119425362 green girl sara seale1

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GREEN GIRL

Sara Seale

Harriet Jones, an 18 year old orphan, thought she had met her Prince Charming when Rory

Lonnegan asked her to come to Ireland to marry him. But a disappointment was in store for

Harriet when she arrived at Castle Clooney.

“Affection? Pooh! you speak like a green girl, Unsifted in such perilous circumstances.”

Hamlet,Act I, Scene iii.



CHAPTERONE

IT was a sorry start to that brave new life in a country often dreamed of, to be lost in a

mountain fog for want of a little common sense, she thought disgustedly.

She could almost hear Matron saying with that familiar bite of exasperation:“Itwould be

Harriet Jones! Of all the orphans I’ve had in my charge, that girl could be relied upon to land

herself in a situation that could quite well have been avoided.”And that, supposed Harriet

Jones, withdrawing a foot hastily from a hidden pool of bog-water, was true. She should have

waited at the bleak little station, as she was bid, when no one turned up to meet the train,

instead of obeying that uncontrollable impulse to explore. But the journey had been long and

fraught with tedious vexations, and freedom was too fresh and unfamiliar to endure a two-hour

wait for the arrival of the next trainfrom Dublin.

“Where are you for?”the gnome-like porter had enquired.“Castle Clooney, is it? And you say

you should be met?”he said with plain disbelief.“There’s few visitors go there and if you was

expected, they’d have sent a car.”

“Iamexpected,”Harriet had answered, a little daunted by her chilly reception. She had

thought from her ignorant, fiction-fed knowledge of Ireland that strangers were welcomed as

long-lost friends.

“Was you so?”he retorted with the disapproving sarcasm of someone who suspects a

leg-pull.“And wouldn’t I be knowing if that was true? Himself would have alarrumed me of the

fact.”

“Alarmed you? Himself?”

“Notyfied me—toult me—and who would himself be but Mr. Lonnegan? You wouldn’t be

conversant with the English tongue, perhaps, and you a furriner?”

“But IamEnglish.”

“That’s what I said,”he retorted disconcertingly.“You’ve likely mistaken the station.”

“I havenot mistaken the station,”she said firmly.“This is Slyne, isn’t it, and the nearest stop for

Castle Clooney? If you care to ring up you’ll no doubt find there’s just been a muddle about

times of arrival.”

“Ring up, says you! There’s no telyphone at the Castle; himself has a mislike

ofmoderncontraptions and visitors alike,”and he shambled away, leaving her standing on the

deserted platform.

She told herself it was only too likely that the charming, casual Rory Lonnegan of Castle

Clooney had given her the wrong train and would gaily drive up two hours later declaring shehad misread his letter.



Meanwhile, her impatient feet itched to explore; a two hours’wait at a draughty little wayside

halt which boasted no shelter would be chilly on a late October afternoon. The mist wreathed

mountains looked invitingly close, the temptation had been irresistible.

Nearly two hours later, however, that unaccustomed bid for independence had become

merely an act of folly, and her situation alarming. She had not realised that the mist rolling

down from the hills could so soon turn to fog, blanketing all landmarks, even had she knownwhat to look for to guide her back again. She had tried to retrace her steps to the station or at

least find the railway track to follow, but either she must have walked in circles or taken a

wrong direction, for the ground became rougher and unseen pools deeper.

As darkness gathered and the mist began to assume horrid shapes closing about her, she had

a sensation of drowning. It was true, she thought, without surprise, that your past life flashed

before your eyes for the few events of any remark in her own seemed uncomfortably clear.

Ogilvy Manor, that very superior, privately endowed orphanage whose inmates were seldom

allowed to forget their good fortune in having escaped a State institution, rose up before her

mental vision in mute reproach.

“Wool-gathering!”Matron had repeatedly told her,“always wool-gathering, when your mind

should be employed with practical, useful matters and not the impossible situations in fairy-

tales and rubbishy novels.”

Harriet had found this to be true, but how to explain that day-dreaming was an escape, a

harmless method of dissipating dullness? Sometimes Harriet would even have wondered if she

had invented Rory Lonnegan, if it had not been for the letters, for she had met him only the

once; a chance meeting in the town where she had been miraculously sent on an errand and

had worn a new pink cotton frock. He had bumped into her coming out of a shop, spilling herparcels, one of which had contained eggs which spread all over the pavement in a glutinous

mess which had filled her with dismay since she had spent the last of Matron’s money. He, the

good-looking stranger, had insisted on buying some more and then taken her off to a cafe for

ice-cream. It was summer and couples were sitting on the grass in the park, and Harriet and her

charming young man had sat there too. Perhaps, she had thought, he had time to kill, perhaps

he had even found her attractive or perhaps, as later became clear, he was intrigued by her

innocent evasions when he tried to find out more about her. She was a flattering listener,

greedy for all he could tell her about his castle in Ireland, which to her had been the crowning

delight that such fabulous places did exist outside novels and fairy-tales, and so eager for more

was she, so ready to believe in whatever he chose to tell her, that he had promised good-

naturedly to write.“We will be pen-friends, Princess,”he told her,“and one day I’ll come back to

England and maybe marry you when you grow up.”She was nearly seventeen, but he clearly

took her for a child.

He was returning to Ireland that night, so was unlikely to learn the true nature of the address

she gave him, and although she did not think he would write, she would be able to live on this

red-letter day for ever.

But he had written, and although his letters were infrequent and often very sketchy, they

kept the fantasy alive for Harriet, who would sometimes read the letters aloud to chosen

friends since they earned her a respect she had never known before. If it was clear from stray

passages that her address had misled him, where was the harm in lettinghimthink that Ogilvy

Manor was a private country house and she the only child of doting parents?



Why, thought Harriet uneasily, am I remembering all this as if Matron was saying look where

wool-gathering has got you now? But the thought of Matron brought her back to the morning

and Matron’s last-minute admonitions, little knowing she was being deceived.

“Now, Harriet, don’t wool-gather and get into the wrong train. Clapham is a big junction and

anyone will direct you if you should go wrong. The family expect you in time to see to the

childrens’lunch, and do try to remember that this is the third time Ogilvy’s found you a post,and try to keep it. We don’t want you turning up here like a bad penny yet again, do we?”

It had been on the tip of Harriet’s tongue to tell her the truth, but instinct had warned her

that to announce airily that she was travelling to Ireland instead, upon the invitation of a young

man she had only met once who had indicated he wished to marry her, would not only be

disbelieved but viewed with the gravest suspicion. So she had contented herself with a promise

to write.

A legacy had provided the second red-letter day in her uneventful life and had changed

everything. No one at Ogilvy’s could imagine why Harriet Jones had been named for a bequestof fifty pounds in the will of one of the orphanage’s more trying benefactresses except that her

manners were good and had presumably, impressed the tiresome old lady, but there it was.

Harriet, to whom fifty pounds seemed a fortune, had written post-haste to her Irish pen-friend,

describing her luck in those very terms, and he had replied more promptly than usual, inviting

her for a visit to his castle, giving times and arrival of flights, and also of boats and trains should

she be averse to air travel. He couldn’t, Harriet had thought, starry-eyed, have made his

intentions plainer with graceful hints that Clooney needed a mistress and hehimselfhad

thoughts of settling down; besides, she was eighteen now and no longer a child.

She had replied in haste that she was coming at once, since the job in Clapham coincidedhappily with a departure that would be unremarked, and opportunity only knocked once. She

had added a hasty postscript correcting her first extravaganza of a fortune because she was a

truthful person, and set out on her big adventure with hardly a qualm.

She began to move cautiously, stumbling over stones, catching on thorn bushes, dragging her

feet in panic from marshy pools, expecting the traditional bog to claim her any minute and

swallow her up without trace.

Every so often the thick mist parted for an instant to reveal grotesque shapes which could be

boulders but were probably something worse, and then she thought she saw two wolfish faces

peering at her through the fog. Her scream was involuntary, and although she knew she was

imagining things, she could not control the instinct to turn and run. As she lost her balance, her

feet slid from under her and she felt herself falling into space.

She did not have far to fall, but as she landed in some heathery cleft between two boulders,

she experienced a violent stab of pain as her ankle twisted under her, and burst into tears.

She lay there weeping while wet from the waterlogged turf soaked through her new suit

which must now be ruined, and her tears fell faster as she thought of all the money she had so

recklessly spent. One couldn’t, she had argued with herself, arrive at a castle as a prospective

bride unequipped for social occasions, but fifty pounds, she had discovered, did not go very farin these days, and although she had bought frugally, there had only been enough of it left to

pay for a single fare.



It was quite dark now and she thought she recognised a new sound, the sharp clatter of

stones and pebbles dislodged by an unwary footfall, and the unmistakable sound of breathing.

She froze into immobility, remembering that Rory had said there was a gaol near the castle and

every so often prisoners escaped and hid in the mountains. It was not a man, however, which

the swirling mist revealed to her for a moment, but no less alarming; the wolfish faces had

reappeared.

“Oh!”she exclaimed, half laughing and half crying with relief.“You’re onlydogs!”

They were, indeed, Alsatians, a well matched brace, dog and bitch probably, even now

backing away from the sound of her voice.

“Oh, don’t go...don’t go...Come here... please...”she coaxed, stretching out her hands to them,

and because, perhaps her voice was soft and unafraid, they overcame their suspicions and

came closer to investigate. The bitch still held back, but the dog, having smelt Harriet all over,

suddenly put out a very long tongue and licked her face.

“You kind, gorgeous creature!”she cried, hugging him close in gratitude for the attention. She

felt him stiffen and quiver, but he bore with the liberty, possibly from sheer surprise. She

thought she heard a faint whistle in the distance, and the dogs had certainly heard something,

for they bounded away and she struggled to her feet with a little whimper of dismay, but it was

out of the question to try to follow, for the fog had immediately swallowed them up.

She stood supporting herself against the rock while she gingerly tested her injured ankle. It

had swollen considerably and was stiff and painful, but she thought she could have hobbled a

little way had there been anyone to guide her. Even as she began to feel her way towards the

direction the dogs had taken, one of them came back and began nuzzling her hand and uttering

little piping cries. He could not have indicated more clearly that he was there to guide her, and

she remembered the stories she had heard about this breed. They were used as guards, she

remembered, as guides for the blind, and trackers for the police. Police...trackers ... of course,

that explained the dogs, thought Harriet, remembering the prison. No matter, she told herself,

if he led her straight to the gaol; at least human hands would dry and feed her and give her a

cell for the night.

So the painful trek began. Time to Harriet had lost all meaning. She was too tired to care any

longer where the dogs might lead her, if indeed they were leading her anywhere and not simply

indulging in some canine caper of their own.

Presently she foundshe was limping on smooth, level turf, which was a great relief, but almost

immediately she bumped straight into something hard and high and extremely solid. Her

forehead connected sharply with stone and as she realised she was confronted by a wall, she

saw the two dogs pop over it in one careless bound.“How do you suppose I’m to do that?” she

admonished them indignantly, but even in her weakened condition, early orphanage training, if

a little belated, offered the practical solution. Where there was a wall with a purpose there

must surely be a gate.

She soon found it by feeling her way along, but the discovery afforded no easier means of

admission. The pair of great iron gates were firmly locked and however frantically she shookthem they would not yield. This, of course, must be the prison, for lighted windows shone dimly

in the distance. Presently the dogs came bounding back, only to turn in their tracks and race



towards someone who seemed to be following with a torch.

“Kurt! Delsa! What the devil’s the matter with you both!”a man’s angry voice shouted, and

even in her thankfulness Harriet doubted she would be welcome here. One of the wardens, she

supposed, and by the sound of him none too pleased at being disturbed during one of his off-

duty periods.

“Who is it? What do you want?”he called, playing his torch on the gates as he drew nearer.

“It’s me...I’m lost!”she replied with unhelpful incoherence, and sank to the ground as her

injured ankle refused to support her any longer.

There was a rattle of iron on iron as the lock snapped back and the gates swung open.

Someone exclaimed“Good grief!”in no very complimentary tones.

“I—I’m sorry if I’ve interrupted your time off,”Harriet said, and was aware of a tall figure

standing over her, his face indistinguishable in the darkness since the light from the torch wasfocused on her own.

“What an extraordinary remark to make,”the stranger said.“My time is my own as far as I’m

aware.”

“Oh! Aren’t you a warder, then?”

“ Awarder! Where the heck do you imagine you are—Clooney gaol?”

“Well, yes...the wall and the gates and the police dogs...”

“I see. Kurt was trained to rescue work before I owned him, I believe, but neither of them are

official police dogs, though they can track and guard. And why, might one ask, were you

mistakenly trying to break into the clink?”

“I told you—I was lost,”she faltered, blinking up at the light.

“Lost, were you? More likely you were trying to shin over the wall and the dogs gave the

alarm,”he said then, with such frank disbelief that her diffidence turned to indignation.

“If you keep the place locked up, how do you expect people to call?”she retorted, and wasnot conscious of the absurdity of such a polite social distinction; neither apparently, was he, for

he replied with a certain grimness:

“I don’t. The gates are locked and the walls high to keep intruders out. Are you going to

remain sitting on the ground indefinitely?”

“I’m sitting on the ground because my ankle’s t-twisted, and I’m cold andl-lost and I can’t

stand up any m-more,”she said and, to her mortification, began to cry again.

He put the torch down on the ground and knelt beside her. Strong fingers began exploring the

bones of each ankle in turn with surprising gentleness, and she could smell the tweedy,

tobaccoey scent of the sleeve of his jacket as it brushed her cheek.



“You’re right at that—this one’s badly swollen—what’s more you’re soaked to the skin. How

long have you been wandering about in this pestilential fog, and where do you come from?”he

said, and there was a changed note in his voice. The first impatience was still there, but now

there was a thread of concern to warm it.

“Hours and hours,”she answered, weeping freely at the first hint of comfort.“And I’ve come

from England.”

“What—today? Then for the sake of sanity what are you doing on the Plain of Clooney?”

“Is that where I am? I got out at a little station called Slyne, but no one met the

train—and—and two hours seemed such—such a waste of time to sit on that dismal platform

twiddling my thumbs.”

“Why on earth should you twiddle your thumbs for two hours?”

“Because the porter said maybe I was expected on thenext train and—and I thought I wouldexplore a bit to fill in the time. I—I’m new to Ireland, you see, and wasn’t to know that your

Irish fogs would come down in a whoosh and catch me out, was I?”

“You wouldn’t, by the sound of you, seem to have much common sense at all,”he answered

rather rudely, she thought.“However, since your foolishness appears to have landed you at my

gates, I can hardly do less than offer you shelter, can I? Oh, for heaven’s sake, child, do stop

crying! You’ve only the dogs to thank that you aren’t spending the night in the mountains.”

“I thought they were wolves—the dogs, I mean,”she said, conscious that her head was now

feeling too full of cotton wool to explain anything rationally, and was surprised when she felt

his hand on her forehead for a moment. He thrust the torch into her hand.

“Here, hang on to this and don’t drop it. I’d better carry you to the house and save that ankle.

I’m beginning to think you must be a bit light-headed,”he observed without enthusiasm,

adding, as he stopped to lift her:“Just in case of possible alarms when you don’t arrive at your

destination on schedule, where were you bound for?”

“Castle Clooney,”she answered, and he straightened up abruptly.

“Castle Clooney?”he repeated on a rather odd inflection.“Were you expected?”

“Naturally. I was invited for a visit. It was a—a sort of proposal, really.”

“Was it, indeed?”There was a very odd note in his voice now, the same note which had been

there when he had accused her of trying to break into his grounds, and she made a last,

determined effort to assert her rights.

“Yes, it was,”she said, eyeing him coldly.“And if you live in these parts you must surely have

heard of Castle Clooney and its owner, Mr. Lonnegan? He’s quite a figure hereabouts, I

understand.”That, she thought, should put him in his place.

“Oh, yes, I’ve heard of them both,”he said at last, and strangely enough, there was now a

queer little thread of amusement in his voice.“But shouldn’t I, if what you say is true, have



heard some mention of your name? This is a sparsely populated stretch of country and we all

know each other’s business.”

“My name is Harriet Jones, and I came into a little money which made this visit possible, so

perhaps your grapevine is a bit behind with the news, since it all happened rather

suddenly,”Harriet said, trying to sound haughty and gracious at the same time.

“Isee. Well, Miss—er—Jones, it would seem to be advisable to get you dried out and more

presentable before your prospectivefiancécomes to claim you,”he said, and picked her up in

one easy swoop and began carrying her towards the lighted windows of his house.

She had only a vague impression of the size of the house, wreathed as it was in mist, but the

hall they entered seemed vast, its soaring roof lost in shadows, firelight and lamplight mingling

to catch flickering reflections in polished wood and brass. It was not a hall at all, she thought, as

she was deposited on some large couch or settle, but a cavernous chamber, for living-room

seemed too homely a definition for such space and grandeur. She lay there while her unwilling

host called peremptorily for whiskey to some unseen person in what was presumably thekitchen quarters, and was surprised when an old man appeared from the shadows, looking so

exactly like the traditional venerable ancient retainer of a castle that she had to pinch herself to

be sure she was awake.

The illusion was lost, however, as the old man observed sourly:

“You’ll not be askin’for the craythur now, Mr. Duff, if you know what’s good for you, and

Agnes’temper spoiled entoirely with the vittles kept waiting this past hour. I’ll tell her she can

rest aisy and dish up.”

“Ah, get away with yoursulks, Jimsy, and bring the decanter. We have a refugee from the fog

who needs attention before I can sit down to my meal,”his master replied with none of the

sharpness Harriet would have expected at such familiarity, and with the first faint hint of an

Irish inflection, and when the old servant shuffled across the hail to peer at her, she could see

her first impressions were misleading. Jimsy, seen at close quarters, was neither venerable or

clad in the tradition of old retainers. His grizzled hair, which had once been red, was sparse and

unkempt, hisshirt sleeves rolled up, and a green baize apron only seemed to accentuate the

unorthodox clothing of his nether limbs.

“W-ell, now...”he remarked, observing her with the porter’s same suspicious eye,“and is this

what the dogs has brought in? There’s no tellin’what thim two will be finding next on the Plain

of Clooney. Would she be one of thim gurrls from Casey’s new joint by the lough?”

“Not at all. She claims to be Miss Harriet Jones over from England on a visit to Castle Clooney

with expectations of marriage, it seems.”

“Does she, so? Well now, that’s very interesting.”

They seemed, thought Harriet, to be sharing a private joke at her expense, or Jimsy, like his

master, placed no great credence on her explanation.

“I think you are both rather rude,”she said, trying to be politely censorious, but only

succeeding in sounding as wretched and confused as she felt, and the master of the house



been wont to complain looked more like the popular conception of an orphan than the real

thing, but even she felt dismayed by the waif-like face which stared back at her. It seemed to

have shrunk considerably or her eyes had grown abnormally large, her hair which, if undeniably

straight, had pleased her because it was fashionably blonde, clung round her neck in dark

rats’tails of dampness, and the freckles she so much deplored stood out like a rash.

“Golly !”she exclaimed in such a heartfelt tone of horror that her host turnedround to look inthe mirror too.

“H’m...you hadn’t realised howyoumight appear to a stranger when you stared so rudely at

my ugly face, had you?”he observed with a hint of rather sardonic amusement.“Not, of course,

that one would expect you to be looking your best after your unfortunate experiences. How old

are you?”

“Eighteen.”

“Eighteen...h’m...and promised in marriage to the master of Castle Clooney, you say?”

“Well, not exactly promised—but encouraged, if you know what I mean.”

“I’m not sure that I do. One doesn’t come belting across the Irish Channel on the strength of

wishful thinking—or did you invent this swain of yours?”

“He’s not a swain, and I didn’t invent him,”she said, shivering, and near to tears again, and his

cool, appraising gaze softened a little.

“You undoubtedlyhavecaught a chill, young woman. You’d better nip into bed,”he said, and

threw back the covers on the high, half-tester bed which looked enormous to Harriet’s

unaccustomed eyes.

She moved towards the bed uncertainly, expecting him to bid her goodnight and hurry away

to his long-delayed meal, but he merely waited, and when she still hesitated, wondering if

anyone had thought to lend her a nightgown, he picked her up again and dumped her in the

bed with impatient finality.

“Keep that dressing-gown on and sweat it out, with the aid of all those hot-water bottles

you’ll find at the bottom,”he said.“We seem to have omitted your bath, thanks to a lot of idle

chatter, but you’ll do as well between blankets. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,”she answered meekly, then remembering with surprise that she had no idea

whose roof she was to sleep under, added:“As this isn’t Clooney gaol, what place is it?”

“Castle Clooney,”he replied quite gently, his hand on the door.

“CastleClooney ! Then—then who areyou?”she stammered, sounding more bemused than

astonished.

“My name happens to be Lonnegan,”he said more gently still, and was gone.



CHAPTERTWO

THE night had passed in such a confusion of feverish dreams and fancies that when she

wakened the next morning, Harriet thought she must have imagined the whole thing. Even if byan extraordinary chance this place was indeed Castle Clooney, her remembered impressions of

the gay young Rory Lonnegan were nothing like the rather forbidding stranger of yesterday,

neither could he have grown so old as that in the time.

She lay in the big tester bed, soon abandoning such riddles as a wave of lassitude lulled her in

to a passive acceptance of the inexplicable. Then there was a knock on the door and a young

girl came into the room carrying a breakfast tray.

“Good morning, miss,”she smiled cheerfully.“Me place is in the scullery, so Agnes tells me

twenty times a day, but up she sends me with trays when there’s extra work to be done an’shetook grand to wait on the quality herself. Is it true you mistook the castle for the gaol, miss?”

“Quitetrue,”smiledHarriet.

“Is that so? An’what poor divil of a felly would you have been tryin’to call on? They’re a

scummy lot get sent to Clooney, so they say, but you can’t pick your relations, can you,

now?”she said with lively interest.

“I haven’t got relations in Clooney gaol or any other as far as I know,”Harriet answered rather

crossly, for her head was beginning to ache.

“Is that so? Then why was you after visiting the place and the dogs misleading you here?”

“I wasn’t—it was all a mistake. I was trying to get to Castle Clooney.”

“Across the Plain of Clooney in the fog? You must be mazed!”

“No, of course not. I should have waited at the station, but I got lost.”

“Then you’d be waiting there yet, since nary a wan of us knew you was coming.”

“This reallyisCastle Clooney, then?”Harriet ventured a little timidly, but was rewarded with a

look which plainly doubted the existence of her wits.

“Now you bide there and kape warrum till himself returns, for you surely have a fever,”the

girl said, remembering belatedly to draw back the curtains and let in the morning light.

“Himself?”

“Mr. Lonnegan, who else? He’s away to the town, an’he says for you stop where you are till

he satisfies himself you’ve taken no harrum. Will I wet the pigs again for you?”

“Wet the pigs?”



“Fill the wather-bags to warrum the bed.”

“Oh, I see. No, thank you. I’m warm enough,”said Harriet a little faintly, but she wished when

the girl had gone that she had thought to enquire what had happened to Rory.

No one came near her for the rest of the morning and she slept fitfully to the accompaniment

of rain rattling gently on the windows.She woke hours later with a strange sensation of beingwatched, and opened her eyes to see her host standing by the bed looking down at her. She

stared up at him without speaking and had the uneasy feeling that he had been there for some

time. It must, she thought with surprise, be late afternoon, for the room had become shadowy

and the sky beyond the rain-spattered windows was barely light.

“Well, let’s hope you’ve slept off any ill effects apart from a gammy foot. Open your

mouth,”he said briskly, and sitting down on the side of the bed thrust a thermometer between

her surprisedlips.

She observedhimmutely as he waited, his fingers on her pulse, trying to trace a likenessto theLonnegan she remembered and finding none. He wore a thick, faded sweater that needed

darning, but no coat, and had wound a scarf carelessly round his neck as if it had been too

much trouble to put on a tie. He would, thought Harriet, still much confused asto his status at

Clooney, most certainly not have measured up to Matron’s rigid conception of a correct

country gentleman.

“Normal or near as makes no matter,”he observed“so I think we’ll do no harm in settling a

few questions and answers.”

The remark had rather an ominous ring, but after that long, refreshing sleep she felt clear-

headed again, and what, ever uncomfortable queries he might have lined up with which to

embarrass her, she had a few of her own which required explanation.

“Now, first of all, how did you acquire this curious notion that I had invited you to Clooney, let

alone held out hopes of marriage?”he asked, and she sat up abruptly in the bed, colour flushing

her cheeks.

“You?”she gasped.“But of course it wasn’t you!”

“Well, that’s one weight off my conscience. I was in two minds as to your intentions, you

know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that you could have been a cheap little adventuress hoping to get away with an attempt

at blackmail, and I’m still not sure. There would have been indiscreet letters, one presumes,

conjured from somewhere?”

Harriet had never been noted in the orphanage for losing her temper, but she lost it now.

Both fear and horrified astonishment at such an accusation lent her fleeting courage and she

bounced in the bed like an outraged child.

“I think you must be crazy—whoever you are!”she exclaimed.“I’m neither cheap nor an



adventuress, and Idohave letters, so there!”

“That was certainly more of a schoolgirl’s reaction than a brazen hussy’s,”he said, thecorners

of his mouth quivering with hastily suppressed amusement.“But you say youhaveletters, so

presumably I was not so far out. Might I see them?”

“Certainly not, they aren’t yours—besides, my suitcase must still be on Slyne platform.”

“Oh, no, it’s here. I fetched it myself this morning.”

“Checking up, were you? Then perhaps you’ll allow I was speaking the truth!”

“Oh, certainly, as farasit went. Old Murphy had even informed the Garda when the Dublin

train came and went and no one claimed a suitcase.

“Whatever impressions you may have formed, Mr. Lonnegan, you’ll admit, I hope, that my

first introduction to your country is hardly a happy one,”she said, and saw thecorners of hismouth twitch again.

“Very properly spoken,”he replied with gravity,“but hardly my fault if your journey has

proved unnecessary, would you say?”

Her little spurt of anger died too soon, and orphanage training did not equip one for

encounters such as this, she thought, and she felt suddenly homesick for the ordered, sheltered

drabness of the only life she had known. Her face crumpled with alarming suddenness into the

shamed defencelessness of a defeated child and tears trickled ignominously under lashes which

were, he noticed with unreasoning compunction, surprisingly dark and long, making two rather

touchingly innocent crescents on her cheeks.

“You have,”he observed, whipping up impatience to cloak an unaccustomed flash of

tenderness,“a rather exasperating tendency to cry. What did you mean when you said‘whoever

you are’in such tones of repudiation? Don’t you know?”

“I know,”she replied, keeping her eyes shut, trying to squeeze away the betraying tears,“that

you say you are Mr. Lonnegan and you seem to live here, but—butmy Mr.Lonnegan is quite d-

different, and I don’t understand it at all.”

There was a taut little silence broken only by the incessant sound of rain, then he asked, withan entirely different inflection in his clipped accents:

“Am I, by any chance, being confused with my young cousin Rory?”

Her eyes flew open.

“Rory’s yourcousin!”she exclaimed.“But I thought—well, doesn’t he own this place?”

“No, I’m afraid I do. I’m Duff Lonnegan, of whom you evidently haven’t heard. Rory, I’ve

always understood, likes to shoot a line about his connection with the castle when far enough

away to make it safe. He makes his home here when it suits him, but he went off suddenly a

couple of days ago with a very sudden offer of a job. Did he tell you he was an actor? I think,”he



notion that an invitation to visit Clooney constituted an offer of marriage?”

