the word love. She didn’t wish to foist her deeper feelings upon him, not When he told her so frankly that his choice of a wife had been motivated by his concern for Liza.

  Shadows were pointing towards the sun when they made their way back to the inn, delightfully rural with its mullioned windows and gables. “We ought to have taken a snap of our—our honeymoon inn,” Tina said, stumbling a bit over the operative word, honeymoon.

  “You can do it in the morning if you want to, you absurd young thing,” John said, knocking out his pipe against an oak tree. She flus
hed at the glint of mockery in his eyes, and he added: “Don’t be on the defensive with me, Tina. I’m not expecting the allure of a sophisticated woman in a girl with your kind of upbringing. Innocence has its own kind of allure, if you must know.”

  “I want to be a wife you’ll not be disappointed in,” she replied, tugging at a lock of her hair in a young, nervous way.

  “Marriage, as I told you once before, is a gamble for both sexes.” He pulled her fingers away from her hair and shook them. “We may both be disappointed by this leap into the dark we’re taking together.”

  Pain jabbed her heart. Was he thinking of Joanna and the joy they had shared? Was he facing up to the fact that it mightn’t be recapturing with anyone else? They entered the inn to the hum of evening activity. There was a sound of cutlery being laid in the dining room and a smell of cooking wafted into the lobby as a waitress brushed through a baize door carrying rolls in a circular basket.

  “Good evening, sir.” She smiled repectfully at John, but when she greeted Tina there was an inquisitive gleam in her eyes. As Tina mounted the stairs she wondered if the waitress was thinking it strange so distinguished a man should have married a girl who was neither pretty or self-assured. On the other hand she could be thinking it romantic, like a story or a film?

  Tina dressed for dinner in a fondant-pink chiffon with a dove-grey sash—a romantic concoction which Gaye had suggested she dine in this particular evening.

  “Don’t believe that honeymoon nerves are confined to us,” she said. “Men are often as jittery, even the most sophisticated types, and it doesn’t hurt to soften them up with a girly dress.”

  It also occurred to Tina to leave her hair as John seemed to prefer it, brushed until it shone and latched at the nape of her neck with a mock-tortoiseshell slide, shaped like a fan, which she had brought to London from Chorley, and which she had been wearing the evening John had proposed to her. She then applied a little lipstick and decided she looked cool and fresh if no raving beauty.