Delsie Read Free Page B

have him yet? She’s had a year of pitting herself against those rowdy students. I wonder if she wouldn’t take him now, where she turned him off before.”
    “He’s gone straight downhill the last year. If she refused him when he was relatively sober, I cannot think she’ll marry a drunkard.”
    “If he hasn’t long to live, as the doctor thinks... And really, you know, he is as well as bedridden. It would be a marriage in name only. She would be more nurse than wife. She might be happy to exchange six months’ work as a nurse, followed by a life as a respectable widow in fairly easy circumstances, for the future she now has, eking out a living as a teacher. She’d be a good mother for Roberta. If Grayshott married her, he would make her the child’s guardian, one must suppose. Roberta would live with her and not Clancy. It might be worth putting it to her in that light, Max. It would save a long and costly court battle for Roberta. There is no saying we’d ever win the case either. Clancy is a ramshackle old fellow, but he wouldn’t beat the child, or anything of that sort. It is only that she would grow up unmannered, in an extremely second-rate household, and marry some scoundrel...”
    “Would she be better off with the schoolteacher in that respect? That woman might be anyone, for all we know. She is hand in glove with Miss Frisk and that set. A third-rate household, if ever there was one.”
    “Good gracious, I didn’t mean Bobbie would go to live with her at Miss Frisk’s place. They’d both stay at Andrew’s cottage, right under our noses, and we would see to the hiring of help for the teacher and so on. In any case, from what I hear, the Sommers girl is from a good family. A connection of Strothingham on the mother’s side.”
    “She cannot be connected to Strothingham or she would not be living as she does, in rented rooms, and teaching school. She’s invented the story to try to nab herself a genteel husband.”
    “I don’t know about that. She was in no hurry to nab Andrew, was she? The connection cannot be close, I suppose, but she is at least a gentlewoman. Miss Frisk tells me she attended a seminary, and can speak French and play the pianoforte—has all the accomplishments of a lady.”
    “Miss Frisk, of course, would be an excellent judge of such matters!” deVigne said with a sardonic curl of his lips.
    “She knows the girl is above herself, at least. You cannot deny the influence would be morally good. One never sees Miss Sommers anywhere except at church and the lending library.”
    Driven to despair, deVigne allowed, with great reluctance, “It might be worth a try. But are we able to get Andrew sobered up and made presentable to go calling on her? For that matter, is he out of his bed at all these days? I haven’t seen him outside the cottage for weeks.”
    “Lord, I hadn’t thought of Andrew going in person to court her. His looks would be enough to disgust her, to see him run completely to seed.”
    “She’s bound to see him if she agrees to marry him.”
    “You go and put it to her. Explain the situation. He is ill, dying in fact. Fill my glass, will you, Max? I come to rival Andrew in my drinking, but at my age it can hardly matter. Delicious sherry.” She sipped carefully, then settled back to continue the discussion. “Miss Sommers will tend to his deathbed, then be Roberta’s stepmother, living at the Cottage. Much better than wearing herself to a thread at the school. We would have to make some settlement on her as an added bribe—a few thousand pounds would be enough.”
    “I’ve never even met the girl. How could I put such a proposition to her? She looks a perfect little nun, mincing up the aisle on Sunday in those black gowns and plain round bonnets. You would be the more proper person to approach her, Jane. The nature of the arrangements would come more easily from a woman—the fact that it would be a marriage in name only, and so on.”
    “Use your