“He said,”she replied doggedly, because here at least was some tangible support of her hasty

actions,“we should get better acquainted; that it was time he was settling down, and that

Clooney needed a mistress.”

“Did he, indeed? From that I gather that my cousin also was indulging in a little fantasy if hegave you to understand he owned the castle. And what should you suppose, my gullible young

friend, precipitated such an ambiguous suggestion which, if true, could be misleading, I’ll

admit.”

“I can show you the letter if you still don’t believe me,”she retorted defiantly, then the

unpalatable truth hit her in one humiliating moment of clarity.

“Could it—could it have been the legacy?”she faltered, and thought his sceptical regard

altered to one of amused, if no less chilling enlightenment.

“Oh, I begin to see. There was a legacy attached, was there, and you proffered it as bait?

Perhaps you understood my cousin better than I had supposed. An English heiress, now, might

have proved suddenly very attractiveto Rory,”he observed, and it was the unkindest cut of all.

“It wasn’t bait ... it was only f-fifty pounds...but it seemed like a fortune to me,”she said,

weeping afresh, and, expecting a further sarcastic comment on her propensity for tears, she

surprised a flash of grudging tenderness in his hard face.

“And you innocently described your legacy as a fortune, I suppose.”

“I expect I did. But I explained when I accepted the invitation. Would you suppose—would

you suppose that was why he went away in such a hurry, Mr. Lonnegan?”

He got up from the bed and stood looking down at her. How like Rory, he reflected with

impatient exasperation, to get mixed up with a penniless orphan by indulging in his own rather

childish histrionics.

“I would suppose that very thing, MissJones, so the sooner you grow up, the better for your

own comfort,”he replied, and spoke harshly because the straight fringe and long,

unsophisticated bob which framed her anxious face gave her such an exaggerated air of the

unwanted foundling of fiction that he began to feel uncomfortable.

“Yes,”she agreed with polite acceptance of the obvious, then added on a faint note of

panic:“But what shall I do now? My legacy’s all gone, you see, and I—I haven’t even the fare

back to England.”

“What you’ll do now is go back to sleep and try to get some sense into your unbelievably

gullible head by morning. You had no good reason, let me tell you, to be so sure of your own

attractions that you could gamble on a one-way ticket,”he said unkindly, and left the room.

She could notsleep, however, for the problems which chased each other round and around inher head with a depressing absence of solution, and the bed grew hot and her ankle throbbed,

and she longed, with an ache she would not have deemed possible, for her hard little bed in the



orphanage and the certainty of waking to the precisely organised routine of life in a

community.

She got up presently, awarethat it was no longer necessary to he swaddled in that hot, rather

scratchy dressing-gown, and opened her suitcase to find more becoming attire. But the new

clothes which she had bought so lovingly to do justice to the visit looked cheap and meagre

when hung in the vast bogwood press which could have accommodated a hundred dresses, andshe fell out of conceit with her unaccustomed finery, remembering how much it had cost and

how reckless she had been to save on a single fare in order to buy that very expensive

nightdress and bedjacket with which to impress the castle servants. Both helped to restore her

confidence, however, when, having sponged her face and combed her hair and splashed herself

extravagantly with cheap toilet water, she put them on and got back into bed. At least she

would no longer look like a scrawny chicken trussed up in a blanket should her unwilling host

return to take her temperature and rebandage her ankle.

Nobody came, however, and presently, tired of lying in the dark, she plucked up courage to

investigate the mysteries of the oil-lamp by the bed, wondering whether it could burst or blowup in her face if she twisted the wrong knob. It did neither, fortunately, but being unused to

such things, she turned the wick too high, and the lamp smitched, covering the new bedjacket

with hundreds of fine black smuts, and Mr. Duff Lonnegan, surprisingly bearing a supper tray,

would, she thought crossly, choose that moment to remedy his long absence.

“For the love of sanity, don’t you know better than that, girl!”he exclaimed, dumping the tray

hastily on her knees and turning down the wick.

“It was new, and look at it now!”she wailed, trying to brush the smuts from her jacket and

only succeeding in making smudges.

“Bought for the bridal visit, I take it,”he said rather tactlessly, she thought, and she replied,

before she had time to think:

“To impress the servants, really.”

“Dear me, what an old-fashioned notion!”he remarked, and she was not sure whether scorn

or amusement was uppermost in his voice.“You will have to revise your exalted ideas of Irish

castles, I fear, Miss Jones. We have staff problems here no less than you in England, and no one

entertains any longer, praise the pigs.”

“I’d thought,”she said, trying to explain and placate at the same time,“that a castle sounded

terribly grand—flunkies and things, you know, like you read of in books.”

“Your orphanage brand of literature must have been a little dated, I fear,”he replied.“Cousin

Rory should have warned you that castles abound in Ireland and have no more significance than

your own manor house over there. Now eat your supper before it gets cold.”

He watched her eat in silence, and when she had finished, took the tray away and drew the

curtains. Now, she thought, becoming oppressed by the continued silence, he surely must go,

but he came and stood at the foot of the bed, looking down at her reflectively.

“Your change of attire has certainly made an improvement, smuts and all,”he observed.“Did



they feed you properly at that place?”

“Of course—plenty of nourishing stews and suet puddings. Why?”

“You seem very thin, but you’re probably just small-boned.”

“I’ve always been the skinny kind. Matron used to say I looked more like an orphanthanthereal thing. I think she took it as a personal affront.”

“H’m...was she a decent sort?”

“Oh, very, and she had the highest reference for turning out well-educated and trustworthy

girls. I was a disappointment to her, though.”

“Why? Weren’t you trustworthy?”

He asked the question with the first hint of indulgence she had remarked in him, and she

smiled back athimshyly.

“Oh, I think so, but I was always wool-gathering,”she said,“and acting foolishly on

impulse—and I read too many unsuitable novels.”

“And she wasn’t far wrong at that, judging by your latest escapade,”he retorted with a return

to his old manner.“Incidentally, won’t they be expecting news of you, or did you run away?”

“Oh, no! No one’s ever ran away from Ogilvy’s,”she said, sounding quite shocked.“I was going

to a new job, you see, so I let the people know I couldn’t come after all, and meant to write to

Matron when I got here.”

“Acquainting, her, no doubt, with the glad tidings of your coming marriage, and scoring a

bulls-eye for the least appreciated of the orphans. Really, Harriet, have you a most touching

faith in miracles, or are you just plain stupid?”

“If you think I’m an adventuress and—and a b-black-mailer, I can’t be stupid as well,”she

retorted, and his eyebrows lifted as they might at an impertinence.

“You could very well be both,”he countered coolly.“However, I’ll give you the benefit of the

doubt, for you can’t be quite so stupid not to have realised that checking up with theorphanage is fairly simple. What will you write to this lady, now?”

She had no ready answer, for the problem had already begun to trouble her. This time there

could be no question of turning up again like the bad penny of Matron’s little joke, for after

such gross deception, Ogilvy’s would surely washits hands of her.

“I can’t go back,”she said then.“It’s the third time.”

“The third time you’ve been led astray with a promise of marriage? How very unfortunate!”

“No, of course not. The third time I’ve been placed with a job and a home and not been

satisfactory.”



“Oh...and why weren’t you satisfactory? Do you drink?”

“It’s not a laughing matter for me, Mr. Lonnegan,”she said, near to tears again.“I wasn’t

satisfactory because the work was beyond me, I suppose. I’m not clever, you see, not in the

commercial field, and I’m no good at figures.”

“I see. And what had they picked for you this time?”

“A sort of home-help somewhere in Clapham.”

“Good God!”

“I’m good with children, you see. Matron says that’s all I really am good for, except for a

misplaced appetite for reading, and that wouldn’t earn me a living.”

He stood jingling some loose coins in his pockets and frowned down at her discouragingly.

“So you like children?”he asked casually, and the solution to this unfortunate situation at

once became plain to her.

“Yes, they understand me. Wool-gathering is only another name for day-dreaming which, of

course, I can see isn’t practical, but children have a world of make-believe which they know is

perfectly compatible with everyday life if you don’t confuse the two.”

“But it seems you do.”

“Not really—it’s a kind ofdefence, I expect. Mr. Lonnegan, couldn’t you—couldn’t you find me

a job with children in the district? You say everyone’s understaffed, and there must be familieswho would be glad of help. It wouldn’t matter then that I haven’t got the fare back to England.”

The eager flush which had crept under her skin dispelled that regrettable look of a waif for a

moment and with the lamplight turning her freshly brushed hair to an illusion of salver, gave

her instead a look of rather charming delicacy. There was more than a hint of breeding there,

he thought idly, whoever her parents might have been, and answered with a rather

unnecessary touch of sharpness;

“Very ingenuous, thereby wholly avoiding the wrath to come. Do you imagine that an

institution as jealous of its reputation as you make out would take no steps to satisfythemselves that you weren’t being exploited in an alien country? In their own interests they’d

probably haul you back and find you another dreary but approved situation in Clapham.”

Her colour faded and the brief moment of charm with it.

“But if you wrote and satisfied them about respectability and all that, it would be enough,

coming from the lord of a grand-sounding castle,”she said naively, and he gave a shrug of

impatience.

“Why should I do your dirty work for you? How do you know I’m even respectable myself?”he

asked, and of course she didn’t. Not if first impressions were anything to go by, she thought

with belated caution, looking at this ugly, overbearing stranger.



“It isn’t very kind of you to make fun of my situation,”she said, a small quaver in her voice,

and he retorted quickly:“Very likely not, butfor heaven’s sake don’t start crying again. There’s a

quite simple way to satisfy everyone and tie up all the loose ends, but as you’ll be chained to

the house with that ankle for a few days yet, there’ll be ample time to consider these things.”

“I can’t,”she said with a rather forlorn attempt at relieving a total stranger of

obligation,“impose on your hospitality indefinitely. I can hobble to the station, even if my ankleis sprained.”

“Seven miles by road, or five across the Plain?”

“Well, you’d hardly refuse to drive me as far as the station, would you?”

“And what would you do when you got there? Murphy wouldn’t let you on the train without a

ticket.”

“All right, I give up,”she said, closing her eyes,“but if there’s a simple way out, wouldn’t it bekinder to tell me what to do instead of mocking me?”

“Very well, he said, and paused long enough for her to hear a fresh spatter of rain on the

windows,“you came here hoping for the proverbial happy ending with wedding bells and

orange blossom, so you’d better marry me.”

Her eyes flew open and she looked at him as if he had taken leave of his senses.

“What did you say?”

“You heard.”

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough fun at my expense?”she asked wearily.“I realise that to

you my crazy impulse to jump on the next boat because I thought some young man meant to

marry me is ridiculous—it even looks that way to me now—but where I’ve come from, lessons

in sophisticated behaviour weren’t included.”

“We’re hardly sophisticated in that sense in the west of Ireland,”he replied rather

dryly.“However, be that as it may, I was quite serious.”

“You were?”

“Why not? You have a problem and, possibly, I have one too.”

“How could marrying me solve a problem for you?”she asked, and there was a touch of

surprise in his quick smile.

“Now you call my bluff by showing unexpected sense. No maidenly protestations or flutters of

alarm—just a businesslike approach to a rather sudden proposition,”he said with humour, and

she blinked back at him rather rapidly.

“You haven’t answered my question,”she temporised,suspectingthat he was still mocking her,

and he replied with that ironical little lift of the eyebrows:



“Neither I have. My reasons needn’t concern you for the moment, but if you must have one,

then apply my ingenuous cousin’s suggestions where they reallybelong.Clooney indeed needs a

mistress, but it’s I who needs to settle down.”

“But hardly with a complete stranger!”

“A complete stranger makes the whole thing possible. Now, Miss Harriet Jones, what otherobjections have you?”

“But the idea’s absurd—we don’t know each other!”

“An advantage on both sides; no romantic preconceptions to wither in disappointment, and

for you, the assurance of a job from which you can’t be sacked. After all, myimpetuous young

friend, you came quite prepared to marry a young man you’d only met once—where’s the

difference in exchanging one stranger for another, when it’s really the castle you fell in love

with?”

She considered this aspect of the matter. It was only too likely thatshe had been prepared to

fall in love with Prince Charming and his castle no matter what manner of man he should turn

out to be.

Duff Lonnegan had been watching her young, undisciplined face betraying her thoughts to

him so innocently and said with gentle irony:

“You see, I was right. Thinkit over, Miss Jones, you might do a lot worse. Now I’m going to see

to that ankle, then leave you to the night’s reflections. Turn back the bedclothes, please.”

He made the ankle comfortable without further reference to his extraordinary proposition,

then took her temperature, informed her briskly that it was normal and she could get up on the

morrow, and left her with a brief goodnight.

She awoke the next morning to find the same young girl depositing a breakfast tray on the

bed, which made her think for the second time that she must have imagined the events of the

night before. But when the girl, who said her name was Molly, drew back the curtains, letting in

a flood of morning sunshine, Harriet knew that yesterday’s lassitude had left her, that her

host’s flight of fancy was no more sensible than her own, and her awkward situation must be

dealt with practically and at once.

“Are there families round here needing home help with the children, Molly?”she asked,

tackling her breakfast with the zest of a returned appetite.

“That’s a quare question, and you from the wather,”the girl replied with vague

surprise.“Would you be wan of thim maiden ladies you hear tell about that sticks their long

noses into other folks’business—do-gooders, they call thim?”

“Good gracious, no! I’ve suffered from them myself,”Harriet laughed.

“You have? Then why would you be concerning yourself with needy families hereabouts,an’you a guest of the castle?”



“I’m only a guest by chance, you know, and I can’t stop on here. I thought you might know of

any houses around that would offer work.”

It had been a mistake, however, to assume that a local servant girl was the obvious source of

information for domestic labour in the district. Molly simply slapped her hands on her generous

thighs and gave an unexpected screech of mirth.

“Wurrk, is it! An’haven’t you the grand humour, now, tellin’the tale with a face as straight as

a yard of portha, an’they all sayin’you seemed a bit simple mistakin’the castle for the gaol

an’lavin’your traps on Clooney station for anny young felly to make off with, puttin’the blame

on poor old Murphy an’he with a year an’a day to his pension. Sure, you was treatin’us all to a

touch of the English humour an’we, over here, thinkin’they has none! Wait till I tell thim in the

kitchen, they’ll die laffin.”Unable to keep such a good joke to herself a moment longer, she

made a dash for the door, knocking over a chair as she went.

“Well !”Harriet exclaimed aloud in astonishment, then smiled as she pictured Matron’s face

had one of her charges so lamentably forgotten her place.

She finished her breakfast without haste, then got up and washed and dressed and made her

bed with accustomed thoroughness, grateful now to that early training which had permitted

nothing untoward to upset the daily routine of Ogilvy’s.

She surveyed herself in an old-fashioned pier-glass, frowning at her unsatisfactory reflection.

Someone had cleaned and pressed her suit, but its ill-treatment on the Plain of Clooney had not

improved its appearance and the skirt had definitely shrunk. Her shoes had not been returned

to her so were probably past redeeming, for they had let in the water badly, but in any case,

she would have to make do with bedroom slippers for the time being on account of her

bandaged foot. She thought her feet looked decidedly odd, not to say indecent, coupled with

the sober garments of daytime, and grinned again, remembering her host’s astonishing

suggestion of the night before. However serious he might have imagined himself to be at the

time, when he saw her again he would soon realise the unsuitability, even the ludicrousness of

such a proposal.

Before going downstairs in search of him, she crossed to one of the windows to take her first

curious look at the country which lay beyond the castle.

Her room must be at the back of the house, for there was no evidence of the wall and locked

gates which had barred her arrival, and she leaned out across the sill, her eyes widening as they

feasted on the fulfilment of a dream come true. It was all as familiar as the letters; the lough

with its north shore slap against the castle, the ruined turret to the west where watch was kept

for the cattle raiders and bands of cut-throats in Sarsfleld’s day, the little island far out in the

calm waters where Cuchulain himself was said to have rested on his quest to Cruachan, and

beyond the mountains, the hollow hills where once dwelt the terrible Sidhe, and today gave

brief shelter to those intrepid spirits who once in a while made a break from Clooney gaol.

“All mine for the asking,”she murmured, comforting herself with a last pretence that, by

taking the surprising master of Clooney at his word, she could make the flimsy promise of those

letters come true, then shebanged the window shut rather crossly and prepared to find her wayto the living quarters of the castle and a sensible discussion as to her immediate future.



The house was not as vast as she had supposed, she discovered, finding the main staircase

after only one wrong turn down a corridor, and in daylight it looked a little shabby with damp

patches spreading on the stone walls, and panelling which had once been fine, cracked and

crumbling in places with dry rot. The staircase, however, still retained its grandeur, and she

paused at the top to admire its gracious, curving splendour and the shining scrolls and twists of

its delicate balustrade. Here she could well indulge in fantasies of past glories and forgotten

elegance, and she regretted the injured ankle, which prevented her from making an impressive

sweeping descent. It was no solace to find her host waiting at the bottom, doubtless, judging by

the expression on his ugly face, having watched and enjoyed her discomfiture from the start.

“A brave effort,”he observed, not without irony.“You’d better take my arm the rest of the

way. We’ll go to the library.”

She obliged, not so much because she needed his support, but because she thought him quite

capable of picking her up in one of those undignified swoops should she refuse, but she felt a

little ridiculous being slowly escorted across the hall in a formal silence, their steps ill-matched

and her head barely reaching his shoulder.

He put her carefully into a wing-backed chair, still without speaking, then smiled with a

certain rather wicked satisfaction as he observed the hungry gleam in her eyesas theytravelled

over the book-linedwalls.

“Such bounty!”she exclaimed with the incredulous delight of a beggar starved for food and

drink, and he turned to a tray of heavy silver which had been set out with cut glass and

decanters in the centre of the room.

“You choose your words with discrimination, Miss Harriet Jones,”he remarked, pouring from

a decanter.“A glass ofMadeira wine?”He handed her one of the Waterford goblets and added,

as he caught her startled expression:“Oh, I can be discriminating, too, when it comes to getting

what I want, or perhaps your flights of fancy are catching. I had an impulse to see how a bribe

of unrestricted reading would appeal to your romantic notions. In other words, I want an

answer.”

She sipped her wine in silence, the practical, common-sense conclusion she had arrived at on

waking upset once again. There could be no doubt that his own conclusions had not altered

with the prosaic light of day, but it was hardly fair, she thought, to gamble so blatantly and so

surely onher besetting weakness. He waited for her reply but made no effort to prompt her as

the silence between them grew, and that, she was beginning to understand, would always be

his way.



CHAPTER THREE

“WHEN you talked about discrimination in yourself, Mr. Lonnegan, I think you meant low

cunning,”she began firmly, and was a little disconcerted when he burst out laughing.

She probably did not realise how comic she looked, comic and rather endearing, he thought,

observing the shrunken skirt which she was trying to persuade in vain to cover her bony knees,

the bedroom slippers several sizes too large, and the disapproving look of a prim governess

cancelled out by the childish fringe which kept tickling her eyebrows.

He answered, however, with a careful regard for the touchy feelings of youth:

“Well, perhaps it was a bit of both. But shouldn’t you feel flattered that I find it necessary to

be devious? I don’t as a rule beat about the bush when I put forward a business proposition andexpect a sensible answer.”

“It depends what you mean by a sensible answer,”she retorted, refusing to be intimidated by

sheer masculine arrogance.“And a proposal of marriage, however ill-judged, is scarcely a

business proposition.”

She took another cautious sip of wine, congratulating herself that so far her head was

remaining splendidly clear.

“My dear child! Is that what’s troubling you?”he replied with an amusement that was tinged

with impatience.“‘You didn’t suppose, did you, that I expected any more than a business

contract between us?”When shedid not answer, he continued in the professionally indulgent

tones of a surgeon endeavouring to explain the necessity for a simple operation:“There are

sound and valid reasons why I need to marry quickly, and no possible objections that I can see

why you shouldn’t oblige since, as I pointed out last night, you had come here with that object

in mind.”

“I didn’t come here withyouin mind,”she said, knowing that it must sound a weak protest in

the circumstances, but she felt gauche and inexperienced.

“That may be,”he replied.“But you came prepared to link up with a virtual stranger, all thesame. You’re not going to tell me it was love at first sight, on a single meeting, and you’ve

cherished an undying passion for my cousin Rory ever since!”

“No,”she said, fidgeting with the disobliging hem of her skirt and looking wretched,“that

wouldn’t be strictly true, but—”

“But what?”

“I don’t know quite how to explain. Most girls have romantic dreams when they’re just

growing up, I imagine, but orphans start at a disadvantage and have to work harder at it.”

“What a curious remark. Why?”



“Because the dreams are likely to remain just dreams since none of us in our right senses

would really expect to live happily ever after with Prince Charming in a castle.”

“It would seem in that case that you must be sadly lacking in your right senses since you

apparently expected the impossible,”he said with some severity as he crossed the room to let

in the dogs which were scratching at the door. They padded back at his heels and lay down at

his feet, and Harriet, putting out an eager hand to Kurt, her friend of the fog, felt hurt when heturned his head away and disclaimed all knowledge of her.

“Why won’t he make friends?”she asked plaintively.“I thought he liked me.”

“Leave him alone till he’s ready. Alsatians like to make their own advances, and in their own

time. They are sensible animals and don’t care to spill their emotions all over the place on first

acquaintance.”

“Well?”he shot at her suddenly.“Have we gone round the mulberry bush enough times for

your liking, Miss Jones? I can’t really see why you should hesitate, unless it’s simply a matter of pride not to agree the first time of asking.”

“I’m not proud.”

“Then you’re just being awkward which, in the circumstances, I’d say you can’t afford to be.

No one round here will offer domestic work to a guest of mine, you know, so why not make the

sensible decision? Fate has thrown us across one another’s paths at a psychological moment;

you need a home and security, I need a wife. It couldn’t be more fortuitous.”

“If,”she said reasonably,“you need a wife so badly, surely there must be a woman of your

own kind in the neighbourhood who would be glad to oblige you?”

“I daresay—and would oblige, as you put it, with less quibbling and reluctance than you, I

may say,”he retorted. She thought that over, then asked with such calm unexpectedness that

she had the unlooked-for gratification of seeing him surprised:

“Is someone chasing you, Mr. Lonnegan?”

He answered with amused evasiveness;

“Well now, that’s a leading question, isn’t it? Clooney, though it’s falling to bits, helps toenhance the dubious assets of its owner with the undiscerning, perhaps, but neither I nor my

crumbling castle are for sale. That’s why—”

“That’s why you think someone like me is the only possible choice,”she interrupted

gently.“Oh, I do see your point. A girl from an orphanage who would be too grateful to demand

much, someone content to be your wife in name in exchange for the realisation of an

adolescent dream.”

“Exactly ,” hesaid crisply.“You have a more mature perception than I gave you credit for, my

dear. Come—I’ll show you the layout downstairs so that you won’t get lost if you choose towander, on your own. That ankle is only badly wrenched, not sprained, and should be easier in

a day or two. Now, we’ll start with the Grand Saloon which used to be the drawing-room in my



mother’s time, but hasn’t been used for years.”

She followed him from room to room, with two dogs in close attendance. She could not take

her eyes off them and, longing to share a fraction of their devotion to Duff just for one

moment, tried to touch one of them as they brushed by her, but was politely repulsed again.

But she forgot the dogs as the histories of paintings and trophies were explained to her withthe laconic indifference of a man who had clearly done the tourist round many times before. He

pointed out with equal impartiality the threadbare state of carpets and tapestries which might

once have been priceless, and she had no knowledge to discover the difference between

genuine and reproduction when it came to furniture. The confused architectural styles did not

trouble her untrained eye; she merely remarked prosaically that so many additional bits and

pieces must make a lot of work for the servants.

“Very true, it would if they were used, and we had any servants,”he replied with a grin.“But

as you can see, we are shrouded for the most part in rather grubby dust-sheets which Jimsy

used to whip off if the odd tourist clamoured at our gates, which wasn’t often. But we’ve put anend to the irritation, praise the pigs!”

“By keeping the gates locked?”

“By keeping the gates locked. Barred gates, I may add, give rise to a few wild conjectures in a

country where most properties stand open to the passer-by, but it saves a deal of trouble.”And

also, thought Harriet, giving him a swift surreptitious glance, protected him from other

unspecified interruptions; but he caught and interpreted the glance and added with a certain

dryness:“The wall wasn’t built on my instructions, if you’re fondly imagining Clooney hides

some grisly secret, but in the days of Ireland’s troubles, land-owners were forced to guard their

properties if they weren’t to be burnt out or worse. This house is still known by its local

nickname round here because it was one of the few that was never touched. Lonnegan’s Luck

they called it, but it was my grandfather’s insistence on a wall and locked gates that saved

Clooney, not his proverbial luck. The only other access to this day is from the rear across the

lough and there was time and to spare for a reception committee before a boat could cross the

water.

They had come, at the end of their tour, to a small room overlooking the lough furnished

more like an office or study than the gracious retiring-room which its moulded ceiling and

delicate faded wallpaper had once proclaimed it to be, and Harriet turned away to look at a

portrait which hung above an ornately carved desk.

“You don’t need to keep trying to impress me, Mr. Lonnegan. I may be an orphan, but that

doesn’t make me simple-minded,”she said.

He observed the slender, erect back turned to him in polite rejection, and said quite gently:

“I wasn’t trying to impress, but to interest you. Perhaps you misunderstand my doubtless

puzzling importuning, but you have, I think, the quality that I and Clooney need. Does that

surprise you?”

“You made that sound as if—as if I had something to give,”she said, and the colour, had crept

under her skin bringing back that fleeting moment of charm which had surprised him the night



before.

He replied a little roughly because already her absurd lack of self-conceit had begun to

reproach him:

“Everyone has something to give. Why should you be any different, thanks to a less fortunate

upbringing?”

She turned back at once to the portrait, aware that she must have sounded naive, if not even

angling for compliments, and studied it attentively to avoid further misconceptions. The face of

a rather plain little girl looked down at her with a teasing suggestion of familiarity. Perhaps it

was the long dark hair primly confined by an Alice-band which reminded her of pictures of old-

fashioned children in the equally old-fashioned annuals to be found on the orphanage shelves,

or perhaps it was just that unchildlike expression of indifference in the round dark eyes, which

seemed vaguely reminiscent of the acceptance seen in the eyes of some unwanted children.

But there was something else, too, a likeness or a reminder of another face.

“Who’s that?”she asked, mainly to divert attention from herself and was utterly unprepared

for his reply.

“That? Oh, that’s my daughter, Nonie,”he said.“The other reason I need you here, my dear

Miss Jones. Shall we go and find some lunch?”

Afterwards Harriet wondered whether he had deliberately left that room until the last,

banking on her natural curiosity to givehimthe opening he desired; but that, she ultimately

decided, was too devious. There had been nothing to prevent him owning to a child at once; in

fact it would have been a more logical means of persuasion than the confusing nonsense he

had talked.

“Are you married, then?”she remembered asking him with gauche stupidity, and his reply had

been deceptively mild:

“My wife died eight years ago. I was hardly contemplating bigamy,”he had said with a little

quirk of amusement, and left it at that.

They had gone into luncheon then and sat one at each end of a long table, its polished surface

reflecting such a lavish display of glass and silver that the distance between them seemed

immense.

