Marriage In Mind

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Odious—obnoxious was too good for him! ‘I’ve had two good offers,’ she took great delight in being able to inform him. He wasn’t to know that both offers were in the family, so to speak, or that both offers of a job were for the one firm.

‘You’ve accepted neither?’ Dark, all-assessing eyes studied her. Why did she feel she’d love to poke him in the eye? She’d never had such tendencies before!

‘I’m being selective,’ she replied coolly, in control of her anger once more. Her control didn’t stay around for long.

How could it? He strained it to the limits when loftily he suggested, ‘You obviously earned enough commission in your last job not to need to take another job for a while.’

What was it about this man? Astra took a long, steadying breath. She’d be hanged if she’d tell him she had private means. ‘Obviously,’ she agreed, her temper straining at the leash. She opened the door—to the devil with him; she was going home.

Before she could so much as take a step outside, however, Baxendale was there again with his comments. Though she had to admit she was a touch baffled by his change of subject when he said, ‘You and Alford seem on very close terms?’

What on earth had her cousin Greville Alford got to do with any of this? Astra threw Baxendale a look of intense dislike. ‘We are,’ she replied coldly. ‘Very close.’ And, not giving him a chance to get another remark in, she went swiftly through the door and marched over the tarmac drive.

Honestly! That man! Never had any man upset her the way he so easily did. Insufferable swine! The next time Greville invited her to a party, she’d ask to see the guest list first. If Sayre Baxendale’s name were on it, Greville would be going on his own!

CHAPTER THREE

GREVILLE telephoned Astra on Sunday morning to enquire if she got home all right. ‘I would have rung you last night, only I got held up longer than I expected. Did you enjoy the party?’

Greville himself gave fabulous parties. By comparison the one they’d attended last night was average. ‘More to the point, did you?’

‘Yes,’ he said simply, and Astra didn’t miss that there was a smile in his voice.

‘When are you seeing her again?’

‘Ah—slight snag.’

‘You didn’t ask her out?’ Astra was surprised—her cousin was normally self-assured, confident—he really had got it badly.

‘I didn’t get very much of a chance last night,’ Greville owned. ‘Her brother was there and, albeit he wasn’t always at her side, I thought he seemed a mite protective of her.’

‘How old is she?’ Astra enquired, wondering if the woman her cousin was so enamoured with might be some giddy young woman.

‘Late twenties, maybe thirty,’ Greville replied, and should Astra think that thirty was a bit mature to have a brother watching over her he was instantly defensive of his love. ‘She’s been through a very tough time lately,’ he explained.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be—you’re gorgeous,’ he answered, and was back to being her super cousin again, who, if truth be told, had done a fair job of watching over his three cousins in their traumatic growing years.

The week began slowly and dully, but Astra was cheered on Thursday to receive a postcard from Fennia. ‘Yancie was right,’ she read. ‘S’wonderful.’ They had received a ‘S’wonderful’ card from Yancie on her honeymoon.

Astra was still smiling when her phone suddenly called for attention. It was her cousin Greville again. ‘Anything wrong?’ she asked. Although they were regularly in touch and knew each other’s happenings, either via his mother, her mother, her other cousins or her aunts, sometimes an age could go by without Greville phoning.

‘Why should anything be wrong? Can’t I ring my lovely cousin to enquire how she’s feeling without there being something wrong?’

‘So your lovely cousin’s fine. She’s not fretting because she’s not working a sixteen-hour day. And no, she hasn’t yet found another job that has the same appeal as the last one, but she hasn’t seriously been looking.’ Astra took a breath, and then asked gently, ‘So, what’s troubling you, love?’

There was a second or two of silence before Greville, the pretence over, the game up, told her the real reason for his call. ‘I need a favour.’

He was the dearest man. ‘It’s yours,’ she answered unequivocally. Should that favour be another party with even the remotest possibility of Sayre Baxendale attending—she could be equivocal later. That fiend Baxendale had been in and out of her head ever since Saturday’s party—before that even—and she’d had enough of him. But, for the moment, Greville was sounding a touch anxious, and it would be a pleasure to help him for a change. ‘What can I do for you?’ she offered cheerfully.

‘Would you come to the theatre with me tomorrow?’

Astra had always known how much Greville enjoyed the theatre and was ready to say straight away that she’d be pleased to go with him. But she sensed there was more to his wish that she accompany him tomorrow than hoping she would enjoy it.

‘I don’t know her name, but she’ll be there, won’t she? The woman you…’

‘Ellen,’ he supplied. Astra did a quick flip through a name-and-picture gallery of the women he had introduced her to on Saturday, but she couldn’t link ‘Ellen’ to any of them. ‘Ellen Morton,’ Greville went on, her name sounding gentle on his tongue. ‘The thing is, Astra, I rang Ellen on Tuesday asking her to have dinner with me—and got a polite refusal for my trouble.’

