The Youngest Bridesmaid by Sara Seale Page B

but one neither of them believed. Tibby had made it her business to ensure that Lou ’ s second night of marriage should be as abortive as the first.
    “ Better? ” Piers asked, taking the empty glass from her, and when she nodded, giving him rather a watery smile, came and sat on the arm of her chair.
    “ Lou— ” he began a little tentatively, “ —I feel I should disabuse you of certain misconceptions. ”
    “ Yes? ” The moment suddenly held promise, and she rubbed her cheek against his sleeve like a little ingratiating cat.
    “ I don ’ t want you to think that spite entered into my sudden change of plans. The spite was Tibby ’ s, and that, I ’ m afraid, is a problem you ’ ll have to sort out between you. Tibby would have taken more kindly to Melissa because she felt it was a settling of old scores. She was very attached to my father, and I suppose she had some muddled notion that the next generation could cancel out. ”
    “ And hadn ’ t you that notion, Piers? ” she asked, trying to reconcile all the puzzling facets of this affair into something she could understand.
    “ Yes, I suppose I had. Melissa is very like Blanche at the same age, you know, and—a small g boy ’ s first impressions of the perfect woman can be lasting. ”
    “ Sublimation, or something? ”
    “ I expect so. The trick-cyclist would have a name for it. ”
    “ They would say it was unconscious transference of a mother complex, ” Lou said, and giggled sleepily at the unlikely thought of Melissa providing maternal solace to any man she married.
    “ Very likely, ” he said s om ewhat sharply, “ but I was not, I assure you, thinking in those terms when I got engaged to your cousin. I wanted to settle down, found a family to leave something worthwhile behind me. The old ties being such as they were, and Blanche ready and eager to bargain, my course seemed simple. ”
    “ It ’ s not simple to me, ” Lou said. “ Why are you explaining all this? You loved Melissa, surely? ”
    He moved a little impatiently.
    “ Because, I suppose, my motives are still the same. I want to settle down, and you, my little Cinderella, are nobly filling the gap. Melissa is damned attractive and I admit to being more than narked at being let down at the last minute, but I thought I had made it clear that you were not chosen at random—added to which, you didn ’ t have to agree to marry me in such a hurry, did you? ”
    “ No, ” she murmured, remembering how she had thought when she had fi rst heard him speak that his was a voice she could fall in love with. He had, she thought, evaded her question quite neatly.
    “ I had imagined—or was I just being conceited when I finally persuaded you—that you had a s mall fondness f or me that had nothing to do with the Merrick wealth or reputation, or am I wrong? ”
    “ No, you ’ re not wrong, dear Piers , ” she said, adding humbly. “ I ’ m—I ’ m sorry for the terrible things I must have said to you. I ’ m sorry for making a scene. ”
    She had thought she owed him that much, that by apologizing for feminine weakness she would assure him that such an annoyance would not occur again, but the warmth which possibly she had only imagined seemed suddenly withdrawn.
    “ Never apologize, ” he said rather brusquely, “ to me or to Tibby or to anyone who shakes your self - confidence. The world takes one at face value, you see, and it doesn ’ t do to be humble. ”
    She felt reproved and puzzled at the same time. In her childhood humility had been considered a virtue and a conceit of one ’ s own opinions a failing not to be encouraged. How, she wondered, did one assess one ’ s own potentialities, and still remain oneself?
    “ You don ’ t understand humility, do you? ” she said tentatively, and he frowned.
    “ I don ’ t like doormats, ” he replied with more curtness than he probably intended, and was surprised by the sudden glint in her eye.
    “ That, ” she