Lucy Gordon - A Convenient Wedding

‘And that’s when?’ she asked suspiciously.

‘Two in the morning.’

‘I sure pick ’em.’

‘Shall I get you that taxi?’

‘No, but you can get me something to eat.’

‘I guess I owe you that. I expect you’re aching all over.’

‘Nothing a good, solid Yorkshire meal won’t put right.’

‘Ready in five minutes,’ Mrs Helms sang out. ‘I’ve put you a table near the fire.’

It was too early in the year for visitors, so they had the place to themselves. Rusty and Jacko had come in with their master and sprawled contentedly by the fire. Meryl looked around, enchanted by the oak beams and the fact that this building was clearly several hundred years old. Then she caught Jarvis’s eyes on her and read ‘theme park’ in them. Huffed, she joined Mrs Helms in the kitchen.

If anything this was worse, because the landlady showed her around like a royal guest. Evidently she too had heard the gossip. When she loaded a tray with more tea Meryl said, ‘I’ll take that,’ and fled.

She found Jarvis on an old oak settle by the fire, his body sprawled in an attitude of weariness, his head fallen back against a side wing. He was asleep.

Now she could see him with all expression stripped away Meryl realised that he looked older than thirty-three, not old in years but in strain and worry. There were two deep lines at the side of his mouth that mirrored the ones in his grandfather’s portrait, but which shouldn’t have appeared on this young man for several years. His eyes had a faint bruised appearance, as though he never slept-never dared, flashed across her mind-except, as now, in brief snatches. Then he would jerk awake with an alarmed alertness, bracing himself for the next burden to be laid on his back.

No wonder he was grouchy, she thought, and for a moment everything was washed away except compassion for him. He was being slowly ground down by problems others had created, and he no longer knew how to reach out for help. If, indeed, he’d ever known.

She purposely made a noise setting down the tray so that he would awaken to find her looking away from him. ‘Is there a special way I should pour your tea?’ she asked lightly as he rubbed his eyes.

‘Strong, with two sugars.’

She managed to get it right and he sipped the powerful brew with a sigh of satisfaction.

‘I suppose you heard everything in the Library this morning?’ he said. ‘Did you have a good laugh?’

‘I’m not laughing. It’s frightening how much it means to them.’

Jarvis gave her a quick glance. Frightening was the very word he’d been using to himself and it alarmed him to know how well their thoughts were in tune.

Mrs Helms bustled in with a big meal which she served on the little table between them. She didn’t leave until Meryl had tasted some of it and pronounced it delicious.

‘You know why she’s hanging on your opinion?’ Jarvis demanded. ‘You see the damage you’ve caused by raising their hopes?’

‘I raised their hopes? Who spread the story of my arrival? Not me.’

He sighed. ‘No. It was Hannah. I know that. She thinks it’s all so easy.’

‘She thinks what they all think, that you’ve been offered a chance to get everyone out of trouble. If you don’t take it, they won’t understand.’

‘Then I’ll have to try to make them understand that there never was such a chance. You and I met, decided we couldn’t deal together, and that was it. I seem to recall your saying that I didn’t appeal to you.’

She looked at him, his profile sharp and uncompromising, and a tremor went through her as she remembered last night.

‘Will they believe that?’ she mused. ‘They think women must be falling over themselves to marry Lord Larne.’

‘Well, you can tell them they’re wrong, can’t you?’

‘That’ll reflect very badly on you. I think the idea is that you’re supposed to use your charms to persuade me.’

It was true, he realised with an inward groan. He’d been both touched and worried by his tenants’s fear, and their confidence that he could save them. And he had no other way of doing it. That was the plain truth. Perhaps, for their sakes, it was his duty to enter this appalling arrangement.

For it did appal him. From the day he’d become Lord Larne he’d always been in control-of his land, his people and of himself. But this woman threatened his control in every possible way.

‘Perhaps you ought to at least try,’ she mused. ‘After all, you owe it to them. It would be a shame if they thought Lord Larne couldn’t make it.’

‘You’ll go too far,’ he growled.

She chuckled. ‘It’s funny how people are always telling me that.’

Her hair fell forward and she swept it back, winding the long tail around and around until she could leave it in a twisted rope that immediately started to become loose again.

‘It’s a pity I arrived in a downpour,’ she said. ‘It reminds people of the legend so now they can’t see me as I really am.’

‘Yes, that must be it,’ he agreed slowly. The warmth from the fire was getting to him and he was relaxing, letting down his guard with her, against his better judgement.

‘Who was she in real life? Hannah said something about a French woman.’

‘That’s right. Marguerite de Vendanne, only child of one of the wealthiest men in France. She brought a fabulous dowry, and when her father died a year later she inherited everything.’

‘And “saved the family”?’ Meryl finished lightly.

‘Insofar as money could save it, yes. It wasn’t a happy family, although the marriage started out well. Giles Larne was handsome, and he dazzled poor Marguerite until she swore she’d marry nobody else. That was quite a stand for a young woman to take in those days, especially one who was such a catch. But she was brave and determined.’ He smiled. ‘Like you.’

‘Only in my case people say “stubborn as a donkey”.’

‘I expect her father said that about her, too. She wasn’t just rich and beautiful. She was a witch.’

She laughed. ‘No, seriously.’

‘I am serious. She vanished suddenly.’

‘You mean she went up in a puff of smoke at the wedding?’

‘No, she stayed for about two years, and had a son. But then she just disappeared and nobody ever knew what became of her. There were stories. Some people said they’d seen her fly away from the top of one of the towers, so they called her a witch.’

