Away Went Love by Mary Burchell Page A

hope.
    He shook his head dispiritedly, and Hope desperately tried to think of something with which she could comfort him. He had been terribly wrong, of course—when she was alone once more she would, she knew, experience all over again the shock of learning that he could even contemplate such a thing as he had done—but she never for one moment thought of abandoning him. For one thing, she loved him. And, for another, she felt some sort of personal responsibility because it was, indirectly, for her that he had done this thing.
    Hope sighed, and brought her thoughts back to the crux of the matter. Where could they find the money?
    “You don’t think”—she turned to him with sudden hope—“you don’t think it might be best to make a clean breast of the whole thing to the heads of your firm, and ask them—”
    Her voice trailed off at the short, grim laugh he gave, even before he said dryly, “No, darling, I don’t.”
    She bit her lip. It was getting terribly near the one unwelcome possibility.
    Reluctantly she tried to imagine the scene.
    “Richard, he—he’s a very hard man.”
    “Who?—Tamberly? I don’t doubt it. Most rich men are,” Richard added.
    “They’re nothing of the sort,” retorted Hope, unable to allow the stupid and envious generalization to pass, even at this moment of crisis. “But, anyway, that’s not the point, of course.”
    “No. The point is—what chance of success have you with Tamberly, on the strength of his personal feeling for you?”
    “Oh, he hasn’t got any personal feeling for me.” Hope explained quickly. “At least, he doesn’t even like me much, if that’s what you mean.”
    Richard smiled faintly.
    “Nonsense. He must. No one could work with you and know you, darling, without being at least a bit in love with you.”
    “Oh, yes, they could,” Hope assured him, though she smiled too at this evidence of his charming prejudice. “Errol Tamberly started by thinking me a tiresome little fool—he called me a decorative time-waster, in fact—and though I think he’s revised his opinion about my wits and my work, I don’t expect he likes me any the better for having proved him wrong. Besides”—she paused and considered the point with some surprise—“somehow we always do scrap naturally. I suppose we just resent each other in some way and can’t help showing it.”
    “But, Hope, surely you can put that aside for once,” Richard cried, and the anxiety in his tone made her feel how little her prejudice against Errol Tamberly mattered compared with the faint possibility of finding someone who would help Richard in his distress.
    “The—the only way I could approach it would be through his rather tiresome sense of responsibility towards me,” she said slowly. “He does seem to think that, in becoming the guardian of the twins, he’s also taken on some sort of responsibility for me too. He’s quite wrong, of course, but—”
    “We might make use of it,” suggested Richard, perhaps a shade too quickly, but, after all, his anxiety could be understood. “Would he believe that you could have got into debt to that extent?”
    “No,” Hope said very promptly. “And, if he did, he’d expect to see the bills. Besides, Richard, I couldn’t tell an absolute and direct lie, even over this.”
    “But it’s useless to tell him the truth,” exclaimed Richard, the faintest note of exasperation sounding through his anxiety. “As you yourself said, there’s not the slightest reason why he should lend the money to me. He’d simply turn the idea down flat, and I can’t say I should blame him.”
    “No, of course—I didn’t mean that, exactly. But I should have to put it that I and a friend were in great trouble and—”
    “Hope, that isn’t much good.”
    “It’s got to be some good,” Hope retorted obstinately. “If I go to Errol Tamberly—and—and I think I’ll probably have to—you must leave it to me to decide what I say. I can’t and