‘Not the quadrille?’ asked the slighted mother with an arch smile.

  ‘Alas a prior engagement,’ sighed Lambert, slicing away the last frail threads of their net; but he walked on with the disconsolate pair, chatting to them as they made for St Patrick’s Hall. Clinton and Theresa followed them at a distance.

  ‘Why does he come if he won’t dance?’

  Clinton shrugged.

  ‘To look around. The Castle aides de camp dance with the ones who are left out. That’s their job.’

  ‘The girls must love dancing with them.’

  ‘They dance very well I’m told.’

  ‘You know what I meant, Clinton.’

  Threading their way through the crush on the edge of the dance floor, Clinton was cornered and obliged to promise later dances to two officers’ wives. On either side of the whirling sea of tulle and muslin were little gilded chairs and, at the far end of the immense hall, a red daïs supporting the empty thrones of the viceroy and his consort. In the gallery, behind a screen of palms and evergreen, a hidden orchestra played tirelessly, only ceasing for short periods between the dances. As a waltz began, Clinton turned to Theresa with eyes suddenly grown serious.

  ‘Will you do me the honour, Miss Simmonds?’

  He offered her his arm and they set off towards the centre of the floor where the circling of the dancers was slower. He drew her close to him, and they moved off carefully at first, because of the press of couples, but soon they felt the rhythm and their bodies seemed to soften and mould together as they glided and turned, quickening as one when the tempo changed. She raised her eyes to his and felt the same tremor in her breast that was always there before they kissed. And it was like loving, this feeling that she was slipping away from herself, the room swimming vague about her, while at the centre they seemed quite still, held steady in each others arms as everything else revolved around them—chandeliers, irridescence of silk and satin, curling side-whiskers, dark dress-coats. The sad girls and predatory matrons had spun away and tilted far beneath the horizon of their circling world; and she was absorbed totally by the illusion that his movements had become hers and that his warmth and strength flowed through her with the pulse of the melody, bearing her up, carrying her like seaweed in the curve of a wave.

  Next came a polka and then a galop, sweeping the whole floor with dashing exuberance, bringing boisterous laughter and apologies as breathless couples collided, legs tangling with skirts. Clinton kissed Theresa’s triumphant happy face as they were swept together, his cheek brushing straying curls. Her movements were light and fast and her eyes flashed with confidence and vitality. Her lovely oval face and parted lips, her auburn hair, glowing warm above the dead white of her dress, drew admiration to her as she danced; eyes following them as they merged and separated from the living swell of shapes and figures.

  Later, Clinton reluctantly left Theresa talking to Lambert, while he himself returned to the dance floor to fulfil his two promises. Between the first and second was an interval of three dances. He was leaving the floor, intending to return to Theresa during this respite, when he felt a light touch on his back. A pair of dark doe-like eyes were scrutinizing him from a pale serious face.

  ‘I’m not a ghost,’ the young woman said coldly, ‘though I had to make myself ill before mama would agree to come here.’ The music had started again and people were pushing past them onto the floor. Without speaking, Clinton led the way to the quieter dining room where refreshments were being served from a long horseshoe table.

  ‘An ice, Miss Lucas?’ he murmured as they sat down at one of the small candlelit side-tables.

  ‘You may call me Sophie, Clinton.’

  ‘Champagne or claret cup?’ he asked after a silence.

  ‘Neither.’ She forced a brittle smile. ‘If Mahomet won’t come to the mountain … Isn’t it lucky my uncle’s comptroller of the household? I was sent ever so many bouquets before the ball.’

  ‘And which lucky man’s flowers did you bring?’

  ‘I threw them all away.’ Her expression was precariously poised between irony and tears. ‘Why aren’t you attending any private dances or dinners?’

  ‘I don’t care for society here.’

  ‘No sauntering down Grafton Street or skating on the viceregal pond?’

  He looked down at her mother of pearl fan.

  ‘If you came here to see me …’

  ‘I succeeded. I told you I wouldn’t give you up. Did you think I’d stop existing when you left Ammering? That’s how you’re looking at me now. What right has she got to be here, why didn’t she die or fade away when I turned my back? That’s what you’re thinking.’ She gazed at him with sudden intentness. ‘All those months and you couldn’t decide. Or was it just mindless cruelty to let me hope for so long?’

