I was thinking about Sabrina when I heard her calling me.

I wondered why she did not come to my room so I went to the top of the staircase and there in the hall was Sabrina and beside her was a man.

I went down the stairs. There was something about him which seemed familiar.

I cried: ‘Can it be…?’

He turned to me and smiled. His eyes, I noticed, were of the same intense blue that I remembered.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it is. And you are Clarissa.’

‘Dickon!’ I whispered, unbelieving.

‘Returned to the home of his fathers,’ he said. Then he took my face in his hands and looked into my face.

I was immediately apprehensive. I had aged considerably and could not bear much resemblance to the girl he had known all those years ago. There were shadows under my eyes, and lines which had not been there when he had last seen me. I was long past my first youth.

And him? He had changed too. He was no longer the boy I had known. His lean, spare figure, his deeply bronzed face, the hair which was not so plentiful as it had been and had flecks of white in it. But the eyes were as brightly blue as ever and they burned with an intensity of feeling which I felt must match my own.

Sabrina was saying: ‘I found him looking at the house. He has come to see you. He went to Eversleigh and Carl told him where to come to find you. When he saw me, he thought I was you.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I thought I recognized you.’

‘There must be a family resemblance. After all, we are cousins.’

‘I am so delighted to have found you.’

We were tongue-tied. I suppose after all the emotion we had shared and the passage of years that was inevitable.

‘You have come in time to dance at my daughter’s wedding,’ I said.

‘Yes, Sabrina told me.’

They smiled at each other; and I felt pleased because they liked each other. ‘This is wonderful,’ he said.

And so it was. Dickon was back.

I suppose what happened was inevitable. I should have seen it coming. When he had gone away I had been an innocent girl, very young. Sabrina had only just been born. When he came back he found an ageing woman, one whose own daughter was just married. He would have been thinking of that young girl all through the years. She would be ageless in his imagination. Surely he could not have expected me to have remained as I was before he went away? Perhaps he had forgotten the passing of time. He would have expected a certain maturity, of course. Perhaps he thought to find me looking like Sabrina.

Zipporah and Jean-Louis had left for the house on the estate. They were absorbed in each other. The guests departed. Dickon stayed with us. I had an idea that this would be a spring like no other.

I loved Dickon. I always had, and not even time and space could change my love for him. He had begun as an ideal and he continued so. As he talked to us, I caught glimpses of the old Dickon, the Dickon whom I had loved all those years ago and who had continued to haunt my life in the years between.

I knew that he had felt the same. I knew that he had come back for me.

We talked a great deal about his life in Virginia. He made us see the forests of arctic pine and balsam; he talked vividly of the plantations to which he had been assigned. He had found a certain consolation for exile in hard work.

‘I used to count the hours, the days, the weeks, the years,’ he told us. ‘Always there was the dream of coming home.’

He had worked with cotton and, finding it interesting, had worked hard; he was given promotion; his master appreciated him, and added to his responsibilities as the years passed. In time it was not like captivity at all.

‘If I had not wanted to come home so badly, I might have become reconciled,’ he said.

The climate was benign; he had been free to ride when he wished to. He loved to see the animals—the buffalo and elk, red and grey foxes, muskrats and weasels; he loved the opossums and often saw black bears in the Appalachians.

He used to fish in Chesapeake Bay for sturgeon and trout as well as cod and King mackerel. ‘We would catch the fish and cook and eat it right there in the bay,’ he told us.

In time he had been taken into his master’s house and treated as one of the family.

‘You never married,’ said Sabrina.

‘No… but there was the daughter of the house. She was a widow with a young son. She reminded me of you, Clarissa. When her father died I took over the management of the place. We might have married… but always I had this dream of coming home.’

Those were happy days. I felt uplifted. He had come home for me and all the years when I had thought of him, he had been thinking of me.

I looked at my face in the mirror and wondered how different I was from that young girl. I had aged considerably. But so had he. Who does not in thirty years? We were mellowed, mature now… but that should be no barrier to understanding.

I thought: He will ask me to marry him. It is the happy ending to our story. ‘And so they lived happily every after.’ How often had I read that line to the children. It always satisfied them. So it should. It was the only satisfying ending.

Those evenings in the twilight were the most precious moments of the day:

Sabrina was always with us. I insisted, although sometimes I think she avoided us. I wanted it to be known that Sabrina would always be with me. I knew Dickon would understand that. He always included her in the conversation and if we went riding, Sabrina would be there.

He told us how, when his term was over, he had felt impelled to stay until he had earned enough money to come back. He had felt an obligation to stay until the widow’s son was old enough to take over. Moreover, he did not know what had happened to his family’s estates, and he had wondered whether after the debacle of the rebellion in 1715 they had been confiscated. He had ascertained that they had not and that a distant relative had been looking after his interests while he was away, so he had a considerable estate in the North.

‘I am a free and independent man now,’ he assured us.

A week or more passed. Dickon had said nothing to me. Sometimes we went for long walks together and occasionally he would go alone. Once I saw him returning with Sabrina. When I asked if she had enjoyed the walk she told me she had and that she had met Dickon by chance.

