A Company of Swans

18

Harriet had been locked in her attic for nearly a month. Her clothes had been removed; she was conveyed to and from the bathroom by Aunt Louisa or those of the Trumpington Tea Circle ladies who came to take over when Miss Morton had to go shopping or merely needed a break. A doctor had been to examine her — not the old family doctor who had once recommended dancing classes, but a new man suggested by Hermione Belper — and had confirmed the Mortons’ worst fears. Pending further treatment of the unfortunate girl, Dr Smithson had given instructions for her to be kept in a darkened room and on a meatless diet to avoid over-stimulation — instructions which Louisa obeyed meticulously, feeding her niece mostly on semolina and rusks of oven-baked stale bread.

The purpose of this regime was reasonable enough: to break Harriet’s will, to make her understand the enormity of what she had done, and to confess it.

‘And then?’ asked Louisa as the days passed and Harriet remained silent. ‘What is to be done with her then?’ She had enjoyed the drama of the original recapture and imprisonment, but the daily task of keeping Harriet guarded fell on her, and the whispers in the town — the suggestion that the Mortons had gone too far in inflicting punishment — were far from pleasant.

‘We shall see,’ Professor Morton had replied. Obsessed with the idea of a grovelling, weeping daughter begging for mercy, he could think no further than Harriet’s utter subjugation.

In deciding how best to deal with Harriet, the Mortons were under the disadvantage of knowing nothing of her life in Manaus, for Edward Finch-Dutton, on whom they had relied, seemed to have disappeared. It was not Harriet’s former suitor who had informed them that she was arriving in Cherbourg, but an anonymous well-wisher who had been kind enough to cable St Philip’s from Manaus.

And Harriet would say nothing. She was willing only to apologise for having caused them anxiety by running away, and for nothing else.

‘I was happy there,’ she had said at the beginning. ‘I did nothing of which I am ashamed. It was the best part of my life and I would as soon apologise for breathing.’

And incredibly the weeks of confinement, the near-starvation, the appalling monotony — for they had taken away her books — had not weakened her resolution.

‘The name of your seducer!’ Professor Morton yelled at her on the rare occasions when he visited his daughter. ‘Assuming there was only one!’

But she had shaken her head and as day followed wretched day she neither broke down nor admitted her wrong.

Harriet endured because she had been loved by Rom. This honour had been accorded her, this ultimate benison, and she must not let them break her because to do so would be to denigrate his love.

So she kept herself sane and she did it by remembering. Not a haphazard wallowing in past happiness, but a disciplined, orderly progression through the rooms of Follina, through its gardens… along the banks of the river. Waking hungry in her cold and dismal room, Harriet, in her mind, rose from the cloud-netted bed where Rom still slept, felt the softness of the carpet beneath her feet… took three steps — exactly three — to the brocaded chair to trace the pattern of the golden fleur de lys… read the titles of the books on the low table: The Collected Works of John Donne; The Stones of Venice; The Orchid Grower’s Manual… moved to the window to draw aside the curtains and name, with the same rigorous precision she had once accorded her work at the barre, the plants that grew on the terrace beneath.

While she could do this — while she could drift in the Firefly past the bank where the otters played and see the sun bittern fly into the light — they could not touch her, and knowing she had to keep well so as to garner these memories, to make them part of her for ever, she ate every morsel of the food she was given and kept her muscles active with exercises as she well knew how to do.

And so the days passed and nothing the Mortons could do deflected her, though her stricken eyes seemed to grow ever larger in her face. Then, during the fifth week of her incarceration, she woke as usual and in her mind walked as usual across Rom’s room, drew aside the curtains, turned to cross the Persian rug so as to make her way back to the bed where he waited… and found that she could not remember the pattern of that rug. She had known it would be hard to remember, but she had studied it so carefully — so very carefully. Was it the outer border that was amethyst, with diamonds and zig-zags of bronze? Or was it the pearl-grey rim with its stylised flowers that came first? Desperate, she sat up in bed, her heart pounding. She had to remember, she had to! If she could forget one thing, she could forget it all — she could forget even Rom, and then there would be nothing left to live for in the world.

