“What do you mean, you don’t like my friendship with him!”

“He is not a good man. In fact he is a very wicked man.”

I saw the hard look creeping over her face. The tenderness of a few moments ago was fast disappearing.

“You hated him from the first moment in the Exchange,” she said.

“I hated him before that. I had met him before.”

“You didn’t say so.”

“Did he?”

“No.”

“He was in Venice before you were born … and I think at the time of your birth.”

“Why?”

“He was there … adventuring, I suppose. Doing what he has done all through his useless life.”

“How can you say his life is useless? He has done many things. He was once in the army.”

“I am sure he looked very pretty in his uniform.”

“Please do not sneer at him.”

“He is a wicked man. He tried to abduct me in Venice. Leigh thrashed him. He bears the scars still. That is his life. He seduces girls when he can … preferably young and innocent ones.”

“You are so behind the times, dear Priscilla. You have lived too long in the country.”

“Unlike you who have been in Town for a week or so.”

“I understand him,” she said earnestly. “He has told me so much about his life. Oh, yes, he has had adventures. There have been lots of women. They chased him, you know, and he couldn’t hurt their feelings by refusing them when they were so persistent. But now he has finished with that.”

“Since when?”

“Since we met.”

“Are you telling me …”

She interrupted: “I am telling you I love him and he is in love with me.”

“He is in love with your fortune. Has that occurred to you?”

“He has never mentioned my fortune.”

“He has mentioned it to me.”

She stared at me blankly. “He … has spoken to you!”

“Yes,” I replied, “he wants your fortune. He appears to be wealthy, but he has to keep up appearances and that requires a great deal of money. Yours will be useful.”

“This is so silly.”

“On your part, yes. On his, it is quite clever.”

“How you hate him. Is it because I love him?”

“No. It went back before that.”

“Because he once liked you?”

“He doesn’t like anyone but himself, Carlotta. And he is so besottedly in love that no one else matters.”

“So you have seen him, and because you thought he would tell about Venice you thought you ought to tell me first.”

“Yes, that might be so.”

“You told him, when you were in Venice, that you were going to have me …”

“I did not tell him. I had no conversation with him … in Venice. I was dragged away from a masked ball. Fortunately Leigh was at hand and rescued me.”

“Then who told him?”

“He discovered somehow … I never knew how. He had people who worked for him perhaps. I never found out.”

“And you hate him for knowing it?”

“Not for that … for other things.”

“Well, you will have to stop hating him because I am going to marry him.”

“No, Carlotta. It’s impossible. You are too young for marriage. Good heavens, child, you’re not fifteen years old yet.”

“Many people have married at fifteen. Princesses … queens … always do. As for you, you may not have married, but it would have been more acceptable to society if you had been.”

“It’s a different case.”

“How? You loved my father. I love Beau.”

“He is so old.”

“So you think I want a silly boy?”

“He must be at least thirty years older than you are.”

“I don’t care if he is fifty years older. He is the most exciting person I have ever met, and I am going to marry him.”

“No, Carlotta, you are not. You cannot marry without your parents’ consent.”

“Considering I have only just discovered who my parent is that seems a poor argument to put forward. You have only just acknowledged your relationship.”

That hurt me. As if I had not wanted to claim her all these years!

“Carlotta, do understand. Everything I do is for your sake. You cannot marry this man”—I clutched at some respite—“yet.”

She responded at once. “How long would you expect us to wait?”

“Till you are sixteen.”

“It’s too long.”

“A year then,” I conceded. “Six months at least …”

She appeared to consider that.

Time, I thought. Time will help. As long as she does not rush into this there may be hope.

“All right,” she said, “perhaps we could wait for six months.”

I felt exhausted and desperately unhappy.

The very worst which I had feared had happened. But at least she knew now. That was like a burden lifted from my shoulders.

I went to Harriet and said: “I have told her. She knows now.”

Harriet nodded. “That is as well,” she said.

“And now, Harriet, I want to go back to Eversleigh. I don’t want another day here.”

She looked at me with that understanding which came to her at rare moments.

Then she said: “We will leave tomorrow.”

The next day we began our journey home. Carlotta looked sullen and scarcely spoke to me. At least, I thought, she will not see him for a while. Surely Harriet will not ask him to the Abbas, and I shall certainly see that he does not come to Eversleigh.

We arrived first at the Abbas, and I was hurt when Carlotta said she would stay there for a while and come over to Eversleigh later.

I went back alone.

I knew that I should have to tell my mother about Carlotta’s birth. The secret was out really, and I wanted her to hear it first from me.

She was a little concerned when I arrived. She said I did not look well. Had I had too many late nights? I told her how I had sprained my ankle and she insisted on calling Sally Nullens to look at it.

Sally prodded it and shook her head and said it was all that gadding about. But she could not really see anything wrong with it, and to satisfy her and my mother I promised to rest it every day,

My mother followed me into my bedroom and that gave me the opportunity I needed to be alone with her.

I began as I had with Carlotta. “I have something to tell you.”

She was all concern immediately. “What is it, my darling?”

