Do Not Go My Love

by Denise Robins

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

When dashing wealthy Vincent Gayland marries Christina over the objections of his mother Christina is beside herself with joy until a terrible accident cuts short their happiness - and perhaps their love. Though Chris' injuries aren't permanent they are debilitating enough to turn Vince towards Gail Bishop a fascinating and unscrupulous woman. And it is a liaison that Vince's mother is in favour of....

Release date: October 24, 2013

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 208

Sample

THE NOTICE OF Christina’s engagement was the second on the list in the morning paper which she had rushed to pick up as it fell with a plop on to the front door mat. She took it into the bedroom of her friend, Pat Jenkins, with whom she shared a small flat right at the top of one of those tall gaunt houses near the Gloucester Road.

“Look!” she said breathlessly, “do look, Patty!”

Pat being short-sighted, had to put on her glasses. She looked. The two heads bent over the paper that was spread on the bed. Christina’s burnt golden-brown like the husk of corn with the sun on it, thick, short-cut, springing high from a lovely forehead. Pat’s not quite so spectacular. Just a neat brown head with a ‘bang’ to give her height because she was short and plump. These two were devoted friends and had worked together for the same firm during the last three years. They had shared this flat for nearly as long.

Christina had all the glamour—the slim model-girl figure, the pearly glow to her skin, the wonderful lashes and the radiant smile. Pat Jenkins was just ordinary. That nobody would look at her twice, if she was with Christina, she knew, but she wasn’t jealous. Nobody could be jealous of Chris. She was so utterly charming. Everybody spoilt her but she remained unspoiled. She had the kindest heart in the world. She gave out love and affection as warmly as she received it, which endeared her all the more to people like Pat who knew her intimately.

This announcement of Christina’s engagement meant that Pat’s jolly cosy life in this little flat with the lovely laughing Christina would soon be over. She would have to find somebody else to share with—and there could never be another Christina. Yet there was nothing in Pat’s blue eyes now to betray the sadness (more than that, the worry) that she felt, as she kissed her friend.

“Congratulations again, honey. I’m glad you’re so happy.”

“I think,” said Christina with a deep sigh of satisfaction, “that I must be the happiest girl in the world.”

It was a bright, warm May morning. London lay under a haze which suggested that the sun would break through and that summer was really at hand.

Christina read again that paragraph in the ‘Forthcoming Marriages’ column.

The engagement is announced between Vincent, son of the late Sir George Gayland and of Lady Gayland of Eaton Square, S.W.1, and Rackham, Linford, Sussex, and Christina, daughter of the late Dr. and Mrs. Spencer Lyle of West Wycombe, Bucks.

Suddenly her face creased into a smile. She flung back her long lovely throat and gave that low husky laugh for which she was famous. (Vince had said that it was the laugh that had ‘got him’. It made him feel so gay.)

“I like the West Wycombe part, don’t you, Patty? That was Lady G’s idea. You know what a frightful snob she is. She couldn’t bear to put my address as ‘Flat 2b’, Backster Gardens, S.W.5. That would have been too, too non-U!”

“Well, West Wycombe was your old home,” said Pat cheerfully as she grabbed her coat and hat and rummaged in her bag to see if she had remembered the lipstick which she invariably forgot. “Coming, Chris?” she asked.

“I feel I could jump over the moon instead of doing a morning’s work.”

“I should worry if I were you, considering you’ll be closeted with the Boss most of the morning, taking down his letters, that is if you aren’t too busy lifting your lips for his passionate kisses!”

Christina laughed again. She, too, seized hat and coat. The girls walked together out of the little flat and down the five flights of stairs up which Lady Gayland, Vince’s mother, had never yet deigned to climb. Christina had asked her several times to come and eat an omelette and salad, just to show how well she could make a French omelette and a very special salad. Vince’s mother had made suitable excuses—obviously shuddering at the idea of paying a call on Christina and her friend up in that shabby dreary house. So far, all contacts with her son’s new girl friend had been made at Eaton Square or in some restaurant, or during a weekend down in the Gaylands’ country home which was near Chichester. Vince had a yacht—a Bermuda Cutter—down there. He was mad about sailing. That was another thing that had brought him close to Christina. She had turned out to be so keen on the sea and she was a good sailor.

As Christina sat with Pat in the bus on her way to Gayland & Co’s new luxury offices in Berkeley Square, she remembered the night when Vincent had proposed to her.

It was just a week ago, in a Club down at Bosham after a wonderful day’s sailing. Both of them flushed from the sea, the sun and the wind, with their cocktail glasses in their hands, had wandered out alone on to the veranda.

