Meridon

36

Two days later I received a letter:

Dear Sarah,

I cannot tell you how sorry I am that I should have been away from home when you were ill and that in my absence your marriage took place. I understand from Penkiss and Penkiss that you have consulted them as to the legality of such a marriage and they have told you, and confirmed to me, that the marriage is legal. I feel deeply unhappy that I was not available to help you at that time. It is as if I had lost your mother all over again to serve you so badly.

I can offer you little consolation except to say that I do indeed believe that your husband may steady now that he is married, and that if he does not, he is well used to having his estate run by a woman. You may find yourself in the position of being responsible for the running of both Havering and Wideacre estates and you will find that work rewarding and enjoyable.

It would have been my wish that you had made a marriage of choice, for love. But I believe that you yourself had little wish for a ‘love marriage’. If that were the case then no arranged marriage could have been more suitable, if you and Lord Peregrine can agree. I know you liked him when you first met him, it will be my most earnest prayer, Sarah, that you continue to enjoy his company and that he treats you well. If there is anything I can do to assist you in any way, I beg you will ask me. If you two should not agree, I hope you know that whatever the world may say, you may always make your home with me, and I would provide for you.

I hope you forgive me for not being able to protect you from this marriage. I would not have left the country if I had known how ill you were. I would have come to London to see if I could serve you. Regrets do nothing, but I hope you believe that mine are sincere; and when I think of your mother and the trust she placed in me, my regrets are bitter.

Yours sincerely,

James Fortescue

PS. I have just this day heard from Will Tyacke. He tells me that he gave you notice that he would not serve under Lord Peregrine and he writes to offer his formal resignation which will take place at once. This worry I can help with. I shall advertise at once for a new manager to take his place. He will be sadly missed by his friends on Wideacre but perhaps a new manager to start with the new squire is advisable. Will has only just seen the notice of your marriage, apparently he did not know you were unwell. He has taken a post in the north of England and is leaving at once.

I read the letter through several times, sitting at the mahogany table in the parlour, the noises from the street very loud in the room. I was sorry James was so grieved that he had not protected me against the Haverings’ marriage plans. I could shrug that off. No one could have predicted that I would fall ill. No one could have foreseen that I would get well again. If I had died, as everyone had expected me to do, then there would have been little harm done. The Wideacre corporation, the great brave experiment of Wideacre would have been ended under a new squire, either way. It was bitter indeed that I should be persuaded of the rightness of running an estate as if the very poorest villager’s life was of value at the very moment when I had put a new man in the squire’s chair. But James was right, I would be the mistress in my house, the land would be run as I wished, and I would run Wideacre as Will had done. I made a sad little face. It would be a different place without him.

I opened the letter again and re-read the postscript. I nodded. He had said he would go when we had parted in anger, that day in the park. He had tried to warn me and I had refused to listen. He had tried to keep Wideacre safe as one of the few places, one of the very few, where the wealth of the land could go to those who earned it. Where people could work and earn the full benefits of their work – not what was left after the squire had taken his cut, and the merchant, and the parson. I had been on the side of the squires and the merchants and the parsons then. I was not now. Since then I had been as close to death as most people ever get, and I had felt someone take my sweating hand and sign away my land for me. I would never again believe that some people deserved higher wages or finer lives than others. We all had needs. We all sought their satisfaction. Some people were clever rogues, they managed to get a little more – that was all the difference there ever was.

I would never be able to tell him that. He had gone, as he had sworn he would go, to a new corporation, a new attempt at creating some real justice in the way England was run. Not words on paper, not ideas in people’s minds, not pleasant civilized chat across a dinner table. Real changes for real people. And I knew that after that experiment failed – as fail it surely would, for it was too little in a world too big and too implacable – after that he would go to another, and to another and another. And though Will might never win he would never stop, travelling from one place to another, doing whatever he could in small brave ways to set a wall against the greed and corruption of the world we of the Quality were building.

