‘I’ll tell you when you’ve finished,’ she murmured, sitting beside him again. As she took his hand, the wry smile, that had seemed engraved on his face, faded.

  ‘When I was ten, he left us for the best part of a year. I took it worse than mother. The other women had finished it for her. After a time, I think he revolted her. That didn’t worry him though. One day he came home, quite out of the blue, and announced he was back for good. If I’d been older, I don’t suppose it would have surprised me much. After all, what does every nobleman want sooner or later? Years later, mother told me he didn’t beat about the bush. Either she agreed to try and give him the legitimate heir he wanted, or he’d divorce her. I’m sure he would have done, if she hadn’t given in. I didn’t know what was going on, but I’d have been blind and deaf if I’d not realised how miserable she was. I pleaded with father not to upset her any more. The first couple of times he kept his temper. After that he hit me whenever I said a word about her. There’s an aphorism about it being harder for a man to forgive the person he wrongs, than the person who wrongs him. At any rate, I forgave, but he didn’t. Now, I suppose I can see the humour in it. In effect I was begging him not to give her the child who would disinherit me. My innocence must have made his guilt worse. After Clinton’s birth, I didn’t really exist in his eyes; even though I did get better at shooting and managed to ride passably. I knew there wasn’t going to be enough money for both of us to go into the army or get equal shares of anything, but the gap in our ages softened the disappointment. I got over it after a while; but … and this is the strangest bit—I went on thinking that one day I’d win back his good opinion. I used to sit imagining him saying that he knew how sad he’d made me and wanted to make it up. I went on making excuses for him, trying to please … Then they separated. Mother and I were sent to Ireland—father had a small estate there—and Clinton stayed on at Markenfield. Father kept him most of the time. He spent a few months a year with us in Ireland. That went on a year or two; then I came to London. Father died in a shooting accident when Clinton was eighteen. The coroner said it was an accident. It looked like suicide to me from what I heard. Who knows? I hadn’t seen him for five years. Clinton got all the land and property; we share a family trust, which is just about the only reason we still see each other. News filters through from time to time. A while ago he bit some high class whore’s leg and was taken to court by her. He covered himself with glory in China; was lucky to get out alive. He nearly caused a scandal with a cabinet minister’s wife a year ago. An active sort of life …’ He shrugged and stared at the floor.

  ‘How strange,’ said Theresa, ‘and now you’re the one with the whip hand. I wonder how you’ll use it.’

  Esmond rose and held out a hand.

  ‘I’m tired and it’s late.’

  She seemed on the point of asking another question, but instead she nodded and took his hand.

  *

  The following day, Esmond did not go to the city, but took Theresa and her daughter Louise to Greenwich Fair. He had kept the outing a surprise till the last moment; but, as with most of his surprises, the careful planning was soon evident. The picnic, bottles of chilled wine, and all the other requirements for the day, had all been stowed away in the landau before he made his announcement.

  Louise was precocious for eleven, but the experience of driving through the streets in an open carriage with a liveried coachman on the box was still enough of a novelty to delight her. Often she tried to seem unimpressed by the trappings of her new life, and the result was a juvenile sophistication that made Theresa cringe. Later, alone with Theresa, Esmond would say that he found the child’s gaucheness touching or innocent. Her positive views, many of which had first been uttered by her grandfather, usually made Esmond laugh. Unaccustomed to children, he had no preconceptions about what she already knew, or what she might want to talk about; and this meant that he rarely spoke to her mechanically or with condescension. At first Theresa had half suspected that he might be trying to win over Louise as a matter of policy; but later, she had revised this opinion. He seemed quite simply to enjoy giving the child pleasure.

  In his immaculate frockcoat and silk top hat, Esmond always looked out of place in places of popular entertainment: as if he had lost his way and ended up mysteriously in a circus tent or fairground without knowing quite how. This was the impression Theresa got that afternoon at Greenwich, watching the trapeze artists, and the caged lions and tigers from Wombwell’s Menagerie with him. Apart from a definite disinclination to have his fortune told, and an equal aversion to visiting the booths which housed the freaks and prodigies, he seemed to enjoy himself. The main event of the afternoon was the ascent of a richly painted hot-air balloon high above the gingerbread tents and hucksters’ stalls.

  At home again afterwards, drinking hock and seltzer in the principal drawing room, while Louise chattered to Esmond about the fair, Theresa was troubled by the undermining guilt that had rarely been entirely absent ever since she had refused to give Esmond a positive answer about marriage. He had assured her many times that he cared nothing for the social position he had thrown away by having her live with him. Yet this had not made her feel better. Considerate to a fault, it would be typical of him to conceal his regrets. Just as he would inevitably conceal any losses in the city that he suffered as a result of scandalous rumours. She was fond of Esmond; admired him. Louise was capivated; Theresa’s father had frequently told her that she would be the greatest fool in the country if she lost her chance of marrying Esmond. And yet, she could not steel herself to decide.

