Where Duty Lies

by Patricia Robins

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

A compelling classic romance from the inimitable Patricia Robins, first published in 1957 and now available for the first time in eBook. The minute Charlotte sees Meridan Avebury, it causes such strong, passionate feelings that she believes it must be love at first sight. But Meridan is already engaged to Phillipa, who is dangerously ill. And while they don't deny their feelings for each other, Charlotte and Meridan are unwilling to take happiness at Phillipa's expense.

Release date: April 23, 2015

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 400

Sample

When the telephone rang, Charlotte rose slowly to her feet and went to answer it. Later she was to remember that she had had no premonition, no sudden inner warning that her life was to be changed completely by this one phone call. Somehow it seemed wrong in retrospect that she could have walked so slowly and carelessly towards her Fate.

‘Charlotte, is that you? It’s Bess, darling! Now listen, Charlotte, because this is rather important… you know I was to have been bridesmaid on Saturday to Angela Bates? Well, the other bridesmaid whom you haven’t met… she was a friend of Angela’s fiancé… she has just been carted off to hospital with appendicitis so Angela’s desperate. It’ll throw out all the arrangements because she needs two of us to carry the train.’

‘I’m so sorry!’ Charlotte said, wondering how she could help. She had been friendly with Bess for years but barely knew Angela except as an acquaintance at the tennis club with whom she’d once or twice made up a four.

‘The thing is, you and Phillipa… the girl with the appendix… are just about the same build. Angela wants to know if you’d step into the breach and be the second train-bearer?’

‘I… I suppose so!’ Charlotte said a little doubtfully, her young mouth turned down from its usual pretty upward curve in momentary indecision. ‘All the same, I shall be almost a stranger… and I’d have to have a rehearsal of some kind…’

‘But of course, Poppet!’ Bess broke in, giggling a little. ‘I knew you’d help out… I told Angela not to worry. Now listen, can you come over to my house right away and try on the dress. Mummy says she’ll do the necessary alterations this evening. We’re to go to the church to meet Angela… there’s a full-dress rehearsal laid on for three o’clock, complete with ushers and everything. We can just make it if you fly…’

Having seemingly committed herself, Charlotte gave a slight shrug to her slim shapely shoulders and replaced the receiver. Bang went her plan for a leisurely half day from the office… and she’d wanted to wash her hair, too! And furthermore, she’d have to get permission to be off on Saturday morning as well. It was all very well for Bess who lived at home and didn’t work… except doing charitable work on committees and women’s institutes with her mother. They belonged to a different income group from Charlotte who had to help support a widowed mother and did a not uninteresting but routine job as secretary to an elderly solicitor in the City! Mr. Everwell wouldn’t be a bit pleased at having to give her an extra half day although she would offer to make up time next half-day. If she didn’t he’d certainly dock her pay packet and she couldn’t afford to lose the money… not if the holiday she had planned for her mother this Summer was to materialize.

Although only twenty-two, the circumstances of her life which had forced Charlotte to be the family breadwinner ever since she left school at eighteen, had contrived to make her look older than her years. Although her creamy complexion was without lines or any marks of age, and her soft grey eyes brilliant and youthful enough, there was nevertheless a serious set to the line of her lips and a determined tilt to the curly dark head that sometimes made her look a woman nearer thirty than twenty.

This curious mixture of youthfulness and maturity gave her an attraction in addition to her natural prettiness. But it had not, however, brought romance into her life. She knew this was her own fault. Any of the young men who had tried to establish a slightly more intimate relationship at the tennis club dances she occasionally attended, or whom she had met at Bess’s charity meetings, she had immediately discouraged so that they had soon ceased to telephone for dates. Her reasons for doing this were two-fold. For one thing she had promised the father she adored that she would take care of her mother who was a semi-invalid… and with her job to keep her busy during the day and her mother to keep company evenings and week-ends, she felt she could not manage to cope with the tangles of light romantic engagements; and perhaps the more important reason was that she had never yet met a man who seriously roused her to any feeling stronger than a mild affection. This had not worried her for deep down within her, she knew that one day, like the song, he’d come along; knew she would recognize him at sight and fall in love with her whole being. Until that happened, she fought shy of becoming involved for her own and her mother’s sake.

