After that she hadn’t cared very much what happened. But a few days later she had been able to accept that, her pride feeling more bruised than her heart, that she had been more fond of Lee than in love with him. And that in fact what lay at the base of her wanting to marry him was more an urgent desire for change of some sort. More a need for some kind of escape from this—nothingness. For the chance to leave home, the chance to get away from her intimidating father.
And, since it was for sure Lee had not been in love with her either, she’d realised that any marriage they’d made would probably not have lasted. Not that she had seen her father’s actions as doing her a favour. She had not. She’d still wanted to get away. But she supposed then that she must have been living in some kind of rose-tinted never-land, because when she’d got down to thinking about leaving and striking out on her own, she had known that she just could not afford to leave. She could not afford to live in even the cheapest hostel. And as Lee had more or less stated—who would employ her?
Another week went by, but just when she had started to feel even more depressed, her father summoned her to his study. ‘Take a seat,’ he invited, his tone a shade warmer than she was used to. Obediently, she obliged. ‘I’ve just been advised of the contents of your grandfather’s will,’ he went on.
‘Oh, yes,’ she murmured politely, wondering why he was bothering to tell her. Grandfather Bradbury had been as miserly as his son, so probably had a lot to leave—but not to her. In any event, she was sure that anything he left was bound to have some ghastly condition attached to it.
‘Your grandfather has been very generous to you,’ her father went on.
‘Really?’ she exclaimed, surprised, Grandfather Bradbury had never shown any sign that he knew she existed when he had been alive.
‘But I’m afraid you are unable to claim your quite considerable inheritance until you are twenty-five,’ he enlightened her. The hope that had suddenly sprung up in her, died an instant death. Bang went her sudden joy at the thought that she could leave home and perhaps buy a place of her own. ‘That is, unless…’ her father murmured thoughtfully.
‘Unless?’ she took up eagerly.
‘Well, you know he had a thing about the sanctity of marriage?’
To her mind he’d had more of a thing about the iniquities of divorce. He’d had a fixation about it ever since his own wife had walked out on him and, despite all his best efforts, had ultimately divorced him. He had passed his loathing of women breaking their wedding vows down to his son. Phelix’s mother had confided in her one time when Edward Bradbury had been particularly foul to her how she had wanted to divorce him years ago. He had gone apoplectic when she’d had the nerve to tell him—delighting in telling her that if she left him she could not take their daughter with her. ‘When you’re eighteen,’ she had promised, ‘we’ll both go.’ And, until that last desperate bid when Phelix had been seventeen, she had stayed.
‘Er—yes.’ Phelix came out of her reverie to see her father drumming his fingers on his desk as he waited for her to agree that his father had had a thing about the sanctity of marriage.
‘So—he obviously wanted you to be happy.’ Her father almost smiled.
‘Ye-es,’ she agreed, knowing no such thing.
‘Which is why a clause was inserted in his will…’ Naturally there was a clause—possibly some snag to prevent her claiming her inheritance even when she was twenty-five, ‘…to the effect that if you marry before you are twenty-five you will be eligible to receive ten percent of the considerable sum he has left you.’
‘Honestly?’ she gasped, her spirits going from low to high, then back down to positive zero. Oh, if only this had happened a couple of weeks ago. She could have married Lee and claimed that ten percent and have been free! Well, not entirely free. Only now did she fully accept that she was glad her romance with Lee had gone no further. Marriage to him would have been a big mistake.
‘Your grandfather plainly did not want you to suffer financial hardship in any early marriage you made.’
‘I—see,’ she answered quietly.
‘And how do you feel about that?’
Her father was actually inviting her opinion about something? That was a first. ‘Well, I wouldn’t have minded having a little money of my own,’ she dared. With her father forbidding her to take any lowly job which would shame him, he made her a tiny allowance that, at best, was parsimonious.
‘We’ll have to see if we can’t find you a suitable husband,’ he, having paid off her one chance of marriage, had the nerve to state.
It was the end of that particular discussion, but less than forty-eight hours later he had again called her into his study and invited her to take a seat.
‘That little problem,’ he began.
‘Problem?’
He gave her an impatient look that she hadn’t caught on to what he was talking about. ‘The husband I said I’d find for you.’
‘I don’t want a husband!’ she’d exclaimed, appalled.
‘Of course you do.’ He overrode her initial protest. ‘You want your inheritance, don’t you?’ he demanded. ‘Ten percent of it represents a considerable amount of money.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘It goes without saying that the marriage will be annulled before the ink is dry on your marriage certificate,’ he had bulldozered on. ‘But that certificate is all I need to take to your grandfather’s solicitors and—’
‘Just a minute,’ she dared to cut in, ‘are you saying that you’ve found a man for me to marry so that I can claim that ten percent?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m saying.’
She couldn’t believe it and stared at him dumbfounded. ‘Is it Lee?’ she asked out of her confused thoughts.
‘Of course it isn’t him!’ Edward Bradbury snapped.
‘But—but you have found someone…’
‘God Almighty!’ her father cut in, exasperated. But then, obviously counting to ten, ‘Yes, that’s what I’ve just said.’
Her tutors had said she had a quick brain—Phelix wondered where it was when she needed it. ‘You’re saying that as soon as I’ve got that—um—marriage certificate that the solicitors want to see, I can divorce—er—this man?’ She wasn’t going to marry anybody! Besides, her father hated divorce—there was something fishy going on here.
‘You won’t need to divorce him. Since you’ll never live with him, an annulment will suffice.’
In spite of herself, with freedom beckoning, Phelix had to own to feeling a spark of interest. Even perhaps the small stirrings of a little excitement.
‘How old is he?’ she asked, telling herself she was not truly interested, but not relishing the idea of marrying one of her father’s Methuselah-like cronies.
‘I’ve checked him out. He’s twenty-eight.’
That spark of interest became a flicker of flame. Twenty-eight? That was all right. She could marry and claim that ten percent, and… ‘And he, this man, he’s willing to go through a form of marriage with me so that I can claim some of my inheritance?’ she questioned. Even while wanting to get away from the environment she lived in, she discovered that she did not trust her father enough to go into this blindly.
‘That’s what I’ve just said,’ he replied tetchily.
At that stage Phelix had not known just how diabolical and underhand her father could be if the occasion demanded it. But, even so, something just didn’t seem to her to tie up.
She