  ‘Of course I wasn’t sure.’

  She leant forward with a nervous eagerness that horrified him.

  ‘Then why should I assume you’re so certain now? If mama hadn’t tried to press you …’

  ‘It’s history, Sophie.’

  ‘I’ll tell you some more history. I wrote to your brother … asked his opinion before coming here.’

  ‘His opinion about what?’

  ‘Whether you intended to marry somebody else.’

  ‘You’d have done better to see a fortune-teller. What was his guess?’

  ‘That you had no immediate intentions.’

  Her tenacity both impressed and repelled him as he met her eyes; looking away at the jewelled comb in her black hair, he thought of the fierce fight she would have had with her parents to make them consent to this last vain effort. Very few girls would have had the courage and the will.

  ‘He said there was an attachment … some actress.’ The scorn and bitterness in her voice wounded him. ‘Were you dancing with her? I watched you both. I thought I was going to be sick.’ She paused, her anger passing. ‘I didn’t know I’d dare say as much. It’s strange … suddenly finding oneself much stronger than one ever expected.’

  ‘I’ve nothing to add to what I said at your parents’ house.’

  ‘But I have, Clinton. I said then that if we were married, I wouldn’t mind what happened if you were faithful for a few years. I’ve learnt a lot since then. Do you remember Alice Clayton? Within a month of her marriage to Miles Claremont she found out he’d kept on his old mistresses.’

  ‘Poor girl.’

  ‘No,’ she cried, ‘the whole point is that she doesn’t care. At first she was horribly upset.’ Sophie blushed and lowered her eyes. ‘Men and women are very different … Apparently Claremont was too passionate … quite brutal in fact. I can’t tell you. But don’t you see? She’s not sorry at all that there are other women. None of the poor creatures seem to last long and they make him quite tolerable to live with. She likes his company; loves him in other ways, and she has ever so much to attend to. A large house, entertaining. She’s perfectly happy.’

  ‘Like a hundred other self-deceiving wives.’

  ‘You haven’t understood. Only a woman who loves a man for her own sake rather than his, can’t accept his weaknesses.’

  ‘Alice sounds clever,’ said Clinton with a faint smile.

  Sophie was staring at him with fixed bright eyes.

  ‘It’s true, though.’ Her voice was shaking. ‘I could be as tolerant as that, Clinton. Dear God, I’ve tried to love other men … the humiliation of it. But now I’ve done with pretending. I don’t care about pride …’ Seeing tears brimming, he rose not knowing what to say; amazed that a girl so carefully brought-up could have made this proposition. He shook his head and stepped back. ‘Am I so repulsive?’ she whispered.

  ‘No, no. You deserve a man who loves you, not some squalid travesty of a marriage.’

  He was returning to the Blue Drawing Room, still shaken by this encounter, when he saw a large florid faced woman detach herself from a group and come towards him; she was his colonel’s wife.

  ‘Just in time for the quadrille, Lord Ardmore. I thought I’d been forgotten.’

  ‘On the contrary, Mrs Hammond.’

  Her shimmery blue dress was wreathed with silver gauze and studded here and there with large frosted water-lilies.

  ‘Who else is in our set?’ he asked, noticing that there were lily buds in her thickly coiled hair. The effect was grotesque.

  ‘Sir Charles and Lady Spencer.’

  ‘Splendid,’ replied Clinton, though he cordially detested his brigade commander and his wife.

  While waiting for Clinton, Theresa decided that she did not like Richard Lambert with his bright confident smile and inquisitive eyes. He would choose a general subject to talk about and then pass effortlessly to himself, his views on life and this and that; and though he could laugh at his own expense, she felt that all the time he was judging the effect he was having on her. She found particularly distasteful a kind of knowingness of expression, as if to say: you’re an artful woman to have managed to snare such an exceptional and normally dispassionate man as Lord Ardmore. When he spoke about Clinton’s merits as a soldier, these remarks took on for her the colouring of a reproach, while Lambert’s occasional polite enquiries about her own profession seemed tinged with condescension.