  At twenty she had married because she could not endure days, or even hours, away from the man she loved. Her husband had been poor, and arrogant as only the young and ambitious can be. From the start he had made it plain that neither love nor marriage would ever be permitted to hinder him in his pursuit of fame as one of the great actor-managers of the day. Illusion or not; just a glance or a touch had made her heart race and her breath come fast. She had accepted him without thought for what had gone before and what would very likely follow. Long before consumption had killed her husband, Theresa had recognised that the real life of romantic love, after its first bright soaring, could be a poor twilight thing, doomed by the false images and expectations that had once sustained it.

  Now, in her early thirties, she told herself she had finally left that delightful and delusory world where love is always true, and always going to last. Never again, if she had any sense, would she grant handsome youthful men all desirable qualities simply because she delighted to look on them. And Esmond after all was a striking man, and not yet old. He was not frivolous or vacillating; he had principles; was loyal. Though distinguished, he never sought, as many actors did, to use conversation as an opportunity to impose his personality and trumpet his achievements. She had come to like his long angular face and heavy-lidded eyes, which perfectly reflected his sardonic humour. His low quiet voice, which had at first seemed a little monotonous, now appealed to her; just as his formality and shyness had come to do. Often she was sure she loved him. So why subject him to suspense which his kindness made cruelly undeserved?

  At times she very nearly relented, but never reached the point of no return. Before she did, from out of her restless searching past came ghosts of faces—not more than three or four, and none of them extraordinary at first sight, though undeniably attractive in their ways—but each one, for a brief month or two, had once been magically transformed and made beautiful beyond expectation. And choice, resistance, reason had all been swept away like gossamer. When she thought of this, Theresa could not escape the difference between such devastating changes and her slowly altering perception of Esmond’s qualities. In truth, he had acquired rights of possession almost without her realising it, by patience and the kind of imperceptible encroachment, which, given time, can establish rights of way to the most unyielding hearts.

  Perhaps in three months she would know whether such things mattered; whether a love built so consciously could justify the sacrifice of an independence not easily won. Her other fears were harder to define. Sometimes she wondered whether his refusal to be demanding or possessive was quite as reassuring as she had once thought it. His ability to maintain such close control of himself, when deeply committed and involved, often struck her as uncanny. A man who trusted a woman, and praised her as a paragon of every virtue, was imprisoning as well as flattering her; for how could she ever disillusion a person who thought so well of her? There were times when she felt obliged to resemble his exalted picture; not making a scathing remark, not saying what she thought, but acting out involuntarily the gentle role his kindness had cast her in.

  Theresa and Esmond dined early that evening, as they always did before she left for the theatre. As dinner drew to a close, Theresa reminded him of the weeks before she had agreed to live in his house. With an exhausting provincial tour just finished, and another looming close, she had been tired and dispirited. Nor had she been happy about Louise, who had been sent away to board at a convent school, when a dearth of leading roles in London had forced Theresa to work with touring companies. Often too downcast to express much pleasure at seeing Esmond, Theresa had been amazed that he continued to visit her when he got so little in return.

  After the butler had set down a bowl of fruit and decanters of port and madeira, Theresa began to speak about a particular afternoon when she had been even less welcoming than usual, and had asked him point blank what he thought he achieved by coming.

  ‘I’ll never forget what you said,’ she continued, snipping off some grapes with a pair of silver fruit scissors. She looked at him, past a vase of roses between them on the shining table. ‘Do you remember?’

  He cupped his chin in his hands and thought for a moment: a man completely at ease.

  ‘I suppose I said something about finding it enough just being with you.’

  She shook her head and watched him, but he added nothing.

  ‘You said you came so that I’d think about you a little after you’d gone away.’

  Esmond smiled ruefully.

  ‘Did I specify what you were meant to think?’

  ‘No, you said that didn’t matter.’

  He adjusted a white cuff where it left the sleeve of his embroidered smoking jacket and raised his eyes.

  ‘Well, you have to admit that any thoughts are better than no thoughts.’ He shrugged apologetically. ‘Perhaps it wasn’t very manly of me.’

  ‘I did sometimes wonder why you put up with me.’

  ‘You mean most men would have had too much pride to go on?’ Although he said this lightly, Theresa knew that he was curious what answer she might give. She looked at him intently.

  ‘What do you think, Esmond?’

  ‘A man’s never the best judge of male conduct.’

  She sipped her wine and watched for the tell-tale brackets of irony at the corners of his mouth.

  ‘Is that modesty or evasion?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘Just the truth,’ he returned without any trace of amusement. As usual he had effortlessly sidestepped what might have been a revealing conversation. After a long silence, during which he began calmly to peel a pear, Theresa said: ‘I wonder who the really confident man is—the one who sees a woman he wants, and snatches …’ She plucked a rose from the vase on the table, crushing the flower and closing her fingers on the thorny stem, ‘… or the man who patiently waits his moment and very slowly reaches out ..?’

  Esmond had lowered his eyes for a moment; looking up again, he saw an undamaged flower in the palm of her hand.

  ‘A good scene for a play,’ he murmured.

