Love Must Wait

by Patricia Robins

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

Gina longed to share her life with the man she loved, but Charles told her love must wait. Gina must learn sophistication, devote herself to becoming a suitable wife for a fashionable author. Charles’s apparent indifference saddened and frightened Gina, for she was horrified by the new Charles who she couldn’t understand. In bewilderment, she turned to Peter for help and by doing so resolved her problems and found the love for which she had waited.

Release date: January 1, 2015

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 400

Sample

THERE were moments in life, Gina reflected, when everything seemed to be completely and absolutely perfect; when one felt a little afraid to breathe lest the cobwebby perfection of ‘now’ dissolved and became just a memory.

Such was this moment while she waited for Charles to come back to her. His secretary, Miss Matthews, had gone home. It would probably be at least another quarter of an hour before Charles would arrive, and she could sit here, alone in his flat, feeling very close to him and anticipating the actual second when she would hear his key turn in the lock and know that she would soon be in his arms.

‘Oh, Charles!’ Gina whispered, glancing apprehensively at the door through which Miss Matthews had so recently departed. She knew Charles’s secretary disliked her and no matter how many times he told her she was imagining things and was far too sensitive, Gina knew quite certainly within her how Miss Matthews would look at her from those steely blue eyes of hers, coldly and almost contemptuously, if she overheard the half-whisper of love that crept from her parted lips.

Abruptly, Gina stood up and went across the soft, deep-piled carpet to the oval mirror which hung about the fireplace. Already, with the thought of Miss Matthews, that wonderful complete perfection of time had gone and she was left with a feeling of uncertainty. She studied her face in the mirror, her head tilted a little to one side as she tried to see her reflection objectively. Suppose this was not her face, the face she saw several times a day when she powdered its nose! Suppose this was the face of some girl she had just met who was in love with Charles, whom Charles loved. What would she say of it?

First the hairstyle out of date! That short urchin cut went out of fashion over a year ago. Why persist in wearing it when no doubt all the smart women of Charles’s acquaintance were much more fashionably groomed? Because once Charles had run his hands through the soft chestnut waves and said:

‘It’s naturally curly, isn’t it, darling? Don’t let any hairdresser spoil it!’

Silly, all the same. The women Charles admired when they were out together always had shining, sleek heads.

Her forehead was smooth and unwrinkled, and Gina could find no fault with it, save that it helped, with other parts of her appearance, to make her look as young as her twenty years. Charles was thirty-nine—only one year off forty—and although he looked wonderfully young and handsome, she knew that the disparity in their ages showed because she looked so young.

‘I’m the wrong type!’ Gina thought, not for the first time. Charles looked so distinguished—as indeed he was. He should have a tall, fair, madonna-like woman at his side, not a leggy teenager like herself!

But, try as she might, Gina could find nothing to dislike about the eyes staring back at her. They were large, soft, warm brown and fringed with the incredibly long, dark lashes that were her best feature. Charles said he had first noticed and loved her eyes.

The nose was slightly freckled and Gina sighed, wishing it long and straight and dignified rather than short and slightly retroussé. The mouth, too, was wrong; too large for the oval of her face and far, far too betraying. Charles always said she could never hide her thoughts from him because of her mouth—it always gave her away.

Half angrily, Gina turned away from the mirror and lit a cigarette. She didn’t smoke often—or even care for it much—but she felt that it gave her poise and it did help to make her look a little older and more sophisticated. At least, she thought, as she sat down again in the comfortable wing-armchair Charles always used, even if she were not as tall as she wished, she had a reasonable figure, and her legs were long and slim and shapely.

Oh, to be beautiful—really beautiful—for Charles to love! Of course, he did love her, but somehow it was impossible not to feel he might love her a little more desperately if she herself were different. He always treated her rather as if she were a little puppy to be cuddled and petted and spoilt. She wanted him to understand that however she might look to him she was, underneath, a woman—all woman—all loving. …

Miss Matthews could see where she just failed to make the grade! If no one else … if Charles could not see it, his secretary did! It was a wonder she hadn’t expressed her opinions to Charles, Gina thought with a half-anxious, half-suppressed giggle. But then Miss Matthews was far too clever to do that. She was always most correct in her manner to Gina whenever Charles was there. It was only when they were alone together, as they had been just now, that Miss Matthews showed her feelings in their true light.