I folded the letter carefully and then I bent down and poked it into the fire. It would be of no help to me, nor to any of the Haverings if they knew that I would have gone against their wishes if I could. I had spoken once against Lady Clara, I had accepted Perry’s awkward apology. They had won as the rich always win. They write the rules. They make the world. They win the battles.

I was sorry it had taken me this long to learn it. I had come from a poverty so grinding that I had seen the Quality as a race apart, and knew nothing more than a longing to be part of them. They made it look so easy! They made fine clothes and good food and polite chatter look like a God-given right. You never saw their struggle to keep their money earning more and more money. You never saw the ill-paid servants and clerks who serviced their needs, who earned the money for them. All you ever saw was the smooth surface of the finished work – the Quality world. I leaned against the mantelpiece and looked down at the fire. It was as if I were to say that marble like this of the mantelpiece came straight from the ground smooth and carved, and never needed working. They managed to pretend that their wealth came to them naturally – as if they deserved it. They hid altogether the poverty and the hardship and the sheer miserable drudgery which earned the money which they spent smiling.

I had been as bad as any of them – worse; for I had known what life was like down at the very bottom, and I had thought of nothing but that I should be free from that hardship, that I should win my way up to the top. And sour it was to me, to learn when I made it there, when I was little Miss Sarah Lacey, that I felt as mean and as dirty as when I had been a thieving chavvy in the streets.

It is a dirty world they’ve made – the people who have the power and the talents and who show no pity. I had had enough of it. I would be little Miss Sarah Lacey no more.

There was a knock on the parlour door. ‘Lady Sarah, there is a parcel for you,’ the parlourmaid said.

I turned with a scowl which made her step swiftly back. I had forgotten I was little Miss Sarah no more. Now I was Lady Sarah and damned nonsense it was to talk of being on the side of the poor while I sat in the parlour of the great Havering town house and was waited on by a dozen ill-paid people.

I took the parcel with a word of thanks and opened it.

It was from my lawyer, Mr Penkiss. It was the contracts for the marriage and the deeds of Wideacre for Perry. Wideacre was out of the hands of the Laceys. Wideacre was mine no more.

I spread the old paper out on the parlour table and looked at it. It meant nothing to me, the writing was all funny, and the language was not even English. But I liked the heavy seals on the bottom, dark red and cracked, and the thick glossy pink ribbon under them. I liked the curly brown lettering and the old thick manuscript. And now and then, in the text I could see the word ‘Wideacre’ and knew it was telling of my land.

The Laceys had earned it in a grant from the king. The Norman king who came over some time and beat the people in a war and won the country. That was how it was told in the gentry parlours. In the taproom at Acre they said that the Laceys had stolen it, robbed farmers like the Tyackes who had been there for years. In the wagons of the Rom they said that once they had held all the land, that they had been the old people who had lived alongside fairies and pixies and old magic until the coming of men with swords and ploughs. I smiled ruefully. All robbers: generation after generation of robbers. And the worst theft of all was to take someone’s history from them. So the children who went to school from the Havering estate believed the Haverings had always been there. And they were taught that there was no choice but to doff their caps to the power of the rich. And no alternative but to work for them – and try to become rich yourself.

I rolled up the parchment carefully and put it back in its package along with the marriage contract. If Peregrine were not too drunk tonight he might be well enough to take it to the lawyers tomorrow.

I glanced towards the window. It was getting dark with that cold, damp, end-of-January darkness which made me glad of the warm fire and the quiet room. I rang the bell and ordered more logs for the fire, and I heard the front door bang as Perry came home.

He was unsteady on his feet, but I had seen him a lot worse. He beamed at me with his good-natured drunkard’s smile.

‘It’s good to see you up,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you’re well again. I missed you when you were ill.’

I smiled back. ‘You’d have made a tragic widower,’ I said.

Perry nodded, unabashed. ‘I’d have missed you all the same,’ he said. ‘But oh! it’s good to have as much money as I like!’