Bess had put forward the view that if Charlotte were less attractive she would be more concerned with finding herself a boy friend! That she could afford to sit back because she knew quite well that she had only to beckon a little finger and a choice of suitors would come running! This was by no means Charlotte’s view for she did not consider herself either plain or attractive… just ordinary, but she did not try to argue with the good-natured Bess who was longing to marry her off to someone almost as ardently as she longed to be married herself. Bess, with her round friendly mischievous face was by no means lacking in attractions herself, and it amused Charlotte to see how Bess fell in and out of love as quickly as showers came and went in Spring. Every new boyfriend was the one – until about a week later, when she cheerfully admitted her mistake and set about finding the Right One as quickly as she could.

Having settled her mother comfortably in front of the television set to watch woman’s hour, Charlotte hurried round to Bess’s home. Her slight lack of enthusiasm at being a bridesmaid to a girl she scarcely knew, vanished when she tried on the dress. It was a cloudy billowy mass of palest tangerine net, beautifully cut and fitting her as if it had been made for her as well as the unfortunate girl with the appendicitis! Charlotte knew without being told that it was a very expensive dress and certainly the most beautiful she had ever worn. The two girls were also to wear tiny crowns of artificial violets and each was to carry a posy of fresh violets intertwined with orange-blossoms.

‘Oh, Charlotte dear!’ exclaimed Mrs. Hopkins, Bess’s kindly mother, ‘you look like the bride yourself. How well the colour becomes you!’

‘And Bess, too!’ Charlotte said, watching her friend adjust her own wreath. ‘Those violets look perfect against your fair hair.’

Bess grinned cheerfully and gave Charlotte a careful but impulsive kiss.

‘We must rush, darling! Angela’s sending a taxi to fetch us at ten to three… no expense spared on this wedding I can tell you. I bet we’ll meet dozens of glamorous eligible young men. There’s to be a big party afterwards and after the bride has gone, we’ll be the most important people there! Isn’t it fun?’

Even the cool Charlotte felt a tinge of excitement run through her… not because of the dance or the partners she might have… but because she knew she had never looked lovelier and it was rather fun… such a change from the drab greyness of a London city office.

They were met at the fashionable church by Angela and her bridegroom-to-be, and half a dozen morning-suited young men who were to be ushers. Angela’s brother, who was amongst these, immediately brought a little law and order into the chaos that reigned on their arrival. Soon the rehearsal was in full swing. Charlotte found that the part she had to play was quite simple and she enjoyed the afternoon almost as much as Bess, who had found time to nudge her and say that she’d really found the man of her dreams at last.

‘The usher standing by the door, darling… next to Angela’s brother… see him?’

But Charlotte did not see him. Instead, her eyes had gone to the man whom she had not noticed before, but who was now talking to the bride’s father. Surely… surely she had seen him somewhere before? She could only glimpse his profile but something in the set of his shoulders, the turn of his head as he stood in the sunlight streaming through the open church door, struck a chord of memory deep within her.

‘Bess, do you know who that is… talking to Mr. Peters?’

‘Haven’t a clue! Charlotte, will you please look the other way and see the man I’m going to marry!’

But Charlotte could not take her eyes away from Mr. Peters’s companion. It was ridiculous to take Bess’s chatter seriously and yet… yet her own heart was beating curiously fast, her own eyes were as fixed as Bess’s… on the man she knew she was going to marry!

‘I’m as silly as Bess!’ she had time to tell herself before the dark head turned suddenly towards her across the emptying pews and she saw his eyes staring into her own. Then coherent thought ceased altogether and she had to put her hand out to one of the pews to steady herself as she saw him making his way towards her. She felt panic-stricken now she knew that she had never met him before; that he was a stranger to her and that she had been staring so outrageously that he must have imagined she was trying to attract his attention. The blood rushed to her cheeks and she wished herself suddenly a million miles away. Then he spoke, his voice deep-toned and rather hesitant.

‘I’m afraid you’ll think me rather rude… when I caught sight of you just now I could have sworn we had met before. I realize now I was mistaken…’ He broke off and gave her a sudden, quick, apologetic smile.

With rare impulsiveness, Charlotte flung her usual reticence to the winds and replied:

‘As a matter of fact, I thought I had met you, too. My name is Charlotte Matthews.’

He took her hand and held it for a moment in a strong firm clasp.

‘How-do-you-do! I’m Meridan Avebury. I saw you talking to Bess just now. Are you a friend of hers?’

‘Yes!’ Charlotte said, her words a little trembly from the queer inner exhilaration that seemed to have her in its grip. ‘Perhaps we have seen one another at one of Bess’s parties?’

