ANNE WEALE - The Bartered Bride

She said, ‘Probably not in England. Ideally, I’d like more sun than we get in this country. I wouldn’t mind living by the sea...or a lake would do as long as it had mountains round it. I’d like to look out on mountains... big ones with snow on top.’

He lifted an eyebrow. ‘Sounds as if New Zealand would suit you.’

She shook her head. ‘I’m sure it’s a beautiful country but it’s too far away from Europe. Have you been there?’

Reid nodded. ‘The scenery’s magnificent...when it’s not raining. The South Island shares England’s problem. Unreliable weather. Where have your travels taken you?’

‘Mostly to holiday places...the Caribbean in winter... resorts round the Med in summer. My mother’s a passionate gardener. She doesn’t like travelling alone, even in a group. I’ve been on some garden tours with her...the south of France, Ireland, California. Where do you go for your holidays?’

‘I used to go with my father who also liked someone with him. We went to Japan together and to other Pacific Rim countries. I travel a lot for the bank. For pleasure I usually go to France or Spain. Where would you like to go for our honeymoon?’

The question, tacked on to innocuous small talk, took her by surprise.

‘I haven’t agreed to marry you,’ she said coldly.

‘If you found the idea unthinkable, you wouldn’t be here,’ he said dryly. ‘Let’s be straight with each other, Francesca. I need you...you need me. It’s a sensible, practical arrangement.’

She knew that at least the first part of what he said was true, but she wasn’t about to admit it. Was it pride that made her reluctant to fall in with his plan too readily?

She said, ‘I’m not clear why you’ve selected me.’

‘You’re very attractive...as I’m sure you’re aware.’

‘Is that all you want in a woman? An acceptable face and figure? Don’t you care what I’m like inside?’

‘I can make some intelligent guesses. People can’t hide their characters,’ he told her casually. ‘Even in repose a face gives a lot of clues to its owner’s temperament. Apart from yesterday’s evidence that you have a short fuse, I haven’t detected any characteristics I wouldn’t like to live with.’

His arrogance took her breath away. In that moment of silent shock, she was struck by the thought it would be both a challenge and public service to bring this man down from his lofty pinnacle and convert him into an acceptably unassuming person.

But perhaps it was already too late. One of Gran’s favourite sayings was, ‘What’s bred in the bone must come out in the flesh.’

Reid, with his long-boned thoroughbred physique and his autocratic features, looked a descendant of generations of men who had felt themselves to be superior beings and never experienced the doubts felt by ordinary people.

In a different, more rough-hewn way, her father had been the same. Probably, somewhere far back in Reid’s ancestry, there had been a man like her father: a roughdiamond unscrupulous go-getter who had founded the Kennard fortune.

Perhaps, if George Turner had married someone better equipped to handle him than her quiet and easily cowed mother, her father might have been saved from becoming an overbearing braggart.

Whether, at thirty-four, Reid’s essential nature could be modified was problematical. But it could be interesting to try.

She said, ‘I don’t find you as transparent as you seem to find me. It takes me longer to make up my mind about people.’

‘You haven’t had as much experience of summing up people as I have.’

The butler reappeared. ‘Luncheon is ready when you are, sir.’

They ate in a smaller room with a view of a large garden, an oasis of well-kept greenery in the heart of the city. The surface of the round Regency breakfast table had the gleaming patina resulting from nearly two centuries of regular polishing. It reflected the colours and shapes of the red-streaked white tulips arranged in what Fran recognised as an antique tulip-pot, its many spouts designed to support the stems of flowers which had once been costly status symbols.

The meal began with potted shrimps served with crisp Melba toast, tiny green gherkins and a dryish white wine which they continued to drink with the main course, chicken with a minty yogurt dressing.

While they ate Reid talked about plays and art shows he had been to recently. It was the kind of conversation made by strangers at formal lunch parties and although his comments were interesting, Fran thought his choice of subjects irrelevant to this particular situation.

When the butler had withdrawn, leaving them to help themselves to a fruit salad with fromage frais, or to a selection of more substantial cheeses, she said, ‘Why do you want a wife when you could go on having girlfriends and change them when you get bored?’

Offering her the elegant Waterford compote, its apparent fragility emphasising the powerful but equally elegant form of the hands in which it was cradled, he looked at her with unexpected sternness.

‘I have a responsibility to my line. I need sons to carry on the traditions established by my predecessors.’

She found his solemnity irritating. ‘Are you expecting me to provide proof of my fertility?’

Before she could add that, if he was, he could forget it, Reid said, ‘No, I’m prepared to chance that.’

‘Big deal!’ Fran said sarcastically.

She had the feeling that Reid wouldn’t hesitate to divorce her if she failed to live up to his expectations in some way.

But although he struck her as a monster of coldhearted self-centredness, she couldn’t deny that he was extraordinarily attractive. Every movement he had made since they sat down had heightened her awareness of the lean and muscular physique inside the well-cut suit and the long legs under the table. His hair was dry now but still had the sheen of health. There was nothing about him suggestive of stress or tension. He seemed entirely relaxed. Yet why did he need to arrange a businesslike marriage instead of falling in love the way people usually did?

Wondering, suddenly, if he might be in the same situation as herself, heartbroken, although it didn’t seem likely, she said, ‘When did you dream up this scheme?’

‘It’s an idea I’ve had for some time...probably since my contemporaries started divorcing. I have about a dozen god-children, most of whom now have stepparents, some official, some not. I don’t want that for my children.’

‘Did your parents stay married?’

It seemed to her that his face underwent a change. His lips didn’t tighten. His eyebrows didn’t draw together. But there was a subtle hardening and chilling, reminding her of the impression of formidable coldness she had received yesterday morning when they sat on opposite sides of his imposing desk.

Now they were at a table designed for a more intimate and relaxed conversation. But she sensed a change in the atmosphere and knew she had trespassed in an area of his life where she was an unwelcome intruder.

‘They separated. They were never divorced,’ he answered.

Fran wanted to ask how old he had been when the separation happened, but something made her hold her tongue.

Later, going back to the flat in the taxi he had laid on for her, she regretted restraining her curiosity.

When—if—two people were going to many, there shouldn’t be any ‘No go’ areas between them...or at least none of that nature. His past girlfriends were not her business, but his family life certainly was. She shouldn’t have allowed herself to be put off. From now on she wouldn’t be, she told herself firmly.

Later that afternoon, her sister rang up.

‘How’s it going?’ Shelley knew about clearing the apartment but not about the interview with Reid.