Sabrina had changed. She looked younger than her thirty years; there was a new bloom on her cheeks. I had become used to her but it was as though her beauty struck me afresh.

I should have known. I should have seen it. Heaven knew, it was obvious enough. But I had to hear them before I accepted it. I had been living in a false world of my own making. It was not real. I should have seen it.

I was coming downstairs and they were in the hall. They had just come in. I was about to turn the corner of the staircase, which would have brought me into view, when I heard her say: ‘Oh, Dickon, be careful. What are we going to do?’

He said: ‘Clarissa will understand.’

I stood there, holding the banister, listening. It was almost as though I knew what they were going to say before they said it.

‘All those years she has never forgotten. She waited for this, you know. I know her well… none better. She loves you, Dickon. She always has.’

‘I love her too. I always shall. But, Sabrina, I love you… differently. Clarissa is a memory from the past. You are here… the present. Oh, my beautiful Sabrina…’

I turned and went quietly back to my room.

Fool! I thought. Didn’t you see it? Didn’t you know? You are an old woman and he has been dreaming of a young one. You have lived your life. He came back to you… for a dream… and he found Sabrina.

That it should be Sabrina was a twist of the knife in my wound.

Could I see them happy together while I myself would be longing for all Sabrina had?

How could I bear to lose them both!

They acted well. They attempted to disguise their feelings for each other, but it was becoming more and more obvious. But perhaps it seemed so because I knew.

Sometimes the desire came to me to do nothing… to wait. How could he ask Sabrina to marry him when I was there? This was the reason for his hesitation, for the haunted shadows in his eyes.

I struggled with myself. It was not easy. I had waited so long, dreamed too much. I could not give him up. Perhaps he would realize that. I could not see him married to Sabrina. How could I live near them and see them together, and yet how could I bear to lose them both?

You have your daughter, I told myself. Zipporah, who would live nearby and always welcome you to her home. You have your interests here.

No, I could not bear it.

I wrestled with myself. I knew what I ought to do, but how hard it was.

I awoke one morning with a strong resolve in my heart. I was going to be unhappy whatever happened. It was inevitable that I should be. I loved Dickon. I wanted Dickon. I wanted to start a new life with him. I wanted Sabrina, too; we had been together so long. What could I do?

I could see only one way. It was hard, but I took it.

I told Sabrina I must talk to her. She came to me uneasily and I said; ‘Sabrina, I am in great difficulty. It’s about Dickon.’

Her eyes opened wide and I could see the excitement in them.

‘You know how I have always thought of him, dreamed of him.’

‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘I know.’

‘But things don’t always turn out as one thinks they would. It’s a mistake really to expect to be able to take up things where you left them off years ago.’

She was looking at me disbelievingly.

‘Do you mean…’ She gulped a little. ‘Do you mean that you don’t… care for him in the same way?’

I lowered my eyes. I dared not look at her and tell this blatant lie, which was what I must do.

‘I am fond of him. He has grown into a fine man… but I have grown used to my freedom. I want things to go on as they have been. I want to stay mistress of myself.’

‘I understand, Clarissa.’

‘I thought you would. But how can I let him know…’

‘He will understand, I’m sure.’

She was wanting to leave me, to go to him, to tell him what I had said.

I stood up. She was beside me. She flung her arms about me.

‘Oh, I do love you, Clarissa,’ she said.

How happy they were! Sabrina had changed. She seemed to have flung off every one of those inhibitions which had plagued her from childhood. She was in love and because she was no longer very young, she loved with a great intensity. Dickon adored her. That was obvious. He was a little worried because he was some thirteen years her senior.

‘What is age?’ I asked. ‘You are ideal for each other.’

My seemingly delighted attitude at the way things had turned out was a perpetual joy to them. They kept looking at me as though they were grateful and so delighted just because I did not want to marry Dickon.

I would smile brightly to hide the fact that I was brokenhearted. It was no mean feat, and I was rather proud of myself. It was only when I was alone in my bedroom that I allowed the mask to drop and sometimes wept a little in the darkness of the night.

The end of a dream!

There was nothing left of it now. I must settle down and perhaps when Zipporah’s children began to arrive I should find some solace in them.

Sabrina and, Dickon were married quietly at the village church and then she left with him for the North.

It was one night in the July of that year when Charles Edward Stuart landed in one of the small Western Isles of Scotland with only seven men and a few hundred muskets and broadswords, and the money lent to him by the King of France. He had come to wrest the crown from our King George the Second and claim it for himself. It was like a pattern to me. It was when the Prince’s father had come that Dickon had been involved and sent to Virginia. Now Dickon was back, and here was the son come to fight for what he considered to be his right.

Everyone was talking about the new insurrection. We had had thirty peaceful years with little mention of Jacobites, but this seemed a serious threat.

Proclamations were issued. Rewards were offered for the capture of Charles Edward Stuart. In Scotland they called him Bonnie Prince Charlie because he was said to be young and handsome.

When visitors came to Clavering they talked of nothing but the Jacobites.