‘Mr. Baring will be back at half past seven. I expect he will be tired so I’ve told Cook to have his whisky-and-soda waiting for him, and to serve dinner immediately afterwards. These literary cocktail parties always tire Mr. Baring, although he doesn’t like to admit it. He should really have an early night and a good long sleep, because he has a busy schedule ahead of him tomorrow.’

‘I won’t keep him up late!’ Gina had replied, stung as always by the older woman’s implications. ‘I don’t suppose Mr. Baring would have asked me to dine here with him if he had felt it would be too much for him!’

Miss Matthews had flushed, her dead-white skin faintly marked with red high on the cheek-bones, but only for a moment. Then she had said:

‘Of course, he probably does relax with you, Miss Trellis. It’s not as if he has to—’

‘—to keep up a very high standard of conversation, you mean?’

‘Of course I didn’t mean quite that, Miss Trellis, but since you put it that way, I won’t argue the point.’

Well, it may have been rude but in a way it was true. Charles was a literary figure. He wrote books that were way above Gina’s head although she had tried hard to understand and like them. He was very intellectual and artistic and he was teaching her to appreciate the finer things of life. But what Miss Matthews did not understand was that Charles liked her ignorance—he’d often said so. It was like modelling untouched clay. He was helping to form her mind and her appreciation. One day she would be able to converse with Charles on equal terms and be able to sit through a whole Wagnerian opera without once being bored.

‘It’s all a question of understanding,’ Charles had said. ‘You’ll learn, Gina. …’

But would she ever learn as much as Miss Matthews? That incredible woman seemed to be a fount of knowledge. However much she might dislike her, Gina had to admit that she was a very clever and able woman. Charles so often said himself that he didn’t know how he’d get on without her, and Miss Matthews never lost an opportunity of saying so, too. Unfortunately, Gina had to agree. She was the perfect secretary, saw to all Charles’s needs, mental as well as such physical matters as dealing with Cook, who lived out and had to be handled with care.

Gina’s thoughts switched abruptly as a faint smell of Charles’s favourite Turkish cigarette emanated from the cushion against which her chestnut curls rested. Dissatisfaction with herself was replaced at once by a deep, warm love for Charles. How lucky she was to have such a man love her … she, a nobody, an ordinary English girl from a suburban home who had never done anything more exciting than captaining the school tennis team, and later on turning into rather a good skier when her parents had sent her for a year to a Swiss school to learn French. That year abroad had saved her from the necessity for taking the G.C.E. which she felt sure she would have failed anyway. Now, when Charles asked her, she need only admit that she hadn’t had an opportunity to take the exam instead of saying she’d failed it! And he did seem to admire the fact that she spoke French so well. Like many Englishmen, he himself spoke it only haltingly. But he didn’t need languages among his many attainments. He’d proved his abilities with the publication of three consecutive best-sellers, and there were few people in the literary world here in England, or in America, who did not know his name.

Dear, dear Charles! Gina thought tenderly and gratefully. How incredibly wonderful that he should even have noticed her at that conference. She was merely a glorified typist who’d been called in at the last moment to take notes because the regular secretary was away with ’flu and she, Gina, could write shorthand quicker than the other girls in the office. Suppose Pam hadn’t been away ill! She would never have met Charles and would never have known what it was to be in love. …

Even now she found it hard to believe the fact of their first meeting. Twice during the conference she had looked up to find Charles staring at her. Twice she had felt herself blushing furiously like a schoolgirl. Could it have been only six months ago when Charles had said: ‘I wonder if I could have a transcript of those notes your secretary is keeping? They would be useful for reference. Perhaps she could bring them round to my flat some time tomorrow?’ She had never really believed, only hoped, that he might want to see her again. She had lived through a terrible night of torture, wondering, thinking, despairing in case the office girl was sent with the notes. But apparently Charles was too important an author and she herself was permitted to go. Charles had kept her talking until Miss Matthews came in with his tea and had made her stay and sit down and have tea with him!

