With All My Worldly Goods by Mary Burchell

like some dreadful dream where she could not even cry out.
    Then she heard Agatha say in a shocked voice:
    “Bruce, don’t talk like that. It’s callous and it’s wicked.”
    But Bruce laughed in that cool, hard manner of his.
    “It may be both, Agatha. But it’s also true. You don’t suppose I should be playing the great lover to Lora, do you, if she were not an heiress? You must surely know that.”
    And then Leonora managed to get away. She crept across the hall and up the stairs, feeling weak and faint. It was terrible, but near the top of the stairs she had to drag herself up by holding on to the banisters, and when she finally reached her room, she fell across her bed in a little heap.
    What had he meant? What could he have meant?
    But it was ridiculous to ask herself that, for he could have meant only one thing—exactly what he had said.
    It was not as though she had heard only one remark, which might have been misunderstood. There had been Agatha’s shocked comment, and then his own defiant insistence.
    She groaned a little and drew herself farther on to the bed, pulling the eiderdown over her, because her teeth were chattering with cold and shock.
    He was just a cheap adventurer. Just exactly what Martin had said.
    Oh, Martin! The thought of him ought to have been comfort now, but it was nothing of the sort. She ought to be realizing with relief that her eyes had been opened in time, and that it was good, dependable Martin she wanted.
    But it wasn’t Martin—it was Bruce. The Bruce she had thought she knew. Oh, not a perfect person, by any means—very imperfect, in fact—but her love in spite of all his faults.
    Only, he didn’t exist, after all. There was just this cool, hard, unloving stranger, who wanted her money and so could play-act and pretend that was she he loved.
    But it was not possible. Such acting did not exist. It could not be all pretence. Why, he had made her love him by the very force of his own suffocating passion. How could any man invent all that?
    She found that she was going round and round in circles telling herself that it was not possible, simply because she could not stand her ground and face the fact that it was so.
    “Then perhaps he loves me a little. Perhaps, at the bottom of his heart, he loves me just a very little,” she told herself feverishly. “It isn’t entirely the money. That’s important, too, of course, but he loves me too.” And then, with fierce pain and anger: “Oh God, have I no pride at all, that I can love a man who needs a bribe of seventy thousand pounds to take me!”
    That was what it came to in the end. He would have her—Oh yes, he would be very pleased to take her for his wife—if he were paid handsomely to do so.
    “No! That I cannot bear.” Leonora spoke aloud, though only in a whisper. “I must have it out with him. I must go down and speak to him. It isn’t humanly possible to go on like this.”
    But she went on lying there for a long time after that, still trying to find the courage to go down and face him.
    In the end it was almost dinner-time when she did go downstairs. And only Agatha was there.
    “Hallo, dear.” She looked surprised. “I didn’t think you had come in. I didn’t hear you.”
    “No. I went straight to my room. I felt a little tired so I’ve—been lying down on my bed,” Leonora said, surprised that she could make it all sound so ordinary. “Where is Bruce?” She could even speak of him quite casually.
    “He had to go out. A friend of his rang up—someone who is in England for only a few days. He wanted Bruce to go down there for the evening. We knew you wouldn’t mind.”
    “Of course not.” (Marry her for her money and then pretend to consult her about details.) “Where is his friend staying?” She didn’t really care, but one had to make conversation.
    “Windsor way, I believe. Bruce drove himself. He told me to tell you he wouldn’t be late.”
    “That was nice of him,” Leonora wondered