‘No one would believe it,’ I told her. ‘No, it is better for them to suspect me than you. You have your life before you. You are young. We do not want scandal clinging to you. However false it is proved to be, there will always be some who insist that it is true. Lance knows the truth. That is all that matters.’

Lance came in with a new stole. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘it only remains for you to appear wearing it.’

‘What if the stole-maker talks… as the coachman has?’ I asked.

‘We must risk that,’ said Lance.

‘Oh Lance, you take too many risks!’

The news was soon being circulated. The stole-maker had lost no time in spreading the news that she had made another stole for Lance, which was an exact replica of the one found in Sir Ralph’s bedroom.

Lance came in looking pale and very serious. I had never seen him look like that before. His eyes were glittering, his lips tightly set together.

He said: ‘I’ve called Blaydon out.’

‘What do you mean?’ I cried.

‘He insulted you. He insulted me. He said you were Lowell’s mistress. There were several people there and… I challenged him. We are meeting in Hyde Park tomorrow morning.’

‘No, no, Lance!’

‘It has to be. I couldn’t stand by and let him insult you.’

How like him that was. He would always obey the rules of society. To him it was the only gracious way of living. He would risk his life because he considered it was the only honourable thing to do.

‘What does it matter what they say of me?’ I cried. ‘You and I know it is untrue.’

Lance’s reply was: ‘I shall be meeting him tomorrow morning at dawn.’

I whispered: ‘What is it to be?’

‘Pistols,’ he said.

‘And if he kills you…?’

‘Luck is always on my side.’

‘And if you kill him?’

‘I shall aim for his legs. It’ll teach him a lesson if I put a bullet through one of them. He’d recover and perhaps regret he said what he did.’

‘Lance… stop this. It’s not worth it.’

‘It is worth it to me,’ he said; and there was that about the set of his lips which told me he would not diverge from his purpose.

‘Please don’t do it, Lance,’ I pleaded. ‘Let’s leave London. Let them say what they will. What does it matter to us? We know the truth. It’s agreed that Sir Ralph was responsible for his own death. No one is accused of foul play. It is so easy. Let us slip away. Scandals die down.’

‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘I shall defend your honour. It is the only thing I can do in the circumstances.’

‘It is not. There are other things. It is a silly code that doesn’t fit in with reality.’

‘It means something to me, Clarissa. Leave this in my hands. I will make him repent. He shall eat his words. I will not have your name sullied.’

There was no persuading him.

I did not tell Sabrina. She would have been frantic with remorse. I kept from her the fact that both the stole-maker and the coachman had talked. She did not go out, for which I was thankful. She had not seen Reggie either. I was sure she could not bear to think of him now for he would surely remind her of that terrible scene with his father.

I did not sleep all night. I wanted to go with Lance to the park, but he would not allow that.

‘You must not be there,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back with you soon. Then I promise you we’ll leave London. We’ll go to the country and take Sabrina with us. We’ll take Zipporah and Jean-Louis and forget this nightmare.’

It was dawn when he left the house in the company of Jack Etherington, a friend of long standing, who was to act as his second.

I sat at the window, waiting…waiting…

I was there when they carried him in. He was bleeding profusely from a wound in his side. I scarcely recognized him. He looked so unlike the jaunty man I had known with the insouciant smile, who had never really taken life seriously.

He had to take it seriously now, for I feared he was about to leave it.

‘I’ve sent someone for a doctor,’ said Jack Etherington. ‘We’d better get him to bed.’

The moments seemed to drag interminably. Lance was looking at me, trying to speak. I bent my head down so that I could hear him.

He said: ‘It was the only way. Understand, Clarissa. I was too slow. He got me first.’

‘The doctor will come,’ I told him. ‘You’ll be better then.’

He smiled, and as he did so I saw the blood on his lips, and that frightened me more than seeing him lying there.

The doctor came. He shook his head gravely. The bullet was too deeply embedded. He could not remove it. Besides, Lance had lost too much blood.

There was no hope and there could only be an hour or two left to him.

So Lance, the gallant gentleman, the exquisite dandy, the inveterate gambler, was dying, and his death was typical of the way he had lived. It made me bitterly angry to think of how he had thrown his life away… uselessly, unnecessarily. But that was Lance.

I heard Jack Etherington say that Blaydon was preparing to get out of the country quickly. That could only mean that he knew he had killed Lance.

Lance lingered for a few hours, and during that time he was lucid and talked to me a little. I told him to preserve his breath but it seemed to comfort him to talk.

‘Oh Clarissa, my Clarissa,’ he said. ‘I loved you always, you know. Still, it wasn’t what we looked for… not quite, was it? There were shadows between us… I was the gambler. I couldn’t stop. I wanted to… for you. I know how you hated it. But I went on… and on. It was between us, wasn’t it… the barrier…? There’ll be debts, Clarissa. I would have paid them… in time… out of winnings.’

Later he said: ‘For you there was Dickon. You never forgot him, did you? I knew he was there. A shadowy ghost in our house… at our table… in our bedchamber. Those were the shadows between, Clarissa. But it was good… all the same, it was good.’

I kissed his lips and his brow. He smiled faintly.

I bent over him and said quietly: ‘Lance, it was wonderful:’

And he closed his eyes and passed away.

THE RETURN

IT WAS NEARLY TEN years since Lance had died. I was completely shattered by his death; so was Sabrina. I saw the old fear in her eyes which I had detected all those years ago when Damans had died.