‘Are you winning or losing these days?’ I asked dryly.

‘Still winning!’ Perry said delightedly. ‘I don’t know what devil is in the cards. I haven’t lost a game since I came back from Newmarket. No one will play with me any more except Captain Thomas and Bob Redfern! I must have had a thousand guineas off them both!’

‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘Shall you mind leaving all this excitement to come home? I want to go back to Wideacre, and I’m well enough to travel now.’

Perry rang the bell and ordered punch made strong when the butler came.

‘When you like,’ he said. ‘But the roads will be bad. Why not wait until it is warmer, and the roads less dirty? We’ll get stuck for sure.’

The silver bowl came in and Perry poured himself a cup and handed me one. I sipped it and made a face.

‘Ugh Perry! It’s far too strong! It’s solid brandy!’

Perry beamed. ‘Keeps the cold out,’ he said.

‘Will you stop your drinking, once we are at Wideacre?’ I asked a little wistfully. ‘Will you really stop your drinking, and the gambling? Is it truly just being in London which makes you do it?’

Perry stretched out his legs to the fire. ‘I’ll tell you the truth,’ he said. ‘I started gambling because I was bored, and I started drinking because I was lonely and afraid. You know how it was for me before.’ He paused. ‘I am sure I could give it up like that,’ he snapped his fingers. ‘Any time I wanted to. I could just walk away from it and never touch it again.’

I looked at him curiously. ‘I’ve seen men who said that who would kill someone for a drink,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen men who would shake and vomit if they couldn’t get a drink when they needed it. I even heard of one man who went mad without it, and killed his little chavvy, and didn’t even know he’d done it!’

‘Don’t talk like that!’ Perry said with instant disdain. ‘Don’t talk about those horrid people you used to be with, Sarah. You’re not among them any more. It’s different for us. I’m not like that. I can take or leave it. And in London, in the Season, everyone drinks. Everyone gambles. You’d be gaming yourself if you weren’t ill and staying at home, Sarah, you know you would.’

I nodded. I was not sure. ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But remember you promised to never use Wideacre as security against a loan.’

Perry smiled, too sweet to be scolded. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’d never use your land, or my own. Mama explained it all to me, how it has to be handed on intact if we have a child. All I’m doing now is spending some of the interest and the extra rents. No one was able to touch it for years, it’s just been mounting up in the bank. And anyway…’ he said conclusively, ‘I’m winning! I’m winning faster than I can spend it. D’you know what they call me down at Redfern’s club? “Lucky Havering”! That’s what they call me! Rather fine, isn’t it?’

‘Mmm,’ I said dubiously. But then I decided to let be. I had seen Perry in London, and down at Havering. And I knew he did not gamble when he was away from the city, and from the boredom of the London season. I knew he did not drink so hard when he was in the country. And I thought it very likely that he might not drink at all when we were on our own in the country.

I was not such a fool as to believe that he did not need drink. But we were wed and inseparable. There was little gain for me to scold him. The only thing I could do was get him into the country as quick as I could where I could have the keys to the wine cellar and Perry would be away from the clubs and his drinking, gambling, dissolute friends.

‘Are you out tonight?’ I asked.

Perry made a face. ‘You are too,’ he said glumly. ‘Don’t blame me, Sarah, it’s Mama. She says we’ve both got to go to Maria’s, she’s having a music party and Basil is to be there and we have to go too to look happy.’

‘Me too?’ I asked surprised. Since my illness I had done very well at escaping all the Quality parties. Lady Clara was content to let me rest and convalesce at home, she had done her duty and introduced me to her world as she had promised. She was working night and day to keep Maria and Basil shackled, and she did not care whether I took and returned calls or not.

‘Your mama wants me to go?’ I asked.

Perry ran a grimy hand through his hair and chuckled. ‘Scandal,’ he said briefly. ‘They’re saying Mama saddled Basil with a light-skirt, and that we’ve robbed you and got you locked up at home. Mama’s had enough of it. You’re to come out to Maria’s party. Maria has to look happy and behave well, and you have to look happy and behave well.’

