“Oh,” she said blankly. Then she shrugged her shoulders and reminded me so much of the occasions when I had discovered her prancing into the room—the first discovery of deceit which should have warned me. “Well,” she went on. “It’s the way of the world.”

“Your way, I know. I hope such behaviour is not general.”

“So now you hate me. Why should you? You have another husband now.” She smiled. “Let us forget the past, Arabella. I hated deceiving you. It made me so unhappy. It was just that I fell so madly in love that I couldn’t help it. But it’s over now.”

“Yes,” I said, “it’s over and now you have caught Uncle Toby.”

“Caught him! He was the angler. I was the little fish.”

“A fish who would only be caught if she wanted to be, I’m sure.”

“I’ve changed, Arabella. I’ll admit I let myself be caught.” She got off the bed and, going to the mirror, looked at her reflection. “I’m no longer quite so young, Arabella.”

“No,” I said bluntly.

“Nor are you,” she retorted sharply. Then she laughed. “Oh, Arabella, it is good to be with you. More than anything I have missed you. I’m so excited to be here. No one can turn me out now, can they? I’m a legitimate member of the household. I have the marriage bond to prove it. Harriet Eversleigh, of Eversleigh Court. There are only two people standing in the way of my becoming Lady Eversleigh. Lord Eversleigh himself and your son Edwin.”

“As my son is but seven years old I am inclined to think your chances are slight.”

“Of course. But it is nice to feel near, you know. Particularly when you have been a hardworking actress—and I’ll admit that times have been hard sometimes. To be able to say it’s quite unlikely but …”

“Stop it!” I cried angrily. “You are saying that if Edwin were to die …”

“I was only teasing you. How could Toby inherit? What made me feel a little jubilant was that he has made Carleton step aside.”

“I think this is a rather unpleasant conversation.”

“We are rather outspoken in the theatre, I’m afraid.”

“Then you will have to change now you are at Eversleigh Court.”

“I will, Arabella. I promise you. Dear Arabella, don’t be angry with me. Let us be friends. I want that so much. I have missed you. When anything unusual or comical happened, I always used to say to myself: ‘I should love to tell that to Arabella.’ I can’t bear that you should be cold to me.”

“In the circumstances how can you expect anything else?”

“You’ve changed, Arabella.”

“In the light of my discoveries, wouldn’t you expect that?”

She sighed. “I suppose so.”

“Now I will leave you. If you need anything, pull the bell rope and the maid will bring it.”

I turned and shut the door. My heart was beating fast. Something dramatic was certain to happen now that Harriet was in the house.

I went back to the drawing room where Matilda was sitting in the window, looking out.

“Oh, Arabella,” she said. “I don’t like it. How could Toby have done this?”

“He’s so enamoured of her. She is very attractive.”

“I suppose so. I shall never forget her coming to Villers Tourron, and how she suggested the play. It seemed such a good idea at the time and I was so pleased. But how it turned out! She took Charlotte’s lover. You can see how Charlotte feels about her being here. The poor girl was quite put out. I do wish she would be more amenable.”

“I have been intending for a long time to arrange some parties for her. I want her to meet people. I am sure it would be good for her.”

“You are a dear soul, Arabella. Such a comfort. I never cease to be grateful that you have become one of us. But this Harriet. Oh, how could Toby have done this to us!”

“It was I who brought her in the first place so I am to blame rather than he.”

“And having a child and going and leaving him with us as she did.”

I slipped my arm through hers. I was thankful that she did not know the real story. I wondered what her reaction would have been had she learned that Leigh was her own grandson.

“We have to accept it,” I said. “I daresay we shall grow accustomed to her being here.”

“You’re such a comfort,” said Matilda fondly.

Carleton and I discussed Harriet’s arrival when we were alone in our bedroom that night.

“You must be watchful of your old friend, my darling,” he said. “I wonder what she is planning now.”

“I think she must have fallen on lean times. So perhaps she is revelling in the comfortable position she has brought herself to.”

“Just at first perhaps. Then she will be looking around for mischief.”

“Perhaps she has grown out of that by now.”

“I’ll wager she never will.”

“How could she come here!”

“She didn’t know that you were aware of the part she had played with Edwin.”

“But she knew you did.”

“She wouldn’t care about me. She would regard me as a fellow sinner.”

“I told her I knew. It came out. I had to.”

He nodded. “I would have expected you to. You could never hide your feelings. My dear, honest Arabella.” He came over to me and put his arms about me.

“We will be on our guard,” he said. “And now … let us forget her.”

So Harriet was once more with us and this time she was in her rightful place. She had become an Eversleigh—one of us.

Uncle Toby’s pride in her was touching. His eyes followed her; he was bemused as though asking himself how such a glorious creature could possibly have married him. She had aged a little, although she concealed this with artifice and it was only occasionally that it was noticeable. Then I saw that there were light shadows under her eyes and fine lines about her mouth. But she would always be outstandingly beautiful and everyone must admit that.

It was amazing how she settled in. That Matilda was cool to her did not affect her. Nor did the fact that she had been my late husband’s mistress. Her manner of shrugging these facts aside was disarming.

She was very eager to see Leigh, and when I took her to the nursery he was with Edwin. She looked from one to the other, not knowing which was her son.

Both boys regarded her with some sort of awe.