  Theresa dabbed her fingers on her napkin, leaving a few small spots of blood.

  ‘If the heroine didn’t mind making herself a pincushion.’ She placed the two flowers beside each other on her plate. ‘Aren’t you going to answer?’

  ‘If I’ve got the question straight. Which shows greater confidence in courtship—sudden action or a waiting game?’ Theresa nodded. ‘I’d say the first, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t.’

  Esmond raised his hands.

  ‘Of course the circumstances …’

  ‘Our circumstances?’

  ‘In that case,’ he laughed, ‘definitely the first.’

  Theresa’s green eyes narrowed a little.

  ‘Didn’t it take a little confidence to see me again and again, to devote hour after hour to what looked hopeless? I don’t believe it ever occurred to you that you might fail.’

  ‘I might have done if I’d tried to force the pace. Too much of a risk.’

  ‘And there wasn’t a risk in waiting your moment?’ she cried. ‘Lots of people used to say I was impetuous and brave because I didn’t do much looking before I leapt. They were quite wrong. I couldn’t bear the uncertainty of not leaping … I was too scared to wait. The right moment might never come. I might get bored with him, or he could change his mind about me …’ She paused and said almost imploringly: ‘You do see that, don’t you?’

  ‘Do you want me to say that I only pretended to be vulnerable before you came here, that I never had any doubts?’ For the first time he sounded both pained and angry. ‘If I accept your argument, how should I understand what you’re doing now? Aren’t you waiting? Making me wait? Taking the risks you couldn’t bear?’ He pushed back his chair and smiled to himself. ‘I’m afraid my dear, in matters of confidence you’ve always had the advantage.’ The clock on the mantelpiece struck the quarter. ‘Perhaps you ought to go?’

  Theresa nodded dumbly. This was not the first time an attempt to ease her conscience had left her feeling worse than before. Nor could she in any way blame him for what she had brought upon herself.

  *

  When Esmond was at work in the city and Louise doing her lessons with her governess, Theresa often felt bored and listless in the museum-like tranquility of her lover’s Italianate mansion. Idleness gave her time to read and think, and yet she often wished she was not left so much alone in the day. But, ostracised by Esmond’s city friends, and knowing he would dislike it if she were to invite theatre people to the house, there seemed no help for it. She might have minded less, if she had been expected to do more for herself. But with everything she could possibly need already in the house, and a dozen servants in readiness to bring whatever she might require, there was scarcely any reason for her to go out. Apart from occasional excursions in Esmond’s landau, her career survived as her only link with what she thought of as the ordinary world.

  At four o’clock, Louise finished with her governess, and Theresa usually spent the rest of the afternoon, until Esmond’s homecoming, with her daughter. After sitting for hours in the formal elegance of the main reception rooms, Theresa liked coming to Louise’s small room with its wallpaper of red flamingoes on dark green and its tables and shelves cluttered with pottery animals and pert-faced china dolls. Less pleasing was a brightly painted plaster statue of the Virgin surrounded by unlit candles; for though Theresa had herself been brought up a Catholic, her daughter’s religiosity sometimes struck her as excessive. When Theresa entered, Louise was sitting cross-legged on the bed reading a book. Theresa sat down next to her and asked what she would like to do. Ignoring the question, Louise looked at her intently.

  ‘Do soldiers go to hell for killing people?’

  ‘I don’t think everything your nuns told you should be ….’

  ‘Never mind,’ the child went on impatiently, ‘they must be cruel to kill people; you can’t deny that.’

  Theresa looked at her in bewilderment. Used to extremes of gaiety or moroseness, she still could not always judge which to expect.

  ‘Why are you so interested?’ she asked.

  Louise swung her legs round and jumped off the bed. She laughed and began to pirouette about the room, her short white dress and petticoats whirling out around her and her red hair flying.

  ‘When you don’t tell me things, I feel ill. Will you feel ill if I don’t tell you?’

  Louise’s eyes looked even larger than usual in her pointed elfish face.

  ‘I doubt it,’ Theresa replied with a smile. Louise tiptoed closer and whispered melodramatically:

  ‘He’s coming. That’s why I’m interested.’

  ‘Who’s coming?’ The child executed another derisive piroutte.

  ‘Him of course. The lord … the viscount, silly.’ Theresa remained silent. ‘Didn’t you know?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘When, when?’

  ‘Tomorrow evening. How did you hear?’

  ‘With these,’ said Louise pointing to her ears. ‘The servants tell me everything … except whether we’re going to see him.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’ll be in bed.’

  ‘I’ll watch from the window.’

  ‘I don’t think Esmond would be very pleased if …’

  ‘Esmond’s never cross with me. You said he’d refuse to let me ride in the brougham with Miss Lane when it’s not being used, but he didn’t.’ She ran over to the window. ‘I’ll hear his carriage and I’ll look out.’ She lifted the net curtain and pressed her face to the glass for a moment before turning quickly. ‘Will he wear his uniform?’

  Theresa squeezed her hand affectionately.

  ‘Yes, and his sword will be dripping with blood.’