Free With All My Worldly Goods by Mary Burchell

come out to lunch or tea with me. There is so much that can be said instead of written and, as an old friend (for I am that) I feel I want to hear from you yourself that you are happy—and I want to see how you look as you tell me about it all.”
    It was a natural enough request, and Leonora was almost glad of it. She felt that, in the peculiar circumstances, Martin was bound to feel misgiving as well as disappointment, and probably a quiet talk together would be much the best way of dispelling it. In any case, she felt she owed at least that to him.
    For the rest, that week was strange and unreal—shot with brilliant moments of rapture when Bruce made love to her, and faintly shadowed by some queer, disturbing occasions when he seemed oddly indifferent.
    Not that Lenora expected to live on the heights all the time, but, very occasionally, it would seem to her that Bruce looked at her almost as though he were unaware of her presence, and if she spoke to him then he replied in that curt, hard way she had learned to know so well in the early days of his guardianship.
    “It’s just that he’s moody,” Leonora thought. Besides, she was marrying a difficult man. It would be idle for her to pretend anything else. And in that case she must not try to analyze and explain every action and impulse. The really important thing was that, strange and difficult though he could be, he was infinitely dear as well—and he needed her.
    Sometimes Leonora thought that was the most precious part of it all. It did more than anything else to soothe the terrible bruise left by her father’s death. For, just as she had thought of her father as someone on whom she might lavish all her love and tenderness, so it seemed to her now that Bruce was even more in need of it.
    To Lenora it was a very beautiful thing that she should be loved, but it was an actual necessity of existence to her that she should have someone whom she could love. And Bruce—lovable yet obstinate, difficult yet passionately demanding her affection and understanding—seemed able to put his very hand round her heart and hold it in a grip that was happiness and pain in one.
    It was evidently no part of his idea that they should waste time on a long engagement. Having swept her off her feet with the breathless haste of his proposal, he seemed determined to marry her almost before she could recover her sense of balance or proportion once more.
    “Why should we wait?” he demanded rather than pleaded. “We have no one to consult but ourselves.” And, to be sure, there was a good deal of reason in that.
    “Well, what about a place to live and all that sort of thing?” Leonora asked, half touched and half amused by his boyishly arrogant desire to rush things.
    “We can look for that at our leisure afterwards,” he said quickly. “For a little while after our honeymoon we can live here, but I don’t want to settle in London. I want a place in the country.”
    “Bruce,” Leonora said gently, “do you never consider any wishes but your own?”
    He was standing by the window when she spoke, his back to her, but at that he turned sharply. Then he crossed the room in quick strides and flung himself on his knees beside her chair, his arms round her, suffocatingly tight.
    “But you do want that, too, don’t you? he exclaimed urgently and there was something almost violent in the pleading expression of his eyes. “I can’t bear it if you won’t come and live in the country with me. Somewhere where it’s green and cool. You can’t imagine—I’ve thought of it for years, sweating away body and soul in Mexico—”
    He stopped suddenly and buried his head against her.
    “Bruce darling—don’t.” She put her arms around him, quickly and comfortingly, unspeakably dismayed to find that he was trembling. “Hush. Of course I’ll come and live with you wherever you want.” She pressed his dark head against her. “Is that all right now—if I promise we shall live where