“You’re quite right,”he remarked suddenly from the far end of the table, after a lengthy

silence.“It’s all rather overdone, but the kitchen is putting on an act for you. Our guests are so

few that they have to be impressed.”

“Oh!”said Harriet rather blankly. She hardly considered she would rank as a guest worth

impressing, but at least it seemed clear that the castle staff, such as it was, were still in

ignorance of her humble origin.

“Haven’t you told them?”she asked innocently.

“Told them what?”



“About the orphanage and—and my silly mistake.”

“I’m not in the habit of discussing my guests with my servants,”he replied with coolness.“As

to your silly mistake, that can remain a matter between ourselves, since my cousin’s not likely

to embarrass you with reminders in the circumstances.”

“Your cousin,”she retorted, stung to equal coolness by his manner,“could have saved meembarrassment more easily by having the decency to stop me coming and making a fool of

myself whenhefound he didn’t want me.”

“Well, to give him his due he did, as I’ve discovered too late to make any difference,”he told

her calmly.“He apparently wrote out a telegram and gaveit to one ofthe farm hands to send

from the village, who, meeting Willie-the-post on the way, not unnaturally passed it on to him

to save himself the extra miles, and Willie stuffed it inhispocket and forgot all about it. That’s

the Irish brand of wool-gathering for you. Still, my dear Miss Jones, it’s an ill wind, isn’t it?”

She refused to rise to that one, however, and sat fidgetinginher chair, wishing that theorphanage tendency to bolt down food before all the second helpings had gone had not caused

her to finish long before her host.

Perhaps he misunderstood her uneasiness, for he remarked suddenly:

“He wouldn’t marry you, you know, if you’re still cherishing hopes of a more romantic

bridegroom. Rory’s nonexistent heiress who was to pull his chestnuts out of the fire has been a

family joke for a long time. You’d much better make do with me.”

But Harriet had had enough of Irish humour for one day.“If, Mr. Lonnegan,”she said firmly,“all

you want is someone to look after your little girl in the holidays, there’s not the slightest need

to marry. Why, when I asked you earlier if you could find me work of that kind, didn’t you offer

me this?”

“Because, you stubborn, persistent creature, Ireland is still a country where in isolated

districts such as this such an arrangement wouldn’t be considered suitable.”

“I see. Well, there must be other houses, other families.”

“None of any help to you. Castle Slyne the other side of the lough is a guest-house now and

theO’Rafferty son and heir a bare two months; the Fitzgeralds and the Lynches have grown-upfamilies, and that leaves the two Miss Ryans with no encumbrances except dogs, Alice Docherty

who might need a groom but never a nursemaid and old General Sullivan who’s long past

either.”He had risen from the table as he spoke and was occupying himself collecting all the

used plates to put on the floor for the dogs to lick.

“Saves the washing up,”he observed, catching her disapproving eye,“we’re short-handed in

the kitchen. Well, Miss Harriet Jones, what’s your alternative, since your handsome legacy is

already dissipated and the fare to England can’t be obtained on credit even in Ireland?”

She, too, got to her feet for one last effort at reason.

“You could, Mr. Lonnegan, if you chose to be generous, lend me the fare back,”she said a



little stiffly, but immediately felt herself blushing at the enormity of the suggestion. To borrow

money from aperfect strangerwas bad enough by Matron’s standards, but to expect charity

when you were already supported by it was like asking for more.

However he interpreted that heightened colour, he was not, evidently, prepared to make

things easy for her.

“But perhaps I don’t choose,”he retorted coolly.“I thought I’d already made it clear that

Nonie wasn’t the sole reason for my proposal, strange as it apparently still seems to you.”

“Well, of course it’s strange! Whoever heard of such a—such a crazy sort of proposal!”

“Well, we’ve done enough sparring for the day, and I must remember my duties as host. We

will go and sit on the terrace and admire the view, and you shall entertain me with unlikely

tales of this orphanage which seems to have ill-prepared you for the hard facts and

disappointments of adult life. Come along.”

The afternoon passed pleasantly, and Harriet found her disconcerting host had, when he

chose, as apt a gift for putting you at ease as he had for putting you in your place. He was also a

good listener and, never loth to chatter if she was encouraged, she soon forgot she had known

him for barely forty-eight hours.

“Did you know who your parents were?”he inquired idly at one point, and looked surprised

and puzzled when she replied that she had never asked.

“It’s better not to know than be disappointed, or just make them up for yourself. I might be

one of the cases who have no records, you see,”she explained simply, and his eyes grew gentle.

“Yes, I see. And did you make up parents for yourself, Harriet?”

“No, not parents. Sometimes I used to invent a benevolent trustee who would adopt me, or

perhaps marry me, like in that old book,Daddy-long-legs.”

“Well, here’s your chance—grab it with both hands!”he said, unable to resist such an

opening, but found her eyeing him doubtfully.

“I don’t think benevolent is exactly the right word for you, Mr. Lonnegan, and I don’t suppose

you’d consider adopting me,”she said seriously, and he got to his feet.

“You would suppose right. One daughter’s quite enough to be going on with, thank you.

You’d best be going indoors, it’s getting chilly,”he said.

Left to her own devices, Harriet felt free to explore at her leisure those rooms they had

visited in the morning. Old pieces of china, many of them cracked or broken lay at the backs of

display cabinets, faded miniatures, odd scraps of embroidery, ivories and silver trinkets were

heaped carelessly together under the glass tops of little spindly tables. She longed to take them

out and hold them in her eager hands, but although the cases were unlocked, Ogilvy’s rigid

ruling never to touch what did not belong to you forbade a closer inspection. She even foundherself jumping guiltily when Jimsy caught her lifting the edge of a piece of cloth which hung

over an easel to discover what it might hide.



“I was bringing a lamp to the snug where himself toult me you would be restin’,”he said with

obvious disapproval.“Why would you be puttin’a strain on your ailin’leg pokin’about with this

trash? These rooms are niver used.”

“Is it only trash?”she asked, aware that the light falling on all these mute objects revealed

dust and the long neglect of years, and wondered whether the old man thought she had been

criticising his household duties.

“Well now ... as to that I can’t tell you, for the stuff’s laid about here gatherin’dust ever since I

first come as pantry boy, but in thim days there was servants and to spare for polishin’up gew-

gaws, and the mistress, as she was then, buyin’annything that took her fancy from the tinkers

at the door. She had a magpie’s taste for gew-gaws, that wan.”

“Mr. Lonnegan’s wife? Is that her portrait?”asked Harriet, warming instantly to a woman who

found fascination in a collection of colourful miscellany without regard to its worth.

“His mammy, not his wife, young miss, an’the pixture’s not of her,”Jimsy replied with asuggestion of reproof.“The late young mistress cared nothing for the castle, poor soul, an’she

with her heart left in Dublin where she should have stayed.”

Harriet felt a chill of foreboding as she stared at the old servant.

“What was she like? How did she die?”

“Miss Kitty, as she was? She was like a child that’s taken too soon from its mammy, an’she

pined for the lights an’the gaiety they took from her. She died when the babby came, God rest

her soul!”

Jimsy stood there holding the lamp and seemed to have forgotten her, remembering too

vividly, perhaps, the melancholy little story, and Harriet said softly:

“Oh, how terribly sad...sad enough not to be happy in such a place as this, but sadder still to

die when a child would have changed everything.”

“She niver wanted the child. Mr. Duff, too, thought a babby would divert her from her

miscontent, and the paintin’she was always at, shuttin’herself up in this very room, for it was

the wan she tuk for herself, but the waitin’an’the slow change in her body soured her

onhiman’she turned agin him.”

“Oh, poor man ... he would have blamed himself, I suppose.”

“He did so, though‘twas not his fault he niver onder-stood Miss Kitty, for dancin’an’dressin’up

was nary a Lonnegan’s notion of the gaiety, but he took it hard, blamin’himself for wishin’the

child on her andmislidn’the poor toad on account of it.”

“That’s sadder still,”she said.“I should have thought the little girl would be a comfort.”

“Ah, well...himself wished for a son, which was only natural, with Clooney in mind, an’how

would amanfind comfort in a pukin’wean, an’he with no patience with wailin’females

annyways?”Jimsy said with a sudden return to his more usual manner.



“Where’s the little girl now?”Harriet asked curiously, for there seemed to be no signs of a

child about the house.

“Away to her convent skule in Knockferry. There’s not much companionship here for a child,

so that way was best.”

“The holidays must be lonely here for her.”

“She’s used to it, the craythur, havin’known nothin’else. Himself was mistaken shutting up

the castle, I’m thinkin’, but he couldn’t abide the place at first, and went trapesin’round

furrin’parts, drinkin’hard an’gamblin’high, an’wenchin’hard too, if he’s annything like his

grandda.”

A rather leery look accompanied the old man’s final remark, and she felt herself colouring as

she began to suspect Jimsy was exercising his histrionic talents with rather too much

exaggeration of the national characteristics.

“Ah well ... I’ll leave you the lamp an’fetch another to the snug in case you want to gawp here

a while longer,”he said a little huffily, and placing the lamp on a table, shuffled out.

She wandered curiously about the room, seeking for indications of its late owner’s personal

tastes, but there were few traces of a young girl’s occupation, except for a shelf of dusty books

and a small chest of drawers containing the discarded mementoes of parties, and a trivial

assortment of unused, or unwanted presents, some still with their Christmas labels attached,

and many bearing the signatureSam.Books, too, were inscribed with the same name; expensive

editions of reproductions in art, lives of painters and sometimes books of verse. Some hadFrom

Sam, with love,scrawled across the fly-leaf, one or two bore more intimate effusions, and one

proclaimed itself to bein memory of that unforgettable night in Dublin.

Who was this Sam, so attentive and so pervasive? wondered Harriet, shutting up the last

book with an unreasoning feeling of distaste, and theveiled portrait on the easel suddenly

proved an irresistible temptation.

She twitched the drapery off with a quick, guilty jerk and stood gazing with curious eyes at

the face looking back at her, the face of a young girl brimming over with life and a strange,

teasing beauty, a face which proclaimed only too heartbreakingly the truth of Jimsy’s kindly

memories of a girl who loved dancing and dressing up and the innocent pleasures of

admiration; but there was something there which contradicted that suggestion of pining. The

work was unfinished, and not very good, Harriet thought, and remembering that the young

Mrs. Lonnegan had painted for a hobby and a distraction, wondered whether this had been a

self-portrait left unfinished because death had intervened.

She shivered involuntarily and was replacing the drape when the door opened suddenly and

she saw her host standing there watching her with a slightly intimidating expression on his dark

face.

“What on earth are you doing in this cold room? You should be resting that ankle by the

fire,”he said, and she moved hastily away from the easel.

“I didn’t realise it was so late,”she apologised.“I wanted to explore these rooms again and



discover more treasures. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Why should I mind? But there’s little here to rank as treasure. Most of the stuff’s worthless

and has amply accumulated through the years.”

“So Jimsy said.”

“H’m...and what else did Jimsy say? The old scoundrel can be like the Ancient Mariner when

the fancy moves him.”

“‘He holds him with his glittering eyes—the Wedding Guest stood still,’”Harriet quoted glibly

to avoid a truthful answer, and he smiled.

“Did the authorities insist you learnthe whole of that terrible poem by heart?”he asked, and

she replied quite seriously;

“Oh, yes. We were very well grounded in the English poets. I could recite lots to you.”

“Well, we’ll reserve that pleasure for days when conversation fails us, I think. Come with me

to the warmth. I want to talk to you.”

She followed him into another room which must, she supposed, be the oddly named snug

which both he and Jimsy had mentioned, and this, she thought, was clearly the room that was

used from choice. It must once have presented the formal graciousness of a small drawing-

room, for it was panelled with the fine-grained wood of another decade, and still retained

something of the elegance of a past generation. But now the more masculine appointments of

a smoking-room rubbed shoulders with brocaded chairs and spindly cabinets; sporting papers

and magazines littered tables in untidy heaps, and the high stone mantel was crammed with an

assortment of pipes, tobacco jars and official notifications.

“Oh, this is nice! I can see, now, why you call it the snug,”Harriet said, warming her frozen

hands at the fire and looking up, saw a coat of arms circled with lettering carved in the stone of

the chimneypiece.“What does that say?”

“Wake not a sleeping wolf.Perhaps you should take it as a warning,”he replied with a certain

asperity, and, in the same tone, ordered her on to the sofa with instructions to put up her feet

“Is this your family motto?”she asked, unperturbed by what merely sounded like a nurserythreat, and he laughed.

“In a sense, I suppose, though it was a Spanish De Wolfe who married into the family back in

the middle ages who fancied it, I believe. Pinched it off Will Shakespeare, I shouldn’t wonder, if

you know yourHenry IV.So you like this room?”

“It’s homey and sort of mixed up,”she said, aware now that she was glad to rest her ankle

after so much standing about.“Not that the other rooms weren’t lovely, of course,”she added

hastily.

“The other rooms are damn cold and very few of them are lovely from an aesthetic point of

view. Clooney is a rather disastrous hotch-potch of style, thanks to the architectural whims of



its various tenants,”he observed with some dryness.

“I’ve had a wire from’this worthy lady of yours at Ogilvy Manor,”he stated casually, and the

observation was so unexpected that she stared at him open-mouthed.

“Matron?”But how could she know I was here?”she said at last.“She thinks I’m in Clapham.”

“Well, I regret to say I informed her.”

“Youinformed her! Well, of all the—”

“How delightfully young you are, Harriet Jones—you nearly called me a dirty sneak, didn’t

you?”

The warmth and pleasure this room had given her faded, together with that new-found sense

of belonging, a sense she had not been aware of until now. She would have to go back, she

thought dully. Whatever harsh view the authorities were likely to take of her future, they couldhardly leave her foisted on a complete stranger for want of the fare home.

“Why did you?”she asked in a small, deflated voice.

“Well, there might have been complications if you decided to stay on my terms. I wouldn’t

want to be extradited to England on a charge of enticement!”

“Could they dothat !”

“Possibly. You’re under age, and I imagine such institutions have certain precautionary

powers over their charges.”

“They’ll make me go back.”

“Yes, they will, unless you give them a valid reason for staying.”

“They won’t think lack of money a valid reason. They’ll send the fare. They might even send

someone to fetch me.”

He rubbed a thoughtful hand over his chin, regarding her with an odd expression.

“But my dear young lady, only this morning you begged me to lend you the fare. Have you

changed your mind since then?”he said with rather unkind irony, and she looked across at him

with startled eyes.

“Couldn’t I stop just for a time as companion to your little girl?”she asked, seeking for a

compromise, and he gave her a sudden grin as though her attempt to bargain had given him

the first round.

“No, you could not,”he replied.“For one thing, Nonie’s only here in the holidays, so how

would I explain your presence the rest of the time? For another, I happen to need a wife, not

just a nursery governess.”His eyes suddenly twinkled with unsuspected humour.“Come now,

foolish Harriet, what have you got to lose? You seem to be sold on my crumbling castle, and I

can’t believe youwant to return to whatever lies in wait for you at this dreary-sounding place. Is



it my unromantic face that puts you off, or are you afraid I’ll beat you if you don’t behave

yourself?”

She sighed, wondering why he felt he had to humour her like a child.

“Well?”

The bitch, Delsa, got up and pushed her muzzle under his hand, jealous for his attention, and

Harriet found herself wondering with slightly shocking irrelevance what he would be like as a

lover. Her thoughts travelled back instinctively to the face in the portrait, and she said on

impulse:

“Your wife was very lovely, wasn’t she?”

“Lovely?”he repeated, frowning no doubt at the apparent inconsequence of the

question.“Well, very pretty, certainly, but loveliness is a little more than that, I think. Why do

you ask?”

“Oh, just a natural curiosity, I suppose,”she replied hastily, remembering that he had caught

her prying, and might well resent uninvited intrusion in his private affairs, but his answer

puzzled her. Nobody, she thought, could have failed to find beauty in that dark, provocative

face.

“You haven’t answered my first question,”he said,“I asked you if it was my ugly face that

made you hesitate, but perhaps you were only thinking that I might make sad comparisons with

the past, and were sorry for me.”

Jimsy’s appearance with a telegram for Duff was a welcome interruption, allowing her a brief

respite for further reflection, for the drab prospect of the unknown homes and identical streets

of places like Clapham wasbeginning to weigh on Harriet as the more impossible alternative of

the two.

The crisp crackle of paper as Duff, having read his telegram, crumpled it into a ball, brought

her back from her thoughts.

“Well,”he said with the clipped harshness remembered from their first meeting,“it’s too late

for repentance, or indeed, for very much choice. They won’t have you back.”

She stared back at himwithout real comprehension.“Was that from Matron? ButIthought you

said—”

“That I’d already heard? So I had, but the first wire was one requesting further information.”

“Then what did you reply?”

“That you’d eloped with me, of course.”

“What !”She sat up so suddenly that pain shot up her injured ankle, making her screw her

eyes shut in momentary anguish. When she opened them again she saw him grinning at her

and said indignantly:“You didn’t say anything of the kind!”



“Well, perhaps I didn’t, but however I worded the message, the result’s the same, so you

haven’t much choice now, have you, Miss Jones?”

She looked tired and rather plain with the freckles standing out on her white face.“No, I

haven’t much choice, I suppose, if you won’t help me,”she said.“I can’t even get away from

here if it means walking. I’m your prisoner. Do you have dungeons?”

“You don’t sound quite as regretful as you should; I suspect you’re weakening. We don’t run

to dungeons, I’m afraid.”

His voice had become cajoling and surprisingly gentle, though his eyes told her he was not

prepared to stand any more nonsense, and quite suddenly she was weeping, whether with

relief that the authorities had taken matters out of her hands, or in the desire for comfort that

a child feels when it has at last given in, she hardly knew, for it no longer seemed important.

She was aware of Duff getting to his feet with an abrupt exclamation, and expected a fresh

rebuke for that irritating predilection to tears, but he merely came and sat beside her on the

sofa and silently proffered his handkerchief, then quite unexpectedly pulled her into his armsand told her to cry it out and be done with it.

“Listen, you ridiculous child!”he said above her head,“you didn’t really imagine anyone could

force you into marriage these days, did you? I must confess that I still think you’d be better off

with the protection of my name and all that goes with it than struggling for existence in a world

for which you seem woefully unfitted, but I’m not going to knock you over the head to convince

you, so the choice is yours, my dear. Don’t cry so bitterly, Harriet, I won’t badger you any

more.”

He spoke with a rough tenderness as if compassion did not come easily to him, but he could

not have chosen a surer way to break down her defences if he had planned it deliberately, for

he seemed to Harriet in that moment, the strange embodiment of all her adolescent dreams;

father-figure, protector, even the benevolent trustee who would one day adopt her, conjured

up by her invention. The fact that he would also be her husband had no more significance than

would the discovery of some unknown relative whom she would claim as her own.

“You won’t need to b-badger me, Mr. Lonnegan,”she said at last, smiling up at him through

her tears.“As the choice is mine, after all, I—I’ll say yes, and th-thank you.”

“So you’ve decided to bum your boats once again, have you?”he said.“I have to warn you,

young lady, that it will be for the last time.”

“You don’t need to warn me, but you—you will be burning yours, too,”she replied, feeling

that in his case the burning of boats might have more serious repercussions that in her own.

“Mine were burnt long ago, so don’t let’s have any doubts on that score,”he said rather

curtly.“No regrets, no comparisons, the slate wiped clean like the past, and the future—well,

the future could hold surprises for us both. Now, for the last time, you’re sure,

Harriet—because there’ll be no going back after today?”

“Yes, I’m sure. I—I hope I’ll make a satisfactory wife, Mr. Lonnegan.”

“I hope so too, and hadn’t you better get used to using my Christian name? Perhaps,



incidentally, you would like to know what your, good lady at Ogilvy Manor really said?”

His smile was a little mocking as he suddenly tossed the crumpled telegram into her lap and

she smoothed it out wonderingly.Return Jones on next boat immediately,she read, and her eyes

seemed to grow as large as saucers;boatwillbe met and fare reimbursed. Regret inconvenience.

“What !”exclaimed Harriet, her cheeks scarlet with outrage.“I wouldn’t havebelieved it of you!Of all the dirty, low-down tricks, letting me think—Return Jones on next boat, indeed—asif I

was a lost parcel!”

“But I needn’t have shown it to you,”he pointed out mildly, watching with interest the

conflicting struggle in her face, then she suddenly gave him a most unexpected grin which

momentarily lent her rather solemn little face the look of a mischievous urchin and caused him

much surprise. Her teeth, he noticed, though small and white, had an engaging irregularity.

“Yes, that’s true,”she conceded fairly, after serious consideration, then a trace of the grin

returned.“Well, at least I’ll get my own back when Matron duns me for a subscription atChristmas—she will, you know, once she knows I’m married to a Castle. Jones,indeed!”

His quick smile was sympathetic, but his expression was a little rueful as he got up and went

back to his chair. He had got what he wanted, with possibly more trust and compliance than he

deserved, but it would, in different circumstances, he reflected wryly, have been far more

sensible to adopt her.



CHAPTER FOUR

THEY were to be married by special licence at the parish church in Knockferry, the nearest

market town, and the few days which elapsed before the ceremony seemed to be filled withvisits from lawyers and clergymen and nameless officials on unspecified business and even

doctors.

Harriet did not, however, understand the necessity for such speed in hurrying on the

marriage until Jimsy enlightened her.

“It wouldn’t be dacent to stop at the Castle whilst they called the banns, young miss,”he told

her reprovingly.“An’where else could you go, an’yourself cast up out of the fog like a piece of

flotsam?”

Harriet had not altogether cared to be likened to a piece of flotsam, but she was grateful that

the servants showed such little surprise at these hurried nuptials, and appeared to accept her

without resentment. Agnes of the uncertain temper, it was true, had looked her over with a

belligerent eye and made it plain that she would brook no interference in the kitchen, and the

untrained Molly, learning that the Castle guest she had thought a little queer in the head was to

become the new mistress, gave way to shrieks of hysterical mirth and had to be banished to the

scullery with sharp words from Jimsy; the land workers, whose wives supplied the casual labour

in the house, stared at her incuriously and went away, scratching their heads.

“Och! There’s no accountin’for the tastes of the quality, an’they not troubled with choosin’a

woman for wurrk,”was one remark overheard.“But wouldn’t you think, now, Mick, he’d’ve

gone for one of the Miss Ryans if it’s heirs he’s after, an’they with the strong hocks under thim,

an’the grand quarters of brood mares?”

The question of heirs, thought Harriet ruefully, was no doubt sufficient reason for the most

unlikely of unions in the eyes of a community accustomed to the seriousness of stock breeding

and the misfortune of no male heir for Castle Clooney, but by the terms of his proposition, it

was evidently not the matter uppermost in Duff Lonnegan’smind. Since to Harriet the main

object for his marriage still seemed to be concern for his daughter’s welfare, she tried to learn

something about the child from Jimsy, but he would only say that the little miss had lacked too

long for the right company and would be the better for some learning in the proper way to

behave.

“Has she no manners, then?”Harriet asked, feeling a little daunted by the prospect of an

undisciplined Irish hooligan.

“Och! Manners in children is onnaturalentoirely. She wasbornould, that wan.”

There seemed, thought Harriet, to be little place for Nonie, for Duff seldom mentioned her

except with that suggestion of rough regret at nature’s perverse trick in endowing the child

with his own looks and not her lovely mother’s. Harriet revisited Kitty’s room to steal anotherlook at her portrait and try to discover some likeness in the child, but she found that both

portrait and easel had been removed, together with the books bearing Sam’s signature and the



discarded clutter of girlish mementoes which had filled the drawers of the little chest.

The discovery gave her an odd little sense of shock. Was this Duffy’s way of warning her not

to trespass, or was it simply a ruthless severing with the past?No regrets ...no comparisons...the

slate wiped clean... he had said, but he had spoken with faint bitterness, and once again

Harriet’s curiosity was aroused. Who was this Sam whose gifts had been sufficiently significant

to banish with the portrait? Had he loved poor, imprisoned Kitty, or even been her lover?Harriet gave a little shiver, imagining what discovery might have led to, for she did not think

that the dark, ugly stranger who was so soon to be her own husband would give much quarter

if he learnt he had been deceived, then she left the room to seek the more friendly familiarity

of the snug, chiding herself for letting her imagination run riot yet again.

She had not expected to find Duff already there, evidently back early from his daily rounds of

his tenancies, and jumped when he remarked with his disconcerting trick of catching her out:

“Well, have you changed your mind?”

“What about?”she stammered, her attention upon Kurt who had lifted his head and after

investigating her with an exploratory nose as he had on that foggy day, flattened his ears to his

skull in sudden ingratiation and miraculously uncurled an inquisitive tongue to lick her.“Did you

see that, Duff? Hekissed me—he actually licked me!”

“Well, I shall administer a different kind of licking if you don’t pay attention to me,”he

retorted, but he smiled all the same at the ridiculous look of shining gratitude she bestowed

alike on the dog and himself.“I asked you if you’d changed your mind, meaning about marrying

me, but it will be too late if you have, in any case.”

“Then why did you ask?”she said not unreasonably, and he shot her a sharp look as if he

suspected pertness, then smiled.

“Asensible retort, and I don’t know why I asked. The wedding’s set for tomorrow.”

“Oh!”

“Is that all you have to say?”

“I don’t know what you want me to say,”she repliedalittle helplessly. She had no idea how

long such matters as a special licence took to arrange and no one had enlightened her.

He leaned forward in his chair and touched her hair with an uncharacteristically hesitant

gesture.

“I don’t know, either,”he said.“Perhaps I’m having last-minute qualms.“You’re so young

Harriet, so utterly inexperienced, and filled with all sorts of romantic nonsense. I feel, I’m taking

an advantage.”

“Do you—I mean have you perhaps had—had second thoughts yourself?”she stammered,

wondering whether it was he who wished to change his mind, but his sudden smile was a littleunkind.



“Never have second thoughts, my dear, or, if you do, sit on them firmly. I haven’t changed my

mind, if that’s what you were hoping for, and it’s too late for you to recant that nice little

preference for butter to bread and scrape, so let’s forget about the conventional heart-

searchings that cast doubts on the wedding eve and get tomorrow’s itinerary cut and dried.

Now—”

She sat on the rug patiently listening to all his instructions; no wedding guests because timewas short and his social obligations negative; no reception for the same reason, but mild

celebration for the tenants because that was expected of the Castle. Harriet asked if the little

girl was to attend the ceremony, but was told rather shortly, no. Nonie hadn’t been told yet,

and Duff thought it better to wait till the holidays with the new relationship already an

established fact.

Later, as Harriet ate her dinner in solitary state, Duff having gone out, and the two dogs rather

pointedly preferring to remain in the snug, she wondered whether Duff was indulging

somewhere in the traditional stag party, but it seemed unlikely in view of the kind of marriage

he was contemplating that he would consider there was anything much for the bridegroom tocelebrate.

She went back to the snug when she had finished her dinner and tried to settle down with a

book, but the silence of the big house seemed oppressive and presently she took herself up to

bed and stood rather forlornly in the middle of the big room wondering what to wear on the

morrow. All Duff’s careful arrangements had not covered the bride’s apparel, and she supposed

he could hardly be expected to remember that she had arrived with one suitcase, and the suit

she was wearing at the time had been ruined by bog-water. She inspected the meagre contents

of the wardrobe, disconsolately aware that her hasty purchases, so satisfying at the time, were

utterly unsuited to Irish country life; neither had she invested in a warm coat, thinking her oldone would do since it had seemed more important to buy the cheap little cocktail dresses which

she had imagined would be essential to gay life in an Irish castle.

