A Convenient Wedding

Meryl chuckled, liking the old woman’s frankness. ‘I might be,’ she said. ‘But don’t count on the marriage. It’s starting to look like one of my crazier ideas.’ She gave a rueful sigh. ‘I’m afraid I have a lot of those.’

Hannah didn’t answer. She was examining the discarded clothes, noting their luxurious quality. ‘I’ll take these to dry,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘You stay by the fire until your room is ready.’

She hurried out and Meryl huddled before the flames, feeling herself thaw out blissfully. The bathrobe was made for someone much larger and could almost have wrapped twice around her slim figure. She tightened the belt, but still had to clutch the edges together at the front.

The room seemed to be a library. Everywhere she saw signs of one-time grandeur declined to shabbiness. The carpet was threadbare, but no more so than the heavy curtains, battling with small success, to shield the rattling windows.

‘He really needs me,’ she murmured. ‘Maybe we can do business. If only I hadn’t arrived like this! Me! A damsel in distress, for Pete’s sake! Rescued from peril like some Victorian heroine. I’ll never live it down.’

She looked up quickly as the door opened. It was her rescuer, wearing fresh clothes and with his hair rubbed until it was almost dry. She saw now that it was dark brown, shaggy and needed a cut. With him were the two dogs, who made straight for Meryl.

‘Good evening,’ she said with as much dignity as she could muster, fending off Alsatians with one hand and holding the robe with the other. ‘You know who I am, but—’

‘I’m Jarvis Larne,’ he said.

Her head whirled. ‘You? Lord Larne? You can’t be!’

It was more wishful thinking than conviction, and Meryl could have bitten off her tongue the moment the words were out. But it was too late now. The man’s sardonic face showed that he could follow her thoughts.

‘Why can’t I be? Because I don’t stand to attention for you? Just who did you think you were talking to back there? The bailiff?’

This was too close for comfort. ‘Certainly not,’ she said with dignity. ‘I never dreamed you could be Lord Larne because you’re so different to your letter.’

‘What letter?’

‘The one you wrote in answer to my advertisement.’

‘Advertisement?’

‘Oh, look! That ad was foolish, I admit, but don’t deny that you answered it. Now I’ve seen this place I can understand why.’

‘Wait a minute,’ he said, peering at her more closely. ‘Are you the woman who was looking for a fortune-hunter?’

‘Yes,’ she admitted defensively. ‘It might have been better put, but—’

‘And you think I’m the answer to your prayers?’

‘No,’ she said with spirit, ‘just the answer to my ad. My prayers are for something quite different.’

‘Then why bother with me?’

‘You wrote to me.’

‘I never wrote to you.’

She pounced on her purse, thankful that this, at least, she’d managed to save from the waves. Pulling out the letter, she thrust it at him. Watching his face as he read the contents, she saw disbelief change to outrage.

‘I’ll kill him,’ he said at last. ‘I will personally wring his stupid neck, and then I’ll boot his rear from here to kingdom come.’

‘Who?’

‘Ferdy Ashton. I recognise his writing and his turn of phrase.’

A cold hand was beginning to clutch Meryl’s stomach. There was something horribly convincing about his exasperation. She’d come all this way—

‘Are you telling me someone else wrote this in your name?’ she demanded. ‘I don’t believe it. Nobody would do such a stupid thing.’

‘Then you don’t know Ferdy,’ Jarvis Larne said bitterly. ‘There’s nothing that idiot wouldn’t get up to. I told him I wanted nothing to do with it—or with you.’

‘For a man who needs money as badly as you do, you’re very high-handed.’

‘My need for money is my business and certainly none of yours. I don’t believe a word of this nonsense. You’re a journalist, aren’t you? Well, you’ll not get a story out of me. I don’t like you. I don’t want you here, and the sooner you’re gone the better I’ll be pleased.’

‘A journalist? Me?’ He was briefly taken aback by the fierceness of her outrage, but his face remained unyielding. ‘My name,’ she said emphatically, ‘is Meryl Winters.’

‘So?’

‘My father was Craddock Winters.’

He still looked blank. ‘Of whom the world says—?’

‘He drilled a few oil wells.’

‘And that made him rich enough for his daughter to act like a headless chicken?’

‘Yes!’

‘All right, we’ll assume that I believe you. I’m not saying I do, but let’s pretend. Why find a husband this way? I’d have thought the world was full of fortune-hunters without having to advertise your desperation. And you don’t look too bad.’

Meryl stared at him, almost beyond speech. ‘Not too bad?’

‘OK, you’re passable—for a man whose taste runs to brunettes. Mine doesn’t, and even if it did you’re the last woman I’d want.’

She breathed hard. ‘I was not proposing a love match—’

‘Luckily for both of us—’

‘It’s a serious business proposition.’

Jarvis Larne snorted. ‘And I’m Santa Claus.’

‘I said business and I meant business. Nothing else would persuade me even to consider marriage to a man who has all the charm of a scrubbing brush. Unfortunately I need you almost as much as you appear to need me—’

‘I do not need you, madam!’

‘Let me finish. Under my father’s will I don’t get full control of my money until I’m twenty-seven, which is nearly three years away. Unless I marry. Then I get it on my wedding day. But until then I’m stuck.’

‘Sounds like somebody knew you pretty well,’ Jarvis Larne said grimly. ‘If you were my daughter I’d make you wait until you were fifty, and even then I doubt you’d have learned common sense.’