Vince had just told his circle of friends about his plans for taking the yacht down to the South of France this summer. They were a gay party. Vince was a great ‘party boy’ and, thought Christina, he always looked so devastatingly handsome when he was in form (which he usually was). A head taller than herself, Vince was clean-limbed, brown skinned and fair-haired with long, narrow, rather impudent eyes as grey-green as the sea he loved. She had never known a man more vital. He was the same at his job. He amazed her—the way he rushed in and out of the office; dashed to appointments, pulled off deals; keen on the business that his father had left him. Nothing lazy about Vince. If he played hard, he worked hard, too. He had inherited the Company and the fortune behind it and he didn’t intend to let it slide. Gayland & Co. were the makers of the famous Gayland Arrow motor cycles. They had a factory in the midlands. They did big export trade, and there was no doubt that the Gayland Arrow was as popular a cycle in this country as any.

Christina’s straying thoughts reverted to the night on which Vince had proposed.

“Chris, sweetie,” he had said, “you’ve been my P.A. for the last twelve months. You’re a marvellous secretary and you’ve turned out to be more—a most marvellous companion. I know there have been other girls in my life. Mama’s hair has almost turned white with worry. She’s been so afraid I’d marry the wrong woman. But you’re dead right. She’s not going to have to worry any more. I love you, Chris, and you’re going to marry me. Let’s go right back to the crowd now and tell them.”

Typical of Vince. He hadn’t even asked her if she would marry him. He had taken it for granted that her answer would be ‘yes’. He was so spoiled—and so charming. And when he had taken her in his arms and kissed her in that breath-taking, experienced way of his—she had melted in his embrace. She had felt that with him she could be strong in other ways—endure pain, grief or trouble—anything bad that life had in store for her. But about Vince she would always be weak. She was so hopelessly in love with him. As she had told him, his money and his position didn’t mean a thing compared with her love for him, the man of her choice. She had said that unless he loved her in the same absolute way, she wouldn’t want to link her life with his.

“Of course it’s obvious, darling,” she said, when she managed to think and talk sanely, with his arms still around her, “that you must love me, because I’m nothing and nobody and I’ve got nothing whatsoever to give you.”

“I disagree. You’re my Golden Girl, Christina—the most beautiful thing in the world,” he had answered with a strangely touching humility for Vincent.

“But I don’t want to be married only because I have physical beauty,” she protested.

“But you’re a darling, too,” he assured her, “everybody loves you. I was only saying to Mama, you must have known for a long time I was crazy about you, yet you never took advantage of it. You just went on with your job at the office, taking down all those letters so demurely. ‘Yes, Mr. Vincent’, ‘No, Mr. Vincent …’ and refusing to lunch with me until I insisted and threatened to sack you if you didn’t. No, you are no gold-digger, my heart’s love, and I think you can be sure that I love all that is you. Of course I’m not going to say I don’t appreciate your beauty. It’s so … it’s so different. So gorgeous. You just glow.”

He had gone on to tell her that he had wanted a wife as vital as himself. He didn’t fancy a meek quiet background-companion. He liked Christina’s intelligence; the spirited way she argued, and stuck to her own opinions; that touch of cool reserve which he found so intriguing. He was sick of what he called ‘glamour’—sleek feline women stretching their arms out to him. They had always poured like treacle into his life. He didn’t want treacle. Christina was different. She had an edge to her tongue when she was annoyed, or felt strongly about things. They’d have a lot of fun together, he said, and quite apart from the sailing, or driving around in fast cars (Vince had been in several Monte Carlo Rallies), there was their dancing. Chris danced like a dream. Vince had always maintained he couldn’t be married to a girl who was a bad dancer.

So here they were, officially engaged at last. This weekend she was going down to Rackham, the Gaylands’ place; a Jacobean house in the village of Linfold, near Chichester. There, Christina was to meet more of Vince’s family and friends.

But what of his mother? If there was one woman of whom Christina was a little afraid, it was Lady Gayland. Her name was the first thing that Pat had mentioned when Christina discussed her love-affair.

“If only our Vince had no mother,” Pat had groaned, “I don’t like her, and I don’t think you do, really.”

It was true; Christina didn’t like her very much. Yet Rose Gayland had all that absolute charm that her son had inherited. People said of her that she could charm a man into giving away his last shilling. Hence she was in big demand for the important charity functions. She was a born organiser, too; and nice to look at, still youthful and handsome in her early fifties; noted for her ‘chic’, one of the busiest of Society hostesses. But Pat, who had worked for Gaylands for a longer number of years than Chris, and had once or twice been lent by the office to act as Lady Gayland’s personal secretary when there was some big show on, had discovered the real woman behind all the gushing sweetness that Rose put over to her public. She was well known on television and she broadcast often—all for charity. Pat had learned, too, that apart from being a snob, Rose Gayland was ruthless and none too generous at home. Those who worked for her in her domestic circle, for instance, did not seem to like her much. She was always losing her staff, and it was common knowledge that she had a way of unsheathing her claws where her idolised son’s girlfriends were concerned. Any of them who had hitherto tried to take him away from my lady had hurriedly retired from the contest.