He led her out through the church door into the sunshine, and for a moment, stared down at her… he was six feet tall, Charlotte only five-feet-five… his brown eyes looking into her grey ones.

‘No, I don’t think so. I’m quite sure I would remember if that were so. Besides, I would have made sure of an introduction to you.’

It was a plain statement of fact the way he put it and yet the compliment was as direct as it could be. The colour heightened in Charlotte’s cheeks and she was glad that Bess came up at that moment, a fair-haired, sun-tanned young man behind her.

‘Darling, this is Jeremy Patricks… Jeremy, one of my dearest friends, Charlotte Matthews… oh, hullo Meridan! Do you two boys know each other?’

Without giving them time to answer, she rushed on:

‘Jeremy and I thought it might be fun to have a foursome this evening after all this hard work. How about you and Meridan joining us?’

Charlotte felt a swift rush of joy, followed immediately by a feeling of helplessness.

‘Bess, I can’t… much as I’d like to. I’ve left Mother alone all afternoon… I simply must go home this evening.’

She knew the man was watching her, willing her to change her mind even before he said quietly:

‘Couldn’t you possibly make it? It sounds such an excellent idea?’

She wanted to go… desperately… in a way she had never felt before about anything. If she didn’t go, she might never meet him again, and it had become the most important thing in the world that she should get to know him better.

Bess, seeing her hesitation, said cheerfully:

‘Look, Charlotte, why not bring your mother round to spend the evening with my parents? They’d love to have her and then she wouldn’t be alone. Have either of you boys got a car?’

Both men nodded their heads and Meridan said quickly:

‘I expect you’ll want to go home and change. Suppose I call about six-thirty to pick you up and run your mother round to Bess’s house. Then we can all go on wherever we’re going in my car?’

‘That settles it!’ Bess said enthusiastically.

‘Will that be all right?’ Meridan asked Charlotte.

Just this once, Charlotte thought… Mother can’t mind.

She nodded her head.

It was only later, as her mother sat on her bed, questioning her while she changed into a ballet-length evening dress, that Charlotte fully realized how crazily she was behaving.

‘But, darling, who is he? I know you said he was a friend of Bess’s but what does he do? You really know nothing about him at all!’

‘No… I suppose I don’t!’ Charlotte admitted as much even while she could not admit yet to her mother exactly how she felt about this stranger who had walked into her life and taken possession of her every thought. ‘All the same, we shall be a foursome so there’s no need for you to worry, Mummy. And as he’s calling here to fetch us, you’ll meet him for yourself. I’m sure you’ll like him!’

It did not need Charlotte’s spoken confidence to reveal to her mother how important was this date. Charlotte was behaving in a manner so completely foreign to her usual behaviour that this point alone gave her away, even had it not been for the glowing cheeks and brilliant eyes with which she returned from the wedding rehearsal.

‘She’s falling in love!’ thought Mrs. Matthews with a sudden, swift fear. ‘Maybe this is the man she’ll marry… and I’ll lose her!’

She tried to hide her fear even from herself. She was not a selfish woman… only a very lonely one since her husband had died. She suffered such ill-health it was nearly impossible for her to leave the house, especially since they could not afford a car. She did not wish to spoil Charlotte’s life by being a drag on her, yet the young girl’s companionship and love and care for her had been so complete and unstintingly given, that until this moment, she had all but forgotten that she might one day have to lose her. That was a fear she had faced only rarely, sometimes when she was having a sleepless night and life seemed at its most difficult. Then she had always comforted herself with the thought that Charlotte was not like other girls… she had few boy friends and the ones she had meant very little to her. She knew her daughter had a warm, even passionate nature, but believed it to be of the kind that awakens late. So she had managed to convince herself that Charlotte wouldn’t get married until she was at least in her thirties… and by then… well, the doctors had told her not to count on more than ten years…

‘Mother, please don’t worry. I promise not to be late. In any case, someone will have to bring you home and I’m sure Mr. Avebury will offer to bring us both back at a reasonable hour.’

Her own selfishness suddenly apparent to her in the face of her daughter’s thoughtfulness, Mrs. Matthews said quickly:

‘No, darling… there’s no need for that. Bess’s father will get me a taxi and I shall be perfectly all right. Since you are going out at all, which you do so rarely anyway, you might as well enjoy yourself properly. Be as late as you wish… but don’t forget you’re working tomorrow!’

Her reward was a hug from the slim white arms of her daughter and a whispered:

‘You are a wonderful Mum!’ which was as unlike the cool reticent Charlotte as the rest of her behaviour in the last few hours.