‘And you?’ I asked, amused.

‘I shall be radiant,’ Perry said glumly.

I laughed.

‘Actually, I shall stay for the first half-hour and then I shall cut along to Redfern’s club, I promised him a game of piquet. He wants to win his losses back,’ Perry said.

‘I don’t want to stay long myself,’ I warned.

Perry beamed at me. ‘Well bless you!’ he said. ‘We’ll say you need to be taken home, and I can escort you. That way we can both leave early.’

‘Done!’ I said, then I pointed to the punch bowl. ‘But leave go that, Perry, it’s too strong, and your mama won’t want you there half-cut.’

Perry got to his feet. ‘To please you,’ he said and held the door for me.

I gathered up the parcel of our marriage contract and the deeds for Wideacre. ‘The papers from my lawyers,’ I said, as Perry held the door for me and we went up the stairs together. ‘We’ll have to take them to your lawyers tomorrow.’

‘At last!’ Perry said. ‘They’ve taken long enough!’ He held out his hand for them and I passed them over. He tucked them in his coat pocket and gave me his arm to help me up the stairs.

We parted at my bedroom door and I went in to dress for dinner. I did not mind going out this once, and I was spiteful enough to anticipate some pleasure from the sight of Maria, daggers drawn with her husband, having to smile and play foot-licker to him.

My new maid was waiting and I had her open my wardrobe so I could choose a gown grand enough for Maria’s music evening. I had a shiny silk gown, as bright as emeralds with little white puff sleeves, cut quite low, and a white shawl to match.

‘I’ll wear that one,’ I said to the girl, and she got it out while I splashed water on my face and slipped out of my afternoon dress. She fiddled with the buttons at the neck while I stood impatiently, and then I sat before my mirror and she took up the hairbrush.

Then I caught her eye and we both laughed.

‘You’re wasting your time,’ I agreed. ‘It’s so short I can’t even put a ribbon through it without looking odd. I shall just have to leave it all curly like this until it has grown a little.’

‘Perhaps a cap, and maybe some false hair?’ she asked tentatively, looking at my bright copper mob with her head on one side.

‘Leave it,’ I said. ‘Everyone knows I had a fever and they cut my hair. I won’t hide it as if it had all fallen out and I was bald.’

She dipped a curtsey and then I went down to dinner.

Lady Clara was there, looking very grand in a lovely gown of pale blue watered silk which matched the colour of her eyes. She was wearing fine diamond earrings and a diamond necklace.

‘They might as well see we’re not in utter poverty,’ she said acidly when Perry made a nervous little bow and said how fine she looked. ‘The gossip is that you were bankrupt and that I locked Sarah up until she agreed to marry you.’ She made a little grimace of disdain. ‘We’ll scotch it tonight, but after tonight I expect you both to come out more into society until the end of the Season.’

‘I want us to go back to Wideacre, as soon as the roads are fit to travel,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to stay in London any longer.’

Lady Clara looked at me under veiled eyes, but said nothing while the butler served the soup. When he had stood back at the sideboard she looked from me to Perry and said: ‘It would suit me very well at the moment to have you both in town for at least another month. I should like you to go out and around together. People expect it, and Sarah you have not yet been presented at Court. That should be done as soon as your hair is grown long again.

‘I don’t think you would either of you enjoy the country at this time of year. At any time it is dreary enough, but in February I should think you would both go mad with melancholy cooped up at Havering.’ She paused. I waited but Perry said nothing.

‘Besides,’ she said. ‘Many of the Havering staff are here, there is no butler nor chef in Sussex. You had better wait until the Season ends in the spring, Sarah.’

‘We were planning to go to Wideacre,’ I said. ‘It does not matter that your staff are here, Lady Clara. Perry and I are going to stay at Wideacre.’