This was by no means the first time there had been an announcement of a ‘forthcoming marriage’ for Vincent Gayland. Christina knew all about that. She was also well aware that she, herself, was going to have to fight to keep on the right side of Vince’s mother. When first Vince had announced that he was going to marry Christina, Lady Gayland had kept an extraordinary control of her features; she had even kissed Christine and called her ‘darling’. Yet by some extraneous method she had managed to convey to Christina the fact that she was badly shaken by the news. She did not approve of the fact that her wonderful son—the most eligible young bachelor in London—intended to marry his secretary. What was Christina Lyle but the penniless daughter of a one-time country doctor.

Well, thought Christina as she travelled to work this morning, I’m not going to be intimidated. If Vince loves me and I can make him happy, I shall marry him—Lady G. or no Lady G.

For the present she was quite convinced that she could make him happy. They were meant for each other. Vince’s father and grandfather had made a fortune out of motor cycles. Vince had gone to Public School and University. Vince had everything. Christina was just a stenographer, living on her own in a shabby flat since her father died (she had been left motherless when she was a small girl). Nevertheless she could offer Vince that tremendous love which he had awakened in her and which she had never given to any other man. And that beauty which he worshipped, and which she was glad now that she possessed, because it was to be his.

As she walked with Pat through the huge bronze doors that led into the super, luxury-heated offices of Gayland & Co., Christina could hardly believe that soon she would no longer come here as Mr. Vincent’s P.A., but as his wife.

Lady G. of course, wanted a six months’ engagement. But Vince had declared that he intended to follow up this morning’s notice by another, announcing that the marriage would take place at the end of the month.

“We’ve known each other too long. Now we’re not going to wait,” he had said.

Well, Chris didn’t want to wait. She just wanted to take this marvellous, exciting thing that life had thrown at her and hold it close and never let it go.

She felt that almost everybody in the building this morning must have seen that engagement notice. There were so many smiles and nods, and murmurs of “Congratulations, Miss”, from the commissionaire, the lift man and several of the other employees who went up in the lift with her.

Pat Jenkins, although two years older than Christina who had just celebrated her twenty-third birthday, worked in the outer office with another of the senior typists. But Christina, the privileged P.A., walked straight through into Vincent’s private office. She had always found it exciting—the big long luxurious room with its four windows looking right across London. The May sunlight slanted through the Venetian blinds on to Vince’s huge desk—and on to Vincent, himself. He had stolen a march on her, Christina noticed. He was here early this morning.

Without raising his head, Vincent said:

“Good morning, Miss Lyle. You are five minutes late. If it happens again I shall have to ask you to find another job. My personal secretary must be punctual.”

Christina stifled a laugh.

“Very well, Mr. Gayland. If you don’t mind I’ll quit at once. I have other attractive offers!”

“I bet you have,” said Vincent, pushing aside his papers and leaping to his feet, as he came towards Christina with that jaunty boyish walk which was typical of him. Everything about Vincent Gayland was young and strong, with a hint of recklessness in the laughing eyes. There was a faint suggestion of sensual weakness in the well-shaped mouth. But he was extraordinarily handsome and Christina felt a great surge of love and longing as she walked straight into his arms.

“Mine,” he whispered, “my future wife. All the world will envy me.”

She put up a hand and smoothed back his hair that was almost as dark golden as her own. His eyes, greeny grey, with those thick lashes which she always told him were wasted on a man, grew serious for a moment as he kissed her on lips and throat.

“Mine,” he repeated, “my very own Christina.”

“I don’t want the world to envy you,” she whispered back.

“But I want the whole world to admire you as much as I do,” he said and held her at arm’s length and looked with passionate possessiveness at the cool slimness of his Christina in her blue linen suit. Those ivory beads and earrings were perfect against her tanned skin, he thought. She had naturally good taste in clothes, inexpensive though they were.

But just the hint of a frown puckered Christina’s fine brows. She didn’t really want to be shown off like Vince’s new yacht, or his latest toy—the Aston Martin—or any of the things that he could buy so easily (and discard with as great an ease). And she didn’t ever want him to think that she loved him because of his money. Nor must she allow herself to feel one moment’s jealousy, or fear that in time he would grow tired of her.

He was sweeping her off her feet again, as always, with his graceful wooing and his unashamed joy in her beauty and their newly-discovered warm intimate feeling for each other. He kissed her until she was breathless, then sat on the desk and held her hand while he smoked a cigarette. He was making plans for the celebration of their engagement tonight. They’d dine at the Savoy. Then go on to the Four Hundred and dance. They’d ask this person and that; and when Christina added “Pat Jenkins”, he wrinkled his nose and shrugged but said, all right—as Pat was such a friend of his darling Chris, but Pat wasn’t exactly glamorous and tonight he wanted it to be the most glamorous party in the world.