The gentleness of her voice brought sudden tears to my eyes. I hastily blinked them away. I said: “I am afraid this is going to be a shock to you. I have hated keeping it from you but I was afraid to tell.”

She looked startled. “Surely you are not afraid to tell me anything?”

“I was only afraid of causing you pain.”

“My dearest, are you ill? Please tell me quickly. Can’t you see how you’re frightening me?”

“No, I’m not ill. It’s not that. Something happened to me long ago. I had a child.”

She stared at me incredulously.

“Carlotta is my daughter,” I said quickly; and I told of what had ensued on my night on the island with Jocelyn and of its aftermath.

“Oh, my dear, dear child,” she cried, “you should have come to me. I was the one who should have looked after you.”

“Harriet had this idea.”

“Harriet!” I saw the lights of anger in her eyes. “Harriet would interfere. You and I should have gone away quietly to a little English village in the Midlands … or the North … somewhere where they didn’t know us. Harriet! Venice! That is just like her.”

“I was very grateful to her. She helped me so much, and she pretended that Carlotta was her child.”

“It was crazy. Melodramatic in the extreme.”

“It was better than having the child put out with a foster mother, which is often done in such circumstances.”

“I would have arranged something. We could have adopted her. I would have seen that she was brought into the household.”

“I know you would have helped me, but it seemed better to do it that way then. I told Carlotta about it when we were in London.”

“And Leigh?”

“Leigh knows. He knew before we were married. I told him.”

“Thank God for that! I shall tell your father.”

“I doubt whether he would be interested.”

“But of course he will. Carlotta is his granddaughter. You are his daughter.”

“He has never been the slightest interested in me.”

“Of course he has. It is just his way.”

“Then tell him if you wish. It is a relief that you know.”

“So this is why Carlotta has come into money. It’s from her father’s family.”

I nodded.

She reached for my hand and held it fast. “Oh, Priscilla, when you were little, we were so close.”

“Because my father resented me.”

“He didn’t resent you.”

“He just ignored me. I was a girl and he wanted a boy who looked just like he did. I always knew it. It did something to me. I used to like to go to Harriet’s where Gregory was always so interested in me. He used to show me pictures and tell me stories about them. One day I said to him, ‘I wish you were my father.’ And he said, ‘Hush, you mustn’t say that.’ And I said, ‘Why not? It’s true. We are supposed to tell the truth.’ And what do you think he said to that? ‘You mustn’t tell the truth when it hurts people.’ Then I said, ‘My father would never be hurt because I didn’t want him for a father, because he didn’t want me anyway.’”

She put her arms about me. “I didn’t know you cared so much about him,” she said.

“I don’t care about him.”

“Oh, but you do. My sweet daughter, you do care about him. You should have come to us with your trouble. Oh, how I wish you had come to me!”

“I suppose I might have done. But Harriet seemed the best one to confide in and she was so interested at once and so was Gregory.” Then I was laughing, a little hysterically perhaps. “You seem to care more that I went to Harriet than that I had a child when I was fifteen born out of wedlock.”

“Never mind,” she said, “it is all done with now. I’m glad you told me. Carlotta is my grandchild … like dear little Damaris. There must be no more fretting, no more secrets. We have to forget the troubles and learn to be happy. This has been worrying for you, and is worrying you still. I can see it in your face.”

But how could I tell her the real reason for my worry? How could I ever tell her what happened while she lay in a fever in a Dorchester inn?

She told my father that night.

He said nothing to me about the matter. I did catch him once or twice looking at me intently, as though he saw me in a different light. I could imagine that he was thinking that his daughter, whom he had scarcely noticed, was a woman after all. She had perhaps inherited something of her father. She had had a lover when she was in the schoolroom; she had borne his child.

I fancied that he was a little more interested in me than he had been before. But he was as aloof as ever.

Christmas had come, and as usual Harriet and Gregory, with Benjie and Carlotta, were to spend the holiday with us. I was eager to see Carlotta again and deeply hurt when I received her cool greeting. She was blaming me for having shown a lack of understanding about her love affair.

The house was decorated in the usual manner—holly and ivy and some other green plants. The carol singers came and Harriet devised a play in which we all took part on Christmas Day.

Not a word was said about Beaumont Granville, and but for Carlotta’s coolness to me I should have thought he had been forgotten.

I noticed my father watching Carlotta with a certain twitch of the lips which indicated amusement. I supposed he was proud to have such an attractive granddaughter.

I felt a great longing for Leigh who had been absent so many months. He was still on the Continent where the King was deeply involved in the matter of the Spanish Succession, as Louis the Fourteenth was trying to secure the crown of Spain for his grandson. This was of importance to England and to Europe, and William kept troops in Holland. Leigh was in command of one of the companies and Edwin of another. We did not know from one moment to another when fighting would break out, but at least they were temporarily not at risk.

I thought a great deal about my marriage with Leigh. It had never been completely satisfying; yet I loved Leigh and Leigh loved me. I knew that I was to blame.

I could not forget Beaumont Granville. So often when Leigh embraced me I would see the mocking face of that man, and the beloved body of my husband would seem to change to that other. Beaumont Granville had not only bruised and humiliated me on that night; he had done so forever. That was the price I had paid for my father’s life.