A Marriage of Convenience by Tim Jeal Page B

diagnose his disease and prescribe the cure.’
    ‘Which is?’ asked Theresa, her face completely composed but her eyes glinting.
    ‘Marriage, madam.’
    ‘I’m sorry?’
    ‘Marriage is the cure. Why do you live as his wife in fact, and yet refuse him the honourable satisfaction of making you that in law?’
    Theresa lowered her eyes.
    ‘The life of an actress makes me unfit for that honour.’
    ‘You mock me, Miss Simmonds.’
    ‘On the contrary; rank is not an illusion but a cruel hard fact.’
    Knowing very well that she was being insincere, Clinton had no idea how to make her honest without abandoning the restraints imposed upon him by being Mr Higgs.
    ‘Should an artificial social distinction,’ he asked, ‘part two people in other ways ideally suited?’
    Theresa bowed her head.
    ‘Mr Danvers is no ordinary broker. He is a nobleman’s son. His brother is a viscount.’
    ‘Actresses have married dukes.’
    ‘I cannot marry into his family, Mr Higgs.’ She clasped her hands as though violently agitated. ‘His brother would prevent it.’
    ‘His brother?’ echoed Clinton, bemused but also suspicious. Yet when he looked directly into her eyes, Theresa gazed back at him without the least trace of mockery; in fact tears were beginning to brim over.
    ‘If you knew a fraction of the things I know about that man, you wouldn’t doubt me.’
    ‘Tell me some,’ he sighed, wondering where his mistake had been.
    ‘He once bit an actress’s leg; he likes chasing young children.’ She rose and leant against the wall for a moment before coming close to Clinton; her manner was conspiratorial. ‘I hardly know how to say this, Mr Higgs.’ She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘He’s about to contract a scandalous marriage to a woman old enough to be his grandmother.’ She looked into Clinton’s eyes, her own opened wide with horror. Clinton fought to stop himself smiling, but in the end could not help himself. She shrugged her shoulders and turned away. ‘You’re a poor actor, Lord Ardmore,’ she said quietly.
    ‘You knew all along?’ he asked, annoyed to have done so badly, but amused too by the absurdity of his situation.
    ‘From the moment you walked in. My poor daughter described you down to that little scar over your eye.’
    Clinton did his best to laugh.
    ‘What can I say?’
    ‘What about what you intended to?’
    ‘That’s no longer possible. I’m afraid my brother might find it in rather doubtful taste.’
    ‘And how would you describe what you have done?’
    ‘Provided an intelligent woman with an excellent opportunity for making a fool of me.’ Her regal scorn was so superbly convincing that he laughed out loud. ‘You really should try that expression on the stage; poor old Sir Charles would take to his heels before his exit. How can I help what Esmond’s told you about me? That old story about biting an actress. The lady in question asked me to bring her a necklace in my mouth on my hands and knees.’
    ‘So you bit her like a dog. How witty, my lord.’
    ‘I thought so at the time.’
    Clinton got up. Her disdain no longer seemed so funny. He said mildly:
    ‘Aristocratic villains are more common in plays than in life.’
    ‘How fortunate,’ she murmured, removing the carmine from her lips.
    ‘One day someone will write a melodrama with a bestial heroine and a virtous aristocrat instead of the other way round.’
    ‘As a burlesque it might be successful.’
    Her ability to deal out sarcasm in a quiet almost gentle voice left him speechless. Looking at her silky hair and her milk white skin, lightly etched with the first faint traces of age at the corners of her eyes, he was filled with admiration for this woman, so unlike the pampered daughters of luxury. A widow of thirty-two or three could not be ruined by slander like a girl hoping for marriage; more experienced and therefore less prone to the emotional upheavals of younger women, she could afford to be herself serenely.