Bachelor's Wife Read Online Free PDF Page A

and be happy as they were, otherwise she was dreadfully afraid I would drive myself into an early grave.'
    'So your father, believing her, changed his will?' It sounded incredible, but then, thank goodness, she hadn't ever met anyone like the woman Nash was describing;
    'I knew he intended to so Lydia should inherit the house. He altered it—and how!— -a few weeks before he died,' Nash said, his eyes flint-hard. 'He couldn't know I'd told his dear wife the night she'd been angling for me to propose, that not only did I not want to marry her, but that there wasn't a woman breathing I'd sacrifice my freedom for—I left her in no doubt that I meant it.'
    'Oh!' The exclamation left Perry at the bitterness in him. 'But—but that's what you'll have to do if you want to claim your inheritance, isn't it? Within the next month too.'.
    She wished he would smile, just once. She thought he might look rather pleasant if he allowed those wonderful teeth she had glimpsed when he spoke to have an airing. But no, his face was a cold mask as he answered:
    'It's what I intend to do. I left my lawyers only a short while ago—the will is watertight. You and I will marry on Friday.'
    Perry had been late getting back to work, but for once that hardly bothered her. Her head was teeming with everything that had happened, been said, her impressions many and varied, but only one clear fact loomed large. On Friday, three days from now, she was to present herself at the register office where once Nash had the means to prove he was married he would hand over the five thousand pounds.
    It hadn't taken long for him to jot down her full name and all the details he thought he would need. He had asked for her phone number too just in case a need arose for him to contact her before Friday. It was then she had to confess she had a stepfather, having to ask him not to let slip any of what she was. doing should Ralph answer the phone.
    'Don't you get on with your step-relative either?' Nash had asked. But she had kept quiet. To say Ralph was a love-—when he wasn't gambling—might have Nash wondering why she had been looking for a marriage partner at all if her home life was so happy.
    Many times before Friday came Perry was to wonder if she was as crazy as she had at first thought him to be. But as she looked at Ralph as he sat stumped over the fire on Thursday evening, misery, dejection personified, her heart went out to the man who had so loved her mother he had gone utterly to pieces when she had died twelve months ago. She knew then that if Nash had been serious, and only now was she beginning to doubt it, then if that was the only way to get the five thousand she was going to go through with it.
    Though longing as she was to see a return of the laughing, leg pulling Ralph, that small percentage of doubt that Nash might not be at the register office tomorrow, no
    five thousand pounds forthcoming, kept her from telling Ralph that soon his worries would be over. As it was she was racking her brains to think up some good explanation of where she had got the money from. As unhappy as Ralph undoubtedly was, worried out of his mind, he would have a fit for certain if he had the smallest inclination of what she was contemplating on his behalf.
    On Friday, solely to keep Ralph from suspecting that this Friday was different from any other Friday, she dressed exactly as she would if she intended going to work. Since she was still a junior in her job, seeming to spend half her time on the floor picking up pins, trousers were the most practical apparel.
    'I'll try and get home early tonight,' she promised when Ralph glanced up as she went into the kitchen, the deeply etched grooves under his eyes telling her he had slept not a wink. Impulsively she went and put her arms around his bent shoulders, giving him a tight squeeze and having to hold hard on the urge to tell him everything would be all right. 'Try not to worry, love,' she said instead, which was no comfort