Bachelor's Wife Read Free Page B

spark
    of humour flickered briefly—and died. She didn't know him well enough to call him Nash, but it was too ridiculous to address the man she had married as 'Mr Devereux'. She added 'Nash' and came to another full stop as she tried to recall if apart from the ceremony when she'd said 'I, Perry, do take thee, Nash' she'd ever addressed him by any name at all.
    The pen went slack in her hand and it was effortlessly, as though it was only yesterday, that she recalled that first meeting with Nash Devereux and all that had followed.
    CHAPTER TWO
    IN her mind's eye Perry saw Nash Devereux the way he had been that first time she had clapped eyes on him— tall, immaculately suited, a cold, embittered look to him. A man she had thought then totally out of place on the small landing with its faded wallpaper outside her step-aunt's marriage bureau.
    She had probably been looking a little grim herself, she thought, for she had been an exceedingly worried eighteen-year-old. She remembered how she had telephoned Sylvia that morning asking if she could come and see her in her lunch hour.
    'What about?' Sylvia had asked without too much enthusiasm.
    'I can't really say over the phone,' she had answered, already aware that Sylvia wasn't in her most sympathetic frame of mind.
    'Ralph, I suppose,' guessed Sylvia, bang on target. Perry had said nothing. 'I helped him out last time,' Ralph's sister had gone on. 'Don't expect...'
    'If I Could just come and see you,' Perry had said quickly, even then knowing it was hopeless. But who else was there to turn to? Everything that was of saleable value had been sold the last time, there wasn't an item of her mother's jewellery left. Nothing at all left that was likely to come anywhere near to realising the five thousand pounds that was the figure Ralph had last night confessed he owed to his bookmaker, his promise never to gamble again broken in the face of the compulsion that came over him.
    'I'm busy right now,' Sylvia had said. 'Please!' she had heard herself pleading.
    'Oh—come if you want to.' And with that ungracious invitation, Sylvia had put down the phone.
    But there had still been hope in Perry's young heart when, counting every second until one o'clock, she had eventually left the place where she was employed as a trainee seamstress, and rushed round to the Perfect Partners Marriage Bureau Sylvia ran.
    All hope in her had died when, rattling on Sylvia's office door on the first floor landing, she had found it locked. She had had to accept then that not only did Sylvia not want to see her, nor want to help Ralph, but she had deliberately, after agreeing to see her, gone out to avoid being drawn into what she. must have guessed was some monetary crisis.
    Not that she could blame her, Perry thought, turning disconsolately away from the door, barely aware of the tall figure of a man coming up the stairs. She had helped out the last time Ralph had got himself into trouble, though the amount then had been nowhere near the amount this time. Sylvia had sworn 'Never again' when she had handed over the money last time. That Ralph too had sworn 'Never again' when vowing he would never gamble again was without foundation, for within a very short space of time he had broken his vow. Why he consorted with the type of people who were threatening dire consequences if the five thousand he owed wasn't paid within two weeks, Perry didn't know—or perhaps she did. No bookmaking company of any repute would allow him so much credit.
    She started down the stairs. Vaguely she heard the sound of the door she had tried being rattled, and turned three stairs down to offer, not very enthusiastically, she had to admit, 'Mrs Wainwright is at lunch.'
    What kept her attention on the man she was afterwards never quite sure. Probably because he was the sort of man no one could overlook. Something in him had her still looking at him anyway when she meant to turn and go on her way.
    It was then she noticed the cold,