“I want Pat,” said Christina loyally. She, Christina, whom Vince found more glamorous than any other woman in his life, wondered suddenly what Vince really felt about all the important things that lay under glamour; integrity, loyalty, generosity, for instance. The real things that go to make up a real human being.

Vincent said:

“Old Alan will be here in a moment. Of course we must ask Alan …”

She agreed with enthusiasm. Alan Brade was Vince’s best friend, and stockbroker. They were always on the telephone; Vince, buying or selling; Alan, making money for him which he had done lavishly during the boom years. When he sailed Vince tried to include Alan in the crew whenever possible. He was a first-class yachtsman.

To Christina, Vince had said about Alan that he was a bit too serious at times.

“Too much thinking—can be boring with his books and his philosophy, but I try to jockey him out of it, and he’s a damn good stockbroker which suits me …”

“You do amuse me, darling,” said Christina.

“Listen,” Vince said, “we’re going to get married as soon as it can be arranged. I refuse to have a long engagement. What say you?”

She was silent a moment. She wanted to pour out all kinds of thoughts—feelings that rose from the depths of her heart; the sort of serious ideas that she didn’t often speak about to anybody. But it was hard—even impossible—to pin down this Vince with his quicksilver mind, his ebullience. Perhaps that was his fascination, she thought, the fact that one never knew what he was really feeling. He was irresistible. She found herself agreeing that she did not want a long engagement.

“But your mother—” she began.

“Mama will do what her bonny boy wants,” Vince cut in with a laugh. “And, incidentally, don’t forget Mama expects you at Rackham this weekend. She wants to introduce you to the whole neighbourhood as her future daughter-in-law.”

Christina bit her lip. It wouldn’t be an unmixed joy—a weekend, with Lady Gayland eyeing her, probing, and letting her see her disapproval through all the sugar coating, all the gushing. But there was no gainsaying Vincent once he made up his mind. As for the wedding—typical of him—this morning, Vincent had it all planned; the honeymoon, too. They would go abroad in the Aston Martin; drive through France and Italy. Then they’d come back and find a home in town. They’d need one, and there was always Rackham if they wanted weekends in the country, and the sailing.

“It’ll be terrific, driving through the Continent with you beside me as my lovely wife, Chris,” he said, and kissed her with a great show of warmth and tenderness. All desire on her part to be sensible or practical vanished. She might as well sit back and surrender to this whirlwind love from Vince, she thought. She wanted it so much.

But on the subject of the honeymoon-drive in the Aston Martin, she did speak her mind.

“I’m not going to have my nervous system wrecked by your reckless driving, I warn you, my darling,” she laughed.

He moved back to his desk and sat down; his eyes half closed, crinkling with laughter back at her.

“Don’t you trust me?”

“Not an inch in a fast car.”

He couldn’t deny that she had cause. He had had two rather bad smashes in the last twelve months. One in France—one in this country. Both times he had escaped death by a miracle and got away with a few cuts and a shaking up, although each time the car had been ‘written off’. He believed in his luck and ran it. But he had had a pretty good row with Mama after the last smash; she had been so terrified; he had sworn to pipe down.

“Darling,” he said tenderly to Christina, “I wouldn’t risk a hair of your exquisite head, and I’m so crazy about the Aston, I don’t want to shake up a single nut or screw, I promise you.”

“I wonder which you value most—me or the car,” she chuckled.

“Come and kiss me again and I’ll show you,” he said and held out a hand.

She went to him, blindly adoring, gloriously content.

IN THE OFFICE next door, Pat sat talking to Alan Brade who had just dropped in to see his wealthy client on his way to the Stock Exchange. Not that Alan had anything in particular to say to Vince. But there was Christina. He really wanted to see her. He had meant to ask her to lunch with him today. In fact, a few hours ago, he had meant to do more than that. He had made up his mind to ask her to marry him.

When Pat had showed him the announcement in the morning paper (which he hadn’t had time to see, for he had been away in Ireland for a week’s fishing—and only flown back an hour ago) the bottom seemed to fall suddenly out of Alan Brade’s world.

It was not until recently that he had fully realised how completely Christina Lyle filled that personal world.

He had known her for quite some time; first of all as Vince’s P.A., he had always admired her cool efficiency and, later, like any other man, he was attracted by her glowing good looks. But after seeing her at various dinners and parties, and particularly after one special weekend at Rackham when he had had time to talk to her seriously, his whole outlook had changed. Christina had become the lode-star of his existence. He had fallen in love with her with all the strength and passion of a deep nature. He was . . .