A Marriage of Convenience by Tim Jeal Read Free Book Online Page A

most men would have had too much pride to go on?’ Although he said this lightly, Theresa knew that he was curious what answer she might give. She looked at him intently.
    ‘What do you think, Esmond?’
    ‘A man’s never the best judge of male conduct.’
    She sipped her wine and watched for the tell-tale brackets of irony at the corners of his mouth.
    ‘Is that modesty or evasion?’ she asked quietly.
    ‘Just the truth,’ he returned without any trace of amusement. As usual he had effortlessly sidestepped what might have been a revealing conversation. After a long silence, during which he began calmly to peel a pear, Theresa said: ‘I wonder who the really confident man is—the one who sees a woman he wants, and snatches …’ She plucked a rose from the vase on the table, crushing the flower and closing her fingers on the thorny stem, ‘… or the man who patiently waits his moment and very slowly reaches out ..?’
    Esmond had lowered his eyes for a moment; looking up again, he saw an undamaged flower in the palm of her hand.
    ‘A good scene for a play,’ he murmured.
    Theresa dabbed her fingers on her napkin, leaving a few small spots of blood.
    ‘If the heroine didn’t mind making herself a pincushion.’ She placed the two flowers beside each other on her plate. ‘Aren’t you going to answer?’
    ‘If I’ve got the question straight. Which shows greater confidence in courtship—sudden action or a waiting game?’ Theresa nodded. ‘I’d say the first, wouldn’t you?’
    ‘No, I wouldn’t.’
    Esmond raised his hands.
    ‘Of course the circumstances …’
    ‘Our circumstances?’
    ‘In that case,’ he laughed, ‘definitely the first.’
    Theresa’s green eyes narrowed a little.
    ‘Didn’t it take a little confidence to see me again and again, to devote hour after hour to what looked hopeless? I don’t believe it ever occurred to you that you might fail.’
    ‘I might have done if I’d tried to force the pace. Too much of a risk.’
    ‘And there wasn’t a risk in waiting your moment?’ she cried. ‘Lots of people used to say I was impetuous and brave because I didn’t do much looking before I leapt. They were quite wrong. I couldn’t bear the uncertainty of not leaping … I was too scared to wait. The right moment might never come. I might get bored with him, or he could change his mind about me …’ She paused and said almost imploringly: ‘You do see that, don’t you?’
    ‘Do you want me to say that I only pretended to be vulnerable before you came here, that I never had any doubts?’ For the first time he sounded both pained and angry. ‘If I accept your argument, how should I understand what you’re doing now? Aren’t you waiting? Making me wait? Taking the risks you couldn’t bear?’ He pushed back his chair and smiled to himself. ‘I’m afraid my dear, in matters of confidence you’ve always had the advantage.’ The clock on the mantelpiece struck the quarter. ‘Perhaps you ought to go?’
    Theresa nodded dumbly. This was not the first time an attempt to ease her conscience had left her feeling worse than before. Nor could she in any way blame him for what she had brought upon herself.
    *
    When Esmond was at work in the city and Louise doing her lessons with her governess, Theresa often felt bored and listless in the museum-like tranquility of her lover’s Italianate mansion. Idleness gave her time to read and think, and yet she often wished she was not left so much alone in the day. But, ostracised by Esmond’s city friends, and knowing he would dislike it if she were to invite theatre people to the house, there seemed no help for it. She might have minded less, if she had been expected to do more for herself. But with everything she could possibly need already in the house, and a dozen servants in readiness to bring whatever she might require, there was scarcely any reason for her to go out. Apart from occasional excursions in Esmond’s landau, her