Harriet sighed, selecting the least offensive garment from her wardrobe to brush and lay out

in readiness for the next day. Her prospective bridegroom had certainly not succumbed to love

at first sight, or shown any sign of courtship, neither, so far as she could judge, was there any

dark impediment in his life, unless it was the discovery of his dead wife’s lover, which would

hardly account for a second marriage so long after. That left only the child, a worthy motive, no

doubt, but scarcely a matter for such haste. It still seemed foolish to Harriet that marriage

should be made a condition for care in such circumstances, but no less foolish, she supposed,

than her own willingness to oblige.

She fell asleep wondering where she would lay her head tomorrow night and whether her

new husband would expect to share her bed, despite his assurance of a business arrangement.

Rooms had been prepared, she knew, in another wing, but she had not seen them; they were,

she had understood, the rooms always allotted to the presiding master and mistress of

Clooney, so presumably Duff and his Kitty had already shared them. It was, she thought

prosaically, on the last drowsy awareness of consciousness, a good thing that her affections

were not at all engaged with the undemonstrative master of Clooney.

She awoke very early as darkness was just merging into the grey of dawn with an over-riding

impulse to wash her hair. She was drying it, huddled by the fire whichshe had managed to get

alight again, when Molly brought in her breakfast, and not only the milk but the whole contents



of the tray nearly slid to the floor as the girl stood staring at her, open-mouthed.

“For the love of God! You’ll not be ready in time, and himself fit to throw a great passion

an’he waitin’at the church door!”she exclaimed.“Kept waitin’he’ll not be if his mind’s set on a

thing. Aren’t you alarmed, miss?”

“Alarmed?”

“Nervous—your insides heavin’at the thought—sure, I thought all brides was needing a drop

of the craythur to seehimthrough, an’they swoonin’away with apprehension.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, Molly, but I feel just as usual,”Harriet replied, reflecting that

Molly, like herself, had obviously supped on too many romantic novels.

“Faith, you’re the quarest bride I ever see!”the girl observed in disappointed tones, and

Harriet, knowing that whatever she might have said, she scarcely felt just as usual, asked if

Molly would like to stay and help her get ready. It would at least, she thought, take her ownmind off the unfamiliar events of the day.

As she made ready with the only bridal garments at her disposal, she could not altogether

avoid a passing regret for the traditional glory of a white wedding. Molly’s presence was helpful

after all, for to her country eyes there was nothing wrong with the cheap new underclothes and

badly made dress, though she, too, regretted the splendour of a white wedding.

“Still an’all,‘tis not the same, as Agnes says, an’he a widower with his heart buried in the

grave,”she said cheerfully.

Harriet gave a little shiver and started brushing out her hair, glad that she had woken early

enough to wash it, for it was the only detail of her appearance that gave her satisfaction.

Straight it might be, but it was thick and silky and could be coaxed into two shining crescents

along the jaw-line, helping to hide the impoverished bones of her face, if not the freckles which

powdered her cheeks and nose.

“Sure, it’s paid for washin’. I wonder you don’t take one of thim permanent waves to give it

style,”observed Molly.

“It wouldn’t suit me. I haven’t the face for style,”Harriet said, going to the window to see

what omen the day had brought her. There had been a frost, for rime still sparkled on theterrace and the bare branches of thorn and rowan; Cuchulain’s Island looked like a ripe purple

plum in the still waters and the foothills on the far shore echoed the colour.

“How beautiful it is,”she murmured.

“Ah, sure the skies is smilin’on you this day, and that’s a promise of good luck,”said

Molly.“See, miss—I’ve remembered the charrms for good luck to a weddin’. Me garter for

somethin’borrowed, if you’ll not be affronted wearin’it, your clothes is new, an’here’s me blue

headscarf, for‘tis the only clean thing of that colour I could find.”Harriet spun round to thank

her, the emotional tears which Molly had been cheated of ready to fall now.

“Ay-ah! Don’t start bawlin’now or you’ll be desthroyed entoirely walkin’down the aisle with



red eyes an’a shiny nose,”said Molly with rough kindness.“Where’s your hat?”

“I haven’t one,”Harriet said tragically.

“God save us! You can’t go to the church with your head uncovered—the divil might fly away

wid you before you could reach the altar,”Molly said, as dismayed as Harriet by such an

omission, then her eyes brightened.“Wait now! You can wear me blue headscarf instead of carryin’it and take it off as soon as the weddin’s done.”Harriet knotted the scarf under her chin,

and gazed doubtfully into the mirror. The shiny artificial silk was a particularly vulgar shade of

blue, and made her cheap dress look common, but it would have to do. She wouldn’t hurt

Molly’s feelings by asking her if she had another, and she had none of her own.

“Thank you...thank you, dear Molly, it will bring me double luck this way. Now, is it time for

the car yet?”

“Cassidy’s been without this last half hour, not wishin’to be late, but himself left a while ago

so you should be startin’. You’d best take a coat, too, for the day’s cold, an’that wheeshy jacketyou’re wearin’has no warmth to it.”

Harriet was reminded of Agnes’contemptuous dismissal of her shrunken suit as cheap

material with no give; her opinion of the‘wheeshy’jacket would doubtless be as disparaging.

“No!”said Harriet with sudden firmness, eyeing her old orphanage coat with acute

disfavour.“I’d rather perish of cold than wear this to my wedding.”

Cassidy, a thin little man with the face of a sad monkey, who drove the car when needed and

did odd jobs about the place, looked unfamiliar in his Sunday blacks and a large white

chrysanthemum in his buttonhole. He ushered Harriet into the back of the car, politely rejecting

her offer to sit beside him, saying it would not be proper for a bride, and drove off through the

big iron gates which today had been left unlocked and open.

If Harriet had qualms now, she refused to pander to them, remembering her brash assurance

of the night before, and whatever lay ahead could only spell good fortune compared with the

drab prospects of Clapham and its figurative bread and scrape. As they reached the outskirts of

the town and she had her first glimpse of the colour and noise and indescribable smells of an

Irish market day, she forgot her more sober commitment at the church, and craned her neck

this way and that to miss nothing of such novel entertainment.

They arrived at last at the church which fortunately was tucked away in a quiet alley, and

Harriet scrambled out, hastily straightening Molly’s headscarf, aware that she must adjust

herself quickly to the more serious business ahead. She had not, however, expected to find her

bridegroom standing on the church steps, watching the street with a most discouraging

expression; shouldn’t he have been at the altar, or were they to walk up the aisle together?

“You’re nearly half an hour late,”he rapped out.“Harriet, you look flushed. Have you caught a

chill again? Why on earth didn’t you wear a coat?”

It was hardly the time, she thought, to explain about the coat, but she wanted to placate him,so said the first thing that came into her head.



ghost. Won’t you introduce me?”

Duff’s eyes came back to his wife and narrowed for a moment as he observed her slightly

open mouth and wide incredulous stare.

“Harriet, this is Mrs. Dwight, a cousin of my first wife,”he said, adding with a soft hint of

mockery,“Your curiosity that evening led you to a wrong assumption, I think.”

Harriet shook hands, relief depriving her of speech for the moment.Sam... Of course there

had been no young lover in Dublin where the pining Kitty had left her heart, only the lovely

cousin whose portrait she had begun to while away the lonely hours, and who had sent books

and fripperies from time to time to bring her pleasure.

“You look cold, or is it just wedding-day nerves?”Mrs. Dwight was saying, and she suddenly

slipped off her short mink jacket and flung it round Harriet’s shoulders.

“There, that’s more bridal-looking,”she said, and turned back to Duff.“You seem to be cradle-snatching this time, darling. Where did you find this charming child who seems to be quite

tongue-tied, and do tell her to take off thathideous headscarf—it makesher look like one of the

littlegirls from the bacon factory.”

Harriet’s first sense of relief gave way to discomfort. Samantha Dwight’s elegant clothes

pointed a cruel contrast to her own, and the faint amusement in her eyes proved embarrassing

rather than sympathetic.

“I hadn’t got a hat,”she said, snatching off the headscarf.“Molly, the nice little servant girl,

lent me this.”

“Really? How odd not to have a hat at all.”

“Give Samantha back her coat and come along, Harriet,”Duff said a little curtly, but Samantha

firmly buttoned the jacket under Harriet’s chin.

“No, no keep it on—in fact, keep it altogether as a wedding present. Duff, I can see, hasn’t got

around yet to a husband’s privilege in the matter of clothes,”she said, and smiled up at

Duff.“Am I invited to the wedding breakfast since you were rude enough not to ask me to the

ceremony, darling?”

He hesitated for the fraction of a second, then said a little stiffly:

“There’s no wedding breakfast as such, just cold food waiting at Clooney, and doubtless

champagne if Jimsy has anything to do with it,”he replied, and they all three began walking

down the church steps together.

“No shenanigans at the Knockferry Arms? What a shame! Your bride looks as if she could do

with a bit of cheer in convivial company,”Samantha said, giving Harriet’s arm a friendly

squeeze.

“Not on a market day with the pubs packed with a tipsy rabble, though the bride, in fact, did

express the rather unusual wish to do the stalls on the way home—as a reward for standing up



beside me in church, possibly.”

Harriet was startled by the bitter note in his voice, but Samantha clapped her hands like an

excited child.

“Oh, do let’s!”she cried.“It’s years since I had a shy at the coconuts and poked the pigs and

bought hideous, useless junk at those dirty stalls. Come on, Duff! Make amends for yourchurlishness in not inviting me to your wedding and ask me back to Clooney to drink your

health for old times’sake, and we’ll stop on the way and let your Harriet try her luck at the

booths.”

“Oh, please,”Harriet said, as he still did not answer, and he gave her a rather odd look.

“Very well, if that will please you,”he said quite gently,“but we’ll leave the fun of the fair till

another day if you don’t mind. Have you got a car here, Samantha? Good; well, you know your

way. Incidentally, you’d better have your coat back.”

“Oh, no, that’s a present—it does something for her, too. I’ve got a stole in the car so I won’t

be cold. Let’s get going.”Samantha moved towards a small red car parked behind Duff’s and he

opened the door for her.

“I’m sorry, but Harriet can’t accept that sort of present from you,”he said pleasantly but quite

firmly.“She can wear it back to the house, since you’re kind enough to lend it. Raff and Barry

have gone on already, so they’ll give you a drink if you’re there before us—be seeing you.”

He did not speak at all as he and Harriet made slow progress through the crowded streets, his

attention wholly occupied with the hazards to be met with on the way. Harriet beside him

snuggled blissfully into Samantha’s coat, stroking the fur with reverent fingers because never

before had she beheld mink, much less touched it, her eyes glued to the window for another

look at the junketing going on outside.

She was grateful to Duff for having included Samantha in the little party, for she had been

slightly apprehensive of sitting down to luncheon with his two unknown friends, neither of

whom had shown much interest in her. The charming Mrs. Dwight would, she was sure, know

exactly how to keep the conversation going, and another woman would be a comforting

support should the talk become too dull and masculine.

“What does her husband do?”she asked, once they were out of the town and it seemed safeto chatter without being checked for proving a distraction.

“Her husband is occupied in pushing up the daisies,”he replied with, she thought, rather

heartless levity.

“Oh, how sad for her. She’s young and so very lovely,”she said.

“Not as sad as you might think. They were already divorced.”

“Oh! Did she stay at Clooney much when your wife was alive? I found books and thingssigned‘Sam’. I thought it was a young man who’d been in love with her.”



He did not reply for a moment, then said discouragingly:

“You came to a lot of improbable conclusions in Kitty’s sitting-room that day, didn’t you? It’s a

dangerous habit weaving fantasies round people you’ve never met. It’s time you grew out of it,

my dear.”

“Yes,”she said,“it was stupid of me. I—I wasn’t snooping on that occasion, Duff. I admit Ilooked at the books and the portrait, but I wasn’t to know there would be private things lying

about, was I?”

“There was nothing private there—that wasn’t the point I was trying to make.”

“But you had the portrait taken away. As I’d imagined it was your wife, I naturally thought you

were annoyed that I’d seen it, and—and didn’t want to be reminded any more.”

“Oh, Harriet, my poor deluded child, what romantic legends have you built up for me now!”

“Molly said—quoting Agnes, I think—that your heart was buried in the grave,”she said

solemnly, then gave a nervous giggle as she recognised a familiarclichéfrom those sentimental

stories of the past. But he misunderstood the giggle, evidently, for he said quite sharply:

“That’s another habit you’ll have to get out of—discussing your affairs with the servants. Our

marriage may not strike them as being the romantic union of popular fiction, but at least they

realise the expediency. We are not, as you English suppose, a head-in-the-air people with no

thought to the morrow. The Irish, under all the charm and blarney, are hard-headed sons of the

soil who would consider a bargain in marriage no different from a bargain in cattle. You’d

better remember that.”

She fell silent at once, having nothing to reply to a rebuke she didn’t understand, though she

did not much care for the comparison with a cow. They were travelling the south road now, so

that conversation would have been difficult anyhow, and she felt relieved when the car turned

at last through the castle gates into the courtyard and a small committee of welcome came out

on to the porch to greet them.

Samantha Dwight was already there with a glass of champagne in each hand to do the

honours, but she held them high above her head when Duff reached put a hand,

sayingroguishly:“Not before you’ve carried her over your threshold in traditional style.”

“But I’ve been over his threshold for days,”Harriet rashly protested, sensing Duff’s reluctance

to conform to such a meaningless convention in the circumstances, and was jolted into alarmed

silence by the roughness with which he suddenly picked her up and set her down in the hall.

The servants had retired quickly, having offered the correct congratulations, but Harriet

caught Molly’s mesmerised gaze on the mink jacket and was sorry she would have to confess

later that it had only been borrowed. They all made their way to the snug where champagne

and a few hastily found assorted biscuits had been set out in readiness. The two dogs fawned

upon Duff as if they hadn’t seen him for days, and although they merely afforded Harriet their

customary aloof recognition, the delectable Mrs. Dwight, admiring and exclaiming inextravagant praise of their beauty, fared no better.



“Oh, well!”Samantha laughed, shrugging and turning away to a more appreciative audience.“I

evidently make no impact on the canine race, but affection can’t be bought, they say—or can it,

Duff, darling?”

The two male guests looked slightly uncomfortable, but Duff merely smiled politely and

topped up her glass with champagne, and before Harriet had time to work out a meaning for

that last remark, Samantha had swung round to toast her silently with an intimate little look of feminine conspiracy, and added with charming apology:“I hope you don’t mind me addressing

your husband as darling, Harriet. We’ve known each other a long time, and are practically

relations. Anyway, I call everybody darling. Here’s to your long life and happiness.”

Luncheon was an unexpectedly gay affair, thanks to Samantha’s gift for putting everybody at

ease. Harriet was amused to see how Mr. Lynch ceased to present such a dull, phlegmatic front

to the occasion and blossomed forth into clumsy compliments and even slightlyrisquéstories.

Mr. O’Rafferty, on the other hand, although he too responded politely to Samantha’s brave

efforts to keep the party going, seemed, in his quiet fashion, to realise that the bride was being

a little left out.

“You must meet Judy, my wife,”he told her.“She, like you, was a little girl over from England

when I married her. She could give you a few tips, I daresay, for this country’s strange to people

from the other side. You remind me a little of Judy, you know.”

“Do I?”Harriet tried to remember what she had been told about their neighbours, for the

name seemed vaguely familiar.“Oh! Are you Castle Slyne?”she asked, and felt like a child

rewarded for intelligence when he answered;

“That’s right. We’re a guest-house now which keeps the old place going. You must come and

dine with us one evening; Judy will be delighted to have someone young to laugh with.”

It would have been comforting, Harriet thought, if Duff could at least have made a pretence

of acting like a happy bridegroom instead of sitting there far more silent than the others and

watching Samantha with oddly ironical eyes. As if he had caught that small projection of

thought, he suddenly smiled across at her and lifted his glass.”

“The appropriate toasts have been drunk, I know, but here’s my private one for you, Harriet.

My grateful acknowledgements to Ogilvy Manor, and may the fruits thereof prosper,”he said,

and she flushed with pleasure at the delightful sense of a secret shared with him.

The meal, tardy in starting, had lingered on into late afternoon. The two men took their

departure with parting well-wishes and vague promises of hospitality in the near future, but

Samantha stayed on, wandering through the rooms with the ease of long acquaintance and

settling finally by the fire in the snug with the assurance of a well-established guest. She was,

Harriet had to admit, far more at home at Clooney than she herself.

“And what,”Samantha was enquiring of Duff,“has happened to Rory, that he, too, hasn’t been

bidden to the nuptials? I would have thought you would certainly have required hisservices as

best man.”

“Would you, Samantha? As it happens, Rory went off on one of his unspecified theatrical

engagements before I’d made my plans, so I doubt if he would have been available, even if I’d



known where to find him,”Duff replied smoothly, avoiding Harriet’s suddenly anxious eye.

“Doesn’t he know you’ve married again, then?”

“Not unless he’s a remote-controlled mind-reader, but when you meet, as you doubtless will,

you can give him the glad tidings.”

“Hardly glad tidings, darling. Didn’t he hope to inherit?”she said softly, and his answering

smile was a little cryptic as he stooped to caress the bitch, Delsa.

“He was next in the male line, certainly, but I don’t know that his hopes will exactly be

blighted by my marriage,”he said.“Rory has the actor’s flair for seeing himself against a good

theatrical backcloth, but I doubt if he’d enjoy the less spectacular responsibilities. That’s what

Clooney means to Rory—a good backcloth, and a nice line of approach when he wants to

impress strangers. He’s never really grown up.”

He gave Harriet a little smile as he spoke, and she, like Delsa, writhing contentedly under hisfingers, felt pleasure in a small intimate moment of something shared. He was, she knew,

reminding her obliquely of his young cousin’s inadvertent part in their subsequent meeting, but

Samantha, too, was quick enough to catch a nuance of reserve.

“You’ll have to watch out when our gay cavalier does meet up with your little bride,

darling,”she said, her eyes resting on Harriet with more attention than she had shown

before.“Rory’s always liked his conquests young and impressionable.”

“And rich—so you’d better watch out for yourself, Samantha,”Duff said with a twinkle that

Harriet thought did not altogether please the decorative Mrs. Dwight.

“I’m neither impressionable or so young that I’m still gullible,”she answered a trifle shortly.“Is

the poor sweet still looking for his heiress?”

“Notvery seriously, I imagine, but Rory’s one of the misfits of our age, enough money to make

a job of work advisable but not essential, and not enough to live on comfortably without work

at all. Incidentally, he andHarriet have already met. Hewas,if he but knew it, largely responsible

for our introduction!”

This time Samantha’s attention was focused on Harriet with more than a passing interest.

“Really?”she said, and there was a mixture of curiosity and surprise in her voice.“You seem to

be suggesting some sort of mystery. Where did you meet, Harriet? I understood you’d only

been over here a week.”

“They met in England when Rory was over there touring, but as he doesn’t, as far as I am

aware, yet know I’m married, that accounts for the mystery, doesn’t it?”Duffsaid smoothly

before Harriet could think of a suitable answer, but she was becoming puzzled by the

relationship between these two. It seemed at times as if there was an undercurrent of

antagonism between them, but it was equally plain that they shared the privileges of long

association.

“I see,”said Samantha, losing interest.“You haven’t offered the usual condolences, I notice,



darling, but perhaps this isn’t a suitable occasion on which to commiserate with the newly

bereaved.”

Harriet felt both awkward and sorry, but Duff replied with what she thought was rather

heartless unconcern:“Well, I didn’t think commiseration was what you would expect in the

circumstances!”

“Didn’t you? No, I suppose one can hardly shout one’s small triumphs from the rooftops. I

should never have sent that cable, should I? Bad timing again.”

Harriet, who was beginning to feel that her own presence was passing unnoticed by either of

them, had no idea what significance Samantha’s odd remark could possibly have, but Duff,

seemingly, was not at all confused.

“On the contrary, it was most opportune,”he replied smoothly, and Samantha, looking

suddenly angry, seemed on the verge of some impetuous retort, but catching Harriet’s

perplexed and slightly embarrassed expression, turned to her, smiling, made charmingapologies for tactlessly outstaying her welcome on such a very private occasion and begged the

feminine solace of a cup of tea before setting out for home.

“And where is home for the moment?”Duff enquired.

“Anywhere—nowhere,”Samantha answered with a graceful shrug.“At the moment, with Aunt

Alice, of course. She was always our port of call for country holidays, Kitty and I—remember?”

“I remember. And how is Miss Docherty? Is she still draining her small income on that

unlucrative stable of hers?”

“If you’re hinting that my nice American dollars might well be employed easing Aunt Alice’s

little lot you can save your breath. They’re no more to her liking than to yours, since you’re

both as proud as the devil,”Samantha replied with lazy unconcern, and Duff, turning to Harriet,

said, with a faint trace of impatience:

“Would you see about that tea, Harriet? You’re mistress here now, you know.”

Harriet jumped up quickly, made aware that not only was she failing in her first duties as

hostess, but had been sitting on like an inquisitive child, listening to the half-understood talk of

its elders. It was going to be difficult, she thought, to remember that she was no longer a guestat the Castle.

They resumed their conversation as she crossed the room, and she hurried to get out of

earshot, for Samantha certainly had forgotten her presence or chose to ignore it, but as she

reached the door and opened it, she heard Samantha say:

“You were afraid of me, weren’t you, darling? That’s why you rushed into marriage with an

accommodating little girl nobody’s ever heard of! The old Adam dies hard, you know...”

The door closed on Duff’s reply, but Harriet stood leaning against it for a moment, shaken andshocked into unwelcome realisation. The reason for haste now seemed only too plain, though

not the reason for preferring a come-by-chance stranger to this fascinating, intimidating



enchantress who, it was painfully obvious, possessed all the natural and fitting qualities to reign

here as mistress of Clooney.



CHAPTER FIVE

WHAT was left of Harriet’s wedding day passed with a sense of anti-climax. True, champagne

was served again with dinner, after which mild sounds of celebration could be heard comingfrom the kitchen quarters, but in the dining-room there was no air of occasion and little

conversation.

Harriet sat at her husband’s table feeling rather like an importunate guest whose welcome

was outstayed, and she wondered whether Duff was finding it as difficult as she to introduce

some neutral topic for discussion. Was it Kitty he thought of with that brooding air of

abstraction, or the lovely Samantha?

“At your old tricks, Harriet?”he said suddenly from the other end of the table, and she

jumped guiltily.“You’ve already made one false assumption from meddling with the past—don’tgo dreaming up any more fairy-tales.”

He spoke quite casually, but she had the impression he was warning her, against what she

could not for the moment imagine, but it was an uncomfortable sensation, being stripped so

easily of one’s private thoughts.

“My mistake over the portrait was natural, I think, and I—I wasn’t meddling,”she said,

refusing to be put in the wrong for the sake of a mood she could not share, and he gave her

that rare, charming smile which could so redeem the ugliness of his face.

“No, of course you weren’t, and your mistake was perfectly natural,”he replied easily.“But

don’t make any more, my dear, will you?”

“I shall probably make plenty as I’m new to housekeeping, let alone life in a castle. You will

just have to be patient with me,”she said, deliberately misunderstanding to divert his thoughts

to more mundane matters, and he got to his feet, terminating the meal abruptly as though

their enforced solitude had irked him.

“I don’t entertain and Jimsy and Agnes between them run the house adequately, if somewhat

imperfectly, so I shan’t expect too much of you,”he said a little dryly.“Come to the snug and get

warm—this room gets like a perishing ice-box. We’ll take to having our meals in the littlebreakfast-room, I think, as I do when I’m alone.”

The warmth and friendliness of the snug was welcoming, Harriet thought, aware now that the

chill of the lofty, inadequately heated dining-room had penetrated to her very bones. She

curled up on the rug beside the dogs.

“Have you felt cheated?”Duff asked suddenly, and she looked up at him in surprise.

“How do you mean—cheated?”she temporised.

“Well, it’s a big day in a girl’s life, I’ve alwaysunderstood, and you’ve had none of the

traditional fripperies and fuss to mark the occasion.”



“It was scarcely that kind of occasion, was it?”she answered carefully, and saw him frown

again.

“No. Still, I could, with a little forethought, have supplied a few extra trimmings to satisfy

those day-dreams of yours.”

“Well,”she said, with a valiant attempt to meet him-on his own ground,“the right clothesmight have boosted my morale and done you more credit, but I hadn’t allowed for a wedding

when I bought them, so it’s just as well you didn’t plan the conventional rejoicings, isn’t it?”

Her reaction was new to him and his eyes were faintly troubled. She had seemed so incredibly

naive with her absurd dreams and expectations, so eminently suitable to his needs because

what he had to offer must surely compensate for those arid years in an orphanage, but he had

not, perhaps, allowed for the natural hopes and dreams of any young girl.

“Harriet...”he began, feeling hesitantly for the-right words,“our marriage, though one of

convenience, doesn’t have to stay that way always, you know. Should you ever come to think of me more kindly, I wouldn’t condemn you to a life of sterility.”

He knew at once, as he saw her eyes widen and her lips part like a surprised child, that he had

merely confused her, but her reply was composed enough.

“But can one, without love, drift into that kind of relationship?”

“Well, a man certainly can,”he said with more harshness than he felt because he

wasbeginning to wish he had never embarked on such dangerous topics with this mere child

who had just become his wife with, apparently, no possible conceptions of the demands which,

despite their agreement, he still had every right to make.“Few men are celibate by nature and I

no less than others, so love, you see, isn’t as important as you think.”

She sat on the rug in silence for a minute or so, her head bent so that the long thick hair fell

forward, hiding her face from him. He was, she supposed with a prosaic acceptance that might

have surprised him, trying to warn her that for all his insistence on a platonic relationship, there

might come a time when natural inclinations could get the better of him. Harriet had simple

concepts of love and passion derived largely from sentimental novels, but she was not ignorant.

The fact that Duff could divorce one emotion from the other might chill, but did not shock her,

for orphanage training had insisted from the start that men’s needs were different from

women’s, and should never be confused with more serious declarations.

Unaware of such composed reactions to his effort to reassure rather than to warn, he sat and

watched her, observing the tender little hollow at the base of her neck and wishing quite

suddenly to explore it. He experienced that same uncomfortable stirring of compunction he

had felt on reflecting that he should have adopted her instead of marrying her. It was not, he

realised immediately, a notion that could have been of any possible use tohimin the

circumstances, and it was too late now to have regrets.

“Does Mrs. Dwight live near here?”she asked suddenly.

“No. She’s staying with her aunt, Miss Docherty, the other side of the lough. She rather

startled you, didn’t she,Harriet?”



“Only for the moment because I’d thought the portrait was of your wife. She’s very lovely,

isn’t she?”

“Oh, yes—very lovely, and very dangerous.”

It might have been a warning, or it might have been a grudging tribute, for he spoke lightly

enough, but Harriet remembered that casual taunt of Samantha’s and the implication thatDuff’s hasty marriage had, in a sense, been complimentary to herself.

“Has she long been a widow?”she asked, more from idle curiosity than any wish to pry, but

his answer was laconic.