‘Better not,’ she said smoothly. ‘There has been gossip enough, I should like you to be seen around town, Sarah. I don’t want you down in the country, it looks too much as if we had something to hide.’

I looked back at her. Her blue eyes were limpid, the candles before her made her face glow with colour. She was sitting at the head of the dining-room table, Perry at the foot. I was placed in the middle, insignificant.

Perry cleared his throat. ‘Sarah did want to go, Mama,’ he said. ‘She has not been well, she needs to rest in the country.’

His mother flicked him a look which was openly contemptuous. ‘I have said that is not possible,’ she said.

I could feel my temper building inside me but I was not a young lady to shriek or have the vapours, or throw down my napkin and run out of the room. I took a sip of water and looked at Lady Clara over my glass.

‘We’ve lost our manager on Wideacre,’ I said. ‘I need to be down there to meet the new man. I don’t want to be away so long. There will be talk down there too about this marriage. I’d like to go down. I had planned to go down within a couple of weeks.’

The footmen started to remove the plates, the butler brought a plate with slices of beef in a red wine sauce to the table and served Lady Clara, then me, then Peregrine. There were artichokes and potatoes, carrots and small green sprouts. Perry fell to and ate as if he was trying to deafen himself to any appeal I might make to him. But I was not such a fool as to think that Perry could help me.

‘It’s not possible, Sarah,’ Lady Clara said pleasantly enough. ‘I am sorry to disappoint you, but I need you both in London.’

‘I am sorry,’ I said mirroring her regret. ‘But I do not want to stay in London.’

Lady Clara glanced at the footmen and at the butler. They stood against the wall as if they were deaf and blind. ‘Not now,’ she said.

‘Yes. Now,’ I said. I did not care what London society thought of me, I certainly did not care what Lady Clara’s servants thought of me. ‘I want to go to Wideacre at once, Lady Clara. Perry and I are going to go.’

Lady Clara looked down the table at Perry. She waited. He had his head bent low over his plate and he was trying not to meet her eye. The silence lengthened.

‘Perry…’ she said; it was all she needed to do.

Perry looked up. ‘I am sorry, Sarah,’ he said. ‘Mama is right. We’ll stay in London until the roads are a little drier, later in the year. We will do as Mama wishes.’

I felt myself flush red but I nodded. There was nothing more to say. I had not thought that Lady Clara and I might pull Perry in opposite directions, I had not thought that I would be under the cat’s paw. But the laws of the land said that Perry was my master, and he was ruled by his mama.

I nodded at her, indeed I bore her little ill will. I had wanted my way and she had wanted hers, and she had won. I had learned about power in my hard little childhood. I had been a fool to think people lived in any other way just because they ate well and slept soft.

‘I thought it was agreed that I might live as I please?’ I asked levelly.

She looked around uncomfortably at the footmen again, but she answered me.

‘I did agree that,’ she said. ‘But that was before this nonsense with Maria blew up. I need you, Sarah, I need Perry too. I cannot afford any scandal talked about this family if we are to hold Basil. Once this Season is over it can be as you wish.’

I nodded. I did not doubt she meant it, but I had learned in that brief exchange that I was as tied to her as I had been sold to Robert Gower, and owned by Da. I was not a free woman. I was apprenticed for a lifetime. All I could ever hope to do was to change the masters.

They cleared the dinner plates and served the puddings. There were three different sorts. Perry got his head down and ate as if he never expected to see food again. He was on to his second bottle. Both his mama and I saw his flight into drunkenness, and she shook her head at the butler when Perry’s wine glass was empty again.

All in all, it was not a happy meal. Elegant; but not happy.

Nor a happy evening. Maria was dressed in scarlet as if to shame the devil and she greeted us at the head of her stairs with her head held high and Basil looking hang-dog at her side.

‘Why, here is your mama-in-law!’ she exclaimed as Lady Clara came up the stairs. ‘And Perry, and the gypsy heiress!’ she said in a lower voice.