‘Oh, Greville. Don’t give up hope,’ Astra encouraged.

‘I won’t. This is much too serious for that. The problem is, though, and you’ll call me all sorts of a clod, I bumped into Nick Wilson today—he was at the party on Saturday—and he remarked on my stunning partner. But when I said you weren’t my partner but my cousin he said that if he’d known he wouldn’t have been poaching he’d have come over and asked if you’d any space in your diary to fit him in. He asked for your phone number, by the way.’

‘You didn’t give it to him!’

‘Would I? Though he deserves some reward, because if it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t have got round to wondering had I mentioned to Ellen when I introduced you that you were my cousin. Had I, in fact, told anybody at that party that we were cousins?’

Astra tried to remember—but all she could remember was that she had told Sayre Baxendale that she and Greville were very close, but definitely hadn’t told Baxendale that they were cousins. ‘I don’t think you did,’ she confessed slowly after a few seconds.

She heard Greville groan. Then suddenly he brightened. Though he did start off by confessing, ‘I’m in such a stew, I don’t seem to be able to think straight any more. But follow me through this, Astra. If some chap came up to you at a party and introduced a beautiful redhead, and then—given that the chap exchanged a few pleasantries with you every now and then—more or less stayed glued near to said redhead all night…Then—bearing in mind you’d had your fill of philandering Casanovas, having a year ago divorced one—how would you react if a few days later the redhead’s seeming-to-be boyfriend rang you up and asked you to dine with him?’

Astra knew that she’d tell any such man to go take a running jump. But Greville was suffering here. ‘Do I like this man?’ she asked.

‘I wish I knew,’ Greville groaned. ‘I don’t feel I can ring her again just to say, Oh, by the way, the beautiful redhead’s my cousin. I’d feel a complete idiot. Besides which, with her ex-husband being such a Don Juan, the poor girl’s probably heard a dozen or more similar lines in her day, and wouldn’t believe me, anyway.’

Astra saw the light. ‘But if I went with you to the theatre tomorrow night…’

‘I’d angle to be somewhere near Ellen during the interval—with you right there beside me, of course. Then I could say, casually You know my cousin, Astra, don’t you? and…’

‘Hey presto, you’ll hope your next phone call will be more favourably received. What time do you want me to be ready?’

‘You’re a darling. But I always knew that—despite that detached air you show everybody else.’

Astra put the phone down after Greville’s call, hardly crediting the change that had come over her cousin. All through her life she had known him as kind and caring, and had also known him as sophisticated but sociable—though careful since the end of his marriage to never again let anyone get too close. But look at him now! He’d known in advance that Ellen Morton would be at the party, but as soon as he’d been in the same room with her—his normally clever brain had scrambled! He hadn’t even remembered to introduce his cousin as his cousin!

If falling in love did that to you, and to Astra it sounded as if Greville was up to his ears in love, then she was glad she’d decided to have nothing whatsoever to do with that emotion.

Though she did so want Greville to be happy. He had been through such a terrible time. By the look of it Ellen Morton had been on the same ghastly treadmill of broken marriage too. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Ellen Morton could learn to love Greville? Astra knew that her cousin had had many lady-friends since his divorce, but inside his marriage he had been faithful; none had been more trustworthy.

There was a school of thought that said everything went in threes. Yancie had married, Fennia had married—perhaps Greville…Grief! Astra brought herself up short; she was getting to be a romantic! Her cousin hadn’t even managed to get a date with the woman yet, and here she was marrying them off!

Even though Greville was early calling for her the following evening, Astra—wearing a straight dress of green silk—was ready. She sensed he was nervous, anxious and on edge, so purposely chatted calmly to him all the way to the theatre.

The strain was starting to show even as they took their seats. ‘I do hope she’ll come,’ he said worriedly. And a few minutes later he remarked, ‘She sounded all right when I spoke to her on the phone, but there’s a lot of summer colds about.’

‘She’ll be here,’ Astra answered lightly, wondering how the dickens he was going to last until the interval when the performance hadn’t even started yet!

Greville ‘accidentally’ dropped his programme, and in bending to pick it up took an ‘uninterested’ scan around. ‘She’s here!’ he mumbled in Astra’s ear as he bent to take his seat, and sounded so tense that for an awful moment she had a dreadful idea that his love was here with some other man.

‘Ellen’s here with her brother?’ Astra asked lightly, calmly, recalling how last Sunday Greville had said Ellen had been at the party with her protective brother.

‘She’s with Sayre and the Listers,’ Greville answered, keeping his voice low.

Sayre! Astra felt her scalp tingle. It couldn’t be! ‘Sayre?’ she enquired, her light, calm tone threatening to escape.