“Not long,”he said, and afterwards she realised she should have been warned by his manner

not to pursue the subject, but she was beginning to find the evening something of a strain, and

the lovely Samantha was at least a mutual point of focus upon which to hang a polite exchange

of small talk.

“Was your wife like her?”she asked, anxious to get things in perspective, since she had

jumped to such false conclusions.

“There was a family resemblance, I suppose,”he answered, but did not elaborate, so she tried

again.

“Your wife painted the portrait, I suppose. They must have been very fond of one

another—so many books and things signed‘Sam’—and the likeness was well caught, and—”she

broke off abruptly as he got suddenly to his feet with an angry exclamation.

“For heaven’s sake stop chattering glibly about matters of which you know nothing,”he

said.“Yes, my wife painted the portrait, no, the cousins were not particularly fond, and since

you’d already dreamed up a lover for poor Kitty and been proved wrong, let that be a lesson to

you not to jump to unwarrantable conclusions. Now, will you please desist in future from

concerning yourself with affairs that happened when you were an inquisitive and doubtless

tiresome child of ten, and curb that rather over-developed imagination. Well, eleven o’clock;

time you were in bed. If you’ll go on up I’ll say goodnight here and let the dogs out.”

She scrambled awkwardly to her feet, for her weak ankle had become cramped from her

position on the floor, and stood there indecisively, appalled by the sudden realisation that she

did not know where she was to sleep.

“Well?”Duff said a shade impatiently, then seeing her crestfallen face, added kindly:“Sorry I

barked at you. I’m a bit on edge, which is no fault of yours, so say goodnight with a nice

forgiving smile, and run off to bed.”

“I—I don’t know where togo,”she stammered, and saw him frown.

“Good grief! Hasn’t someone shown you where the rooms are?”he exclaimed.“I should have

thought with your inquisitive tendencies you would have ferreted that out for yourself. Well,

come along and I’ll show you. The dogs will have to wait.”

As she followed him up the elegant staircase and into a strange wing of the house, she felt he



was not pleased at being obliged to come up with her, and wondered if he was embarrassed at

having to share what was, presumably, the bridal suite with a stranger who meant nothing to

him, and she inspected her new quarters with slight apprehension.

Duff turned up the lamps, replenished the turf in one room, firmly shut and locked the

intervening door to the other and threw the key on to the dressing-table.

“To allay any fears you may be harbouring, Miss Jones,”he said with a slight edge to his voice,

and when she answered a little timidly, but with the polite insistence on exactitude he had

already come to associate with her:“I’m not Miss Jones any more,”he turned to look at her,

reflectively running a hand over his chin.

She stood in the middle of the big room looking lost and alien and very tired. Her thin

shoulders drooped like a child who has just been scolded, and his face softened to a brief

tenderness.

“Neither you are,”he said with gentle amusement.“You are Mrs. Duff Lonnegan for better orfor worse, but not at the moment looking very happy with her married quarters. Don’t you like

your room, Harriet? You can always change it—there are plenty of rooms going a’begging in

this house.”

“Oh, no—no, really. I don’t want to change, besides—”

“Besides what?”

“Well, it would look rather odd, wouldn’t it? The servants, I mean.”

“Oh, I should have to come along to wherever you happened to pick just for the look of

things,”he said, then burst out laughing.“It’s a shame to tease you when you’re so tired. Hurry

into bed now, and I’ll see you in the morning. Goodnight again.”

She wished he would kiss her goodnight, just a token kiss like the one he had bestowed in the

vestry, but he was already at the door before she remembered to return his courtesy and was

gone without further comment.

If, after the momentous transformation from Harriet Jones, an undistinguished foundling

from an orphanage, to Mrs. Duff Lonnegan of Castle Clooney, Harriet expected a general

metamorphosis around her, she was to be disappointed. The house settled down again to itstimeless air of gentle drifting, and she had the curious impression that her coming had made

very little difference to anyone. The servants accepted her, but brooked no changes in the

running of the house, even if she had dared to make any, and Duff, busy with the affairs of his

small estate, although he enquired punctiliously for her well-being when they met at

mealtimes, seemed to reflect his household’s assumption that nothing in their lives had altered.

Harriet thought it strange that no attempt seemed to have been made to break the news to

the little girl of her father’s remarriage, since the school was so near at hand, but when she

suggested that they might take the child out for the day and get acquainted, he replied that he

thought it best to wait until she came home for the Christmas holidays.

Christmas...The magic word at once restored and excited, and it was little more than six



weeks away, despite the deceptive mildness of a wet November, Harriet realised, and her mind

was immediately filled with the image she had associated with places like Castle Clooney;

bustling preparations, fat cooks making endless puddings with everyone stirring and making a

wish, a giant tree all lit up and hung with presents for the village children, laughter and secrets,

tinsel and holly and carols, and open house for all.

Harriet thought Duff looked at her a little oddly, however, when she broached her plans tohim.

“I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed, Harriet,”he said wryly.“There hasn’t been a Christmas like

that at Clooney since I was a boy. In those days there were more servants and one’s relations

far and near were gathered into the fold, I suppose, but now there’s not enough staff to cope

with house-parties, and most of the relations have died off or have family house-warmings of

their own.”

“There was Nonie,”she reminded him.

“You’re thinking I’m an unnatural and far too casual parent, aren’t you, Harriet? My daughter,

unfortunately, doesn’t care for me very much, so it’s been difficult to establish any kind of

companionable relationship.”

“Perhaps you haven’t gone the right way about things,”she said.

“Very likely not,”he agreed a shade regretfully.“I left her too much to servants in the early

days when I shut the place up and racketed round the world, I suppose. By the time I settled

down here again I was a stranger to her, so I sent her to school.”

“Wasshe here alone all that time?”Harriet asked.

“Oh, no. She went to her grandparents every so often, but I’m not sure if that was a good

thing,”he replied rather shortly, and she looked surprised for, apart from his cousin Rory, he

had never mentioned other relatives.

“Grandparents?”

“Kitty’s people. They still live in Dublin. They wanted to adopt Nonie at one time, but that

notion was intended as a reproach rather than an honest desire for the child, I think.”

“Poor Nonie... poor little girl...” shemurmured, and he raised a quizzical eyebrow.

“Conserve your pity, my dear, until you get to know one another. You may find it thrown back

in your face,”he said dryly.“But don’t look so startled; you’re possibly young enough to meet

my daughter on her own ground. In fact, of the two of you, I would say you were the younger.”

The weather grew colder and the house with it. Harriet could understand now why most of

the rooms were shut up in winter for, with no central heating, the Castle would become icy if

really hard weather set in, and she was grateful when Duff reverted to his old habit of living in

two rooms, not only for the warmth, but for the greater intimacy engendered by the familiarmug and the little breakfast-room where they now took their meals. It was an intimacy that

stopped there, however. Every evening he bade her goodnight downstairs and she repaired to



her high, impersonal bedroom which, despite a good fire, always struck chill. She would listen

for the sounds of him moving about next door and wished he would sometimes poke his head

round the intervening door and wish her a final goodnight just to be friendly, but although she

never turned the key in the lock, the door remained closed between them and she hadn’t the

courage to riska snub by making the first overtures herself.

She was, had she understood her conflicting emotions during the night watches, alreadyhalfway to being in love with the ugly stranger who, although her husband, treated her with the

mixture of indulgence and impatience a kindly uncle might have shown; she was, had she

known it, so starved of the personal affection that life in a busy community must perforce rule

out that she would have laid her untapped store of loving and giving at the feet of any person

who had need of her.

She resisted with admirable self-control the temptation to woo the two Alsatians into caring

for her, but their polite indifference continued to hurt her. The dog, she imagined, had thawed

slightly and bore with a little judicious petting, even sometimes offering a paw, but Delsa still

would have none of her, and waited impatiently for her master’s return.

“It must be wonderful to have some living creature so devoted, so utterly dependent on your

every mood,”she said one day, and he caught the note of envy and longing in her voice.

“I’m afraid with this breed you’ll always have to take second place if their hearts are already

given,”he said gently.“I must buy you a dog of your own, something that will be company for

you when you’re alone. The magic of your fairy-tale’s beginning to wear off, isn’t it?”

“No—oh, no!”she protested quickly, afraid of a gentle snub at the expense of her regrettable

habit of expecting miracles, and then could have hit him for uncovering a truth she had not

faced for herself. Clooney had, indeed, become a disappointment.

“Don’t feel too cheated, Harriet,”he said, touching hercheek with compassionate fingers:“You

expect too much, you know, with that unbridled imagination of yours working overtime. Things

will fall into proportion as you get older. In the meantime, I’ll see what I can do about a dog for

you.”

But she found her own dog, and that made it doubly precious, for it was the first concession

she was to win for herself by putting up a fight.

Now that the days had turned so much colder, she had acquired the habit of putting out food

for the birds every morning after breakfast, braving Agnes’displeasure by invading the kitchen

for scraps.

“You’re a quare wan,”she said, but for once her bright, bad-tempered little eyes

softened.“Well, it’s not your feathered cronies gets the benefit, I’m thinkin’, for the food’s gone

in the wink of a pig’s eye, an’if you’re encouragin’rats, himself won’t be best pleased, an’so I’m

tellin’you.”

But it was not rats that were stealing the birds’food. Harriet hid herself, deciding to watch,

and presently a lean and very bedraggled dog advanced a tentative, quivering snout betweenthe iron bars of the high, locked gates, and then squeezed its skinny body through into the

courtyard and wolfed down Harriet’s offerings with such lightning speed that she blinked



incredulously at sight of the empty dish.

“Oh, you poor thing, you must be starved!”she exclaimed with compassion, emerging without

caution from her hiding place, and the dog gave her one wild, terrified look and bolted back

through the bars of the gates.

Harriet made no mention in the kitchen of the raider, but she bribed Molly to save bones and,meat scraps each day without the cook’s knowledge, and for a week she fed the dog, not

attempting to touch and scare it. Then one morning she ventured to coax it to come to her and

after some hesitation the animal advanced on its belly in a series of ingratiating wriggles and

allowed her to stroke it. After that her cup was full of joy, for each morning the dog waswaiting

for her, and having overcome the first hurdle of fear and suspicion, fawned upon her with

pathetic eagerness. It was, she supposed doubtfully, a rather odd-looking animal and decidedly

common.

“I’m afraid you’re no beauty,”she told it sadly, but at least, she thought, its eyes were

beautiful, soft and dark and heartbreaking with the renewal of trust and love she herself hadput there. Something strange and tender happened to Harriet when each day she had to leave

the dog and shoo it away to wherever it belonged, for it was an outcast like herself. Duff had

promised her a dog; well, she would have this one and none other—for had it not chosen her?

Whoever it belonged to could, she thought, scarcely object to selling it, judging by its blocking

condition.

She enlisted Molly’s aid, and one day they smuggled the dog into the old laundry at the back

of the kitchen and gave it a bath.

“You’re not thinkin’of kapin’it here, are you, ma’am?”Molly asked when it had become clear

to her that the operation was not merely to satisfy a kink for hygiene that the heathen English

seemed to bebornwith.

“Of course. Mr. Lonnegan has promised me a dog, and this is the one I’ve chosen—at least he

really chose me. Do you know who he belongs to?”

“Ah, sure, that wan’s been kicked aroundfromone cottage to another this past twelve

month.‘Tes a stray, the craythur, an’nobody owns it. But himself will not be wishin’to have it

here with his prize Alsatians, let me tell you,”the girl said, and Harriet replied:“We’ll see. It

wouldn’t hurt those snooty Alsatians to be taken down a peg or two, if it comes to that, and I

sure Mr. Lonnegan’s no snob.”

Whether he was a snob or not, however, Duff proved anything but amendable when

confronted with his wife’s choice of a pet.

“My dear child! You’ll be the laughing stock of the place if you trail a monstrosity like that

about with you,”he said, eyeing the newly-washed mongrel with much disfavour.

“He’s not a monstrosity—only ill-treated andhalf-starved.”

“He’s certainly that, poor-beast,”Duff allowed.“We’ll give him a square meal and send himhome.”



“He hasn’t got a home. Molly says he’s been around for ages and nobody wants him.”

“Well, I don’t want him, either. As a matter of fact I’ve heard of a suitable dog for you—well-

bred spaniel pup, five months old, house-trained and all the rest of it, so you can forget about

this extraordinary-looking animal. I’ll find it a good home with one of the tenants, if that will

satisfy you.”

“No, it won’t, I’m afraid,”she said nervously but quite firmly, and he gave her a quick look. He

had not expected to have any argument over such a trivial matter, but he was beginning to

recognize a stubborn streak in Harriet that gave her courage if she was driven beyond a certain

point.

“But my dear, be reasonable,”he said kindly.“You can’t adopt every common stray that takes

your fancy.”

“I only want this one. He chose me,”said Harriet.“At first he wouldn’t come near me, but I’ve

been feeding him for a week and he trusts me. You can’t gain a creature’s trust and confidenceand then turn it away.”

He regarded her reflectively, wondering for a moment if this was a rather subtle dig at him,

but Harriet was not subtle, and the eyes raised to his held a look of such anxious pleading and

hope that he was uncomfortably reminded of the same expression in the eyes of the dog.

“Duff—”she said, her gentle voice a little unsteady for the first time,“I’ve never asked you for

anything—and I do need a new coat and some warm jersey’s and things, but they can

wait—suppose...suppose no one will take him in...suppose you hadn’t taken we in? There’s not

much difference between us, you know—we’re both strays.”He looked down at her crouched

beside the dog, both of them gazing at him with identical expressions, and he wanted to take

the pair of them and knock their silly heads together.

“Oh, for sanity’s sake keep the brute!”he exclaimed,“but don’t think you can pull that

orphanage stop again and get away with it, young woman—both strays, indeed! And I warn

you, Harriet, if he makes any trouble with my two, out he goes, and not all your tears will get

me to change my mind a second time.”

But she was not paying any attention, for she had sprung to her feet at his first words, her

face suddenly radiant, and as he finished speaking, she flung both arms round his neck and

kissed him.

“Oh, Duff—dear Duff!Thank you!”she cried, then hastily disengaged herself and stood rather

awkwardly on one foot.

“I’m sorry,”she said,“I—I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

“Why the heck should a kiss from my wife embarrass me? It was very pleasant,”he retorted,

but his eyes werealittle impatient. The warm, spontaneous gesture had indeed been pleasant,

but he hadn’t cared for that swift withdrawal.

“Well, you never kiss me—just that once in the vestry, and I suppose that was sort of

expected of you.”



“Have you wanted to be kissed, then?”

“It—it would be friendly. Just goodnight and good morning, you know.”

“I see. Just a habit of convention between acquaintances.”

“I had thought we were friends,”she said then.

“Did you, Harriet?”he said with unexpected gentleness.“Then that should be a beginning. You

shall have your chaste goodnight salutation if it’s important to you, but there’s nothing to stop

you bestowing the same favour upon me, if you’re so inclined, you know. Now, what did you

mean when you said you needed a new coat and sundry garments? You have an allowance, so

for pete’s sake, why don’t you use it?”

“Oh!”she said, and looked embarrassed. She had not appreciated that she could draw

cheques without asking, never having had a banking account, neither did she know what to buy

to meet the requirements of her new life.

“What shall I call him?”she asked to change the subject, and gazed with such rapture at the

unspeakable mongrel that he answered, quite sharply:

“Since you’ve overruled me against all my better judgement in this matter, I claim the right to

christen theperisher myself. He shall be Uriah Heep, and no name could suit the cringing tyke

better,”he said, but if he had hoped to ring an indignant protest from her, he was disappointed.

“Uriah...” shesaid reflectively.“Well, it’s certainly unusual, and—you can call him anything you

like, dear Duff, since you’re letting me keep him.”

“H’m...”he grunted, eyeing the dog with distinct disfavour.“Well, you’ll have to placate Agnes

if he pinches the Sunday joint or cocks his leg in her kitchen, so be it on your own head. Now,

for heaven’s sake, Harriet, go and fit yourself out with some sort of trousseau, or the

neighbourhood will be saying I keep a tight hold on the purse-strings where my wife’s

concerned. I can’t run to the mink I wouldn’t allow you to accept from Samantha, I’m afraid,

but get yourself a decent fur coat; you’ll need it when the winter really sets in.”

“Where—and what sort of coat?”she asked, alarmed by such vague and extravagant-

sounding orders.

“Oh, how the devil should I know? You need a woman to advise you, I suppose,”he said, and

as if on cue, Samantha Dwight walked in, unannounced, observing provocatively,

“I’ve kept tactfully away while the honeymoon period would, one presumes, make visitors

unwelcome, but now I thought it time I renewed acquaintance with your little wife, Duff dear.

What’s this I hear about womanly advice? Does your charming Harriet need feminine support?

She could certainly do with a few good clothes...What a very extraordinary animal! Is it yours?”



CHAPTERSIX

SAMANTHA undertook the supervision of Harriet’s wardrobe with enthusiasm. There was

nothing she liked better, she said, than shopping for pretty clothes and basking in the flatteringattentions of persuasive sales ladies, also it would give her an excuse to prolong her visit with

her Aunt Alice.“Why not let us run down to Dublin for a couple of nights and do the thing

properly, Duff?”

“I’ll not risk Harriet getting a taste for city ways. The local shops are quite good enough for

our requirements here.We don’t entertain,”he said, and Samantha looked amused.

“Are you going to make the same mistake all over again, darling?”she said softly.“Even the

most devoted wife needs an occasional break from Clooney’s splendid isolation.”

“I think you must be forgetting, Samantha. My mistake didn’t lie in denying freedom but in

allowing too much, and—no, I don’t intend to make it again,”he replied.“Apart from that I can

no longer afford the extravagance of eight years ago, as you should remember.”

“I don’t have to go to Dublin for the few clothes I’ll need here, Samantha, and Duff—I haven’t

got extravagant tastes, as you should know, so if you can’t afford—”

“I’m not on the breadline yet, my dear, so don’t look so guilty,”he interrupted with slight

irritation, then added more gently;“Thank you all the same for your concern. Clooney rather

tends to swallow up one’s income with nothing much to show for it, except debts and

obligations and a hefty overdraft, that’s all.”

“Yes, I see,”said Harriet, but she was not really enlightened. She knew little enough about

financial affairs, having been supported by charity all her life, and since even the responsibility

of housekeeping was denied her, she had no idea of the demands a place the size of Clooney

could make.

“I wish—”she began, but Samantha’s mischievous little air of attention stopped her. It was

not the moment to plead for a share in domestic responsibilities, neither did she flatter herself

that she could improve on the existing methods of household expenditure. She could, however,

and did, keep a watchful eye on the purse-strings when buying clothes for herself, and foundthat Samantha soon wearied when the more expensive items of her choice were politely turned

down in favour of something cheaper.

“Really, Harriet, you don’t have to be quite so cheeseparing,”she exclaimed.“You’ve got an

allowance, haven’t you? Well, for heaven’s sake blow the lot or have the bills sent direct to

Duff. He’s hardly likely to grudge you a few extra bits of nonsense—Kitty cost him enough, God

knows!”

“All the more reason, then, for me to practise economy,”Harriet said with a touch of

primness, and Samantha who, if she privately thought of Duff’s choice of awife unrewarding,had no intention of jeopardising her own right of entryto his house by alienating Harriet,

replied indulgently:“Okay, honey, you do what you think best. Duff’s luckier than he deserves,



the old skinflint.”

“Skinflint? Oh,no,Samantha!”

“A figure of speech, darling. I’m very fond of your husband, so any names I call him are purely

terms ofaffection. But how come you never managed to scratch up some kind of trousseau

yourself, or were your parents skinflints, too?”It was the sort of awkward question which hadbeen bound to come up between them sooner or later, Harriet thought, but since she did not

know how much or how little of his affairs Duff was prepared to discuss with strangers she

answered briefly that her parents were dead and anyway there had been no time to think of a

trousseau.

“So I’ve rather gathered. If I didn’t know Duff as I do, I’d have been inclined to have obvious

ideas for all this indecent haste—what a surprising blush, darling! Don’t take me too literally,

will you?My more outrageous remarks arebornof habit rather than malice, you

know,”Samantha said lazily, and Harriet, whose colour had been occasioned by Samantha’s

obvious ignorance of the true nature of her marriage rather than the implied suggestion, wasrelieved when the subject was dropped.

She never felt quite at ease with this glamorous stranger, but she came to look forward to

those days when Samantha would call for her to drive into Knockferry to shop; not only did she

enjoy the novel pleasure of acquiring a wardrobe, but also a more familiar acquaintance with

the countryside.

But Harriet learnt very early to keep her enthusiasm to herself, for Samantha soon grew

impatient at being asked to stop the car in order to investigate some fresh but probably

commonplace feature of their trips into town. Sometimes they would lunch in the town;

sometimes come back to Clooney for a late meal, when Samantha would linger on until Duff

returned in the evening; sometimes, however, Samantha would just drop Harriet at the gates

with a careless reminder of their next shopping date, and drive away.

Duff, mindful of his assurance, conscientiously bestowed the nightly kiss upon her, but she

did not takehimup on his casual suggestion, and offer any demonstration of her own. Only to

Uriah could she fell free to expend the love and gratitude which so often welled up in her, and

she watched in fullness of hearts the gradual filling out of the thin, starved body, and the trust

returning to the soft dark eyes.

“Don’t get things out of proportion, will you?”Duff warned her once, a little troubled by such

a wanton squandering of affection, but she had answered quite simply that the dog was the

first living creature that had ever needed her, and therefore exceptional, and he said no more.

He was glad that Harriet had found an outlet since he was becoming conscious that he himself

failed her in this respect. Uriah pattered in the wake of the two Alsatians on his little short legs,

his tail carried at a vulgar angle, and however subservient he might be to the human race, he

appeared impervious to snubs from his own kind; indeed the reactions of the other dogs were

so contrary to Duff’s expectations that he could even feel annoyed. Kurt, it was true,

dissociated himself entirely with well-bred scorn not only from the interloper but from Harriet,

who had not appeared to notice his cautious bids for affection of late, but Delsa, the fastidious

one, with eyes only for her master, lost her head entirely.She invited advances shamelessly,became skittish and ridiculously coy at the smallest attention, and lay gazing at her raffish

admirer with love in her eyes and no thought at all for her destined mate.



“There’ll be trouble later on,”Duff observed, unamused by the antics that caused Harriet so

much pride in herprotégé.“If, when the time comes, you allow that unspeakable cur to mate up

with Delsa, I’ll have him out of here in double-quick time, so I’m warning you.”

“It would certainly be a love-match,”Harriet replied in a moment of rashness, gazing with

fond eyes at Uriah’s rapt expression while the bitch licked him all over, and jumped guiltily

when Duff retorted with sharp displeasure:

“For heaven’s sake, Harriet, don’t carry your absurd romanticism to extremes! Love-match

indeed! Animals are no more concerned with love when their natural appetites are aroused

than the average male is.”

He saw the innocent pleasure drain out of her face and, although cursing his own clumsiness,

he blamed it on that irritating naiveness of hers which could make a rather silly remark sound

deliberately provoking.

“I’m sorry,”he apologised,“I didn’t mean to be quite so crude, but sometimes you display asimplicity that makes me want to shake you.”

“Simplicity doesn’t necessarily mean half-wittedness,”she said gently.“You’ve made it clear

before that love isn’t important when natural instincts just boil down to common desire. I quite

understood.”

“You’re an odd mixture,”he said, sounding puzzled and a little uncertain of himself.“One

minute you’re an uninformed child and the next you come out with some curious snippets of

wisdom.”

“I’m not at all wise. I’ve no experience, you see,”she said, and he smiled at her with a touch of

tenderness.

“Well, that should make you very rewarding material for the right man,”he said, and she

realised then how often he must forget the implications of their relationship.

“But I’m already married,”she said, and saw him frown as if he had just remembered the fact.

“Yes, well ... I wasn’t suggesting another Mr. Right might come courting you in the future,”he

replied rather shortly, but she smiled, knowing he had forgotten for that moment. His remark

had been just the kind of indulgent assurance a fond uncle might have given to a doubtingniece.

“And the future,”he added, seeing and unwillingly interpreting the smile,“may hold surprises

in store for both of us.”

With a complete change of mood, Duff asked,“Do you like Samantha?”

“Yes, I do. She alarmed me a little at first because she’s so very elegant and assured, but she’s

different when you get to know her, and she’s been very kind to me.”

“H’m...when Samantha’s being kind, she’s usually feeding her own ego, so don’t be lulled into

a false conceit of your importance,”he said with dry ambiguity, and sheremembered that odd



impression of antagonism he had given her before.

“Why don’t you like her?”she asked.

“Have I said I didn’t?”

“No, but—well, perhaps I just got the wrong impression.”

“You’ve collected a whole heap of wrong impressions since you’ve come to Clooney, haven’t

you, my child?”he retorted and she wondered whether he was warning her yet again not to

concern herself with affairs of the past.

Samantha, on the other hand, showed no such disinclination to satisfy a natural curiosity

when next they met.

“I wondered when you’d get around to asking about Kitty,”she said, a ripple of amusement

warming her husky voice to a pleasant promise of feminine gossip.“What exactly has Duff toldyou?”

“Nothing, except to keep my nose out of what doesn’t concern me,”Harriet said, feeling

suddenly injured, and Samantha laughed.

“Duff would!”she said.“Wait a moment, honey, while I order another round of drinks, then

we’ll really let down our back hair.”

They were sitting in acornerof the saloon bar of the Knockferry Arms, drinking sherry and

hungrily consuming sandwiches, having driven into the town to gratify Harriet’s desire to taste

again the colourful novelty of market day.

“I’d thought,”Harriet said, when the drinks had been brought to their table,“that Duff

couldn’t bear to talk of his first wife, perhaps. Agnes says—”

—“that his heart’s buried in the grave—I know! It’s a conventional tag servants like to tack on

to a widower, and Duff certainly played up to popular opinion, shutting up the Castle and taking

off into the blue.”

“But surely that only shows—”

“It shows remorse, perhaps, because, having got his wife with child, thinking that would settle

her, it killed her, but not love. He realised his mistake too late. He should have married me, you

see.”

Samantha was watching Harriet with bright anticipation, but if she had hoped to jolt her into

embarrassment or dismay, she was to be disappointed. To Harriet, the disclosure was neither

startling nor upsetting, but only seemed toexplain that odd reserve in Duff whichshe had taken

for dislike.

“You mean he was engaged to you first?”she asked.

“Oh, no—I just misjudged my moment,”she replied.“I was playing hard to get, you see, and



hadn’t allowed for pretty Kitty, or Kitty’s matchmaking parents—my own uncle and aunt,

incidentally.”

“So?”

“So—Duff came down for the Horse Show Week that year and there were the usual

junketings, with Duff and Kitty paired off for every occasion. I, being young and foolish andmuch too sure of myself, went off on a visit elsewhere to keep Duff guessing, and Kitty got

him.”

“But was he in love with you?”Harriet asked, unable to understand how such a situation could

come about unless as the result of a lovers’quarrel.

Samantha’s smile was slow and secretive.

“Not then,”she said.“He wasn’t in love with Kitty, either—just flattered by her rather popeyed

admiration, I suppose, and in a mood for marriage. Her parents pushed it for all they wereworth, of course, rather fancying the idea of a castle, and Kitty just did as she was told; a

whirlwind courtship and then the reckoning. Duff sticks to the pattern, doesn’t he, darling?