And now Charles was going to marry her. Or at least, some time in the future—when she was older and a little more mature. He had actually said so one night last week when she had dined here in his flat with him. He hadn’t exactly proposed—not in the way Gina imagined most men proposed to the girls they loved. But then Charles wasn’t ‘most men’, he was different, and their whole relationship was different, above the usual. For one thing, he was a good deal older than herself, and he was famous. Naturally he wouldn’t want to marry her yet—not until she was old enough to take her place at his side as his wife.

Gina sighed, again wishing herself different. How silly she had been that evening, how schoolgirlish! She ought to have seen for herself that Charles couldn’t possibly want to marry her as she was now. But he had been so passionate that evening, declaring again and again how much he loved her and wanted her, that without thinking she had said:

‘Couldn’t we be married soon, Charles? Then I can be really yours … all yours!’

Charles had released her from his arms and walked away from her so that for one awful moment she had believed that he didn’t really love her at all. Then he had turned and studied her for a moment and said:

‘Don’t look so desperate, darling! Of course I want to marry you, but you’re still so young, Gina—you must see that. You forget I’m nearly forty!’

She had jumped up and thrown her arms around him in spontaneous relief and love. Yet still not quite understanding, she had said:

‘The difference in our ages doesn’t matter to me, Charles. You don’t look forty, and even if you did, I wouldn’t mind!’

He kissed her lightly on the cheek and gently removed her arms.

‘But I mind, Gina! I have a certain position to maintain—appearances to keep up, if you prefer. I cannot risk my public accusing me of baby-snatching!’

She had tried to smile back at him but it had become a little twisted as it reached her mouth, for now she saw that she had been far too presumptuous and demanding. She was not yet grown up—not in the way Charles meant. It was not enough that her body should be that of a woman, Charles wanted her mind to be mature, too. She had so much she must learn before she could hope to be the wife of so eminent a man as Charles Baring. Only someone as unsophisticated and thoughtless as herself could have taken it for granted that Charles would want to marry her as she was, that he might prefer to ‘educate’ her once she was his wife rather than before.

If she had been a little hurt and disappointed by Charles’s more adult attitude to their relationship, she had soon forgotten it when he took her back into his arms and again kissed and caressed her as if she were the only woman in the world. However inadequate her intellectual capabilities, at least she felt Charles had no doubts about her attractions as a woman. Inexperienced though she was, she sensed that her attraction for Charles in the physical sense was something even he could not quite control. It was always she who had to break away from his embrace, afraid lest their passionate need for each other should become overpowering.

Gina knew that her mother disapproved of her coming to Charles’s flat alone in the evenings. But she considered her mother to be old-fashioned and certainly not very complimentary to Charles.

‘I suppose you think he’ll try to take advantage of me!’ she had said spiritedly.

Her mother had sighed.

‘No, I don’t suppose anyone as well known as Mr. Baring would try to seduce you, Gina. I mean that you put yourself in a position where you might find yourself wishing to give way.’

Secretly, Gina rather agreed now with her mother, although she would have died rather than admit to it. Charles’s love-making was very insistent and she was beginning to be a little afraid of her own awakening emotions … her own need of him. With the lights turned down low and no fear of interruptions, it was very hard to keep a curb on her emotions as well as Charles’s and she would feel exhausted when he drove her home around midnight. Yet those precious hours when he held her in his arms were so terribly important to her. They proved his need for her, his love for her; proved they were equal in at least this one thing. It was the only time she spent with Charles when she did not feel hopelessly inadequate—practically the only time when Miss Matthews would not do just as well or better!

Gina’s reflections came to an abrupt halt as she heard the sound of Charles’s key in the lock. The colour flared into her cheeks and she hurriedly took another cigarette from the silver box on the table beside her. But it was never lit, for as Charles came into the room her legs took her flying across the carpet towards him and a moment later she was in his arms.