But the pattern would not be recalled. In her exhausted brain shapes and colours swam in an indistinguishable blur and whatever she did she could not reassemble them.

It was Hermione Belper who came that day to remove Harriet’s luncheon tray, and when she came down again she had good news for Louisa, who was returning from the shops.

‘She is weeping uncontrollably, Louisa — and she has not touched her food. It seems her spirit is broken at last. How thankful you must be!’

And the Mortons were thankful. But if Harriet now lay listlessly on the pillow and showed none of her former defiance, she still did not speak of her time in Manaus and she was growing so thin that it was not easy to see how she could, as it were, be ‘produced’ again in public. Moreover they themselves were being subjected to an increasing amount of unpleasantness. It was easy enough to discount the smear campaign of a woman like Madame Lavarre, but when the Provost of St Anne’s crossed the road rather than speak to the Professor, the Mortons were increasingly compelled to seek ways out of their dilemma.

It was at this point — just two weeks before the beginning of the Michaelmas term — that the Professor came home in a state of more than usual indignation.

‘Do you know who I met today? Edward Finch-Dutton! He was creeping round the walls of the Fountain Courtyard and trying to avoid me, I’m sure.’

‘Good heavens! But why has he not been in touch with us?’

‘I have no idea. Apparently he tried to bring Harriet back and it went wrong. He had a black eye and his nose was covered in sticking-plaster; I can only conclude that he has taken to the bottle. But I will tell you this, Louisa. I asked him what had made him send that second cable and he said it was because Harriet came out of a cake. In her underclothes.’ And as Louisa stared at him, speechless with incredulity: ‘That’s what he said. In her underclothes. Then he mumbled some nonsense about her perhaps not having meant any harm and bolted. I tell you the fellow was drunk; he will have to resign his Fellowship, no doubt about that.’

But the news had given Louisa her cue. ‘Bernard, don’t you think we ought to face the fact that Harriet is seriously unbalanced? I have thought so all along, but this really decides the matter. Isn’t it time we found a good institution where she can be helped? Homes for the mentally ill are extremely liberal these days: wholesome food, fresh air, basketwork… Dr Smithson knows of a specialist in London who has made a study of cases like hers. If Mr Fortescue certified that Harriet is not in her right mind, Smithson would second the diagnosis and her removal to somewhere suitable would follow automatically.’ And as the Professor still seemed to hesitate, she concluded, ‘I am thinking only of Harriet. She needs professional care and attention if she is to be healed. To refuse her that would be very selfish, would it not?’

This was a plea to which the Professor could scarcely be deaf. Dr Smithson accordingly was appealed to, and contacted his eminent colleague in Harley Street and it was arranged that Mr Fortescue would come down as soon as possible in order to examine Harriet.

After which, having got her way, Louisa was really quite kind to Harriet and sent up jam with her semolina and butter with her rusks, but for Harriet — slipping away into the shadows — these attentions came a little late.

Fate had played into Isobel’s hands in a most remarkable way. The Raimondo brothers, who had taken Harriet back to Manaus to catch the Lafayette, took the absurdly large sum she had given them, collected two girls from Madame Anita’s brothel and set off for their home town of Iquitos in Peru. The seraphic urchin to whom she had entrusted the note for Furo had been less seraphic than he appeared; he got into a fight in an alley on the way to the Casa Branca, lost the note and bolted for home. Thus Furo, waiting in increasing anxiety for Harriet, had not returned to Follina until the small hours and by the time Rom was back in the city to see what had become of her, the Lafayette had sailed.

It was thus only Henry who remained as a witness of Harriet’s return to Follina and it was he himself who had given Isobel her cue.

‘Uncle Rom will be awfully sad too,’ said Henry, blinking back his tears at the news that Harriet had decided to go and be a famous dancer, that she would not be coming back. ‘He likes Harriet; he likes her very much.’

‘Yes, he does,’ said Isobel. ‘So I’m afraid he will be extremely sad. What will make him particularly sad is that she said goodbye to you and not to him. It will hurt his feelings, don’t you think? So perhaps, Henry, it would be really kind not to tell him? Just to keep it a secret? You’re grown-up enough for secrets, aren’t you?’