Actually they’d called her the enchantress, but, sitting here with this black-haired woman who’d risen from the sea to torment him with hopes and dreams, and who would disappear again at any moment, he didn’t want to think of enchantment.

‘The truth is more prosaic, of course,’ he went on. ‘It always is. She was the faithless one. She tired of poor old Giles pretty soon and started casting eyes at one of his stewards. The two of them vanished together. I’ll show you her portrait in the castle. She’s wearing a triple rope of pearls that were famous in their day. They vanished with her and were never heard of again, so I suppose they sold them off one by one and lived on the money. She took her maid, but left her baby son behind.’

‘And nobody ever spotted them?’

‘This was the fifteenth century. They couldn’t plaster missing persons all over the television screen. If people didn’t know what you looked like, and you had money, you could hide successfully. Giles never recovered from losing her. He took to drink and was dead in five years, leaving their son to inherit.’

‘What a sad story. That poor man!’

‘Yes, he must have thought everything was going to be wonderful, and he didn’t know what had hit him.’

‘You know, this food really is delicious,’ she said appreciatively. ‘These little batter cakes-’

‘Yorkshire puddings.’

‘I’d almost marry you just to have them every day.’

Instead of rising to the bait he merely raised his eyebrows ironically. She laughed and it was allowed to drop. They ate slowly, lulled to sleepiness by the warmth after the cold and wet outside. Meryl felt herself suffused by drowsy contentment. When, she wondered, had she last been content in the whirl and bustle of a moneyed life?

‘Wake up!’

‘Eh? What?’ She opened her eyes to find Jarvis’s face very near and his hands on her shoulders, shaking her.

‘Wake up!’ he said gently. ‘Mrs Helms wants to close.’

‘Have I been asleep?’

‘For ages.’

‘I didn’t snore, did I?’

He smiled. ‘No, you didn’t snore. I promise. But you talk in your sleep.’

‘What did I say?’ she demanded suspiciously.

‘I couldn’t follow most of it. Something about destiny.’

She didn’t want to move. She just wanted to stay here, with her mouth dangerously close to his, trying to understand the look in his eyes.

Except that she already did understand it. She’d seen that look before in men’s eyes. And she’d laughed and teased them, kissed them if she was in the mood or sent them away unkissed, knowing they’d be back next day.

But this man was different. His strength of will was as great as her own, and his pride even stronger. She held her breath, knowing that he was fighting temptation, willing him to lose the battle.

‘Mike says the car’s ready,’ Mrs Helms said, barging in noisily.

They pulled quickly apart, each stunned by the shock, struggling for a foothold in this new, strange world.

‘I’ll go up and get my things,’ Meryl muttered, not quite knowing what she said.

She came down a few minutes later to find Jarvis gone and Mrs Helms waiting by the door. She tried to pay her, but Jarvis had settled the entire bill, which she felt was high-handed of him. She wandered over to the direction of the garage, thankful that the rain had stopped.

‘I’ve patched it up,’ Mike declared. ‘But it’s time to have this thing put painlessly to sleep. Drive carefully.’

It had gone midnight as they drove home. A brilliant moon had come out, bathing the countryside in silver. By now Meryl was getting used to the way everything changed from magic to danger and back to magic again. But still the awesome beauty made her hold her breath.

‘I tried to pay the landlady-’ she began.

‘You had no right to. It was for me to settle the bill.’

‘Maybe for the meal, but my room-’

‘You wouldn’t have needed it if you hadn’t been helping me push the car.’

‘But you didn’t want me on this trip anyway, and I think it was for me to pay.’

‘I disagree.’

‘But you-’ She choked off the words, You can’t afford it.

‘Don’t say it,’ he advised.

‘I wasn’t going to.’

‘Yes, you were, and it would have got you dumped by the roadside. This is exactly why I want you out of my hair.’

The brief moment of understanding had gone. He was on guard against her again, and doubly so because of his moment of weakness.

‘Look-’ she tried again.

‘The subject is closed.’

‘No way!’

‘The subject is closed.’

‘Why? Because Lord Larne says so? You’ve got a nerve.’

His answer was to slam on the brakes and look at her with meaning. He’d do it, too, she thought. The rotten swine would dump her out here.

‘Have you got anything else to say?’ he asked dangerously.

‘Just one thing. After what you did to those brakes it would serve you right if you couldn’t start this thing again.’

He didn’t risk answering that, but started up without trouble. Which only went to prove, she thought crossly, that the devil looked after his own.

AT LAST the shore came into view, the causeway forming a silver ribbon across the water to where the castle reared up against the night sky. She wondered if she was looking at it for the last time.

There was a strange car parked at the entrance, and Hannah came bustling to meet them as they entered.

‘There’s a man called Blackham been waiting for you for hours,’ she told Jarvis. ‘He says he’s not going away until he sees you.’

‘That’s right,’ said a voice over her shoulder. ‘I promised my client that you wouldn’t escape me.’

He was a scrawny individual with an unhealthy colour, somewhere in his fifties. Just the sight of him was enough to make Meryl’s skin crawl.

From his tone, Jarvis evidently shared her distaste. ‘I’m not trying to escape you, Mr Blackham.’

‘Oh, yeah? These figures say differently.’ He waved some sheets of paper. ‘Pay up. My client’s getting impatient.’

Meryl glided silently into the shadows, hoping Jarvis would be less aware of her. How it must gall him to have this scene witnessed!

‘Your client and I had an agreement-’ Jarvis began.

‘He’s changed his mind,’ Blackham snapped. ‘He wants his money now, or he’s prepared to start legal action.’