‘My dear…’ Basil complained. He took Lady Clara’s hand and bowed low. Maria stepped forward and kissed her mama, Perry, and then me. Her cheek was cold and dry with powder, she was white under her rouge.

‘Everyone’s here!’ she said brightly. ‘I don’t think there’s been such a squeeze since Lady Taragon ran off!’

Lady Clara’s face was stony at the reference. ‘Keep your voice down, Maria,’ she said in a biting undertone. ‘And behave yourself.’

Maria shot a bright defiant look at her, but she greeted her next guests more soberly, and nodded to the servants to pass around chilled champagne among the crowd.

Basil came over and drew Lady Clara into the window-seat. I could see his bald head nodding and his thin voice droning on. Lady Clara spread her fan to shield them and looked compassionately at him, over the top. Perry and I were alone. He took another glass off a passing waiter and downed it.

‘I am sorry, Sarah,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t tell her “no”.’

‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘All you had to do was to tell her that you agreed with me, I’d have done the rest.’

He shrugged. One of Maria’s footmen came and took the empty glass and exchanged it for a full one. ‘I don’t know,’ he said miserably. ‘I don’t know why. I’ve never been able to stand up to her. I suppose I can’t start now.’

‘Now’s the time you should start,’ I said. ‘I’m there to help you, we both know what we want to do, and you have control of your fortune. What can she do if she doesn’t like it? She can get angry, but she can’t do anything.’

‘You don’t know what she’s like…’ he said.

‘What who’s like?’ Maria asked from behind me.

Perry made a face at her. ‘We wanted to go down to Havering, but Mama is keeping us in town,’ he said dolefully. ‘She wouldn’t have minded if you hadn’t been kicking up a dust, Maria.’

He turned away from Maria’s reply, looking for another glass of wine. Maria looked hard at me. ‘I suppose you think it’s awful,’ she said harshly.

‘Not at all,’ I said steadily. I was not afraid of Maria.

‘I’d have thought a young bride like you, and married for love, would think it was awful…’ she said again.

‘I’m not married for love and you know it,’ I said. I kept my voice low and the hum of conversation around us and the distant ripple of a harp and a violin were enough to drown out my words for anyone but Maria. ‘But I’d not be fool enough to marry a man old enough to be my father for his money and then hope to get away with playing fast and loose.’

Maria’s eyes were very bright. ‘Is that what you think it is?’ she asked her voice hard. ‘I fell in love with Rudolph, I didn’t hope to get away with it. I wanted us to run away altogether. I didn’t even care about the money.’

I said nothing. Maria looked around and saw her mama side by side with her husband, their heads together.

‘She’s got me where she wants me,’ she said resentfully. ‘And he has. The two of them together. They bought Rudolph off – I know! I know that shows he wasn’t much good! – I never said he was much good. But he made me feel alive, he made me feel as if I had never been young before!’ She looked at me and her eyes which had been bright went hard again. ‘You wouldn’t even begin to understand,’ she said bitterly.

I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said sadly. ‘I’ve never been like that with a man.’

She held out her hands before her and looked at the heavy rings. ‘He used to take my rings off and kiss each one of my fingers,’ she said. Her voice was heavy with longing. ‘And every time the tip of his tongue touched that little place between each finger I used to tremble all over.’ She glanced at me. ‘All over,’ she said.

I was thinking of Will Tyacke and how I had warned him that I had no love to give a man. I was thinking of the time he had peeled down my glove and kissed me on the wrist and pulled the glove up again as if to keep the kiss warm. I was thinking of how he had followed me to Gower’s show that night and seen me wrecked with grief for her. I was thinking that even though he had Becky and her love, he had come to London whenever I asked him. It was me who named our meeting days. He never failed me. He never promised me one thing he did not do. And at the end he said that if I married Perry I would not see him again.

He had kept that promise too.

