Marianne's Marriage Of Convenience. Lynna Banning
Читать онлайн книгу.
“Of course not,” she said shakily.
Of course something is wrong! In exactly twenty-four hours I am going to promise to spend the rest of my life with someone I scarcely know. Anyone with an ounce of intelligence and a lick of good sense would be frightened half to death.
He reached over and lifted the salt shaker out of her hand. “Then how come you just salted your coffee?”
She bit her lip. “Oh. Well, perhaps I am a bit unnerved. Actually—” she lowered her voice “—I am, um, well, I am getting downright scared.”
“Thank God,” he muttered. “I was beginning to think getting married didn’t matter enough to you to ruffle even one feather.”
A choked laugh burst out of her mouth. “Oh, I have a feather ruffled, all right,” she said in a shaky voice. “It isn’t every day a woman gets married.”
Lance quickly switched their coffee cups and signaled the waitress. “Could you bring me another cup of coffee?”
The woman studied the full cup of coffee at his elbow. “Something wrong with this one?”
“I...um...I accidentally added too much...sugar,” he said. “Wedding jitters, I guess.”
The waitress grinned at him and whisked the cup away.
“Thank you,” Marianne murmured.
Lance blinked. An unprompted thank you from the queen of orders that must be obeyed? He found himself staring at her, and his heart gave a little jump. Did he really know this woman at all?
“Marianne?”
“Yes, Lance?”
“I have something to ask you.”
Her face changed. “Yes? What is it?”
“Marianne, what is your middle name?”
Her eyes widened. “My middle name? It’s Jane,” she said. “I was christened Marianne Jane. Why on earth is that important?”
Jane! It was a simple name. Unaffected, straightforward and honest. “It’s not important, really. I was just curious.”
He addressed his fried chicken, but all during their supper he could think of nothing else but Marianne’s middle name. Jane. He liked it. He liked it a lot.
Then she startled him with a question of her own. “Lance, what is your middle name?”
Oh, God, he’d do anything to avoid telling her that. The waitress saved him by bringing a fresh cup of coffee and setting it down in front of him. He stared at it.
“Lance?” Marianne persisted. “I asked you a question.”
“Yeah, I heard you.”
Her hand hovered over her cup. “Well, what is it? Your middle name?”
He grimaced. “Rockefeller.”
“What?” she cried.
Every diner in the crowded restaurant stopped talking and stared at them. After a long, awkward pause, she leaned toward him. “What?” she repeated in a whisper.
“Not the rich Rockefeller,” he whispered back. “The poor one.”
“I didn’t know there was a poor one,” she murmured.
“Oh, yeah. Your Great-Uncle Matty was rich. My great-uncle was poor. Ignatius M. Rockefeller. Ever heard of him?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Neither has anyone else. Great-Uncle Iggy died in a gold mining accident in Montana thirty years ago. He didn’t have a dime.”
She started to laugh and the buzz of conversation in the dining room resumed.
“Marianne, what’s so funny?”
“You,” she sputtered. “Me. Us. We’re getting married tomorrow and here we are, asking each other about our middle names.”
“Yeah. Maybe it’s because we’re both a little bit nervous about tomorrow.”
“Oh, Lance,” she whispered. “I am more than just a ‘little bit’ nervous. I have to confess I am a lot nervous!”
He reached across the table and covered her hand with his. He was apprehensive, too. But never in a million years would he admit that to Marianne.
After supper they climbed the stairs to the second floor and stopped before the door to Marianne’s room. Lance cleared his throat.
“Tomorrow...”
“Yes?” Marianne looked up expectantly.
“Well, uh, tomorrow I guess we’re getting married.”
“Yes. Are you getting cold feet?”
He slid his gaze to the closed door. “Nope. Just thinking ahead. Tomorrow we’ll only need one room, and I was wondering, um, well, whether you wanted to move into my room or...”
“Oh.”
He pressed on through a dry mouth. “My room just has a single bed, and I noticed that yours has a...”
“Oh,” she said again. “Yes, I see.”
“See what?” he ventured. Suddenly he wondered if Marianne knew the first thing about being married, that after tomorrow they would only need one bed. At least he assumed they would need only one bed. Or did she have some kind of funny idea about marriage that she hadn’t told him?
“I realize that when we’re married we will need only one hotel room,” she acknowledged. “That is obvious.”
“Oh, yeah. Obvious.” It was also obvious that one bed and two people meant... He frowned. Did she really understand the implications of only one hotel room and only one bed? Marianne was a lot of things, but she was not dumb.
But it did make him wonder.
“Occupying one room instead of two will save us some money,” she said. She dug in her reticule for her room key, stuffed it into the lock and turned the knob. The door swung open, and once again he glimpsed the double bed in the center of the room.
He stopped dead. Jumping jennies, it was the bride who was supposed to be nervous about getting married, not the groom!
She looked up at him. “Lance, are you... Well, I mean, are you absolutely sure you want to marry me?”
Sure? Hell, no, he wasn’t sure. And neither was she if she had any smarts. But a promise was a promise.
“Yeah, I’m sure. I’ll meet you at the church tomorrow, Marianne. Three o’clock, right?”
“Yes, three o’clock. Good night, Lance.”
Before he could reply, she disappeared inside and closed the door. He stood stock still for a long minute, shaking his head. Was he imagining it, or did Marianne now not seem anxious or scared or even the least bit ruffled, as if getting married was something she did every day, like washing up the dishes? Well it sure wasn’t something he did every day! His nerves were strung up tight as a new barbed wire fence.
Still shaking his head he moved down the hall to Number Seven and unlocked the door to his room.
* * *
At half past two the next afternoon Lance slowly made his way toward the small white-painted church that sat on top of the hill at the far end of town. Puffs of frothy white mayweed and swaths of golden buttercups carpeted the ground, and three large maple trees shaded the building. It looked like a picture in a storybook. His pulse sped up.