Second Best Wife Read online

  SECOND BEST WIFE by

  ISOBEL CHACE

  "I'll simply take you in her place."

  Georgina's mouth fell open. "What on earth do you mean?"

  "I mean," William replied patiently, "that you're a member of the female sex and that's all I need to come with me to the Far East as my wife."

  "You're mad!" she gasped in utter disbelief.

  But, unfortunately, William was not mad--only very determined. Rejected at the last moment by Georgina's somewhat capricious sister, he meant every single word!

  CHAPTER ONE

  Georgina had first met the redoubtable William Ayres when she was ten years old. She had disliked him on sight, mostly because at fifteen he hadn't looked like a boy at all but a fully grown man. Worse still, he had made his reputation locally as a wit at her expense and she would never, never forgive him for that, not if she lived to be a hundred and one.

  It had been at a village children's party which, as far as she was concerned, had begun badly and had got steadily worse as the afternoon had gone on, until that brief, devastating moment when William had made her the laughingstock of the whole community.

  Georgina had been told to look after her nine-year-old sister, as she always was, and had been taking the duty as seriously as she always did. This had largely consisted of defending Jennifer from the village bully, a boy named Duncan Radcliffe. She had been remarkably successful too, for her flair for organisation and her practical way of going about things in general had already been in evidence at that tender age. She had only turned her back once in two hours, but it had been enough for Duncan to pull Jennifer's skinny plaits and twist her arms, and then, of course, half a dozen adults had stood between him and the revenge Georgina would have meted out to him then and there.

  So Georgina had bided her time. She had waited for the inevitable game of Postman's Knock—a game she thought remarkably silly at the best of times — and had waited her turn to choose Duncan as her victim. She had even pretended to kiss him, but at the last moment she had drawn back her fist and had hit him, hard, on the nose. And Duncan had cried and she had been glad he had cried.

  And then it was that William, bored stiff by the doings of his juniors, had opened his mouth and drawled,

  'Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie, Kissed the boys and made them cry!'

  A roar of laughter had greeted this sally, the more so for Georgina was a solid little girl who had not yet fined down into the slim, well-made woman she was now. The nursery rhyme had followed her wherever she went. Even Jennifer had begun to shorten her name to Georgie, accompanied by a silly giggle that never failed to make the discomfited Georgina see red. One day, she had vowed to herself, one day she would teach William Ayres a lesson he would never forget and everyone would laugh at him as they had laughed at her!

  Now, thirteen years later, the instrument of his punishment had fallen into her hands and the unassuaged bitterness of years rose in her throat, blinding her to the difficulties that still lay ahead of her. It had not taken her very long to discover that William disliked her almost as much as she disliked him. She had thought it a pity that that dislike hadn't been extended to Jennifer as well, but her sister had blossomed into a frail, gentle young woman, unable to make up her mind about anything, but so sweet-natured that nobody minded her ineffectual ways. As far as boys were concerned she was a regular honeypot, which Georgina was not. Perhaps to make up for her sister's lack of character and push, Georgina had a practical streak that verged on the managing and a defensive attitude to life that made her as prickly as a hedgehog and not sweet at all.

  It had been last year that William had asked Jennifer to marry him, and Jennifer, unwilling as ever to hurt him by telling him that she wanted to marry someone quite different, had blurted out her consent and had then run to Georgina to get her out of it, just as she always had.

  Georgina's moment of triumph had been sweet. She had tasted it on her tongue and had found it good. Not normally vindictive, she had known she was going to enjoy telling him of her sister's defection. Her moment of complete, devastating revenge had come! Georgina stared at herself in the looking-glass, pulling a face at the strongly defined features that stared back at her. Where Jennifer was so fair as to be almost wholly pink and white, broken up only by the pale blue of her eyes, Georgina s hair was black, her eyes the grey-green of a stormy sea, and her face as tanned as any gypsy's — and she had known a few for, once upon a time, they had been allowed to camp quite close to the village where she had been brought up. They never came now, for the police had long ago been given orders to move them on as fast as they had arrived in the district and, as far as Georgina knew, she was the only person who missed them.