Charles Baring held her close against him with a now customary feeling of mixed emotions. One half of him responded to all that was the woman in Gina. The other half withdrew mentally from the child that was equally she. He disapproved of her wild rush into his arms even while he wanted badly to kiss that large, generous, upturned mouth.

He did so, and gently disengaged himself from her arms.

‘Cook will be up in a moment with the drinks,’ he cautioned her.

Gina went slowly back to her chair, her first rapturous welcome turning to quick distress. Why didn’t she think before she acted! It would have been terribly embarrassing for Charles if Cook had walked in just now.

‘I’m sorry, darling! I expect you’re tired. Tell me about the cocktail party. Was it fun? Did you meet anyone exciting?’

It never occurred to Gina as she listened to his account of his activities that he might have asked her to the party. He could so easily have done so. She would have argued that she couldn’t possibly go for the same reasons Charles had not taken her—that she wouldn’t have known what to say to anyone there. It did not occur to either of them that Charles might be ashamed of her, any more than it occurred to either of them that he need not be so. Gina was sufficiently young, attractive, unspoilt, to be an asset anywhere. There was something fascinating about her looks that had indeed caught Charles’s attention in the first place, and anyone meeting her was secondarily attracted by her innate charm and sweetness. Only Gina’s parents wondered why Charles never took Gina anywhere ‘important’; why their meetings were nearly always in Charles’s flat or in some secluded restaurant where they were not likely to run into any of his literary friends and associates.

Gina’s face, however, as she sat opposite Charles while he drank his whisky-and-soda, held no sign of reproach or criticism. She was not really listening to what he was telling her, only listening to his rather deep, exciting voice and feeling happy that he should have chosen her, Gina Trellis, to be sitting here listening to him, above all other women he knew.

‘Miss Matthews gone, I suppose?’ he said, when Cook brought in the soup and they were sitting opposite one another in the pretty dining alcove, candles alight on the shining polished table-top, silver gleaming and the rich reds and mauves of the bowl of anemones Miss Matthews had put there giving colour to the meal.

‘She went about half past six!’ Gina said. ‘She was worried about you—thought you’d be very tired and told me I wasn’t to keep you up late as you have a heavy day tomorrow.’

Something in Gina’s tone caused Charles to look at her anxiously.

‘I know you don’t like her, Gina, but I do hope you haven’t been rubbing her up the wrong way!’

‘Me rubbing her up the wrong way!’ Gina said, indignation getting the better of tact. ‘It’s her who doesn’t like me, Charles!’

‘She who doesn’t like me,’ Charles corrected her grammar automatically. ‘I know she can be difficult, Gina, touchy and perhaps a little disapproving, but I don’t want her antagonized. Surely you can see for yourself how much I depend on her? I couldn’t possibly manage without her and if she ever left—’

‘She won’t leave you!’ Gina broke in, jealousy making her speak her mind. ‘Why, she worships the ground you walk on, Charles. I think you could commit murder and she’d find some excuse for it!’

‘You’re being very silly, Gina!’ Charles said coldly. ‘One might almost believe you are jealous of her. I’ve told you before she has been with me fifteen years. Naturally she has my interests at heart. She’s a most devoted and conscientious worker and I—’

‘—couldn’t manage without her!’ Gina finished, hurt enough to be childishly angry. ‘Well, I don’t like her and I never will.’

Charles stared at the flushed face of the girl across the table and exasperation overcame the momentary desire to take her in his arms and make love to her. Surely even a fool could see how invaluable Miss Matthews was to his whole career. And that being so, even a fool would try to get along with her for his sake. But not Gina! Somehow it was typical of all that was wrong with Gina. She never thought deeply enough, she just felt. An older or more clever woman would have concealed her dislike in order to avoid just such a scene as this. No, clearly he couldn’t contemplate marriage with Gina yet. If only she were a little less attractive! If only she hadn’t got whatever it was that weakened his resolve to put an end to their association before it was too late and he jeopardized his career with an unsuit. . .