Henry was. Sinclair of the Scouts, in the Boy’s Own Paper, was continually keeping secrets, some of them calculated to burn a hole in a lesser person’s breast. Aware of the child’s passionate desire to please her, Isobel was sure that he would keep his word — and if anything went wrong she could plead, naturally enough, an unwillingness to cause Rom pain. There had only remained the sending of the cable to Professor Morton — for it was not Isobel’s intention to let Harriet reappear in Rom’s life as a glamorous ballerina — and the deed was done. After which she settled down to her role as comforter.

‘You must be happy for her, darling,’ she said to Rom. ‘I met Dr Finch-Dutton at Belem and he told me that it was all that Harriet had wanted all her life. Just to dance… always to dance.’

‘We will not speak of Harriet,’ was his only answer.

Yet he accepted without question Isobel’s version of what had happened. Count Sternov, whose friendship it was impossible to doubt, had been at the Metropole just after Simonova’s miraculous recovery and had heard her offer to take Harriet to Russia. Both he and the Metropole manager had seen the ballerina depart in triumph, walking to the hansom with her arm round the shoulder of the English girl, while Miguel himself had seen Harriet go aboard with the Company.

So what had occurred was clearly what Rom had both feared and expected. Overcome by this sudden marvellous opportunity, Harriet had gone and perhaps wisely made the break cleanly without messages or farewells.

He made no further enquiries and, concealing from everyone the degree of his wretchedness and the hurt she had caused him by not trusting him enough to speak honestly of her ambitions, he pursued his plans: transferring his possessions, making provision for his Indians, issuing instructions to MacPherson concerning Stavely. He had set himself to restore his father’s house and he would do so, but the burden of loss he rolled through his days — as Sisyphus rolled his stone — seemed only to grow heavier as the grey weeks passed.

Isobel, however, did not give up hope. It was of course absurd that she should live in Paradise Farm, even with the generous allowance Rom had proposed, while he ruled alone at the Hall. The suggestion was an insult. Her place was by Rom’s side and as his wife, and now that the detestable girl was gone he would come to see this. So she changed her clothes five times a day, flirted, brushed against him ‘by accident’ and would have been surprised to learn how infrequently Rom even noticed that she was there.

Harriet had been gone for a month when, in the hour before sunset, Rom walked through the tall trees towards the Indian village, bound on business with old José. The light had slanted in just that way when he had first gone in search of Harriet and found her cradling Manuelo’s baby. He had known then really, that he wanted no children who were not hers — and suddenly the sense of desolation so overwhelmed him that he stopped and put out a steadying hand to the trunk of a tree.

At which point there entered a deus ex machina.

It entered in an unexpected form: that of a lean, rangy and malodorous chicken. Exuding the sangfroid of those reared as household pets, enjoying its customary evening stroll from the village, the bird stopped, examined the unexpected figure blocking its path, gave a squawk of displeasure — and retreated…

Leaving behind a small mottled object… A single chicken feather, to which Rom stooped and which he held for a surprisingly long time in the palm of his hand.

Then he turned abruptly and made his way back towards the house.

Henry, conversing on the bridge with the manatees, was the first person to see him. Uncle Rom looked different — the way he had looked on the first day, not all grim and shut-in as he had appeared since then — and emboldened by the change in his hero, Henry beamed and said, ‘Hello!’

‘Hello, Henry!’ Rom, ashamed now of the way he had been neglecting this endearing child, held out his hand. ‘I was just on the way to find your mother. I’m going back to Europe tomorrow; I’ll book a passage for you soon, on a fine steamer, but I have to leave at once.’

Henry nodded. ‘You’re going to find Harriet, aren’t you?’ he said with the quick insight of those who love.

‘That’s right,’ said Rom, greatly surprised.

‘I’m so glad!’ The little face was transformed with relief. ‘I’ve been awfully worried about her because I knew she shouldn’t dance when she had the measles! I went to a dancing class once and it was horrible: you go round and round very fast in slippy shoes, and if you did that with the measles you’d fall down and get bronchitis and—’

‘Wait a minute, Henry. When did you think Harriet had the measles? In the maze at Stavely?’

