Wife Without Kisses by Violet Winspear

Author:Violet Winspear [Author, Unknown]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-02-06T18:41:40+00:00

“Ah, so I did, so I did. All the same, little girl, it’s true about the cow. Her name is Julie and she’s sweet and gentle as a May morning. I like sweet, gentle things, surprisingly enough, but they’re so hard to find. When one does find them, they always seem to belong to other people. Sad, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” Rea scuffed the ground with the toe of her shoe, not fully understanding him.

“It’s terrible. Of course, one could always reach out and grab what one wants, regardless of the owner. Shall I do that, Rea?”

She was so startled that he knew her name that the full implication of his question passed her by. “How do you know my name?” she demanded.

“Why, I know your maid,” he drawled. “Little Betty. Hasn’t she ever mentioned me? She often mentions you. She tells me the most interesting things about you.” “Betty?” Rea gazed up at him with big, startled eyes. “W-what does she tell you?”

“Oh,” he considered, chipping at the lichen on the yew with the nail of his right forefinger, “various amazing things. Servants are inquisitive creatures, Rea; their sharp eyes don’t miss a thing.”

“What should Betty miss?” Rea faced him in a sudden flash of anger. “You’ve no right to question her about me! What has she been saying to you?”

“She’s been saying that your husband is a most unusual man.”

“Unusual—Burke?” Rea was watching Jack Larchmont in a rather frightened fashion now. Servants, as he said, were inquisitive creatures, and Betty, with her cowlike eyes under her low-worn cap, was inclined to snoop. Until the advent of Rea’s new clothes from London, Rea had often caught her examining the meagre contents of her wardrobe and her chest-of- drawers, as though it puzzled her that the wife of a rich man like Burke Ryeland should be so lacking in fine dresses and expensive underwear.

“Yes, unusual,” Jack Larchmont reiterated. “I call it unusual for a man not to share his wife’s bed.”

The words hung between them in the ensuing silence, blatant and unlovely. Rea blushed hotly, and then went very white. “How dare you say that!” she gasped. “How dare you discuss my husband with a—a servant!”

Jack Larchmont greeted this with a mocking smile. “Why? Is he some sort of a divinity? Mustn’t his name be used on the coarse lips of the hoi-polloi?”

“You’re horrible!” Rea gasped. “Listening to Betty’s low gossip—encouraging it! Putting your own vile interpretation upon things she’s told you—things she can’t possibly know anything about!” Rea’s hazel eyes flashed as they met the dark mockery of his eyes. “I have a son, remember? Does the inquisitive Betty suggest that I found my Peter under a—a gooseberry bush?”

“He’s neither your Peter—nor the gallant Burke’s!” Jack drawled. Then, like the tongue of a snake striking, his hand swooped upon Rea’s wrist. He held her a prisoner as he stepped close to her. “I heard what my father said to you that day you came to our farmhouse, but I knew

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