  She sighed, wishing her chin was a little less square and her mouth a little less firm, even if it did kick up at the corners when she smiled. Her father had once told her she had a passionate mouth, but he had been laughing when he had said it and she had known in her heart of hearts that he, too, secretly preferred the rosebud curves to Jennifer's lips, often left slightly open to accommodate her slightly prominent teeth and to relieve her neat but not very practical nose.

  It was no wonder that William had fallen for Jennifer, Georgina thought. There was no danger of Jennifer challenging any of the dictates he had handed out to them both during the years of their adolescence. It had always been she, Georgina, who had fallen foul of the temper which she had known from the start he possessed and which she had taken some pleasure in provoking whenever

  she could, frightened as she had been at times of the cold rage that had possessed him, swamping his normally excellent judgment, and closing his mind completely to the reasoned practicalities she had deliberately offered him, fanning the flames of their mutual dislike.

  But Jennifer had not fallen for William. Georgina had feared she would, for Jennifer liked what she called 'strong' people, but in the end she had chosen someone almost as gentle and undefined as herself, a man Georgina had despised from the first moment she had set eyes on him. Imagine her astonishment, therefore, when Jennifer had introduced him as the grown-up version of that juvenile bully, Duncan Radcliffe, of whom she had been so afraid when they had been respectively nine and ten years old.

  ‘You're Duncan Radcliffe?' Georgina had accosted him in accusing tones. ‘You can't be! Duncan was a beast!'

  Duncan had smiled sweetly back at her. ‘People ignored me,' he had explained diffidently. ‘I was always trying to — get them to listen and they never did. You always made me cry, I remember. I was scared stiff of you. Whenever I managed to say a single word to Jennifer you would come up and bash me.'

  ‘You bullied her!'

  And Jennifer had gone a delicious pink and had said, ‘Yes, but I liked it, Georgie. He never hurt me as you did. I told you so at the time, but you were too busy quarrelling with William to pay any attention to anyone else.' She had giggled suddenly. ‘Duncan and I thought it awfully clever of him to bring out that funny rhyme at that party! We laughed about it for months afterwards!'

  Months? It had been years before Georgina had heard the last of that particular nursery rhyme, years in which she had seen to it that even if nobody had forgotten it, just as she had never been able to forget the burning humiliation of that moment, they never dared to repeat it any more in her hearing. It had cost her dear, but she had come out on top in the end. Even Jennifer had received a black eye when she had repeated the offending verse in an incautious moment.

  Georgina had given them both a bewildered look. ‘But what about all the times he pulled your hair and twisted your arms?' she

  had asked Jennifer.

  They had both of them smiled at that. 'You wouldn't understand, Georgie,' they had said together. 'It only meant
that we liked each other.'

  Georgina didn't understand now, but she had understood at once when they had, both of them, shuffled their feet and looked slightly pathetic and had asked her if she would mind breaking the news to William.

  Georgina's eye had gleamed with a long-awaited triumph. 'That will be a pleasure,' she had said. And she had meant it, every word of it.

  But walking along the short distance between the Perry household and the much grander residence where William Ayres' parents lived, she began to wonder if it was really going to be the kind of revenge she would enjoy after all. She had never felt sorry for William before and it would ruin everything if she were to feel any sympathy for him now. He hadn't felt sorry for her when he had made her the butt of the whole village's somewhat simple brand of humour!

  Georgina opened the gate and walked into the pleasant garden that surrounded the rose-pink brick building that she had always thought wasted on anyone as undiscerning as William. She stood for a moment, running her eyes over its familiar features with a hunger she would have spurned had she been aware of it. The Perry house where she lived was as bleak and bald as this one was gracious and welcoming.

  'Well, if it isn't Georgie Porgie,' William's voice broke into her thoughts, making the hairs prickle on her neck with hatred for him. 'What's brought you into the lion's den?'