‘What is it about me?’ she cried to me. ‘Why is it that I am fated to bring disaster? There was my mother. I was indirectly responsible for her death. And now… Lance. If I had not thought of marrying Reggie, I should never have gone to that house that night. I should not have left the stole behind, and Lance would be alive this day.’

‘It is not your fault that things happened the way they did,’ I insisted.

‘But why me? Why should I be the one every time to bring disaster and death?’

‘You saved my life. Don’t forget that. I never shall.’

‘Oh, Clarissa, I’m so unhappy. There is a terrible guilt on me.’

‘No,’ I cried. ‘You must not feel this. Be sensible, Sabrina.’

The task of bringing her out of that terrible gloom was mine, just as it had been all those years ago, and I felt more than ever that our lives were inextricably woven together. I was closer to her even than to my beloved daughter Zipporah.

Zipporah was soft and feminine and yet strangely enough more equipped to take care of herself than Sabrina was… she had her friendship with Jean-Louis and I think, in her heart, was more fond of him than of anyone else.

Sabrina did not marry Reggie. After that dreadful night she could not bear to be with him. It reminded her too much. Poor Reggie was heartbroken. He went abroad to some members of his family—in Sweden, I think. But Sabrina had done something for him, I was sure. She had restored a certain confidence to him, but perhaps that was partly due to the fact that his father of whom he had been in such obvious awe, was dead. However, he went out of our lives; I sold the house in Albemarle Street and we settled in the country. I decided we would live there quietly, away from the social scene, although, after the manner of such affairs, the scandal of Sir Ralph’s death was soon forgotten.

During those ten years Priscilla and Leigh had died and Uncle Carl came home to take over the management of the Eversleigh estates. Occasionally I went to see him, but it was a sad business now that Arabella, Carleton, Priscilla and Leigh were no longer there.

The old generation passed on; the new ones were coming up. I myself was now forty-three years old and Sabrina herself was thirty. People were amazed that she had never married. Such a beautiful young woman, they said of her. She had had her admirers, of course, but I was sure that contemplating marriage brought back to her too vividly that scene in the bedroom, and always she shied away from it.

We were together so much, it seemed as though we knew each other’s thoughts, and what we wanted now was to live in peaceful security in the country. It suited us all and we did not miss the house in Albemarle Street. We threw ourselves into the life of the country; we entertained and were entertained by people we knew, who were not always those we had known in Lance’s day. There was no gambling at our house—except the occasional game of whist which was played merely for amusement. I had a stillroom and interested myself in the garden, particularly in growing herbs. It was the sort of life I had been brought up to in Eversleigh and although I was not ecstatically happy I was serene and at peace.

I was delighted to see the bond between my daughter and Jean-Louis grow stronger with the years. It was taken for granted that they would marry in due course. They were eager to do so but Jean-Louis wanted to be sure he could afford to keep a wife first. Jean-Louis was very independent. He knew the story of his mother’s deception, of course, and I think that made him more determined than ever to stand on his own feet. He had always had a great interest in the estate and before Lance’s death had learned a good deal about it from Tom Staples who was Lance’s very excellent manager. When Lance had died, Tom had managed for us with Jean-Louis’s help; and when Tom died I offered the job to Jean-Louis and he accepted it with alacrity. As there was a pleasant house that went with the job, he would now have a home of his own.

That was what he had been waiting for. I knew that he and Zipporah would now marry.

They were happy months before the wedding. Zipporah, Sabrina and I spent long hours refurnishing the manager’s house. It was good to see my daughter so happy and I had no doubt that she had chosen the right man, one whom she had known and loved throughout her childhood. They had had the same interests, the same upbringing. I did not see how the marriage could fail.

I wished that Lance could have been there to see our daughter’s happiness.

It was the beginning of the year 1745. I had said Zipporah should have waited for the summer. ‘June is the month for weddings,’ I added.

She had opened those lovely violet-coloured eyes very wide and said: ‘Dear mother, what does the time matter!’

She was right, of course; so the wedding was to be at the beginning of March.

‘Spring will be in the air,’ Zipporah reminded me.

I thought how wonderful it was to be young and in love and about to be married to the man of one’s choice. My thoughts went back to Dickon and once again I was wondering what my life would have been like if I had married him.

It was absurd to go on dreaming after thirty years.

The day before the wedding arrived, the house was full of the bustle of preparation; the smell of roasting meats and baking pies and all sorts of preparation filled the house. The guests began to arrive. Zipporah had wanted a traditional wedding with blue and green ribbons and sprigs of rosemary.

I was taken back all those years to the day I had married Lance. I remembered the haunting uncertainties which had beset me and how, when I had stood at the altar with Lance, it had seemed as though Dickon was at my side, watching reproachfully.

Soon Sabrina and I would be alone. It would be strangely quiet without Zipporah and Jean-Louis. I should miss my daughter’s bright presence greatly. But she would not be far away and I should see her often. And Sabrina and I would be together. I was always uneasy about Sabrina nowadays. I thought she should marry and have children. That would have been the life for her.

I wondered often whether she regretted not marrying. She took solitary rides. I wondered then did she brood on all that marriage might have offered; was she beginning to think her life was wasted? Now that Zipporah was getting married, did I detect a certain wistfulness in her eyes?