‘No, when she came here to—’

He broke off, bit his lip, hung his head in misery. He had betrayed a secret and now would never grow up to be like Sinclair of the Scouts.

‘When was that?’ Rom had managed to speak calmly, almost casually, but the child shook his head and cast an involuntary glance of fear in the direction of the terrace where Isobel reclined.

They had reached a trellised arbour with a stone seat, to which Rom led the little boy. ‘Henry, do you remember what it says on the mantelpiece in the Hall at Stavely? Carved into the wood?’

‘Yes, I do remember. It says: TRUTH THEE SHALL DELIVER — IT IS NO DREDE. And “deliver” isn’t like delivering milk, it’s like making you feel better. Only keeping secrets is good too,’ said Henry and sighed, caught on the horns of this ancient and troublesome dilemma.

‘Yes, it is. It’s very good.’ Rom made no attempt to minimise the seriousness of the problem. ‘Except when someone is in danger — or ill — and then keeping a secret is not as important as telling the truth.’

Henry deliberated in silence, made up his mind. ‘You see, Mummy said it would hurt your feelings if you knew that Harriet had come back and not said goodbye to you. Only, I didn’t realise she was going away because she had a basketful of presents all wrapped up in interesting paper. And she was so nice to me when I was afraid of you being my stepfather.’ He paused, flushing, but his uncle’s face was so utterly kind that Henry knew he would not be offended by anything he said and in a rush — blessed with the total recall of those who have uncluttered minds — Henry repeated his last talk with Harriet. ‘She said she didn’t have measles, but her eyes were streaming like anything when I kissed her good night and she was shivering — and the spots come later, you know’ His face grew pinched again. ‘And I’m sure she shouldn’t dance if she feels like that. If she got that thing you get after bronchitis, she could die! And I don’t want Harriet to die!’

‘She won’t die, Henry,’ said Rom. ‘I promise you!’ And as Henry gazed up at his uncle he knew that he had been a little bit silly once again. Because when Uncle Rom looked like that — so powerful and triumphant — no one could possibly die. No one could do anything except live and be happy.

‘I’m extremely grateful to you, Henry,’ said Rom, getting to his feet. ‘Indeed, I am utterly in your debt. And I don’t think it’s necessary for us to mention our conversation to your mother. Gentlemen often have private conversations of this sort among themselves. I’m leaving very early in the morning, but we shall meet in England and have some splendid times.’ And shaking Henry’s hand with gratifying formality, he strode away.

Left alone, Henry made his way back to the manatees. The carving on the mantelpiece had been quite right, he reflected. Truth did deliver you. He felt much better. He felt, in fact, absolutely fine!

Half an hour before Mr Fortescue was due from London, Aunt Louisa went upstairs to Harriet’s room to put a clean towel on the wash-stand and to change Harriet’s nightdress for a high-necked one of bleached calico. It was her own, but she did not grudge it to the errant girl, for the few but shamefully luxurious things which Harriet had brought from Manaus had all, of course, been confiscated and sold.

‘Goodness, she has got thin!’ said Mrs Belper, who had come to be with Louisa on this important day. Just returned from a week’s visit to her sister, she was startled by the change in Harriet.

‘She is thin because she doesn’t eat!’ snapped Louisa. ‘I hope you don’t think that we are starving her.’

Mr Fortescue was due at two thirty and in deference to the occasion Louisa had ordered coffee and even a plate of digestive biscuits to be sent to the drawing-room.

‘I wish Bernard could be here,’ she said. ‘But he never will miss giving a lecture.’

‘Perhaps it is as well, Louisa; it might be a little painful. After all, if the diagnosis is what we expect, it will virtually be a statement that his daughter is—’

A shrill peal of the door-bell brought both ladies to their feet and out into the hall.

Mr Fortescue was as well dressed as they expected and the gleaming Rolls-Royce in which his chauffeur waited was evidence that this Harley Street specialist was in the top rank, but he was surprisingly young.

‘I have come to see Harriet Morton,’ he announced, handing his hat and gloves to the maid.