  'Certainly not your charm, William Ayres,' she snapped back at him. 'I was wondering how you could have lived in such surroundings all these years and yet be so uncharming.' She wanted to tell him that he was more like a scorpion than a lion, but her innate honesty of mind forbade the attack. He did look remarkably like a lion, with lion- coloured shaggy hair and eyes the colour sometimes of warm toffee and sometimes of sunburned grass.

  'What do you want?' he asked her wearily.

  It was so unusual for William to be anything but terse and faintly taunting when he spoke to her that she was thrown off balance by the dullness of his tone of voice.

  'I'd hardly have come for my own pleasure,' she retorted tartly.

  He leaned on the spade he had been wielding, looking her up and down. 'Give it a rest, Georgie. I could see from the cut of your jib the moment you opened the gate that you'd come to give me a set-down. Why don't you get it over with?'

  She narrowed her eyes, resenting the intimate way he was looking at her. He didn't see her as a desirable female, so he shouldn't look at her as if he did. 'It's too good to hurry,' she murmured, forcing a smile. 'Much too good to hurry!'

  He picked up the spade and dropped it into the ground. The metal cut through the hard ground as easily as a hot knife through butter. Unaccountably, Georgina took a step backwards, knowing that that was what he'd like to do to her and feeling suddenly unsure of herself.

  'Well?' he said.

  'It isn't really good,' she contradicted herself. She took a deep breath, averting her eyes from the mockery in his. 'Oh dear, I wish she'd told you herself now, but Jennifer would just leave you hanging on for ever —'

  To her surprise William grinned at her. 'She hasn't your gift for quick surgery,' he agreed. Then he sobered, his mouth settling into a grim line. 'Get on with it, girl! And don't look at me like that! If you think I'm going to bleed all over the garden for your delectation, you're wrong. I wouldn't give you the pleasure of sharing my wounds with you!'

  'No, of course not! You've never been vulnerable like the rest of us, have you?' Georgina returned hotly. 'You're as arrogant now as you were then! In fact, I think you're worse now, if you want to know.'

  'I don't.'

  She twisted her fingers together in an agitated movement that betrayed her inner torment. She wasn't enjoying this half as much as she had thought she would. She spent a long moment trying to find the right words to soften the blow she had waited so many years to deal him, but there was no way she could find of wrapping up the unsavoury truth that she had to deliver. Besides, it wasn't her way. She had always looked facts straight in the eye herself and she thought that William did too.

  'In ancient times the bearer of bad tidings was often killed for bringing them to the ear of the king,' she said at last.

  'Is that why you're nervous? Because you think I might murder you for enjoying sticking pins in me? Not in cold blood, my dear Georgie. Of course there's no saying what I might not do in a rage —'

  'Jennifer isn't going to marry you.'

  His face hardened. 'On your say-so?'

  Georgina opened her eyes wide. 'Why should you think that?'

  'Because you've bossed the poor girl about unmercifully ever since I've known you! It was one in the eye for you when we got engaged, wasn't it? Did you have to break it up? Couldn't you have contained your jealousy for your sister just this once?'

  Winded, Georgina stuttered a denial which withered on her lips as she read the full depth of his contempt for her in his expression.

  'She's going to marry Duncan,' she explained.

  'Oh, is she? We'll see about that!'

  Georgina recovered a little. 'You mean it's all right for you to bully her, but not for me?'

  He pulled the spade free of the earth and slammed it down again. 'Heaven give me patience, for you'd try the patience of a saint, Georgina Perry! What made you pick on Duncan of all people?'

  'I didn't!'

  But she might just as well not have spoken. 'I suppose you found out long ago that he couldn't stand up to you? he went on nastily. 'Well, I can, Georgie Porgie, and I will. I'll make you rue this day for as long as you live, if it's the last thing I do!'