‘I’ll leave you to finish dressing in peace!’ Mrs. Matthews said, suddenly unwilling to face further for the moment the youthful glowing picture of her young daughter.

Alone, Charlotte sat down at her dressing-table and studied her face.

Was she really pretty? Bess always said so but then Bess made all kinds of remarks that were merely expressions of her own moods and had no foundation in fact! Was she the kind of girl men found attractive?

Her finger touched her eyebrows, traced the line of her cheek, the curve of her lips, touched the smooth skin of her neck and shoulders.

Well, at least she was not plain!

Suddenly, as she stared at her reflection, the colour flared into Charlotte’s cheeks and she covered her face with her hands, her heart beating absurdly.

How mad was this kind of behaviour… these thoughts… all because she had had a few words with a man called Meridan Avebury, about whom she knew nothing… nothing, except that his hair was dark and grew into an attractive point at the back of his neck… that his forehead was wide and deep and intelligent, and the brown eyes…

‘Charlotte Matthews… if you don’t stop day-dreaming you’ll be late!’

She finished her dressing with a sudden flurry of movement which only enheightened her colour and did nothing to smooth her nerves which seemed all on edge. When the front-door bell rang a few moments after six-thirty, she jumped so violently backwards from her dressing-table that she upset the bottle of Toujours perfume across the glass top and only just avoided it spreading to her black nylon net skirt.

As she hastily mopped up with pieces of cotton-wool, she heard the unaccustomed male tones in the drawing-room below and for an instant, she stood perfectly still, her thoughts suddenly crystallizing into a moment of stark truth. She was in love… for the first time in her life. Downstairs was the man she wanted to marry… every instinct told her so. This is why she had been waiting for so long… the man she had known with some inner consciousness was coming to claim her… to awaken her. For this she had been sometimes lonely, sometimes even a little afraid, yet knowing all along it would happen… that she would one day find herself no longer alone.

Meridan Avebury… he had a strange name. Who was he? What did he do? What kind of work occupied him? How had he lived his life all these years she had not known him? Which of the services had he served in during the war… Army? Navy? Air Force? Where did he live? What were his parents like? How old was he?

Suddenly, she smiled at the slim, eager-eyed figure in the looking-glass. She would know when she next came back to this room… she would know exactly what and who this man was. She would know whether he wished to see her again… whether her love was founded on rock or sand… whether… whether he could ever fall in love with her, too.

For a moment, she was afraid. It was not enough that she should be discovering this new person she knew herself to be… not enough to know she was no longer a girl but a woman in love as crazily and stupidly as Bess might fall in love! She wanted to be reassured that it was true… that she had not imagined it… that when she went downstairs, she would not look at him and wonder how she could have spent these last hours in so fantastic a day-dream.

‘Don’t let it be a day-dream,’ she prayed silently as she switched off her bedroom light. ‘Don’t let me fall out of love! Let him be in love with me, too!’

Then she ran downstairs and joined her mother and the man who had in the space of a few moments turned her life and her reasoning upside down.

Bess and Jeremy were dancing. Jeremy had had one duty dance with Charlotte earlier in the evening when they had just finished eating, after which he had danced consistently with a happy, excited Bess. And after one dance with Bess and two with Charlotte, Meridan had preferred to sit out and talk in the intimacy of a crowded noisy restaurant where other people were bent on their own amusement. They were no more aware of the young couple at the corner table than Meridan or Charlotte were of them.

In a brief while, Meridan had made Charlotte tell him about herself, her childhood in India with a father in the civil service whom she had loved dearly and a gay and attractive mother; how her father had contracted some tropical disease and they had been forced to come home to England where he had seen one specialist after another, gradually getting worse until at last, when Charlotte was eighteen, he had died; how her mother had suffered a stroke from the shock of losing him and recovered only partially, and how she herself had immediately taken a secretarial job to augment the tiny pension that was all they had to live on.

It had not taken long to tell these few tragic events of her life and yet he had been impressed by the uncomplaining way in which she spoke of these last five years… of her obvious devotion and sense of duty to her mother. There seemed to have been so little that was gay or full of fun for a young girl growing up.

‘Don’t let’s talk about me… tell me about yourself!’ Charlotte said. ‘I really know nothing about you at all except that you are a friend of Bess’s. I’m surprised she has never spoken about you.’

‘I don’t really know her very well!’ Meridan admit. . .