Let’s hope you, too, won’tlive to repent at leisure.”

“Was she like you—your cousin, I mean?”Harriet asked to avoid a direct comment, and

Samantha shrugged.

“Oh, she was pretty enough in a conventional chocolate-box fashion, and there was a vague

family resemblance, I suppose. She didn’t really want Duff—she wanted Clooney, and she

wanted to score off me. We used to come up here and stay with Aunt Alice when we first left

school, and Kitty would moon about the Castle and picture herself as a sort of romantic Lady

Bountiful handing out largesse to the grateful tenants. It didn’t work out like that at all, of

course. The tenants weren’t grateful for half-baked advice on the running of their homes, and

Kitty soon got bored with her ivory tower and made tracks for Dublin and a bit of gaiety. She’d

always been the spoilt child, and when Duff couldn’t or wouldn’t show her the good times she

expected, her parents took against him and made a lot of mischief.They never forgave him for

Kitty’s death, and have done their best to wean the child away—not difficult when she makes

out her father neglects her.”

“Does she?”

“Well, what doyouthink? Nonie’s no worse than any other child who’s cute enough to seize

an opening for self-dramatisation, I suppose, but personally, I can’t stand the brat—what I

remember of her. Have you made your number yet as the new stepmama?”

“No. Duff thought it best to wait till she comes home for the holidays.”

“It’s a wise man that knows his own child, to reverse an old proverb. I wish you joy, honey!”

Harriet finished her sherry and absently bit into another sandwich. She was not, as yet,

particularly disturbed by the prospect of having to deal with an awkward little girl, butSamantha’s own admissionsseemed oddly inconclusive.



“Why didn’t Duff marry you when he was free?”she asked suddenly.

“For the simple reason that I’d got myself wed in the meantime,”shesaid.“Bad timing again,

you see.I married on the rebound as they say in the novels, and serve me right for not being

content with what I had. After all, half a loaf is better than no bread at all, or wouldn’t you

agree?”Harriet made no answer, her thoughts following a line she did not care for. Was

Samantha implying that she and Duff had been having an affair while Kitty waited for her baby?

“I see you don’t,”Samantha observed with amusement.

“Don’t what?”

“Agree that half a loaf is better than no bread. An adolescent viewpoint, honey, and one I’d

advise you to revise for your future comfort.”

“Are you trying to tell me that you still want Duff?”Harriet, asked, and Samantha’s eyes were

amused.

“Oh, come now, darling, I’m hardly as crude as that, though you must admit that in the event

of you being right, I’m at least honest and playing fair. You’re not in love with Duff or he with

you.”

“No.”

“How refreshingly candid—not that it doesn’t stick out a mile with both of you that your

marriage was one of convenience, as they say. As to those eight years which you dismiss so

lightly, they were notquite barren, you know. Duff and I met up again by chance in the South of

France where I was spending my elderly husband’s dollars and having myself a ball at his

expense, and Duff was playing the tables in every available casino with the usual Lonnegan

luck.”

“Winning?”

“No, losing, of course. Duff’s luck hasn’t lived up to the Castle’s nickname in many respects,

has it? However, it turned then just for a time. He’d run through most of his English money, so I

paid his losses—as a temporary loan, of course—and we had a very satisfactory affair which did

us both a power of good and released some of those dark inhibitions which had bothered him

since Kitty’s death.”Drinking hard, gambling high and wenching hard, too, if he’s anything likehis grandsire...Jimsy had said, she remembered.

“And then?”she prompted, gripped by a story which, for the moment, had little personal

significance for her.

“And then, my surprisingly sensible child, I went back to the States and got me a divorce and

some nice fat alimony, and was free again, which was another mistake—or perhaps it was just

Lonnegan’s Luck pursuing me.”

“I can’t see—”

“No, neither could I at the time, but Duff, it appears, like many of his race, has a puritanical



streak in him. He doesn’t accept divorce, so in his eyes, you see, I wasn’t free at all—ironical

that I should find that out when I’d gone to all that trouble, and a little hard when you think of

all those dollars which helped out at the time, wouldn’t you say?”

“You mean the gambling losses? But surely—”

“Oh, a loan, of course, which he repaid, but when he got home, he found things here in apretty poor state, and was forced to borrow again. I’d never intended the money to be anything

but a gift, of course, thinking I’d be here to profit by my investment, so to speak, and when

poor old Silas K. popped off so conveniently, leaving me all his lolly in spite of the way I’d

treated him, I thought it was in the bag, but that’s life for you. I could have bought up Clooney

and put it all to rights, but—proud as the devil is your unpredictable husband, Harriet, and

don’t ever think you can talk him into any sort of compromise with his rigid notions. He’ll stand

by his marriage vows however badly things may turn out, and it will be you who must

compromise.”

“What are you really trying to tell me?”Harriet asked, and Samantha gave one of her gracefullittle shrugs of evasion.

“I should have thought it was plain. Everything boils down to compromise in the end, and

there’s no need for you and me to tread on each other’s toes—I don’t believe you’ve

understood a word I’ve been saying!Shall we have another drink?”

Harriet shook her head, only anxious now to get out in the fresh air and readjust her ideas.

She understood very well what Samantha had implied, just as she now understood Duff’s

reasons for a hasty marriage.

Samantha watched her, wondering whether anything she had been saying had sunk in, for the

girl was clearly as dumb as they come and not even emotionally disturbed, which seemed odd.

“What made you marry him?”she asked curiously, and Harriet was silent, tracing idle patterns

with herfingertipin a small puddle of sherry which had been slopped over on to the table.

A man who had been leaning on the counter with his back to her turned suddenly, and she

recognised Duff’s friend who had given her away and been kind to her at the luncheon which

had followed. He came over to their table, carrying a mug of beer, and smiled down at her with

pleasure.

“How nice to see you again, Mrs. Lonnegan,”he said pleasantly.“I’m afraid we haven’t got

around to that promised dinner date, but my wife’s been very busy. I don’t suppose you’ve

wanted to be bothered with invitations yet awhile, anyway.”

His eyes twinkled with kindly teasing as he spoke, and she smiled back at him politely. She

frequently found it difficult to remember on such occasions that strangers would naturally

assume her marriage to be a normal one.

“Duff never goes out very much in the evenings,”she said, trying to sound less ignorant of her

husband’s tastes and habits than she felt, and saw Samantha’s mouth turn down at thecornersin a little droop ofcommiseration.



“Yes, Raff, do get him to come out of his shell,”she said, widening her eyes at them.“Eight

years is too long for needless regrets, don’t you think? I’ve been trying to fill in the picture a

little for Harriet, for things can be difficult for the second wife until she knows what she’s up

against, don’t you agree?”

Michael O’Rafferty observed her with a thoughtless deliberation which carried a certain

coolness, but he answered courteously enough:

“Mrs. Lonnegan is up against nothing more serious than the gradual adjustment of any young

wife to the ways and habits of an older man. You’ll make Duff young again, my dear, as my wife

did for me. Are you staying long, Samantha?”

“Long enough,”Samantha replied, and Harriet thought an odd little flicker of understanding

passed between them, and when Raff next spoke the slight coolness of his regard was in his

voice.

“And Miss Docherty? Is she well? We don’t often see her these days unless at a racemeeting.”

“My Aunt Alice is as tough as one of her own elderly pensioners put out to grass and a long

old age of contemplation. How formal and polite you’ve become, dear Raff, since you married

your Judy,”Samantha replied on a slightly waspish note.“Come on, Harriet, it’s time we got out

of this mob and made tracks for home. Be seeing you, Raff.”

They were free of the crowds and the market traffic now, and Samantha took the north road

back to Clooney in deference, she said, to the long-suffering springs of her car. She did not

comment for a time, then observed suddenly:

“Don’t let Duff walk all over you, darling. He will, you know, if you give him half a chance.”

“Another warning?”asked Harriet, surprised that after such a disturbing morning she should

feel no animosity for Samantha.

“Never heed the gipsy’s warning unless you’ve crossed her palm with silver,”said Samantha

frivolously.“Don’t, by the same token, take all my nonsense too seriously.”

“But what you told me was true, wasn’t it?”she asked, sounding like a grave child again, and

Samantha replied with the impatience she could not quite control:

“True on most counts, but I don’t advise you to try verifying the facts with Duff.”

“I wouldn’t dream of embarrassing him with knowledge of his private affairs. What’s

happened in the past is no concern of mine, as he frequently tells me,”Harriet replied with

dignity.

As November dipped into December with a change in the weather which proclaimed that

winter had come to stay, Harriet’s thoughts turned again to Christmas.

Despite Duff’s warning that old customs had made little difference to Clooney in the years of

his solitude, she was resolved that this year the festival should not pass unnoticed, for there



would be a child in the house. The thought of Nonie, that unknown little girl who was now her

stepdaughter, sometimes gave Harriet an uneasy moment, for the child was so seldom

discussed that it was often difficult to remember that Duff had a daughter.

“Hasn’t she got a schoolroom of her own?”she enquired of Jimsy, trying to discover how best

to avoid an innocent appropriation of the child’s favourite haunts.

“Oh, ay—the old nurseries in the servants’wing,”Jimsy had replied vaguely, and Harriet had

gone to explore for herself.

The servants’wing, still so-called though a row of musty rooms testified to long years of

disuse, seemed to her cold and depressing. It seemed an unnecessary banishment for a child

when there were so many unoccupied rooms in the Castle which could have been adapted for

her use, and Harriet said as much to Duff, who displayed a surprising lack of interest.

“But don’tyoucare whether your daughter is happy and well looked after when she comes

home?”she asked.

“Nonie’s looked after well enough,”he replied quite mildly.“Whether she’s happy is another

matter.”

“But surely that’s up to you—to see that sheishappy, I mean. Children aren’t difficult to

please.”

“You’d better wait till you know my daughter. Nonie, you will find, doesn’t react like a child to

normal treats and pleasures, neither, I’m afraid, will she thank you for moving her to one of the

other rooms, but by all means make changes in the nursery if you want, only don’t say I didn’t

warn you if your efforts fall flat.”

It was not an encouraging start, but Harriet, determined to prove his forebodings wrong, set

about transforming the neglected nurseries with a will, plundering the many unused rooms for

furniture and orderingmodernbooks and games to replace the discarded toys. With Molly’s

help she shifted the furniture around a dozen times before she was satisfied.

“Wouldn’t that please you, Molly, if you were a little girl thinking yourself too old for a

nursery?”

“Well, as to that, I wouldn’t be knowin’, for‘tis not what I’d be expectin’for meself,”shesaid.“An’Miss Nonie’s the quare one, always slippin’away by herself an’no company for her da

at all. Rest aisy, ma’am, she’ll not trouble you if you let her be.”

It was not a very reassuring hope for a future relationship.

“Oh, well...”said Harriet inconclusively, then put the problem of Nonie out of her mind and

went about her preparations for Christmas, but here again she seemed to meet with

discouragement. Clooney was too big a house to decorate unless it was done on a grand scale,

and with only herself and a possibly disapproving child to sit down at Duff’s table on Christmas

Day the pattern of everyday life would scarcely change. She had become accustomed eachevening to sitting opposite him in the chilly dining-room, eating her dinner with the mute

politeness of a child taught not to chatter unless spoken to. She occupied her vagrant thoughts



with the positioning of holly and paper streamers, and once he observed:

“Planning where the mistletoe will go, Harriet? Your eyes keep darting round the room with

rather a distracted look of uncertainty.”

“Well, it’s difficult to decide,”she said, grateful that he should take an interest, however

casual.“Little bits of holly would look lost and not enough grows round here, Molly says, tomake a really good show.”

“Go and buy it up by the truck-load in Knockferry if it will satisfy your love of

make-believe,”he said carelessly, and she looked a little shocked.

“Spend good money on stuff that grows in the hedges!”she exclaimed, too recently plucked

from the rigid economies of institutional life to countenance such wanton waste, then added

on an afterthought:“But Christmas isn’t make-believe. It’s real.”

“What a child you are,”he said, but he spoke with tenderness and not with his customaryamused tolerance, and she gave him that sudden mischievous grin across the table.

“How nice you can be, when you really see me,”she said, and he looked quite startled.

“What on earth do you mean?”

“Well, you often don’t—see me, I mean. I’m a guest—a sort of unexpected dependent wished

on you, rather like Uriah.”

“For the love of sanity, what next!”he exclaimed, jumping to his feet to move round the

table.”

“I must have failed very badly if I’ve given you that impression,”he said a little roughly.“You

should remind me more often that I make you feel like the subservient Uriah.”

“But he’s very happy. This place must be like heaven to him, surrounded by love and affection

as well as good food and comfort, so why shouldn’t I feel the same?”

“There’s one small difference, I would imagine. Do you feel yourself surrounded by love and

affection?”

She sighed, resting her head against him; her contentment was new and sweet, and she

resisted the temptation to take advantage.

“That wasn’t in the contract,”she answered, and felt the spasmodic tightening of his fingers

on her shoulders.

“Contracts can be amended—even reconstituted to meet changes in circumstances,”he said,

and turned her gently round to look into her face.“Have I been keeping too much to the letter

of the law in the matter of our agreement?”

She felt the colour rising under the unfamiliar demandinhis eyes.

“Whatever you want of me, Duff, I’m willing to give,”she replied, striving to capture and keep



the moment of perception.“But you haven’t wanted anything, have you?”

“I wonder if you realise what you’re offering,”he said on an odd little note of tension.

“I think so, but—”

“But what?”

“You think of me as a child, don’t you, Duff?”she said, but for him the moment of perception

had already passed.

“Well, youarea child,”he said, moving away from her.“A good, conscientious child, ready to

please in any capacity and quite ignorant of the ways of the world.”

“Because you want me that way,”she said, and he began snuffing out the candles on the

table.

“Perhaps,”he replied, his ugly features oddly distorted in the flickering light as each flame

died.“Or perhaps I’m more concerned for your happiness than you think.”

The day came for Nonie’s return for the holidays,andHarriet drove with Duff into Knockferry

to fetch her feeling as nervous as she used to on being summoned for an interview with

Matron.

“Does she know you’ve married again?”she asked, wondering if Duff, with a masculine dread

of a possible scene, was leaving it to her to break the news.

“Oh, yes. The Reverend Mother told her at once. There was no surprise and not muchinterest, I understand, so you needn’t be nervous,”he replied rather dryly.

But there was a flicker of surprise in the child’s eyes as she shook hands politely with Harriet

in the convent parlour, and she said with grave deliberation:

“You aren’t at all what I expected. Has Father really married you?”

“Oh, yes. She can’t be sacked if you two don’t get on,so you’ll have to learn to accept

her,”Duff said beforeHarriet could answer, andNoniegave him a cool, level look very like one of

his own and replied with old-fashioned composure;

“Naturally. Clooney’s quite big enough for us to go our separate ways.”

Duff merely lifted an eyebrow but made no comment, and Harriet was too taken aback by

such an adult egression of disinterest that she could think of nothing to say. They left the

parlour where the smell of beeswax and carbolic reminded her forcibly of the orphanage, and

out to the waiting car in silence.

By the time they had reached Clooney, Harriet was beginning tothinkthat it was going to be as

difficult to come to terms with Nonie as it sometimes was with Duff. The child answered

questions politely, but volunteered no more information about herself than was necessary, and

such brief exchanges as took place between father and daughter sounded like the conventional



small talk between strangers. Harriet consoled herself with the fact that her efforts to give the

nursery a more adult air had been a step in the right direction, but when she accompanied the

child upstairs and waited for some evidence of appreciation, there was none forthcoming.

Nonie stood sedately in her neat school uniform looking about her with critical eyes, then she

took off her coat and hat without speaking and hung them up carefully in the Chippendale

wardrobe which had replaced the original shabby painted deal, glancing without curiosity at thenew pile of children’s books on the table.

“Don’t you like the nursery now it’s more like your own sitting-room?”Harriet asked at last a

little wistfully, and the child answered politely enough:

“I liked it better as it was.”

“Oh! Did you play with those old toys, then? I’ve only put them away.”

“No.”

“Well, I ordered these books for you. They’re all newly published and some have lovely

illustrations.”

“It was kind of you, but I always use the library when I’m at home,”said Nonie with her first

hint of smugness, and Harriet wanted to smack her.

“In that case the tenants’children can have these for Christmas. They haven’t the advantages

of a library,”she said on a note of retaliation that was more reminiscent of a schoolgirl than a

reproving grown-up, and the child looked at her with the first flicker of interest.

“How old are you?”she asked.

“Eighteen.”

“Good gracious! Father must have been out of his mind!”The involuntary exclamation was so

mature and so ludicrously an echo of Duff that Harriet laughed.

“Well, out of his mind or not, you’re stuck with me, so I don’t see why we shouldn’t both

make the best of it,”she said.

“What am I to call you?”asked Nonie.

“I don’t know,”said Harriet, who hadn’t considered that question, but Nonie, of course, had

the answer, as she would, Harriet was beginning to think, to most things.

“I shall call you Harriet,”she said with the indulgent firmness of an equal.“Mother would

sound rather silly, wouldn’t it?”

“Extremely silly,”Harriet snapped with heartfelt agreement, and whisked out of the room. She

found Duff in the snug drinking sherry, with a second glass already filled and waiting for her.

“I had a notion you might be needing this,”he said with a twinkle, observing her flushed

face.“My precocious daughter must be something of a shock to the ample product of an



orphanage. Didn’t she care for your titivations to the nursery?”

“No. You knew she wouldn’t, didn’t you?”

“My dear, I did warn you—”

“Yes, I suppose you did. Butwhy is she like this, Duff? I know you’ve left her alone a lot whenyou were abroad, but surely, later, you could have tried to make up for that.”

“The blame doesn’t entirely rest with me, you know,”he said, sounding suddenly tired.

“Who, then?”

“The grandparents—Kitty’s people. I told you I had come to the conclusion that long visits to

Dublin were a mistake.”

“You mean they turned her against you?”

“I think so—not deliberately, Iimagine,but they never forgave me for the way the marriage

turned out, and Nonie is enough like her mother to enjoy being the centre of attraction.”

“But surely when you came home again you could have done a little spoiling yourself?”

“Oh, no. By that time I was the bogey-man, you see. Heaven knows what yams she spun the

grandparents, who write accusing letters from time to time but can never bring themselves to

visit Clooney. It’s another nail in my coffin with Nonie, of course, that I don’t allow her to stay

there any more.”

“I don’t think I’m going to like your daughter,”Harriet said suddenly.“A child that is precocious

and unnatural is bad enough, but a spiteful child I can’t abide,”she said, and heard an echo of

Matron’s sweeping statements.

“Nonie’s not spiteful,”he said, smiling at such vehemence.“Don’t let me give you a wrong

impression. She wouldn’t, I’m sure, make capital out of imagined grievances from any

deliberate intention of spite; she’s simply cute enough to know what’s expected in the matter

of questions and answers, and plays up.”

“I see. Well, it doesn’t sound attractive all the same. What do the nuns think of her?”

“She always has an excellent report. The sole criticism appears to be that she’s a bad mixer

and won’t make friends, and that, unfortunately, you’ve discovered already for yourself. Give

her time, Harriet. I’m depending on this warm-hearted simplicity of yours to crack the ice.”

“It hasn’t cracked yours,”she retorted.

“You might be surprised one day. I, unlike the fond Uriah, don’t wear my heart on my

sleeve,”he said with such an alarming air of censure that she felt chastened. It was almost a

relief when Nonie joined them, her long dark hair neatly brushed and tied back with a bow, and

the school uniform replaced by a skirt and sweater.

Luncheon was something of an ordeal until she realised that Nonie’s presence made very



little difference, for she, like her father, was not disposed to chatter and received Harriet’s

efforts to draw her out with polite surprise. She was a very polite little girl altogether, Harriet

had to admit.

She was, indeed, a very plain child, and Harriet’s tender heart softened towards her,

remembering her own sense of inadequacy when faced with the superior attractions of others.

She was glad when the meal ended, but wondered a little apprehensively if Duff expected her

to amuse Nonie for the rest of the afternoon since the child had been a considerable factor in

his decision to remarry, but when asked what she would like to do, Nonie intimated with such a

condescending air that she preferred her own company on the first day of the holidays that

Harriet found it hard to resist the impulse to stick out her tongue and reply with orphanage

rudeness.

She might yet have preserved her adult superiority had Nonie not cast a disparaging eye upon

Uriah and remarked:“That reallyisa most hideous animal. Where on earth did you find him,

Father?”

It was too much. Before Duff could answer, Harriet had risen in wrath from the table and

advanced upon the child, her cheeks scarlet.

“You,”she said, reverting to orphanage idiom,“are the most ill-mannered little twerp it’s been

my lot to meet! The dog happens to be mine, and if you don’t like his looks, take a gander at

your own ugly mug!”

Nonie’s mouth fell open with sheer surprise, then she retaliated with a healthy reversion to

childhood:

“You’re no beauty yourself, and you’re not proper grownup either, even if youhavemarried

Father, so there!”she shouted, and stuck out her tongue. This time Harriet had no hesitation in

sticking out hers, accompanied by a hideous grimace, and Nonie ran out of the room with her

hands over her ears, her father’s burst of laughter completing her discomfiture.

“I’mnot sorry,”Harriet told him with the mutinous defiance of a child refusing to apologies, but

Duff only laughed louder with the helpless mirth of an overgrown schoolboy.

“Don’t apologise, my dear,”he said when at last he could speak.“I wouldn’t have missed that

for worlds! It’s the first time I’ve seen poor Nonie behave like a normal, rather rude little girl.You, too—I wonder how often you’ve been tempted to put your tongue out atmeand call me

names?”

But Harriet’s unaccustomed spurt of temper was alreadydying, and she was reproached with

the knowledge that on the very first day of testing, she had been found wanting.

“I wouldn’t dare—I mean, I wouldn’t dream,”she replied, eyeing him warily, and his

amusement turned abruptly to a sober mood of thoughtfulness.

“Dare, I think, was the operative word, for your dreams have never been rationed, have they,Harriet?”he said.“Well, that delightful prep-school exhibition has probably broken the ice, but I

don’t want two difficult daughters on my hands, so grow up a little, will you?”



CHAPTER SEVEN

IT was a relief to Harriet when bedtime came, for she had been obsessed with her own

shortcomings as the afternoon wore into evening.

Nonie, bearing out her desire for solitude for the first day of the holidays, disappeared on

ploys of her own, and Duff and his dogs were presumably about the policies after rabbits, his

usual occupation if there was no estate work to be attended to. He had not come in, however,

by the time it was too dark to shoot, and Harriet, left alone with her thoughts, had ample

leisure to repent, and regret her undignified behaviour.

Nonie did not come down for tea, and Harriet supposed she was showing her displeasure by

sulking, so she had hers alone, and was thankful. Her conscience pricked her, however, for she

felt her duty certainly lay in making sure that the child was being properly cared for and thebedtime hour, whenever it might be, observed, but she could not bring herself to invade the

nursery inviting further snubs, so went instead to the kitchen to enquire.

“I wanted to ask what the holiday routine for Miss Nonie is,”she said.“Should I be seeing to

her supper or her bath, or something?”

“Och, you don’t need to trouble yourself, ma’am. Molly takes a tray up at half-past six, an’she

gets herself to bed an’won’t thank anyone for bedtime stories and the loike,”

But even Harriet’s imagination boggled at the prospect of regaling such a precocious child

with bedtime stories and she smiled.

“Well, so long as this is the usual practice, I won’t go uptonight. I’m afraid Miss Nonie hasn’t

taken very kindly tome.”

“Sure, you don’t need to take heed of that wan’s airs and grace—all play-actin’an’she

thinkin’to take a leaf from her da’s book, for himself can get on his high horse when he

chooses, beggin’your pardon, ma’am.”

Harriet smiled again, warming to Agnes, sitting in a basket chair by the roaring fire. She was

quite accustomed now to the curious knack the Irish had of being familiar with their betterswithout ever forgetting their place, and she had personal acquaintance with Duff’s high horse.

“Yes, he can,”she agreed.“I suppose in a way, the little girl’s very like him.”

“‘Tis her aim to be that, poor toad, for the quare reverence she bears him,”Agnes replied with

such matter-of-fact unexpectedness that Harriet’s mouth flew open in an‘0’of surprise.

“But I thought—”she began, remembering Duff’s weary contention that the child had no

fondness for him.

“Then you thought like everyone else,”Agnes finished.“The child dotes on her pappy, an’so

I’m tellin’you.”



“Well, I hope you’re right, Agnes,”Harriet replied without much confidence, and old Jimsy,

who had been polishing silver in a darkcornerof the kitchen without paying the smallest

attention to the conversation, remarked suddenly and with apparent irrelevance:

“Wouldn’t it be time you was thinkin’of changing that quare article you have for a dog, young

miss?”Jimsy, for some reason best known to himself, had never taken to addressing her

as‘ma’am’in private.

“Change Uriah! But I’ve only just got him!”protested Harriet.

“I was thinkin’the craythur was a kind of a make-do, meanin’no offence, for‘tis onnatural to

nurse a poor dumb animal to still the cravin’s of—”

“Och, hould your whisht, you old divil!”Agnes admonished him quite sharply, and Harriet, the

colour high in hercheeks, got herself out of the kitchen with what dignity she could muster,

wondering whether Jimsy’s extraordinary speculations meant what she thought they did.

But by the time she had got herself to bed at the end of that upsetting day, she no longer

cared what any of them thought, experiencing again that desire for comfort and assurance

which had beset her in her early days at the orphanage, and she buried her face in the pillow

and wept with abandon.

Much later, or perhaps it was really only a few minutes, she became aware of Duff standing

beside the bed, holding a candle.

“For heaven’s sake, child, what’s the matter?”he said, and for a moment her tears stopped in

the sheer surprise of seeing him there.

“I—I’m sorry, did I disturb you?”she said, trying to hold her breath on the next sob.

“No, I wasn’t in bed, but I was thoroughly alarmed by these violent sounds of distress next

door. What is it?”and he put the candlestick on the bedside table and sat down on the bed.

“Nonie’s upset you, I suppose,”he said, and she began to cry again.

“She hates me! I should never have come here!”she sobbed, abandoning all pretence of

reason, and Duff took her into his arms, holding her and soothing her in such a faithful imitation

of those nebulous characters she used to invent for herself in adolescence that for a brief moment she thought she must be dreaming.

When she was quieter, he laid her gently back against the pillows and stroked the tangled

fringe back from her hot forehead.

“Listen, you silly child, that rather tiresome daughter of mine’s taken quite a shine to you in

her own queer way—says you’re a lot better than she expected and is inclined to suppose that I

must have somehow tricked you into marriage! She doesn’t, you see, consider you are much

older than herself, and thinks I’ve taken an unfair advantage, and she’s possibly right at that, so

cheer up!”

“Doesn’t she know she was the main reason for you getting married?”



“Oh, my dear girl, have a little common sense!”he exclaimed.“One doesn’t discuss one’s

reasons for remarriage with an eight-year-old child, neither was she my sole reason, though it

was the easiest one to give you at the time.”

“I’d forgotten. Samantha was the other, wasn’t she?”she said unguardedly, and knew it for an

ill-considered remark as she saw him stiffen.

“Samantha?”he repeated on a cool note of enquiry, and she looked away, not wanting to

meet the withdrawal in his eyes, but she could not escape his elongated shadow thrown on the

wall, still and a little grotesque, reminding her he was waiting for an answer.