‘I shall never forgive them,’ Maria said. She suddenly smiled, a hard bright smile. ‘I shall never forgive those two,’ she said, nodding towards her husband and her mama. ‘That fat old bawd and that cheap lecher. She sold me and he bought me, and he is making her keep to her side of the bargain.’

Lady Clara and Basil had risen from their seats and were coming towards us.

‘You should have run when you had the chance,’ Maria said to me. ‘When I first met you, when you were just up from the country. I thought then that if you’d had any wit you’d have got out of Mama’s clutches. But you wanted to be a lady, didn’t you? I hope it brings you much joy!’ she laughed, a hard bitter laugh which made a few people turn around and look at us, and made Lady Clara come to her side.

‘It’s time to hear La Palacha sing,’ she prompted. ‘I’m longing to hear her, Maria, Basil has been telling me how charming she is.’

Maria nodded obediently and turned to summon one of the footmen.

‘I have to go,’ I said firmly. Lady Clara turned to me with a frown.

‘Don’t you start,’ I said warningly and she heard the old toughness in my voice and hesitated. ‘It’s my first time out and I can’t abide standing around,’ I said. ‘Perry said he’d take me home. I’ve come as you bid me, and I’ll be staying in London as you wish. But don’t push me, Lady Clara, I won’t have it.’

She gave me a tight little smile at that. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Make your curtsey to the princess as you go out. You are going to her luncheon tomorrow.’

‘Yes ‘m,’ I said in imitation of Emily’s servitude. ‘Thank’ee ‘m.’

Lady Clara’s eyes narrowed, but she leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. I smiled at her, my clear showground smile and then made for the door. Perry was swaying slightly on his feet, his eyes glazed, a glass in his hand.

‘Time to go,’ I said tightly. Perry nodded. We paused for a moment by the princess to bid her good evening. She exclaimed over my cropped head and my paleness and said I must promise to come to her luncheon tomorrow and eat some good Russian food. And now I was a wife too! How had that been?

‘Private,’ Perry said owlishly. ‘’Stremely private.’

The princess’s sharp little eyes were bright with curiosity. ‘So I had heard!’ she said. ‘Was only your family there?’

‘’Stremely private!’ Perry said again.

The princess looked to me, she was waiting for an answer.

‘It was during my illness, your highness,’ I said. ‘A quiet ceremony, at home. We were anxious to be married and we foresaw a long illness.’

Perry made his bow. ‘’Stremely private indeed,’ he said helpfully.

The footman mercifully opened the door and I put my hand on Perry’s arm and pinched him hard to get him out.

‘You drunken doddypoll, Perry!’ I said irritably. ‘I wish to God you’d stay sober!’

‘Oh, don’t scold, Sarah!’ he said, feckless as a child. ‘I had enough of that with you and Mama at dinner. Don’t scold me, I can’t bear it. Be nice, and I’ll see you home.’

I took his arm and we went downstairs, he was steady enough on his feet.

‘You need not,’ I said. ‘You can go straight to your club if you will promise me that you’ll come away if you start losing.’

‘Yes, I promise,’ Perry said carelessly. ‘I’ll come away if I lose and I’ll only drink another glass or two. And tomorrow Sarah, if you’re well, we can go riding in the park together.’

‘I’d like that,’ I said. The link boy outside the house waved for our carriage and it came up. Perry helped me in and kissed me on the hand. His lips were wet. Unseen, I wiped my hand on the cushions of the chaise.

‘Call me tomorrow morning,’ he said, ‘’bout ten.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Good-night.’

I watched him as the carriage drew away from the brightly lit doorway. The petulant rosebud mouth, the mass of golden curls, his downcast blue eyes. He was exactly the same young man as he had been on the London road that day, who was too drunk to find his home.

The same, and yet not the same. For when I had met him then he had worn his joy in life about him, like a cloak from his shoulders. But the young man outside the wealthy house stood as if, in reality, he had nowhere to go, and would find no pleasure in anything he did.