Read Online Dorothy Eden by Sinister Weddings - Free Book Online Page B

married. There’s a little church overlooking the lake, you stand at the altar and think you’re on the lakeside.”
    “But, Paul!” Something still nagged at her. “If I hadn’t liked it here, weren’t you going to stay either?”
    “Naturally not. Stupid! Do you think you’ll like standing at the altar on the edge of a lake?”
    Julia nodded happily, thinking that at last everything fell into place. Until now she had not been able to imagine herself really wearing the snowy dress and laving her hand trustingly in Paul’s. But now it was going to be true.
    “Oh, darling!” she said breathlessly, and at the same moment the doorbell rang with a rusty clangour.
    Paul started up impatiently.
    “Bother! Who’s this?”
    “I’ll go,” said Julia. “You rest that foot, or you won’t be able to go and buy Davey’s sheep.”
    “Why Davey’s sheep, I’d like to know?”
    She turned at the door, laughing. “Poor Davey wants them. How can he be a successful shepherd without them?”
    “Then tell him to complain to me!” Paul’s voice followed her.
    But she laughed again, confidently, thinking it would be fun to tell Davey that it was true, the neglected state of Heriot Hills was going to be remedied very quickly, as she had said it would be.
    She pulled open the heavy creaking hall door, and in the gloom on the verandah stood the thin dark-haired girl with the baby in her arms.
    Julia drew back a step. The stranger was the first to speak.
    “This is Heriot Hills, isn’t it? The bus driver told me to come up this road.”
    “Yes, this is Heriot Hills.” (The brunette, Julia was thinking wildly. She had thought about a brunette, and here she stood! It was a dream.)
    “Oh, that’s all right, then. Lord, it was a hump up that road with my bag and a baby, too. Is”—she hesitated the slightest fraction—“Paul in?”
    Julia said uncertainly, “Yes, indeed. Come in. Paul has a bad ankle. I’ll call him. But I don’t know who you—”
    Her sentence was finished by Paul’s low exclamation at the end of the hall. “Nita!”
    The girl laughed, a slow, amused and yet excited laugh. As she came into the lamplit hall (Kate had discovered an oil lamp and hung it that day) Julia saw that she was good-looking in a thin tense way. She was also well dressed. She must have had quite a time walking up the rough road in those delicate shoes.
    “Hullo, Paul,” she said. “You see, I came after all. I brought Timmy, too.”
    Paul limped forward. Whatever he had felt at the evidently unexpected appearance of this girl he played the part of a surprised and genial host very well.
    “Why on earth didn’t you send a telegram? Davey would at least have met the bus. Walking up that road with a heavy baby! Put him down and come and meet Julia. Julia, this is Nita. Harry’s wife.”

7
    T HAT NIGHT, AFTER JULIA had gone to bed and put out the light, Paul came into the room and lay on the bed beside her. She could feel the hard ridge on his body through the blankets.
    “Paul!” she whispered.
    “Be quiet!” he said. He took her in his arms and kissed her until her mouth hurt. She tried to draw away, but the hardness of his grip increased.
    “We’ll be married quickly,” he said.
    “But, darling—”
    “Now I have my way,” he said definitely.
    Julia reached out her arm to grope for matches.
    “What do you want?”
    “I want to light the candle. I want to see you.”
    “Why?”
    “Because you don’t sound like yourself. Something has happened. You talk as though if I don’t marry you soon you’re afraid I never will.”
    All he answered was, “Nothing’s happened. Except Nita coming, of course.”
    That was it, Julia thought. Nita coming unexpectedly like that with the baby. Paul may have disguised his feelings behind his pleasant affability, but Kate had been unable to hide her agitation. She had put it down to the difficulty of preparing another bedroom in the ramshackle old house and how they were