“Shouldn’t I have mentioned her?”she said at last, trying to retreat and at the same time give

him an opening to admit her as an equal if he would, but it only had the effect of shutting her

firmly outside.

“I see no reason why you shouldn’t, providing you keep that imagination of yours in check,”he

replied.“Has she been encouraging your passion for romantic drama with brightly-colouredtales of the past?”

“She only satisfied my natural curiosity—things you wouldn’t tell me yourself,”she answered

vaguely.

“Such as?”

“Just gossip, mostly, I expect. I wasn’t prying again, Duff, but it’s natural to want to know

something about the man you’ve married, surely?”

“Such as?”he said again, and she experienced a strong and most unbecoming desire to

retaliate with the schoolgirl rudeness Nonie had roused in her.

“Such as your taste in toothpaste, whether you shave once a day or twice, and like your eggs

soft or hard boiled, how your nose got broken—if it did—if you wear the same underclothes

winter and summer, and if you have headaches, or toothaches or colds on the chest. I—I don’t

even know how old you are!”

He rubbed his fingers through his hair, disordering it still further and surveyed her with a

rather helpless expression.

“Dear me!”he said.“What a curious list to seem so important.”

“It’s the little things thatareimportant to a wife, but as we—we don’t share

the—the—ordinary intimacies, I can’tfind out for myself, can I?”she said, and he smiled a shade

sardonically.

“And were those the items upon which Samantha enlightened you?”he asked, and she looked

uneasy.

“Of course not—if I’d asked her those sort of questions she would have thought our marriage

odder than it is, wouldn’t she?”she said, and his eyes were suddenly gentle.



“I’m glad to hear discretion can put a brake on your curiosity,”he said.“Well, for your

information, I’m not fussy as to my brand of toothpaste, neither to the timing of my eggs which

can be variable, according to Agnes’mood. I should shave twice a day to avoid the five o’clock

shadow, but frequently don’t, and I’m thirty-seven years old. Satisfied?”

“Thirty-seven?”she repeated, smiling up at him with the alert interest of someone storing up

precious information.

“More than twice your age. Does that shock you?”

“No,”she said,“but it explains things a little.”It explained, she hoped, that insistence on

treating her like a child which she was beginning to find so defeating to a desire for growth and

expansion.“Couldn’t you—couldn’t you forget the difference in age sometimes?”

His glance was tender and, at the same time, a little wry.

“You make it difficult very often with your polite acceptance of what I choose to give andthose woolly daydreams of yours. I’m giving you time to grow.”

“And then—when you think I’ve grown?”

“There’s no telling, is there? We’ll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, don’t run to

Samantha for more serious information. I’ve no doubt she’s already taken advantage of your

gullibility and trotted out old rumours and unpaid scores. Understand?”

She took a deep breath and shut her eyes.

“What I understand perfectly well is that you and she once had an affair, which doesn’t

surprise me at all, or shock me—or upset me. Did you think it would?”she said very quickly

before her courage failed her.

“If by that you mean why didn’t I tell you myself, I didn’t think such ancient history concerned

you,”he said.“However, I’d guessed Samantha was hardly likely to keep such a satisfying titbit

to herself. Was she trying to make mischief?”

“Oh, no, I don’t think so—just putting me in the picture, she said.”

“I’m sure she did, but Samantha’s picture only has room for one, so don’t be too flattered.Well, I can’t muzzle the indiscreet lady even if I wished to, so remember the next time you have

one of those cosy get-togethers that your charming gullibility is an open target for anyone with

an axe to grind. In other words, don’t believe all you hear. Now it’s time you stopped talking

nonsense and went to sleep.”

“Will you leave the door open?”she asked.

“Yes, of course, if that will reassure you,”he said, and she curled up contentedly, aware that

sleep, held off so long, was suddenly swooping down upon her with a blissful fuzzing of the

edges of conscious thought.

“It’s the first time the door has stood open between us,”she murmured drowsily.“Will you



kiss me goodnight, Duff?”He bent over the bed and she was only dimly aware, as her heavy

eyelids closed, that she had slipped her arms round his neck as naturally as though it was a

long-accustomed habit.

When she awoke the next morning the intervening door was closed and Molly was standing

by the bed with a breakfast tray just as she had that first morning at the Castle.

“I never have breakfast in bed,”Harriet said, trying to struggle into a sitting position under the

weight of the tray and at the same time prevent Uriah from turning his attentions to her eggs

and bacon.“What’s the time?”

“Gone ten, but himself toult Agnes to lave you be for it was sleep you needed. Was you took

in the night, ma’am?”Molly’s eyes held a lively curiosity, and Harriet realised that since it was

her daily duty to do the bedrooms, it was only too probable that by now the girl had a pretty

shrewd idea of the relations existing between husband and wife.

“I couldn’t sleep that’s all,”Harriet replied rather shortly.“Has Miss Nonie had her breakfastand been given something to do?”

She spoke so like the nursery governess of popular conception that Molly giggled.

“That wan finds her own pleasures. You don’t need to trouble yourself with her, ma’am.”

“Don’t you like her, Molly?”

“Ah, sure, she gives no trouble, so why should I care one way or the other?”the girl replied

carelessly.

“We must think of something to please her—something special. Oh, of course, there’ll be

Christmas these holidays; all children can enjoy that,”Harriet said, the delight of her own not

very distant childhood still fresh in her mind, but Molly observed with rather a depressing truth:

“Sure, an’what’s Christmas without the childer? One little girl sittin’down to turkey an’plum

puddin’as solemn as you plaze, an’no rough games to shake it all down afterwards an’no tree to

share with other little friends.”

“But of course we shall have a tree! And all the children from the farms and the tenancies can

come up for tea and Nonie will be hostess and hand out presents, which I’m sure she wouldenjoy and—and—”Harriet’s excited words tailed off as she saw the lack of response in Molly’s

face, and she finished uncertainly:“Don’t you think that’s a good idea, Molly?”

“Ah, sure, there’s nothin’wrong with the idea, but you’ll not get the old biddy downstairs

washin’up for a crowd oi childer bringin’in dirt an’turning the place upside down,”Molly said,

presumably referring to Agnes with her usual disrespect.

There was no need, Harriet found, to approach the mildly astonished Duff in a spirit of battle.

“My dear child! I thought we’d been through all this before. Fill the place with holly and tinsel

and balloons and all the messy clutter you can lay hands on if it will make you happy—it won’t

make any difference to me,”he said.



She had found him strolling along the shore of the lough before luncheon.

“And the tree and the party?”she asked anxiously.

“Party? oh, yes, we used to keep up that practice here, I believe, in the days when servants

were two a penny,”he said idly,“but the custom died when the Castle children grew up and

there were none left at Clooney.”

“Well, now there’s Nonie, and I don’t mind betting that however much she scorns her own

age-group, she’d get a kick out of being lady of the manor and handing out presents!”

“You’re probably right at that, but would the other kids enjoy being patronised? The tenants

don’t bob to the quality any longer, even in Ireland, and one must beware of charity.”

“You’ve got things all mixed up, Duff,”she said.“Heaven knows, I’ve had enough of the sort of

charity you mean, butreal charity is never patronising. Do you think the orphans weren’t

grateful for their tree and their presents and all the fun? We never thought for one moment wewere being patronised, because everything was given freely and with love.”

He put an arm round her shoulders with an involuntary gesture, drawing her to him, and said

with gentleness:

“Freely, and with love...yes, that sums up all the best in life if we could learn to live by it,

doesn’t it? You know, Harriet, sometimes you make me feel a little ashamed.”

“I do? Butwhy ,Duff?”

“You have so much to give, I think, and I—took what I wanted so lightly.”

It was a strange admission, she thought, and one that she did not altogether understand.

“You—you haven’t taken anything,”she said then, clinging to the literal interpretation of their

bond, because she was unsure of his intention.“Are you regretting things, Duff? Because it

doesn’t seem to me that I do much here to earn my keep. I don’t even run your house for you.”

“Earn your keep? Is that how you think of our bargain?”

“Well, of course, but so far, all the advantage seems to be mine. I will try to make friends withNonie if she’ll let me, but you neither of you want the only thing I have to give, and you—you

once told me that perhaps you—and Clooney—needed someone like me, but you don’t, do

you? Anyone would have done at the time.”

His fingers tightened with such, violence on her shoulders that she cried out, but the pressure

did not ease.

“Perhaps that’s what I meant when I said I’d taken what I wanted so lightly. But if I confuse

you, Harriet, you equally confuse me—one minute an ignorant child, the next sending out

curious vibrations that in any other girl would be taken for invitation. How am I to know where I

stand?”



She looked up at him mutely, tongue-tied because she did not know how to answer a

question which her own simplicity might well have misinterpreted.

“I don’t know the way,”she said, and indeed she did not. That Woman’s Intuition which the

magazines and romantic novelists had so airily assured her was the unfailing guide in all such

situations was either missing in her, or was not properly understood, she thought.

“Don’t you, Harriet? Are you beginning to want a little more than bed and board and

gratitude for small services rendered?”He still held her between his hands, and looking up into

that dark, ugly face, she tried vainly to capture the right phrase with which to answer him.

“I—I don’t understand you.”

“No, you don’t, do you?”he said, and she thought there was a tinge of disappointment in his

voice as he let her go.“Well, you shall have your tree and your children’s party, if that will make

you happy, but don’t expect a kind of pantomime transformation scene as a result. I’ve a

feeling you’re going to be disappointed.”

“Oh, no!”she cried, relieved that they were back on territory that was familiar.“Half the fun is

preparing, and would you—couldn’t you help me with the decorations and things? I know you

think it’s all rather silly and unnecessary, but you’re so tall you could reach the places I couldn’t,

and—well, it’s so much nicer to be part of something, and share, don’t you think?”

“Yes, Harriet, I’ll help you—perhaps that will be a beginning,”he said, with a little smile.

“A beginning?”

“Yes, think it over. What was this thing you spoke of just now—the only thing you had to give,

you said, that neither I nor my daughter wanted?”

She felt herself colouring, but she was too simple to dissemble.

“Affection—love perhaps,”she said, and his expression was suddenly a curious mixture of

tenderness and surprise.

“And did you think I hadnoneed of that? Everything given freely and with love, to use your

own very revealing phrase,”he said, and bent his head as if to kiss her, but drew back when the

three dogs burst into a sudden clamour of recognition or warning and a voice from the terraceshouted gaily:

“Hi there! Am I a gatecrasher on the honeymoon, or can I stay for Christmas?”

At first Harriet did not recognise the slim young man who vaulted over a stone bench to meet

them, but Duff went forward to claphimon the shoulder with every sign of welcome, and she

knew that it must be Rory Lonnegan.

“You old sly-puss—getting yourself married all on the quiet and not even inviting me to the

wedding!”Rory was saying.“Lead me to the blushing bride!”

Harriet was indeed blushing as the two men came back to her, and she wondered how Duff



proposed explaining his sudden marriage to a girl who had come over to Ireland on his cousin’s

invitation, and was, to all intents and purposes, a stranger to him, but Duff was watching the

meeting between them with a look of quizzical amusement on his ugly face, and it was clear

that he was not at all disturbed.

“Harriet, this is my cousin Rory,”he said with conventional gravity, then his eyes twinkled.“But

I understand you’ve already met, so perhaps introductions are hardly necessary.”

Harriet saw the young man’s start of surprise and the enquiring lift of an eyebrow very

reminiscent of his cousin, but he advanced politely to shake hands with her.

“I don’t think—”he began, then his handsome face lit up with an expression of astonished

recognition.

“Why, you can’t be—you surely can’t be my charming little pen-friend of a year or more ago!

Well, what d’you know!”

He took Harriet’s hand in his, kissed her on both cheeks which he declared was the right of a,

cousin by marriage, and, flinging an arm about each of them, walked them back to the house.

He was just as she remembered him; gay, good-looking, the ready tongue which had first

charmed her and now demanded to know how on earth the two of them had met.

“Perhaps it’s slipped your memory that you invited Harriet here?”said Duff with cool

amusement, and Harriet, observing Rory’s mystification, realised that he had, indeed,

forgotten. In sending off that hasty telegram which had never arrived, he had clearly put a little

girl he had only met once straight out of his mind.

“Good God!”he exclaimed, memory evidently coming back to him with a rush.“But surely you

got my wire? You didn’t, I hope, traipse all over from England to this benighted country on a

wild-goose chase, did you?”

“Hardly a wild-goose chase, as it turned out,”Duff said on an odd little inflection which

seemed to have a message for his cousin, who gave him a swift, amused look, then turned to

Harriet with cheerful impudence.

“Well, it’s an ill wind, they say. I can’t for the life of me imagine what you can have seen in my

ugly cousin, but I hope you find Clooney to your liking, now you’re stuck with us,”he said, andwhen she replied, it was with the first conscious recognition that in the eyes of the world she

was Duff’s wife and mistress of his house, and could accept the role of hostess, if nothing more.

“Very much to my liking, thank you. If you’re staying over Christmas, I’d better go and see

about a room for you,”she said.

“My room’s been the same for years and is always ready, so don’t bother,”he told her with a

twinkle of amusement she did not altogether interpret, and she felt relieved when Nonie

created a diversion by appearing from nowhere and flinging herself upon Rory with most

uncharacteristic enthusiasm.

“UncleRory —howsuper !Have you come for Christmas?”she cried with all the pleased



excitement of any normal child, and Harriet, catching a glimpse of the expression that

contorted Duff’s face for an instant and was gone, knew a queer little stab of pity for him. It

could not be pleasant to be obliged to accept such a pointed preference.

“Did you know I had a new stepmother, Uncle Rory?”Nonie was saying, with sidelong glances

at Harriet which seemed to invite participation in some obscure joke, but Rory pulled her hair

with anone too gentle tug and replied;

“Of course, and you’re a very lucky young woman, let me tell you, for I saw her first.”

“Youdid?”You mean Father pinched her from you?”

“Well, hardly that; let’s say your papa, for once, accepted what the gods sent him without

asking silly questions, and that goes for you, too. Now, Princess, tell me what you’ve been up to

at that prim academy of yours, since last I saw you.”

Harriet briefly described the adventures that had led her to the Castle, and Rory’s grin grewbroader.

“So all my false claims to the Castle were exposed. Cousin Duff took you in, and—settled the

whole matter by making an honest woman of you. Well, well, well, life is full of surprises!”

Nonie, who had been listening with an expression of dark frustration, trying to fill in the

tantalising gaps of a story she had already gleaned for herself from snippets of gossip, hastened

to add her own contribution.

“And what do youthink,Uncle Rory? She mistook the Castle for Clooney Gaol,

andMolly says—”

“That’s enough, Nonie, Harriet’s adventures might wait until after lunch, I think,”Duff said,

cutting short his daughter’s interpolation with a sharp air of dismissal which brought a sulky

look to her face. He was not, Harriet thought, best pleased with his cousin’s frivolous findings,

and she wondered how he would explain the matter with satisfaction to a young man who

must realise by now that his own unintentional part in his cousin’s affairs had set in motion a

whole, unlikely chain of events.

When later, however, she managed to find an opportunity to ask him, he replied with an air

of polite surprise which made her feel foolish:

“I told him the truth, naturally. There was nothing odd in the fact that our meeting came

about through a natural misunderstanding on your part, and Rory is the last person to ask

awkward questions so long as he can avoid being saddled with any responsibility himself, so

don’t go making mysteries where none exist, will you, Harriet?”

“No, Duff,”she said dutifully, but she was aware that he had really explained very little, and

during the days that followed, she did not think that Rory’s mischievous curiosity was so easily

fobbed off. He would glance from one to the other of them with bright, inquisitive eyes, every

so often dropping a remark which made Duff raise speculative eyebrows, but she soon becameused to the impudence that was always good-natured, and felt at ease with him as she seldom

did with Duff.



Nothing had been seen or heard of Samantha for a week orso, and Harriet wondered if she

had tired of the prolonged visit with her unsociably inclined Aunt Alice and taken herself off for

a gayer Christmas elsewhere, but one afternoon she walked in with her usual omission to

announce her arrival by ringing the front door bell, carrying an enormous box of expensive

baubles and decorations which she said she had ordered especially from Dublin for Harriet’s

tree.

“Rory darling!”she exclaimed, handing the box to Harriet and embracing Rory with every

evidence of delight.“I’d heard the prodigal had returned and had to come over and say hullo. A

long-time-no-see, isn’t it?”

“Oh!Howlovely !”Harriet exclaimed suddenly, unwrapping the first of the glittering surprises,

and from then on had no attention to spare for the conversation of the other two until she

heard Rory say with that little spice of malice back in his voice:

“Are you staying for Christmas too, then, sweetie? What a gay time we shall all have!”

“I’m stopping on with Aunt Alice, yes, but I haven’t been invited to your shenanigans at the

Castle as yet,”Samantha replied, and Harriet looked up.

“But of course you must come for lunch on Christmas Day, if you would care to,”she said

quickly.“It would be nice if you could make up the family party.”

“Now that I consider to be a very broad-minded suggestion in the circumstances,”Rory

remarked airily, and the atmosphere seemed to alter. Samantha told him to shut up with a little

too much emphasis, he merely grinned back with rather unholy satisfaction in the apparent

scoring of a point, and Harriet turned to look at them both, one of the shining silver balls still

cupped in her hands.

“Have I been tactless?”she asked.“Is there some reason why—”she broke off, not knowing

how to finish without suggesting more than had possibly been intended.

“Tactless to offer your very charming hospitality?”Samantha mocked gently, and Harriet

looked embarrassed.

“Well, I was forgetting,”she remarked awkwardly.“I suppose the last family party was when

your cousin was alive. Duff mightn’t like to be reminded, perhaps.”

“Very likely not, but that was hardly a family party, it was a free-for-all for Kitty’s rowdy

Dublin friends,”said Rory.“Now this, of course, would only be different in the sense that—”

“Pay no attention to Master Rory, Harriet, he loves to stir up trouble like a little

boy,”Samantha said with a return to her lazy unconcern, but her dark eyes seemed to challenge

Rory, and Harriet was beginning to feel uncomfortable. It was a relief when Duff walked into

the room and she turned to him thankfully.

“Duff—”she said with the badly expressed haste of a schoolgirl,“I suggested Samantha came

to us for lunch on Christmas Day as she’s stopping over with her aunt—not a real party—just tomake more fun for Nonie. You wouldn’t mind, would you?”



“Not a very happy way of phrasing things, perhaps,”he replied with a faint smile.“I could

hardly say I did mind with your prospective guest sitting there, could I?”

Harriet flushed and looked abashed, but Samantha stretched her long, elegant legs out before

her, deliberately inviting admiration, and retorted with the easy intimacy of long association:

“You could and you would if you had a mind to, darling. There’s no need to walk on hot brickswhere I’m concerned, Harriet; Duff and I have known each other too long to stand on ceremony

where feelings are concerned, haven’t we, Duff?”

“Hot bricks, of course, are enjoyed by martyrs—or am I thinking of nails and hair shirts? Are

you a martyr, Harriet?”Rory said with apparent inconsequence, and Duff, before Harriet could

be driven to one of her more literal interpretations of confusing observations, guided her firmly

back to the table and began turning over theChristmas decorations, scattering a further litter of

shavings and paper on to the floor.

“Rory’s rather good at talking nonsense, so treat him with the contempt he deserves,”hesaid.“What have you got here—loot for the Christmas tree?”

“Samantha ordered everything from Dublin—wasn’t that kind?”

“Very kind. Was this the bait with which to buy your Christmas invitations, Samantha?”

Samantha began to look angry. It became her very well, Harriet thought, and wondered why

it was that she seemedtoarouse an unwillingsort of antagonism in most of the men she had

dealings with.

“You’re becoming rather a bore, darling, with all this schoolmarm stuff you seem to be

handing out lately. I’m not Harriet, you know,”Samantha said with a sudden very cool stare,

and one of the fragile glass ornaments snappedwitha sharp little splinter of

soundbetweenDuff’s fingers.

“No, you’re not Harriet,”was all he said, however, and turned back to his wife.“I’m sorry,

Harriet, it was extremely careless of me,”he said, but she took the pieces from him and threw

them on the fire.

Harriet now had the whole glittering mass of the Christmas decorations spread out on the

table and was quite unaware of Duff’s attention on her rapturous face as she fingered first oneand then another of the entrancing trifles.

“Oh!”breathed Harriet.“How beautiful they are! I wish the orphans could see our tree when

it’s finished...we never had anything so like a fairy-tale at Ogilvy’s—not ever.”

She had been speaking to Duff, but the brief moment of silence which followed reminded her

that others were listening. Samantha said sharply:“What orphans?”and Rory enquired with

casual interest:“Some charitable connection with your home?”

“Itwasmy home,”Harriet replied.“Ogilvy Manor is an orphanage. Didn’t Duff tell you?”

Duff was standing behind her and he rested his hands lightly on her shoulders, but said



nothing. Samantha narrowed her eyes in fresh alertness and was the first to speak.

“Well, well!”she said softly.“Sothat explains a lot.”Rory burst out laughing and

exclaimed:“Well, I’ll be damned!”and Duff spoke at last, his hands still resting on Harriet’s

shoulders.

“Well, now—since that rather unimportant little detail of Harriet’s upbringing is presumablyclear to everyone, suppose we just forget it and carry on as usual,”he said, and began scooping

up handfuls of the shavings and packing that had fallen on the floor and tossed them on to the

fire.

“I think Uriah wants to go out,”Harriet announced suddenly, making the first excuse that

came into her head, and Rory, with an amused wink at his cousin, lifted the dog by the scruff of

his neck and deposited him in the hall.

“Now, Princess,”he said to Harriet as she opened a door at the back of the hall and shooed

the dog outside,“will you kindly tell me why you led me up the garden that fine summer’s day?”

“I didn’t,”she said.“At least, not on purpose. You see, the orphanage was always known as

Ogilvy Manor and I—I didn’t think it was necessary to explain when I wasn’t likely to see you

again.”

“H’m ... a pity, perhaps, that Samantha had to know.”

“Why?”

“Because—s-sh! Listen!”

The door of the snug was not quite closed and Samantha’s voice reached them clearly, high

and shrill and quite unlike her usual husky drawl.

“So youwererunning away from me!”she was saying.“The minute you knew I was free—in

your stuffy, puritanical sense of the word—you couldn’t wait to put a barrier between us, and

you picked the first come-by-chance bride that offered—a little girl from an orphanage who

happened to cross your path through a freak of the weather. Had you already taken what you

wanted, that she agreed so meekly to marry a stranger?”

Duff’s reply was inaudible, but he must have retaliated with something sharp, for when shespoke next, Samantha’s voice had more control.

“Very well,”she said,“let’s assume that for your purpose a charity child was a heaven-sent

tool—no parents to make mischief, as in Kitty’s case, no expectations of anything more than

bed and board, and gratitude unbounding, to give or accept anything you chose to offer—or

take, if it comes to that. Weil, I’m civilised enough to behave, but in the meantime—you’ll need

morethanthe milk-and-water overtures of a dutiful little wife before very long, if I know you,

my dear. You’ll need compensation, and I—”she broke off with a sharp little cry, and to Harriet,

rooted in that implacable moment of eavesdropping, the ensuing silence could mean only one

thing. Duff must have stopped her mouth, not with words, but with a kiss, however angry, forwhat else could a woman so provocative and so sure of an old passion drive a man to?



“We shouldn’t have listened,”she muttered distractedly to Rory, as her mind and her limbs

unfroze again.“You shouldn’t have let me hear all those—those very private things.”

She darted back to the terrace door to let the dog in, but as the cold air from outside greeted

her with a cleansing rush of freshness, and she looked up at the myriad of stars shining down so

impersonally from the heaven, she slipped out into the night, slamming the door behind her.

She ran down to the shore of the lough, the dog at her heels, and stood there watching the

water lapping at her feet. She was unaware that she was crying, because tears always came

easily, and she was unaware of the cold or the fact that she was without a coat, so welcome

was the night air on her burning face.

“Harriet...”Nonie’s precise little voice behind her made her jump and she turned in surprise to

see the little girl standing there, holding out a coat.

“I thought you would be cold,”she said, and Harriet slipped her arms into the sleeves,

realising she was beginning to shiver.

“Isn’t it a beautiful night?”said Nonie conversationally.“I walked as far as the point and back

while you were all unpacking Cousin Samantha’s pared.”

“Did you?”Harriet felt at aloss. Nonie had been politely tolerant of her since Rory’s arrival, but

it was the first time she had made an unprompted overture of her own.“I thought you would be

there to help me unpack. Don’t you want to see those lovely decorations for the tree?”

“I can see them later when Cousin Samantha’s gone,”the child said.“Shall we sit down on this

rock for a while if you’re warmer now?”

“Yes, if you like,”said Harriet rather helplessly, and they sat side by side on one of the flat, low

boulders dotted sparsely along the shore.

“How did you know I was out here?”Harriet asked, and Nonie replied:“I saw you go. I was

listening, too.”

“Oh!”Harriet felt she was in no position to deliver a mild homily on the undesirability of

eavesdropping, so she said instead:“Well, I hope you didn’t hear anything to upset you?”

“Oh, no, I didn’t understand much. I often listen, you know. It’s the only way you ever get tofind out what’s going on in this house.”

“Well, that’s probably because you go off on your own and won’t mix. You should come down

when we have a guest, you know, because youarethe daughter of the house, after all.”

Nonie looked pleased at the acknowledgement of her own importance, then she said

carelessly;

“Cousin Samantha doesn’t count. She isn’t a guest.”

“Well, she’s a very lovely woman, and it’s always nicer to look at a pretty face than a plain

one,”Harriet said with some vague idea of giving credit where credit was due and discouraging



childish prejudices, but Nonie turned her mouth down.

“No, it isn’t,”she said.“When you’re ugly yourself, it only makes it worse.”

Harriet felt a rush of tenderness and her first moment of liking for this difficult, unchildlike

little girl.

“You are not ugly, Nonie,”she said gently.“And children alter so much. I was a hideous child,

all skin and bone and eyes—like a scared white rabbit, they used to say, only fortunately my

eyes weren’t pink! I know I’m no beauty now, as you once pointed out, but I’d pass in a crowd,

wouldn’t you say?”

“Oh, yes, you would,”the child conceded politely,“though you’d never set the Liffey on fire,

Agnes says, which she seems to think is a goodthingas Father is very jealous.”

“Jealous? Your Father?”

“Oh yes. My mother was very pretty, you know, and that caused trouble. Are you really a

charity child, Harriet? That was the only interesting thing I heard Cousin Samantha say.”

“Well, they don’t call orphans that any longer, because it was supposed to carry a sort of

stigma and nowadays orphanages are quite different sorts of places, and many of them are

simply called Children’s Homes, which is what they are, really. Orphans, you see, can’t help

being left alone in the world and some charity has to look after them.”

“It must,”said Nonie, wiping a dewdrop from her nose with the back of her hand with a

heartening disregard for nice behaviour,“bewonderful to be an orphan—never to know who you

are, or what might happen next—why, you might turn out to be a princess in disguise!”

“Oh,Nonie...”Harriet put an arm round the child and found she was half laughing and half

crying. Here was no smug little girl prepared to condescend, but only another wool-gathering

echo of herself, and she remembered that Nonie, too, devoured unsuitable literature in her

father’s library and probably, no less than Harriet, made up impossible fantasies as part of her

defences.