‘Yes, indeed. We were expecting you,’ said Louisa, all affability. ‘It is good of you to come all the way from London. We have naturally been very much concerned — my poor brother has been distracted — but we really feel that an institution of some kind is the only answer. Though of course it is for you to say after you have examined her.’

Mr Fortescue did not appear to be a man of many words.

‘Perhaps you will take me to her?’ was all he said and Louisa, explaining the sad circumstances, her niece’s inexplicable depravity and the course which on the advice of Dr Smithson they had been compelled to take, led him to the top of the stairs, where she took a key from the bunch at her belt.

‘You keep her locked in?’

‘Oh, yes, Mr Fortescue. Yes indeed! We would not be willing to take the responsibility of leaving a girl of that sort unguarded.’

She inserted the key in the lock — only to find that the specialist’s lean brown hand had closed firmly over hers.

‘Give me the key if you please. And be kind enough to wait for me downstairs. I always examine patients of this kind alone.’

‘But surely that is not customary?’ Louisa was distinctly flustered. ‘Surely another person is always present when—’

‘Are you telling me how to do my job, Miss Morton?’ The voice was silkily polite but the glint in his eyes sent Louisa scuttling back downstairs.

He waited until she was out of sight and then turned the key.

The room was bare, cold, scrupulously clean. In the narrow bed Harriet lay on her back and did not turn her head.

Rom walked over to her.

He had imagined this meeting a thousand times: the happiness, the love that would flow between them, the joy with which they would laugh away their misunderstanding. Now there was none of that. A red mist covered his eyes; rage savaged him: he thirsted to kill — to take hold of the woman he had just seen and beat her head against the wall — to press his fingers slowly, voluptuously into the jugular vein of the man who had done this to Harriet.

Harriet opened her eyes. For a moment she stared unfocused at the figure bent over her. Then over the face of this girl he had believed to value her career above his love there spread a look that he was never to forget as long as he lived.

Next came a desolate whimper of pain, a fractional movement of the head.

‘No,’ said Rom quietly, ‘you’re not dreaming. I’m here, Harriet! In the flesh — very much in the flesh.’ Aware that she was on the edge of the abyss, that he must call her back very gently, he laid only the lightest of hands on her hair. ‘You’ve led me the devil of a dance! I went to St Petersburg first! Simonova’s in fine fettle, I may say.’

She could not speak yet. Only her eyes begged for the power to trust in this miracle.

‘I must say that I find that a perfectly detestable nightdress,’ said Rom cheerfully. ‘Your Aunt Louisa can certainly pick them!’

It came then. Belief. He was real, he was here. She sat up and threw herself forward into his arms — and among the frenzied words of love and agony and longing Rom caught, surprisingly, the name of a well-known London suburb.

‘You want to live in St John’s Wood?’ he asked, startled. Later it occurred to him that this salubrious district had probably saved Professor Morton’s life, for the passion with which Harriet now pleaded to be set up as a kept lady so intrigued him that he forgot his murderous rage.

‘It is an entrancing prospect, certainly,’ he said. ‘Especially the Gothic windows. However, I am not going to install you in a villa in St John’s Wood. I am going to install you at Stavely, where you will be my love, my companion and also — by tomorrow afternoon — my wife.’

‘No.’ Harriet had had her miracle. She needed no more, and lifting her face a daring inch away from his, she informed him that he was going to marry Isobel.

‘Harriet, do be quiet about Isobel. I never had the slightest intention of marrying her and if you had not been so obstinate and blind you would have seen that at once. I don’t even like her any more — the way she treats Henry would put me off for a start. In fact, in the month I’ve spent with her I’ve grown quite sorry for my brother. Now listen, I must get hold of the necessary documents and go and find your father, but I’ll be back—’

No. She was not able to be left. Her eyes grew wide with fear. ‘If you go, they’ll find some way of separating us. They’ll lock me in again and tell you I’m mad and—’

‘All right then, we’ll go together,’ he said, cheerfully matter-of-fact. ‘You can wait in the car. Get dressed and—’

‘I can’t. They’ve taken away my clothes.’

