Choose the One You'll Marry by Mary Burchell

that unpalatable, it seemed, for Angus frowned quickly. “I didn’t know he was one of your beaux.”
    “Oh, well, he—he’s a sort of cousin, you know.” Pacifically, Ruth resorted once more to this now threadbare theory, but without much success.
    “Cousin?” Angus’s tone repudiated the relationship absolutely. “He’s no more your cousin that Aunt Henrietta is the person she’s pretending to be.”
    “You mustn’t say things like that!” Ruth spoke sharply, for she was aware that Charmian’s attention was even more completely focused upon them. “There’s no proof of any pretense.”
    “But I told you—”
    “I must go now,” Ruth interrupted firmly. “Give me a ring in the morning, and I’ll see what I can arrange.”
    And more curtly than she would really have wished, she nodded to Angus in farewell and went off, aware that he looked after her, surprised and apparently somewhat chilled by this summary leave-taking.
    I’ll have to impress on him that he mustn’t talk so carelessly about Aunt Henrietta, she thought vexedly. That girl heard everything, and she’s perfectly capable of storing up information and turning it to her own account later.
    It was a disturbing thought. And as Ruth left the building and went out into the autumn sunshine, she felt vaguely guilty. As though she had in some way betrayed Aunt Henrietta.
    She was not very sure of her whereabouts at first, since she had been brought to the studios by car. But it was a pleasant novelty to be abroad on her own in London for the very first time, and she strolled along happily until—she was not quite sure how—she found herself in Piccadilly.
    Here she lingered to do some enjoyable window - shopping, was beguiled still further by the shops in Bond Street, and was standing gazing enraptured into the windows of a china shop when a familiar voice said beside her, “Hello. Have they let you out of school early?”
    “Michael!” She turned, with a sense of pleasure so acute that it surprised her. “Where on earth did you spring from?”
    “My office, which is quite near here,” he told her, and the way he smiled down at her somehow conveyed to her that she was looking extraordinarily pretty. “I thought you were rehearsing most of the day.”
    “The afternoon rehearsal finished early,” she explained. “At least—everyone seemed to think it had gone on quite long enough, and Angus was more or less satisfied, so we were allowed to go. To anyone like myself, with strict office hours, it seems slightly wicked and immensely enjoyable to be out at this time in the afternoon.”
    “Then what about completing the impression by coming and having tea with me?” he suggested.
    “But—have you time?”
    “ I also want to feel that I’m doing something slightly wicked and immensely enjoyable,” he assured her, at which she laughed.
    “I’d love it! Where shall we go?”
    “The Ritz is just around the corner,” he told her. “Or—”
    “The Ritz?” She breathed the magic name in slightly hushed tones. “Oh, that would be wonderful. Won’t Susannah be thrilled!”
    “Susannah?” He looked inquiring. “Where does she come into this?”
    “At Susannah’s age one takes a vicarious delight in everything one’s elder sister does,” she explained indulgently.
    “I suppose one does.” He, too, smiled indulgently. But the indulgence was not for Susannah. “Let’s go to the Ritz, then.”
    So they went to the Ritz, and Ruth found herself sitting opposite Michael Harling, pouring tea for him and handing cakes, just as though he really were her cousin and not—as he once had seemed—the disagreeably strict man from headquarters who thought Mr. Naylor, her immediate employer, was too easy with her.
    “I take it the day went satisfactorily?” He smiled at Ruth as he took his cup and saucer from her hand.
    “Oh, yes. There were awkward moments, of course. I suppose there always are when one’s trying to mold a number of