Away Went Love by Mary Burchell Page B

I won’t depart from the truth further than I can possibly help. I may not like him, but he’s a perfectly truthful and upright man himself, and I refuse to tell him lies.”
    Richard was silent and for a moment he pressed his lips together as though he found Hope’s particular brand of honesty rather trying in the circumstances. Then his good nature and his sense of gratitude evidently reasserted themselves. His face cleared and he kissed her.
    “You’re right, of course, dearest, and you must handle this thing your own way. For me the amazing thing is that you’re willing to help me at all. Almost any other girl would be furious and reproachful at being faced with a situation like this. No one but you would understand how it came about. But you do see, Hope, don’t you?—I daresay I’ve been unutterably stupid and—wicked, if you like—but it was because I wanted to be able to give you something really worthwhile. I swear it was. I wouldn’t have taken the risk for anything else on earth.”
    “Yes, I know.” She returned his kiss eagerly, though her eyes were troubled. “But, please, Richard, don’t ever again think things like prosperity and luxuries and so on matter to me beside having you safe and—and honest.” She flushed a little as she brought out the last word, but her own uncompromising sense of honesty refused to allow her to call Richard’s lapse anything but what it was.
    He made a slight face, but he said quite steadily: “All right. I’ll remember—just as I shall remember the lesson this whole thing has been. You needn’t worry about it ever happening again, my dear.”
    She flung her arms round him and hugged him gratefully for this assurance. For the first time that evening she felt she had her old familiar Richard back.
    “When are you going to make the attempt?” he asked, at last taking up his neglected cup of coffee.
    “Tomorrow,” Hope said promptly. “He comes to the Laboratory on Mondays and I shan’t wait a moment longer than I need.—Oh, Richard, don’t drink that. It must be cold.” She hastily provided him with fresh coffee, though he protested with a smile that she bothered about him too much.
    “I probably shan’t get a chance of speaking to him privately until the end of the afternoon,” Hope went on, thinking aloud and making her arrangements as she did so. “He isn’t the kind of man to let you bring up private matters during official hours, so he would consider the whole thing more—tolerantly”—she felt that was too optimistic a word as soon as she had uttered it—“if I went to see him after hours. More as the sister of the twins than as an assistant in the Lab., if you know what I mean.”
    “Yes, I know.” Richard nodded his approval.
    She thought he was waiting to hear just how she meant to tackle the problem, but as she really had no idea herself at that moment, she said as much quite frankly.
    “I’ll think it over very carefully,” she promised. “But a lot will have to depend on his mood and—and his first reactions.”
    “I leave it entirely to you,” Richard told her, and though he smiled, his eyes said so plainly that his fate was practically in her hands that Hope felt more than ever responsible for bringing off her effort successfully.
    For the short time longer that he stayed Hope devoted herself to trying to cheer and reassure him. He needed it — badly. She could see that. And in trying to raise his hopes she raised hers temporarily.
    After all, Errol Tamberly was a very rich man—he did seem to entertain some sort of guardianly feeling towards her—he might be persuaded to help a friend of hers, so long as she could represent herself as being personally involved as well.
    Not until Richard had bade her an affectionate goodnight and gone did Hope begin to remember the exact terms in which Errol Tamberly had spoken of Richard the previous day. Certainly she would have to conceal the identity of the “friend who needed