The Bridegroom's Bargain. Sylvia Andrew

stay here—if I do, I’ll only say even more than I should…’

      Lexi’s eyes were huge pools of darkness. ‘I’m sorry you’re so angry,’ she said, ‘but I didn’t want Richard’s pity. He’d have done better to save it for my father. You don’t understand.’

      ‘No, and I don’t suppose I ever will. Why this should happen to Richard of all people… How could you? How could you, Lexi?’ She stared at the girl in the bed for a moment, then shook her head and said, ‘It’s no use. Murdie will have to sit with you. I can’t.’

      She went out and the door shut behind her. Lexi closed her eyes. She was trembling again. The feelings of panic and loss, which had plagued her ever since her world had turned upside down, returned in full force. Why had Richard asked her to marry him? At the time she had thought that he loved her as deeply as she had loved him….

      She remembered the occasion with painful clarity. How foolish she had been! When Richard had come into the library at Rawdon, she was standing at the desk where she had found her father the day before, slumped over his papers. The papers still lay there in an untidy heap. She had been making an effort to gather them together, to put them into some sort of order, but tears had made her progress slow…

      ‘My poor girl! You shouldn’t be here alone.’

      At the sound of Richard’s voice Lexi turned to him blindly, and he took her into his arms, holding her close, her head pressed against his chest. She felt safe, as if she had reached some kind of refuge. In the confusion and distress of the day before she had been aware of Richard’s presence, taking charge, issuing orders. He had made sure she was being looked after, but there had been no opportunity for them to talk.

      He held her now, giving her time to recover a little, then led her to the fire. ‘You’re cold. When did you last have anything to eat?’

      ‘I don’t know. Does it matter?’

      ‘Of course it matters! Let me send for something.’

      Richard waited till she had eaten a little of the food he ordered and drunk some wine. ‘Isn’t that better?’ he said. She nodded and he smiled, the special smile he seemed to keep for her alone, warm and affectionate. It worked its usual magic, and for a moment she forgot her heartache in its glow. He took her hands in his and held them in his own, gently warming them.

      ‘What were you doing when I came in?’ he asked after a moment.

      ‘I was…I was trying to sort out some of Papa’s papers.’

      ‘That was foolish,’ he said. ‘They would be better dealt with by your father’s lawyers. I’ll put them in some sort of order for you, and then you can leave everything to them. You need to rest.’

      ‘I can’t!’ she said. ‘If I don’t do something with them, Mark will think he has to. He was here this morning when I came in. I don’t blame him—he is the next in line, after all. But he is still a comparative stranger. And those papers were the last things…the last things Papa was reading when he…he died. I want to be the one to deal with them.’

      ‘Would you let me do it for you?’

      She stared at him. ‘I would,’ she said slowly. ‘You were as close to Papa as anyone. But you’ve already done so much. And I have no real claim on you or your time. How could we explain it to Mark?’

      ‘Easily,’ he said, his grey eyes serious. ‘Because you’re wrong, Alexandra. You have every claim on my time and on everything else of mine.’

      She looked at him, wide-eyed, uncertain of his meaning.

      He went on, ‘I always wanted to marry you—your father knew that. And now I want us to marry as soon as it can be arranged. Will you? And will you trust me?’

      Lexi did not hesitate. A flood of joy drowned her heartache and she threw herself into his arms again. ‘Richard! Oh, Richard! Of course I will! You know I will! I’ll marry you as soon as you like. But won’t we have to wait? The neighbours will be shocked… Papa’s death…’

      ‘They’ll get over it. Your father would have wanted you to be safe. If things had been different, you would have been my wife long ago—we both know that. And now you need someone to look after you, to keep you happy and secure. We could marry in a few weeks, if you agreed. The wedding would be a quiet one, of course. Do you mind that?’

      ‘Mind? Oh, no!’

      ‘Then say you agree. I swear you won’t regret it.’

      ‘Regret it? How could I possibly regret being married to you, Richard? I’ve wanted it all my life, I think!’

      And after he had gone, taking the papers with him, she had been so happy even in the midst of all her grief. Richard had at last asked her to marry him. He loved her as she loved him…

      Now, just a few weeks later, Lexi groaned and hid her face in the bedclothes. How foolish of her to have been so gullible! Of course Richard hadn’t loved her in the way she had loved him! He might have married her out of pity as his aunt thought, or perhaps it had been out of guilt, a last flicker of conscience. But one thing was quite certain. He couldn’t possibly have loved her.

      She was surprised by the sharp pang this thought gave her—the final traces of illusion gone. How curious that it should hurt so much, after all the other things that had happened.

      She turned restlessly in the bed. What did it matter what Richard had felt? She was living in a nightmare, married to a stranger. The Richard she had known and loved no longer existed…

      It was too much. She closed her eyes again and escaped from the unbearable present into the past, a world where she had known the old Richard, the one who had meant so much to her.

      Richard Deverell had been Johnny Rawdon’s friend before Alexandra was born, and, though they were very different in character—Johnny so extrovert and Richard always so quiet—they had remained friends ever since. Lexi’s earliest memories were of golden days of sunshine as she watched the two boys catching tadpoles or fishing in the lake at Rawdon, and her own cries of, ‘Wait for me! Wait for me!’ She fell into streams and out of trees, sank up to her knees in mud, and tripped over rocks, but she never complained except when they tried to go off on their own.

      Over the years they got used to her copper head popping up wherever they went, and gradually took it on themselves to protect her from the worst of the tumbles and scrapes. In return she gave them her unstinted loyalty and devotion. The three children had been practically inseparable whenever they were free from tutors and governesses. They rode together, climbed trees together, fought and laughed together, spending long days out by the lake, or in the woods round Rawdon.

      Everything had been so simple in their childhood. It had seemed to her then that this idyllic existence would last forever. But it couldn’t, of course. Things were changing all the time, and the greatest change came after Richard and Johnny had spent the Season of 1810 in London. When they came back to Somerset that summer they were dashing young blades, with no time for their old pursuits or Johnny’s unsophisticated little sister. The six years’ difference in age between them had become a chasm not to be bridged by persuasion, or tantrums, or anything else. Lexi was forced to watch from a distance as Richard and her brother flirted with the young ladies of the neighbourhood, took them riding or on the river, escorted them to the many picnics and dances arranged by their hopeful mamas. For a short time Lexi, bereft and isolated, thought her world had come to an end.

      But, after a while, she started to derive a certain amount of malicious amusement from watching the efforts made by the young ladies to capture the two most eligible young men in the county. They met with little success. Johnny laughed and teased, and treated no one seriously. And though Richard was courteous to all, though he danced with one, appeared to be amused by another, listened attentively to a third, he remained throughout his cool, level-headed self, singling no one out for any particular attention. But strangely, as Lexi watched, her own perception of her childhood companion slowly