Rom gritted his teeth against a renewed attack of fury. ‘Never mind.’ He pulled a blanket off the bed, wrapped it round her, picked her up. ‘Poor Harriet, I’m always abducting you in unsuitable clothes.’

‘Good heavens, Mr Fortescue!’ Louisa, with Mrs Belper hovering behind her, was waiting in the hall. ‘Whatever does this mean?’

‘It means that I am taking away your patient immediately,’ said Rom. ‘I have diagnosed pernicious anaemia, tuberculosis of the lung and an incipient brain tumour. It is possible that I can save her with instant treatment at my clinic, but there is not a moment to lose.’

‘But that’s impossible… I must consult my brother. This is not what we expected at all…’ Louisa was entirely at a loss. ‘And the fees at your clinic would be quite beyond us.’

Rom took a steadying breath. ‘If you want a corpse on your hands, Miss Morton, and a court case, that is your affair. You have called me in; I have given my diagnosis. Now, please fetch the patient’s birth certificate at once: it is required by the governors of my clinic as a condition of admission.’

‘I told you she was too thin,’ bleated Mrs Belper.

Totally flustered, Louisa made as if to go to the telephone, only to find the extraordinary surgeon standing in front of it while still holding Harriet in his arms.

‘Her birth certificate,’ he said implacably. ‘At once.’

The Rolls had driven off and the ladies were trying without success to calm themselves in the drawing-room, when the doorbell rang again.

‘Good afternoon,’ said the obese, grey-haired gentleman standing on the step. ‘You are expecting me, I know. My name is Fortescue…’

Professor Morton was lecturing, pacing the rostrum, his gown flapping, his voice managing to be both irascible and droning; while in the front row Blakewell, a fair-haired, good-looking young man destined for holy orders, wondered if boredom could kill and kicked Hastings, who had gone to sleep and was sliding from his chair.

‘And this man who calls himself a scholar,’ rasped the Professor, ‘has the effrontery — the unbelievable effrontery — to suggest that the word hoti in line three of the fifth stanza should be translated as—’

The door burst open. An agitated College servant could be seen trying to restrain a man in an extraordinarily well-cut grey suit who pushed him aside without effort, closed the door in his face and proceeded to walk in a relaxed manner to the rostrum.

‘Professor Morton?’

‘I am Professor Morton, yes. But how dare you walk in here unannounced and interrupt my lecture. It’s unheard of!’

‘Well, it has been heard of now,’ said the intruder calmly, and the students sat up with a look of expectancy on their faces. ‘I came to inform you that I have removed your daughter firmly and finally from your house and to ask you to sign this document.’ He laid a piece of paper with a red seal on the lectern. ‘As you see, it is your permission for my marriage to Harriet.’

The Professor grew crimson; the Adam’s apple worked in his scraggy throat. ‘How dare you! How dare you come in here and wave pieces of paper at me! And how dare you kidnap my daughter!’

‘I think the less said about that the better. I found Harriet half-starved and confined like a prisoner because she tried to have a life of her own. If you would like me to tell the students of the state in which I found her, I should be happy to do so.’

‘How I treat my daughter is none of your business. Harriet is sick in her body and sick in her soul—’ But he took an involuntary step backwards, aware of a sudden menace in the stranger’s stance. ‘Who are you anyway?’ and rallying: ‘I won’t be blackmailed. Harriet is underage—’

‘Professor Morton, it is only because you are Harriet’s father that I have not actually throttled you. Anyone else who had treated her as you have done would not have lived to tell the tale. I choose to believe that you are misguided, pompous and opinionated rather than sadistic and cruel. But unless you sign this document without delay I will take you out into the courtyard, debag you and throw you into the fountain.’

The look of expectancy on the students’ faces changed to one of deep and utter happiness.

‘You wouldn’t dare!’ blustered the Professor.

‘Try me,’ said Rom. He looked down at the row of upturned faces. ‘I can do it myself, but it would be easier if I had help. If anyone is willing to help me debag the Professor, would they put up their hand?’

There were fourteen students in the lecture room and thirteen hands shot up without an instant’s hesitation. Then Ellenby, sole support of a widowed mother, shook off his moment of cowardice and also raised his hand.