  A shiver of fear ran up Georgina's spine. 'Why me?' she asked almost humbly. 'Why are you always so beastly to me? All right, I wanted to be the one to tel! you because— because I've never forgiven you for making everyone laugh at me, and this was the best opportunity I've ever had to hurt you as I was hurt then. But it wasn't anything to do with me that she preferred someone else to you! Anyone would! But you can't take it like a man, can you? Well, I don't believe your silly threats, so there!'

  'So there?' There was a trace of cold steel in his amusement. 'How are you going to stop me taking it out on you?'

  She faced up to him, swallowing down her momentary fear. 'I'll stay out of your way.'

  'Much good that'll do you!'

  'It'll be a pleasure!' she told him passionately. 'I don't like you at all—I never have!'

  'Because I called your bluff when you made that poor little rabbit of a boy cry? Little girls should be taught early in life to keep their fists to themselves.'

  'That was Duncan,' she retorted. 'Duncan Radcliffe. He's the man Jennifer is going to marry instead of you! He was a horrid boy, always pulling Jennie's hair and pinching her.' Her brow wrinkled as she remembered her earlier bewilderment. 'Only Jennie doesn't remember that now.'

  'Probably because it never happened outside your imagination. It was most likely the excuse you invented in case anyone asked you why you'd punched the poor little devil. Usually you didn't bother with any excuse. You even took me on once, my girl, and you narrowly missed a good thrashing as a result. If I'd given it to you then, you might not stand in such need of one now!'

  She was offended. 'Oh, I hate you!' she declared. 'You don't know anything about me at all, but you've always pretended you do, and it was never anything to my credit. Jennifer could do no wrong, but I could do no right, could I? Well, for what it's worth, you can do no right as far as I'm concerned either!'

  'Pity.'

  'And what does that mean?'

  He brushed the mud off his fingers, ignoring her. She had a good view of his face in profile and she wondered, briefly, how she would have felt about him if she hadn't learned to hate him so many years before. He had a lot going for him in the way of looks. It was a good, strong face that turned slowly towards her and the eyes that met hers were well-shaped even if they were as cold as a winter's day.

  'I'll tell you after I've seen Jennifer and heard her side of this affair. But I warn you, Georgina, if I find you're the c
ause of things having gone wrong between us, you'll pay for it. If you've messed

  things up for me, I'll have you instead!'

  Her mouth fell open. 'What on earth do you mean by that?'

  'I mean,' he said with such restraint that she found herself believing every word of it, 'that you may not be my ideal woman, but you belong to the female sex, more or less, and that's all that's necessary for you to take Jennifer's place and come with me to Sri Lanka. I don't intend to go alone and you, my dear, will hate every moment of it, and that's good enough for me!'

  'You're mad!' she gasped.

  'If I am, it's because you've driven me round the bend,' he responded with a grunt. 'You've nobody to blame but yourself!'

  'If you think—'

  He put a hand on her shoulder, his fingers biting into her flesh. 'I don't think, I know. Come along, Georgina, we're going to have a talk with that sister of yours — both of us!' 'She's with Duncan,' Georgina protested. 'Can't you see, William, she was afraid to tell you herself? I wish she had! I thought I'd enjoy hurting you — '

  'It won't be me who receives the lasting hurt!'

  'No, but why hurt me? Why did you have to make them all laugh at me at that party? People went on about it years later, still quoting that stupid rhyme at me. It was so unfair!'

  'Life is unfair. Besides, you deserved it and you know you did. A tomboy is one thing, but a termagant is another.'

  'I never hit you!'

  'Not for lack of trying.' He glanced down meaningly at her clenched fists. 'Are you going to try it now?'

  Georgina forgot that discretion is the better part of valour. Her temper flared and she took careful aim, judging her distance nicely. She made exactly the right allowance for him to dodge her blow and caught him fair and square in the eye. At the moment of contact her anger seeped away and she withdrew the guilty fist to cover her mouth, her eyes wide with contrition.

  'You dared me to!' she defended herself.

  'I can't say I thought you'd do it all the same,' he muttered. He put a hand up to his eye and swore briefly. Georgina was horrified to see