Free Mine for a Day by Mary Burchell Page A

me—how did your employer take all this?”
    “Mr. Brogner? Oh, he—thinks I have shown a lack of discretion, to put it mildly. He didn’t exactly approve,” she admitted.
    “I hope you told him that I badgered you into doing it.”
    “But you didn’t, you know.” She looked amused. “The idea was mine.”
    He looked astonished.
    “That’s just Frances’s nonsense—”
    “Oh, no. Though I agree that she embroidered the actual fact with some nonsense,” Leila said steadily. “But the original idea was mine. I made the suggestion when—when we were together in the garden, yesterday morning.”
    “Yesterday morning,” he repeated incredulously. “Great heavens! Is it less than forty-eight hours since”—there was a long pause, then he completed the sentence rather bleakly—“since I learned about Rosemary?”
    Leila felt her mouth go dry. In the press of later events, and particularly in the strange, half-sweet pleasure of sharing a tense emotional situation with Simon, she had almost forgotten the tragedy which had precipitated this situation. For him, the overwhelming, shattering event was Rosemary’s desertion.
    He stood there for a moment, his hands thrust into his pockets, his frown of sombre concentration showing how far away his thoughts were.
    Then he seemed to make an effort, for he raised his head suddenly and said:
    “But—about Mr. Brogner. What did he decide?”
    “Decide?” She had not expected to be switched back on to the subject of Mr. Brogner quite so abruptly.
    “Yes. He didn’t do the heavy employer, and threaten you with dismissal, or anything like that, did he? Because, naturally, I feel responsible for you, Leila. Even if, as you maintain, the idea was originally yours, I was the one who insisted on having it put into practice. And entirely for my own—or, rather, my family’s—advantage. In a way, one might say we are nothing to you. I couldn’t possibly have you—lose your job, or anything like that, just because you happened to be Rosemary’s cousin an d , being on the spot, were dragged into our affairs.”
    “It’s very kind of you to bother.” She heard her own, voice, cold and remote, just as his had grown impersonal and faintly abstracted. She was no longer his valued ally—a person in her own right. That one reference to Rosemary had put everything into focus for him once more.
    “My dear girl, it isn’t a question of bothering, and kindness doesn’t enter into it. It’s a plain case of fulfilling one’s obligations decently.”
    She knew he was probably trying to reassure her about any claim she might have on him. But his wording hurt more than she could have believed possible. Pain and resentment chilled her voice to the tone of a stranger.
    “You haven’t any obligations towards me, where Mr. Brogner is concerned,” she assured him categorically, for she felt in that moment that she would beg in the street rather than accept—much less invite—help from Simon. “He may fuss and criticize and even disapprove, but he wouldn’t dream of dismissing me for something I did outside the office.”
    “That’s all right, then. And if you have any trouble with him—in the way of unjust criticism, I mean—you must let me know.”
    “Don’t even think about it,” Leila said, in her new-found, chilly self-confidence. “I can manage Mr. Brogner.”
    Which was a lie, of course. And moreover a lie which would have annoyed Mr. Brogner greatly.
    By the time she retired to her bedroom that night—a bedroom from which Frances had ostentatiously removed all sign of Simon’s existence—she already felt like counting the hours until her release.
    Dinner had been a trying affair, with Frances studiedly ignoring her, and Simon—after an initial attempt to put things on a sociable basis—refusing to woo Frances into a better mood. And, because the whole atmosphere was so artificial and embarrassing, she had felt the gap between herself and Simon widening