  When a striking débutante came up to them, Theresa was relieved and sat back glad of the diversion which Lambert’s efforts to extricate himself would provide. Perhaps he might not want to disappoint this particular young lady, whose dark eloquent eyes and flawless skin made her undeniably lovely. The girl’s dress, with its exquisitely worked pattern of birds and butterflies on the lace overskirt, was the most perfect creation she had seen that evening. Strangely the girl ignored Lambert completely, and, to Theresa’s astonishment, stood motionless in front of her, gazing with a peculiar glitter of hostility in her eyes. Then she turned abruptly to Lambert.

  ‘Perhaps, sir, you’ll be kind enough to introduce me to the lady.’

  Lambert got up with slightly elevated brows.

  ‘If I was acquainted with you, madam, I’d have no difficulty.’

  ‘Miss Lucas. Sir George Lucas is my uncle, so don’t trouble yourself about my suitability.’

  Lambert looked at Theresa helplessly. She ended his uncertainty by holding out her hand.

  ‘How do you do, Miss Lucas. Theresa Barr. Miss Lucas, allow me to introduce Captain Lambert.’

  ‘I’d like to talk to you, Miss Barr.’

  ‘Mrs Barr,’ interposed Lambert.

  ‘Can you excuse us, sir?’ said Sophie sharply.

  ‘I’m not sure that I can.’

  ‘Are you under orders, captain? Don’t worry; Lord Ardmore’s an old friend. I’ll ask him to forgive you.’

  ‘I’m most obliged. He should be back soon.’

  ‘I’m quite happy to talk to you,’ said Theresa.

  ‘As you please,’ murmured Lambert, bowing ironically to her, before walking rapidly towards St Patrick’s Hall.

  ‘Gone to tell his master,’ said Sophie. ‘I’m the sad little country thing he might have married. Did you guess?’

  She sat down next to Theresa on the small sofa. Though her voice had been controlled, Theresa saw Sophie’s hands trembling in her lap. She was gripping her white kid gloves so tightly round her fan that now and then her hands gave a little shudder. Theresa said softly:

  ‘If you think I had anything to do with …’

  ‘I don’t care whether you did or didn’t.’ Sophie hesitated, as if about to weep. ‘I’d have done anything for him. More than you could ever guess.’

  ‘If I was rich …’

  ‘So you talked about me,’ cried Sophie with sudden fury.

  ‘Lord Ardmore’s brother mentioned you.’

  ‘Lord Ardmore? Is that what you call him? A nice ring to it. Haven’t you some charming personal name for him?’

  ‘Don’t try to trade insults with me. If you’ve anything to say, say it.’

  ‘Very well. When men want to get rid of their mistresses, they buy them off. I’d like to buy you off, Mrs Barr.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not for sale.’

  ‘When he’s a beggar you may regret it.’

  The girl’s pale angry face and arrogant voice had stung Theresa, but now, as if a glass shutter had slid down across her mind, she could not think how to respond. This innocent looking skim-milk miss was trying to corrupt her; without being able to help it, she laughed in Sophie’s face.

  ‘How much would you pay, Miss Lucas?’ she asked, doing her best not to laugh again. But once more the girl’s burning eyes reached her, killing her amusement, confusing her; so that she no longer knew whether she felt pity or anger. Sophie said rapidly:

  ‘Do you love him enough to be ready to …’ She broke off as she saw Clinton looking down at her.

  ‘Go on, Sophie,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that.’ She covered her face with her gloved hands, dropping her fan; then she let out a long slow breath. ‘I don’t care, Clinton. I’d rather be hated than forgotten.’ In spite of herself, Theresa was moved by Sophie’s defiance. In the distance she could see Captain Lambert leaning elegantly against a column and thought she saw a sardonic smile. She felt Sophie’s hand on her arm. The girl said: ‘If he ever needed me, I wouldn’t try to stop him seeing you. That’s how much I love him … not for my sake but for his … to save his career, to help him to be the great man I know he could be with an unselfish woman’s support.’

  ‘All right, Sophie, you’ve said your piece.’ Clinton checked himself as if on the point of shouting at her. Theresa had never seen him as angry; and yet when he spoke his voice was soft and low. ‘Do you think fame and a million of money would please a man long if he had them only on condition he walked everywhere with a thorn in his shoe?’