“You’re a stage actress,” said Leigh. I suppose he had heard the servants talking.

“You’re Uncle Toby’s new wife,” added Edwin.

She told them they were both right, and very soon she was telling them about the stage and the plays she had acted in and they were clearly fascinated.

She had lost none of her charm. Uncle Toby was her adoring slave and that was easy to understand, but when I saw her exert it over the boys, I knew that she had lost none of her gifts and I remembered how little Fenn had adored her.

What was almost incredible was that I found myself being caught up in the old spell. My resentment was gradually weakening. Although I still thought of her and Edwin together now and then, it no longer angered me. She made a great effort to win back my friendship and she was gradually succeeding.

She had a gift of narrative and it was not long before I was hearing about her adventures.

“I knew it wouldn’t last with James Gilley,” she told me. “But I had to go. What else could I do? What life could I have given Leigh? I had to think of my baby. I knew that you would look after him and that with you he would have a good life. So I forced myself to part with him. It was a wrench. You don’t know how I suffered …”

I narrowed my eyes and smiled at her.

“You don’t believe me. I understand. I don’t deserve your trust. I can see how you feel. But Edwin was so persuasive and I was half in love with him. He wasn’t good enough for you, Arabella. I used to tell myself that and it would salve my conscience. I used to say if I was not the one, there’d be someone else. Better for Arabella’s sake that I should be the one.”

“That’s an odd way of looking at it.”

“I thought at first he would marry me, Arabella. I think he would have if he’d not been so weak. But he had always done what he was told and what the family expected. Then when I realized that he was going to marry you, it had gone too far to stop.”

“You were so deceitful, Harriet.”

“I know. It was forced on me. You know how I have had to battle. Nothing came easily to me. I used to tell myself: Once you are married to a man who can keep you in comfort then you can repent your sins and start to be a good woman.”

“So you are now embarked in that path of virtue?”

“I am. Arabella, I assure you I am. It can happen you know. Look at Carleton.”

“What about Carleton?”

“What a rake he was and now he’s reformed. He is a model husband now, I am sure. He glances neither to left nor to right. His eyes are firmly fixed on his Arabella.”

I looked at her sharply. Was she laughing at me? Was she hinting at something?

She read my thoughts. “No, I mean it. He’s turned into the devoted husband. Well, now I shall turn into the devoted wife.”

“I am glad to hear it. I should hate Uncle Toby to be hurt. He’s such a darling.”

“I agree with both those sentiments. You must admit I have made him a happy man. I shall keep him so to the end of his days. Oh, he was so good to me. He used to come to the playhouse whenever I was playing, and when I heard who he was, naturally I pricked up my ears. I was Roxalana in The Siege of Rhodes when he first saw me. He came backstage afterwards, and you can guess how excited I was when I heard he was Toby Eversleigh. I asked him a good many questions about his family when we supped together, and over the wine of which he partook more freely than I did, I heard of you and what was happening here at Eversleigh Court.”

“And decided to join us.”

“Not just then. I had to wait until I was asked. It was after I was Carolina in Epsom Wells that he was so deep in love with me that he had reached the pestering stage. He was different from others. He spoke of marriage right from the first. Of course I was reluctant. What a situation! And I told him, No I could not think of it, and the more I said No the more determined he became. Then I made my little confession …”

“When you were sure of him, of course.”

“Of course, and I had to forestall Carleton whom I wouldn’t have trusted to keep quiet. And he said no matter what I had done, he loved me. I was the most beautiful woman in the world. He wanted me to marry him and so on. And I thought: To go back there … to live under the same roof as Arabella … You may not believe it but those were some of the happiest days of my life at Congrève. I enjoyed them. I loved little Fenn and Angie and Dick. You remember the play we did? And those Lambards. Wasn’t it fun? I wanted to recapture all that. Besides, I wanted the standing of a married woman. I could have gone higher. Oh, yes, I’ve had lovers. The King noticed me one night. He would have sent for me but the plague came and the theatres were shut. Then there was the fire and after that there was Moll Davis and now Nell Gwyn. Young girls really. When I was their age …”

“You would have outshone them all.”

“Youth! How wonderful it is! I never did like things that didn’t last, and there’s nothing more perishable than youth.”

“You were still young enough to capture Toby.”

“Toby’s an old man. I was wise to choose an old man. It’s one way of keeping perennially young. When he is sixty I shall be …” She smiled at me mischievously. “Still in my thirties. Quite a girl in his eyes, you see.”

Yes, she was winning me over. I was already forgiving her.

But I should always be wary.

The autumn came in wet and blustery. One day Lord Eversleigh, who had been to London, returned with a shivering fever. He was wet through to the skin and had come from the inn where he had spent the night, riding throughout the day in the heavy rain.

Matilda was most distressed to see him. She set the maids scurrying for warming pans and got him to his bed. He would be all right in a few days, she insisted, and he should have known better than to get wet through and stay wet all those hours. He knew very well it was bad for his chest.

I had rarely seen her so anxious—and not without cause. Lord Eversleigh developed a cold and in a short time his lungs were congested and there was a hushed pall of anxiety hanging over the house.

Carleton had been in London with the King, who was still interested in the Roman finds, but he hurried back to Eversleigh. He was too late to see his uncle alive.