‘I think you should sign, you know,’ said Rom pleasantly. ‘After all, it’s no tragedy to have your daughter installed as mistress of Stavely.’

‘Eh? What?’ The Professor peered at the document and registered the fact that Harriet’s suitor was Romain Paul Verney Brandon of Stavely Hall, Suffolk. ‘Good heavens!’

If the Professor had continued to defy him, had kept up his bluster, Rom might have felt a reluctant respect for the detestable man. But over Professor Morton’s face there now spread a look of servile amazement and awe — and unscrewing his fountain pen, he signed his name.

He was, however, not destined to resume his lecture. Rom might have left the room, but he had shown the students a lovely and fulfilling vision; he had unleashed primeval forces which were not to be gainsaid.

Blakewell rose first and even when he became a bishop he was to speak with nostalgia of this moment of release. Hastings followed — then Moisewitch, whom the Professor had humiliated in front of the entire tutorial group, took off his spectacles and laid them carefully on the window-sill. No words were necessary as every student in the hall moved as one man towards the rostrum.

‘His trousers first,’ said Blakewell. ‘Start with his trousers…’

Rom drew back the curtains and looked out on Stavely’s moonlit avenue of beeches, the silver pools of light in the meadows of the park, drank in the sharp clean smell of the air with its first touch of frost. He was back home and with every reason to rejoice. To the place he had left as a penniless and rejected youth, he had returned as master — and he had brought his future bride.

Away to the left he could see the chimneys of Paradise Farm, but no light showed from the house. Isobel was back, having sulked all the way across the Atlantic, but she had decided to remain in London and spend some of the allowance Rom had bestowed on her. Her son was with her now, but a message from the housekeeper had informed Rom that he could expect Master Henry at the end of the week. Clearly it was not going to be difficult to keep an eye on his nephew!

He stayed for a while, still, by the window, but the dreams he had had for Stavely eluded him. It was probably just reaction from the constant exercise of will, the long journey and fruitless delay in Russia, that made him feel both restless and weary. What else could ail him, after all — and knowing that he would not sleep, he nevertheless turned from the window and began to prepare for bed.

He was interrupted by a knock at the door — quiet, but not noticeably timid — and Harriet, still in her Aunt Louisa’s appalling nightgown, entered the room. At which point Rom became aware of what had ailed him… and ailed him no longer.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ said Harriet, ‘but I woke up and I wondered if I could make a request of you?’

She had folded her hands and now with a rush of expectancy he looked down at her feet which she proceeded to fold also.

‘What request would that be, Harriet?’ he asked, matching her own grave and measured tones.

‘Well, you said we were going to be married tomorrow, didn’t you? Because of the special licence?’

‘Yes, I did say that. If you wish it, that is?’ he teased.

How did she manage to look like that after the ordeal she had been through? Did she somehow consume and metabolise love, this extraordinary girl?

‘I do rather wish it,’ said Harriet. ‘I wish it like someone who has been lying in a cold grave might wish for the day of resurrection. Or like an extremely hungry lion might wish for a Christian. And I mean to be immensely respectable and wear a mob-cap and have quarrels with you about the coal bill to show how independent I am. Only there is one thing I so very much want to do, still, and it isn’t a very married thing. I know you don’t approve of it and I do understand that, but it would make me so happy because you know how interested I have always been in Suleiman the Great.’

He looked at her and felt the tears spring to his eyes, because after all she had been through she had kept the gift of laughter, could offer him what he longed for with such gallantry and grace.

‘You want to creep from the foot of the bed into the presence?’ he asked with mock severity.

Harriet admitted that this was so. ‘They weren’t abject, the odalisques,’ she explained. ‘People have that wrong. They just worked very hard at love — it was all they had.’

But Rom, aware that the time for conversation was running out, was applying himself to the practical aspects of the problem.

‘Under the counterpane or over it, do you wish to creep?’ he enquired.

Harriet’s face crumpled into its urchin grin, acknowledging a hit. Then she raised her arms as does a child who wishes to be gathered up and in two strides he was beside her.

‘We will creep together,’ announced Rom idiotically and carried her — this lightest and most beloved burden — to his bed.