  Sophie made no reply but looked at him as though he had hit her across the face. She remained very still and Theresa was stunned to see not anger or self-pity on her face but a look of humility and undiminished adoration. A moment later she walked away towards the laughter and the music.

  21

  The sky tinged with orange, darkening to copper where scarves of freezing mist obscured the sun; and already the light dwindling to dusk among the nearer trees. From the carriage windows flocks of starlings seemed suddenly to dip into sight out of nowhere and vanish as mysteriously. Hedges made ghostly white by crystals of hoar frost slid gently past as the landau rolled on.

  When Clinton had suggested to Theresa that they spend her last two days out of Dublin in the country, he had offered her no better reason than being sick of the town—his real intention being, she suspected, to give her no opportunity to run away at once if she decided to refuse him. An issue of such gravity would not be allowed to rest upon the outcome of a single skirmish. A few days earlier, Theresa knew that she would have raised difficulties; but her meeting with Sophie Lucas had produced a deep change in her. In spite of her real fears of a lasting break with Clinton, so sure had she been of his love for her that she had hardly given thought to the possibility of being supplanted soon afterwards by an actual rival. But the jealousy and determination in Sophie’s eyes had revealed more to Theresa than her own fierce possessiveness: to give up Clinton for his own sake appeared in a very different light, now that the alternatives open to him had become so starkly clear. The idea of this young girl taking her place burned Theresa with a depth of revulsion that blurred all her previous misgivings, making them seem as futile as a swimmer’s struggles against the currents of a river in full flood.

  Since Clinton had decided to dispense with the services of a coachman and drive himself, Theresa had chosen to sit next to him on the box rather than enjoy the comparative warmth of the carriage’s interior. Though swathed in rugs, the cold still reached her as darkness fell, but she had no desire to leave his side. Around them in the dim wastes, she saw the dull red glow of hearth-fires through cabin windows, and once, etched black in a low doorway the motionless figure of a man. The sky above was jewelled with a multitude of stars, uncannily brilliant in the chill night air. Looking up at them, while the carriage swayed gently under her, Theresa felt as if she were floating; their journey no longer earthbound but through the gliding panorama of the stars into realms of boundless space. She turned to Clinton as he gazed at her, and for a moment his eyes seemed to share the sky’s secret, penetrating far beneath the surface of her thoughts, ages down into her beyond the limits of her own life and birth.

  ‘Look at the stars,’ she whispered.

  ‘They make me think of death.’ He paused, sensing her disappointment. ‘I prefer the infinite in smaller doses … a grain of sand or a blade of grass.’

  ‘Do you feel no mystery?’

  ‘What you asked in your letter … Does my heart expand under the trees?’

  ‘Why be ironic? You love life.’

  ‘Too much to abandon reality for its shadow.’

  Ahead of them, the carriage lamps cast pools of yellow light on the road. She touched his arm.

  ‘What is it in us feels pleasure? Our hands, eyes, ears? Don’t we know truth with our hearts as well as our minds? Love’s proof of that … proof of what can’t be seen or understood. I want more in you than I can touch.’

  ‘My soul?’

  ‘Why not? I’m not trying to prove God’s existence. While I can feel and see, I’ve no need to explain Him. When I think of leaving you, the pain’s no simple physical hurt, but a deeper wound … a bleeding of the spirit. Don’t you understand?’

  ‘Yes, and I love you for it; nothing else.’ He was silent a long time. ‘When people without hope or consolation can sit down and weigh scruples, still cling to some soiled rag of pride in defeat or facing death, I kneel to them. To thank God for their courage robs them and us.’ He twisted the reins in his hands and sighed. ‘Perhaps I’d do better to agree with you. But I need more in my own way than I can touch. I don’t want you to love some phantom of me. I want you to love me as I am …’ At the start of a steep hill he applied the brake and checked the horses. ‘I want to be loved for the worst in me as well as the best. You think I’m a sort of chivalrous savage … self-sacrificing to a fault. It’s not so. Whoever makes sacrifices wants something for them.’