A Marriage of Convenience by Tim Jeal Page A

intangible affinity, mattered as much as title deeds. Markenfield was not just a building but an idea, the sum of all the impressions of those who had lived in it—the servants too. The horses, the dogs, even the trees all played a part. One generation planted what another generation saw reach maturity; the animals overlapped the generations, just as individual servants might have first come in their teens to serve a father, and finally stayed on to serve his grandson. Stories of the family and the house were stored over the years in so many minds. This was the true meaning of being owned by what one held—to be inextricably part of the continuity it embodied.
    But when Markenfield had been let, the old servants had left, adding to the void left by Clinton’s father’s sudden death and his own departure. The chain had been broken. The idea, the real bond, was something remembered now; but no longer living. He had come to Norfolk, certain that there were no choices left—that Markenfield was sacrosanct and marriage inescapable. Only now, at the moment of decision, did he know consciously what he had half-sensed by the roadside an hour ago. His father was wrong; a nobleman’s land did not always outweigh all else. The choice was still there to be made: to sell his inheritance and not himself.
    And beside him, the girl still watched his every expression, waiting, hoping, making him ashamed that he had needed to be pushed to the very brink before knowing his mind. He longed in some way to make amends for the pain he was about to cause her. Perhaps if he could explain about the married lives of the officers at his club. But why should this sheltered girl ever believe him?
    When they reached the end of the border walk, he took Sophie’s arm and said gently:
    ‘Have you ever heard that cynical bachelors have a catch phrase about marrying for money and loving for pleasure?’
    She looked up at him with a brave attempt at light-heartedness.
    ‘I daresay they often come to love their rich wives in spite of their cynicism.’ She turned away as if about to cry, but when she met his gaze, her eyes were bright with anger. ‘Do you think I ever thought you loved me? I’m not a fool. If people only married for love, how many marriages would there be?’
    ‘I can’t marry you,’ he whispered, dreading that she would weep and scream at him for having allowed her to hope. Instead she said in an insistent voice:
    ‘Why can’t you?’
    ‘It would dishonour us.’
    ‘Only if you love someone else. Do you, Clinton?’
    He shook his head, amazed by her calmness.
    ‘If I gave you a dozen reasons,’ he murmured, ‘they’d only be poor attempts to justify what I want to do.’
    ‘So you reject me without a word?’
    He tried to take her hands, but she moved away at once.
    ‘Ask yourself,’ he said, ‘how long can any woman live without bitterness, when every day brings her fresh proofs that her love is not returned?’
    ‘Do you think I care about bitterness?’ she cried. ‘Would bitterness be worse than never to see your face or hear your voice? Is bitterness more cruel than the misery of life without the one person who makes it possible? I don’t care who you’ve loved or who you’ll love. If you’d be faithful even for a year, I’d pay any price. I’d barter my soul for it.’
    The hint of hysteria in her voice horrified him.
    ‘I’m not worth your devotion. I never was. I’m nothing like the person you think you love.’
    She stood rocking her weight from heel to toe with a faint twisted smile on her face; an absorbed introspective look.
    ‘All that time you used to spend with the farm people; how I hated you for that, preferring the company of those dolts to mine. Then going out with the fishermen at Overstrand, your fool of afather letting you in any weather. I used to pray for you.’ She suddenly touched his arm and looked into his eyes. ‘I could find the tree where you stripped off the bark in your