“I suppose we all want what we haven’t got,”she said.“When I lived in the orphanage I used

to imagine myself in a castle with grand rooms and lands and serfs and, of course, Prince

Charming thrown in, and you, who were brought up to this, would rather be an orphan!”

“Don’t you like your dream-come-true, then? Of course, Father isn’t anything like Prince

Charming, but you can’t have everything,”said Nonie practically.“Now, Uncle Rory’s my idea of

Prince Charming. Why couldn’t you have waited for him?”

“Because your father asked me first, I suppose,”Harriet answered.

“Well, I’m glad he married you and not Cousin Samantha,”Nonie said, and Harriet felt herself

whisked back with unexpected discomfort on to dangerous ground.

“Your cousin was only recently widowed, I understand, so there was hardly any likelihood of

that,”she said, knowing that she sounded prim, but Noni, however her childish instincts had led



her to recognise the attraction which once and perhaps still existed between her father and her

cousin, accepted the explanation without argument.

“Only—”she said“—there’s a queer sort of feeling when they’re together, as if they sort of

hated each other, but Uncle Rory says that often means the opposite.”

Harriet fell silent, watching the moon come up from behind Slieve Rury. A door on the terracebehind them opened, letting out a soft flood of lamplight, and Duff’s voice called:

“Harriet? Are you still out there?”

They got up and walked back to the house, and Duff, recognising his daughter’s small figure,

said with surprise:

“I didn’t know you were out there, too, Nonie. What have the pair of you been up to, leaving

our guest alone and unsupported?”he said, and spoke with the light inconsequence he would

have displayed towards any casual visitor.

“Has Cousin Samantha gone?”Nonie asked in her usual tones of cool withdrawal, and when

her father nodded, said:“Good!”with unflattering relief at the guest’s departure, and ran into

the house and upstairs to her own domain.

Duff stood aside to allow Harriet to enter, then closed the windows and stood looking at her

with a rather sombre expression.

“I hope Samantha didn’t hurt you with any flippant remarks about orphans,”he said, and she

took off her coat and threw it on a chair.

“No,”she replied.“She didn’t make any comment as far as I can remember except to say that

it explained things—meaning your marriage, presumably. I’m sorry if I blurted out the truth

without thinking.”

“For heaven’s sake! Do you imagine I’m ashamed of your upbringing?”he exclaimed.“If the

question had ever arisen I would have been the first to acknowledge my debt to orphanages in

public.”

“Well, that was very nicely spoken,”Harriet said, and he gave her a quick, puzzled look.

“Has something upset you?”he asked.“Nonie—has she been difficult?”

“Nothing’s upset me, and Nonie’s been particularly kind. She’s a lonely child, I think.”

“I know she is; she often makes me feel guilty, butIdon’t seem to be able to get through to

her.”

“Agnes says the little girl dotes on you,”Harriet ventured.

“Agnes, like most of her class, has her own unshakable conceptions of correct filial love and

respect. It would seem that you, too, Harriet, pay too much attention to servants’gossip. Don’t

try meddling with matters you don’t understand,”he said, and she wondered if that was a tacit



warning not only against interference with his relations with his daughter, but in such other

relationships he might be considering.



CHAPTER EIGHT

THAT night marked another milestone in Harriet’s growth to maturity. The bustle and

preparations which filled the remaining days before Christmas allowed little time forintrospection, but she was aware of change in all their relationships, not least of a change in

herself. She could see Samantha now for what she was, a dangerously attractive woman who

could afford to be tolerant towards an insignificant little bride whose negligible stature would

scarcely inconvenience her, and she could see herself as Duff must see her, a guileless child

with her head filled with romantic nonsense.

She did not blame him for still desiring something which he had thought to put out of his life,

for that was human nature; she did not even blame Samantha for refusing to be dismissed, but

she did blame her own lack of sense in accepting so heedlessly a proposition which, for her,

could only lay up heartbreak and disillusion.

Oh, well, she told herself practically, that time was not yet, and there were unexpected

compensations. Nonie, since their strange little interlude by the lough, had seemed to hold out

tentative offers of friendship; even the fastidious Kurt, having allowed her to extract a thorn

from one of his pads took to following her about, and Rory, that lighthearted charmer indirectly

responsible for all that had happened since that summer day’s brief idyll, was an unfailing

source of comfort and something more besides. He flattered outrageously, encouraged in her

an innocent awareness of her sex, and brought the Castle alive with the unaccustomed sounds

of laughter and shouting as they went about their preparations.

Duff watched them with an odd feeling of being ostracised in his own home. He knew he had

only himself to thank for being left out since he poured cold water on their foolish enthusiasms

more often than he tried to enter into the fun, but the unconscious change in Harriet hurt him,

just as the change in Nonie had always hurt him when Rory visited them, and for the first time

he found himself envying that gift of ease and well-being which his young cousin could so

effortlessly communicate to others.

“You’re not losing your heart again to Rory, are you?”he said one evening before dinner when

she had called to him from the next room to come and zip her into her dress. That in itself, he

reflected, was a thing she would never have done a week or so ago.

“But of course I am! Rory could steal any woman’s heart by simply remembering she is

one,”she said, so accustomed now to the sort of answer Rory would expect and understand

that she forgot for a moment how such a reply would sound to Duff.

He zipped up the dress none too gently, and swung her round to face him.

“And that, I suppose, was a dig at me,”he said a trifle grimly, and her eyes widened.

“I didn’t mean it as a dig, it just slipped out.”

“I think you did. Don’t let young Rory’s bit of blarney turn your head, will you?”



“My head isn’t easily turned. I was brought up in a hard school,”she said, and he smiled down

at her reluctantly,finding this attempt at sophistication both touching and rather charming.

“You may have been brought up in a hard school, my dear, but I don’t think it taught you

much in the way of toughness,”he said, and she lowered her eyes, looking up at him through

her lashes, wishing she knew the right way to charm just one pretty speech fromhim.

“I’m tougher than you think, and perhaps I’ll need to be,”she said, thinking of that overheard

conversation, and could not know that in the light of his recent knowledge he guessed her

thoughts, which accounted for the roughness in his voice when he next spoke.

“Don’t go building up more fancies out of things only half understood,”he said, and his hands

on her shoulders tightened as if he had a barely controlled urge to shake her, and she found

herself blinking with the old nervous trick she could not control when he consigned her,

figuratively speaking, to the schoolroom.

“No, Duff,”she said from long habit, and he did give her a little shake then.

“Well, don’t look at me as if I was about to haul you over the coals like a child!”he exclaimed,

and she pushed a disordered strand of hair out of her eyes.

“But that’s how you do treat me—like a child,”she toldhimgently.“That’s how you want to see

me.”

“That’s how it’s best for me to see you—for a time,”he said ambiguously,“but don’t imagine

for that reason that I’m unaware of what goes on around me.”

If it was a warning that Rory’s blatant attentions did not please him overmuch, she did not

take it seriously, for there was nothing to stop him making a few mild overtures himself if he

had a mind to.

“Will you kiss me?”she asked, ignoring his last words. His kisses had been rare of late, for he

had abandoned the nightly ritual downstairs since Rory’s arrival, presumably because it might

look odd to the casual observer, and he did not always remember to remedy the omission

when he came upstairs to bed.

“No, I’m hanged if I will!”he replied with such unexpected repudiation that she felt both

alarmed and much abashed at having embarrassed him.

“I’m s-sorry...”she stammered,“I wasn’t trying to—to flirt with you or something.”

His ugly face twisted in a wry grimace and he patted her on the shoulder with an air of

dismissal.

“I’m sure you weren’t, Harriet,”he said, going back to his own room, adding as he closed the

door between than:“Youmight try it some time.”

She was so surprised that she stood stock still for a moment with her mouth open. The

thought of trying to flirt with a husband who behaved more like an impatient schoolmaster

than a man with any notions of dalliance had never occurred to her, and if it had, she wouldn’t



have known how to begin. She went down to dinner in a thoughtful mood, resolving to ask

Rory’s more experienced advice on the subject, but the result was not happy.

“You want to know how to flirt?”Rory said, his voice suitably grave, but his blue eyes twinkling

with amusement.“Well, you haven’t been doing too badly for a beginner.”

“You mean I’ve been flirting with you? Was it obvious?”

“Obvious to Duff, I wouldn’t mind betting.”

“Oh!”

“Has he been registering displeasure?”

“Not exactly. He just said something rather odd.”

“I shouldn’t be at all surprised! If it’s Cousin Duff you want to try your hand on, you need a

few more lessons. Come here.”

She went to him obediently, just as she would have as obediently gone to Duff, and was

unprepared for the suddenness with which he caught her in his arms and began kissing her. He

had kissed her before, in a lighthearted cousinly fashion, but this was different; this was the

way of a lover, she thought, the way she had wanted from Duff instead of those avuncular

pecks he afforded her when he remembered.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for the past week...You’re so sweet ... so ignorant of what you

invite with your absurd bids for advice...”he was murmuring, and she began to feel anxious.

“Rory, please...”she whispered, and just as he released her, Duff walked into the room.

He stood for a moment, surveying them in silence, observing, with a certain savage pleasure,

Harriet’s undisguised look of guilt which gave the lie to Rory’s unabashed jauntiness, then said

with deceptive mildness:

“You seem to have misconstrued my suggestion upstairs, Harriet. Shall we go and eat?”

“Duff, you don’t understand.Iwas only trying—”Harriet began, but Rory placed a warning

hand on her shoulder.

“Never explain, never apologise, my sweet, it puts you in the wrong at once,”he said.“A

cousinly embrace hardly comes amiss, old boy, if a girl is in need of a little consolation.”

“I hardlythinkthe matter’s sufficiently important to incur Agnes’wrath at keeping dinner

waiting. Shall we go in?”Duff said, and Rory, an arm round Harriet, ushering her out of the

room, observed in passing:

“The king-of-the-castle brush-off—the point is taken.”For Harriet it was an extremely

uncomfortable meal. She found herself making idiotic remarks from pure nervousness,

demanding to know what kept the carol-singers from the Castle, and whether there would be

snow on Christmas Day.



Duff replied with indifference that carol-singers had long ago given up coming as far as the

Castle and couldn’t be expected to know that this year was different from any other, and Rory

hardly made her second question sound any more sensible by answering extravagancy:

“Of course,Princess! The fairy godmother will wave her wand on the last stroke of midnight

and you will find a white world in the morning. You’re very like Cinderella, aren’t you?”

“King Cophetua and the beggar maid, more likely,”she snapped back with unaccustomed

tartness, because she was annoyed with herself for inviting such nonsense, and saw the dark

unfathomable look Duff sent her across the table.

“That,”he observed with mild distaste,“was rather an unnecessary remark, don’t you think?”

“Oh, dear!”she sighed when, the meal finished, he took himself off to his study leaving them

rather pointedly to the snug and each other’s company,“I never seem to learn the right way. I’d

thought upstairs before dinner—but now everything’s gone wrong again.”

“And what happened upstairs before dinner, if one might ask?”Rory enquired from his

comfortable position in Duff’s favourite armchair.

“No, you might not,”she replied a trifle coolly.“Andyoudidn’t help matters by that ridiculous

little exhibition.”

“You might be wrong at that, you know. It does no harm to ginger up a wavering resolution

with a few well-timed hints,”he said, and she looked outraged.

“If,”she said,“you were putting on an act to—to make me appear attractive to Duff, you can

save your good deeds in the future.”

He was out of his chair in one lithe movement and kneeling beside her, his face contrite and a

little rueful.

“No act, I assure you, Princess, and my essays in making love have never been altruistic,”he

said.“I don’t think you’ve any idea how delightful and unspoilt you are—how provocative, that

innocence of yours can be...”

Uriah suddenly barked and sprang across the room, making them both jump, and Samantha’s

voice said from the doorway:

“Since when did you find innocence provocative, darling? I do apologise, Harriet, for

interrupting at the wrong moment, but I’ve never got out of the habit, I’m afraid, of walking in

unannounced.”

Rory had got to his feet, for once looking slightly sheepish at being discovered on his knees,

and Harriet had risen politely.

“If we’d known you were coming we’d have waited dinner,”she said.

“How kind of you, darling, but I only came on a sudden impulse to give Duff his Christmas

present.”



“Aren’t you coming for lunch on Christmas Day, then?”

“But of course. I just thought I’d like to deliver my small gift in private. So embarrassing,

sometimes, being obliged to open one’s presents in public, don’t you think?”

“It would depend, I imagine, on what the present consists of,”Harriet said with an unruffled

coolness which made Samantha raise her eyebrows.

“How sophisticated you sound all of a sudden, honey,”she said.“My humble offering has

nothing questionable about it, I assure you—I was just claiming the privilege of old friends who

enjoy the personal touch in those trivial exchanges of the season. Where’s Duff?”

“In his study,”Harriet replied, catching out of the tail of her eye the very comprehensive

expression on Rory’s face.

“Then I’ll leave you to your pleasant tete-a-tete, and won’t disturb you by coming back. Duff

will see me out when I’ve said by little piece,”Samantha said, and blowing an airy kiss to themboth went out and shut the door.

“And Samantha’s little piece will consist of rather more than seasonal greetings, I don’t

doubt. She’ll make trouble for you, Harriet,”Rory said, but Harriet thought he looked smug

rather than contrite.

“There’s been enough trouble from silly unimportant things. What do you suppose her

humble offering is—a jewel-encrusted cigarette case or diamond cuff links?”Harriet said rather

crossly, and he gave her a quizzical glance.

“It’s the silly, unimportant things that usuallyareresponsible for trouble,”he said.“You were

remarkably cool, Harriet. Aren’t you a tiny bit afraid of the very determined Mrs. Dwight?”

She considered a moment, her eyes grave and a little troubled under the straight, fair fringe.

“No,”she said then,“I think I’m more afraid of Duff. I wouldn’t, you see, have much to argue

about if he wants us both.”

“What a very curious observation for a young bride to make,”said Rory slowly, his eyes and

his twitching eyebrows inviting further explanation, but she just smiled at him, looking suddenly

tired and rather plain.

“Yes, isn’t it? I think I’ll put Uriah out and go to bed, if you wouldn’t mind. Tell Duff not to

disturb me when he comes up, will you?”she said, congratulating herself on the implied

assumption of conjugality she left behind her as she called to the dog and said goodnight.

The weather turned very much colder in the night and gave promise of the snow Harriet had

hoped for. She did not know why she had placed so much faith in the power of snow to

transform Clooney and everyone in it into a merry Christmas card of laughter and goodwill, but

she was beginning to think that even the miracle of a land wrapped in sparkling whiteness on

the morrow would not bring the spirit of Christmas into the Castle.

She and Duff met only briefly at breakfast. He made no mention of Samantha’s visit, nor of



the nature of her present, and Harriet did not like to ask.

She tried once to refer to last night’s little scene with Rory, hoping to make him understand

what had occasioned it, but he cut her short with the firm retort that he was not interested in

excuses, if that was what she intended, and he would be out to lunch.

Harriet’s optimism was too great a part of her nature to be quenched for long, so when shefound there were still some oddments of forgotten shopping left over from the last visit to

Knockferry, and Rory suggested they might lunch there since Duff was going to be out, the idea

appeared delightful; she so seldom went outside the policies that a drive into the town was still

a treat. They took Nonie with them, separating at the shops since Nonie was pregnant with

secrets and mysterious commitments of her own, and arranged to meet later at the Knockferry

Arms.

Harriet, finding her way among the narrow streets that were still strange to her, forgot all the

disturbing crosscurrents of the past few days in the renewed delights of childhood.

She made a few purchases, and was about to ask her way to the hotel, when she saw Duff

come out of a building and hurry across the road. Her natural impulse was to run after him and

ask him to join the others for lunch, but she remembered he already had a luncheon date, and

by the time she had hesitated to cross the road he had disappeared down a turning and was

lost to sight. She glanced in idlecuriosity at a brass plate on the building from which he had

emerged, saw that it was the office of a firm of lawyers, and remembering past mention of

loans and overdrafts and the perpetual drain on the estate, decided with a feeling of relief that

of course it was financial worries which had seemed to change him just of late. As she walked

on, finding that after all she remembered the way to the square, she thought with compunction

of the money she had heedlessly squandered on decorations and presents, imagining his firstreluctance to spring from a desire for no reminder of the past when in actual fact he had been

trying to avoid extravagance.

“Oh, what a clot—what a spendthrift idiot I am!”she muttered to herself as she reached the

hotel, but the solving of a problem and the simple pleasure of the morning had brought back all

her anticipation and joy, and Rory handed her a glass of sherry with a smile of approval and told

her she was looking very pretty.

They went in to lunch, and as they settled themselves at their table, Harriet glanced across

the crowded room and almost immediately saw them; Duff and Samantha sitting in an alcove

shielded by a potted palm from their nearest neighbours, and very intent on their own

conversation.

Rory, catching Harriet’s change of expression, looked across the room and back again, his

eyebrows turning up at thecorners in a rather comical contortion.

“So what?”he said softly.“Do you want to make your number?”

“No—no, of course not,”she said quickly.“Couldn’t we just slip out and have lunch

somewhere else?”

“I hardly think that’s a good idea,”he said with a warning glance inNonie’s direction, but she,

with the rather alarming acuteness which could still take Harriet by surprise, said calmly;



“If you think I haven’t seen Father and Cousin Samantha over there, you can save your

grown-up signals not to speak in front of the child. What’s wrong with a lunch out, anyway?

We’re doing it.”

“Nothing,”Rory said a little blankly.“Well, Harriet did you do all your shopping?”

“Most of it, but I rather wool-gathered, I’m afraid, just enjoying the shop windows and all theChristmastrimmings.”

Harriet said, restored to normality by the child’s matter-of- factness. What significance, as she

had suggested, could be attached to lunching out in a place where the Lonnegans of Castle

Clooney could scarcely hope to pass unnoticed?

“I saw Duff, as a matter of fact, coming out of some lawyers’offices on my way here, but was

too late to catchhim,”she told Rory, relieved that the discussion should become trivial, and

Nonie said:

“Oh, that ties up, I should think. He’s probably paying her off.”

“What in hell do you mean by that?”Rory said, so completely taken aback that he even forgot

to mind his language.

“Well, he’s owed Cousin Samantha money for years, hasn’t he?”Nonie replied with mild

astonishment.“Now he’s keeping Harriet he can hardly afford the two of them, can he?”

Harriet dissolved into undignified giggles, and Rory, after a valiant effort to find words of

reproof, joined her.

“Really, my dear child, you do choose your words a little oddly,”he said at last.“You’re all

confused again with not keeping girls as pets, I suspect. Whatdid you mean?”

“I thought you knew,”she said through uninhibited sounds of soup-supping.“Father borrowed

money years ago to keep the estate from falling in, and now he’s going to pay the last bit off

and tell Cousin Samantha to buzz off.”

“And how, might one enquire, do you know all this?”

“Ihave my methods,”Nonie said, and gave Harrietasly little smile of conspiracy.

“Listening at doors again, I suppose,”Harriet said severely, feeling that some sort of

disapproval was indicated if she hoped to have any authority over the child in the future, but

Nonie merely closed on eye and grinned.

“I’m not the only one,”she replied.

“Touché!”Rory murmured.“She might be right at that, you know. The kitchen grapevine has a

habit of being curiously conversant with what goes on above stairs. It’s common knowledge, of

course, that Duff had to borrow extensively to keep the place going after those years of

neglect.”



“Oh, yes, Samantha told me herself. She seemed to think the money was more in the nature

of a bribethana loan,”Harriet said, filleting her fish neatly and with apparent unconcern.

“That would, of course, be obvious, but it should explain why he doesn’t like to boot her out

until he can raise the rest of the lolly,”Rory said, but he was sorry her simple treat should have

been spoilt all the same, for he did not think his well-intentioned assurances were doing much

towards helping a sore heart.

“Well, it probably isn’t easy to boot something out of your life when there’s nothing much

else to take its place, and it’s nothing to do with me, really,”she said with a dogged little air of

acceptance, but she could not, he noticed, keep her eyes from straying to the other side of the

restaurant, and he himself could see the couple reflected in a mirror behind Harriet’s head.

Whatever matter was being discussed with such undivided attention, he did not think

Samantha was having things all her own way; her gestures were sometimes conciliatory and

inviting, but more often angry and impatient, but it was, on the other hand, not so easy to

guess Duff’s reactions since his gestures were rare and his dark profile too far away to read.

Presently they got up to go, and Harriet relaxed with a small sigh of release.

It was past tea-time when Duff came home and the tree was nearly finished.

“That’s going to look quite something when it’s finished,”he said, his eyes on the tree.

“Yes, those ornaments are beautiful,”Harriet said.“Is it snowing?”

“No, but the wind’s in the right quarter. You may get your Christmas snow yet,”he said,

thinking how small and light she looked, the slender lines of her body stretched to their utmost

to capture a tip of a branch.

“Here, let me fix that—you can hardly reach,”he said, and went to stand behind her, one

hand reaching for the branch, the other slipped round her waist.“How small you are—there’s

nothing of you. Do we give you enough to eat?”

His question could scarcely be serious, she knew, but she caught an unfamiliar thread of

anxiety in his voice. Foramoment he seemed the old Duff, laughingatheralittle it was true, but

concerned as well. She allowed her body to rest against his in a brief instant of response, and

was aware of the faint rasp of his chin as he brushed it across the top of her head.

Nonie’s voice spoke from the foot of the tree where she was crouched.

“We saw you having lunch with Cousin Samantha, Father, but you didn’t see us,”she said, and

a glass star slipped from Harriet’s fingers and smashed on the stone flags with a sharp little

splinter of sound.

“Oh!”wailed Harriet, looking ready to cry. The fragile star and the fragile moment seemed to

her as one, and both were shattered.

“Never mind. Find me another, there are plenty more,”Duff said, but the warmth had gone

from his voice.

“Father, did you hear me?”the little girl persisted, and Duff gave her a look of no mean



displeasure.

“Yes, I heard you. What did you expect me to reply? If we didn’t see you then it was your fault

for not coming to say how-d’you-do, wasn’t it?”

“Harriet didn’t want to. She said—”

“Nonie! If you insist on talking a lot of nonsense, you’d better go upstairs to your room. I

mean it,”Harriet interrupted with such an unexpected ring of adult authority that Nonie

scrambled to her feet, looking more surprised than indignant.

“Okay, okay—I was only trying to help,”she said quite mildly, and ran upstairs.

“And who, if I might ask, did the brat imagine she was helping?”Duff asked, and began taking

off his coat.

“I don’t suppose she knows. Nonie picks up gossip here and there and forms her ownconclusions,”Harriet replied glibly.

“And you do the same, one supposes.”

“I try not to come to conclusions when I’m not sure.”

“Well, that at least is praiseworthy if not strictly true. Is the fact that I gave Samantha lunch

and you happened to see us of any great moment?”

“Of no more moment than you happening to see Rory kissing me,”she said,alittle surprised at

finding herself able to answer him so patly. She evidently surprised Duff as well, for he frownedand said rather shortly:

“That remark, of course, could be as ambiguous as it sounds. You’re learning quickly from

Cousin Rory, my dear. You wouldn’t have been so smart with your answers a short while ago.”

“A short while ago I was only expected to answer like a dutiful child. One grows up, you

know,”she said, and because she was busying herself with the tree and did not have to look him

in the face, she was able to talk in this fashion.

“You may consider yourself grown-up, but you still have a lot to learn about humanrelationships,”he said with amusement, trying to recapture his old method of ending an

argument on a note of indulgent tolerance.

“Then why the hell don’t you teach me?”she retorted, swinging round to face him with a

suddenness which set the ornaments on the tree shaking and tinkling in brittle merriment.

Her vehemence, no less than an uncharacteristic resort to strong language, took him aback

for a moment, then his face hardened and he made a long stride towards her, and took her by

the shoulders.

“I may take you up on that before you’re much older, young woman, and my lessons will

possibly not be at all to your liking,”he said quite quietly, but there was no longer any attempt



to humour in his voice.

Long after, looking back on that disastrous Christmas Day, Harriet could trace the chain of

mishaps right back to the moment of waking, for her hot water bottle had leaked in the night,

producing an icy flood which had to be dealt with unaided, since Duff was driving the servants

to early Mass, and there was no snow, despite the drop in temperature; instead, rain poured

down relentlessly from a leaden sky. The present giving, too, fell flat, for Duff had alreadybreakfasted and was not yet back with the servants; Rory was still in bed and asleep, since

Molly, in her haste for church, had forgotten to call him, and Nonie, sitting in solitary state and,

by the look of her, in no very Christian frame of mind, had already opened her presents and

pushed them aside.

“Oh! Couldn’t you have waited till everyone’s here?”Harriet asked in disappointment; she had

looked forward so much to the pleasure of watching the recipients’faces as they unwrapped

their gifts.

“What’s the point? Father won’t be back for ages and Uncle Rory won’t come down tillsomeone brings him some shaving water. You’d better open yours.”

Nonie, reflected Harriet ruefully as she began cutting string had a much more adult and

sensible point of view about such matters than she had, herself. Her presents were varied and

well chosen, but her pleasure in them was dimmed with nobody there to receive her thanks,

and there seemed to be nothing from Duff.

“If you’re wondering where Father’s is it’s under your plate,”said Nonie, who appeared at

times to have inherited her father’s knack of reading thoughts, and Harriet, lifting her plate,

found an envelope with her name inscribed on it in Duff’s neat writing. She unfolded the

cheque it contained, conscious of further disappointment, and Nonie, who had been watching

her face, said with interest:

“Has he gone mean on you?”

“Oh,no!”Harriet exclaimed, for the cheque had been more than generous.“It’s just that—does

he giveyoumoney, Nonie?”

“Oh, yes. Everyone gets money, the servants, the tenants, the pig people—even Uncle Rory.

It’s easier to write cheques, Father says, and saves the embarrassment of choosing the wrong

present. Quite sensible, really.”

“Yes, I suppose it is,”Harriet said, and wondered for one wild moment if Samantha, too, had

received a cheque in exchange for the unspecified gift she had made such a mystery of a couple

of nights ago. But it was another damper on the day and even Rory, arriving in a dressing-gown,

unshaven and full of apologies, could not quite lift the blight which seemed to have settled.

Duff came in a little later, looking chilled and damp, and swallowed a cup of tepid coffee with

evident distaste.

It was difficult, Harriet thought, to find the right words to render thanks for his cheque with

so many observant eyes upon her and so little concern for the occasion inhim,and heinterrupted her stammering little speech to say with absent kindliness:



“Never mind the polite acknowledgements now, Harriet. I hope you’ll buy something nice for

yourself. Will you spare me a few minutes in the study before we embark on the day’s

shenanigans?”

She followed him to the study, wondering a little uneasily if he was going to refer to

yesterday’s explosive little scene between them.

The room felt cold and impersonal, and no fire burned on the hearth. She so seldom went

there that she had not thought to put up any decorations.

“What is it?”she asked, as he seemed in no hurry to say what was in his mind.

“What is what?”He looked blank for a moment as if he had been thinking of something else.

“Whatever it is you want to tell me. Is it something I’ve done, or forgotten to do?”

He turned to look at her and his face was grave and a little troubled.

“I believe you still think of me as a kind of employer,”he said.“Haven’t you learnt ease with

me yet?”

She stared back at him, disconcerted, but not at all flustered, and he remembered that

perplexing quality she had of shedding her acquiescence when it was least expected.

“But that’s how I thought of you—that’s what you are—my employer,”she answered.

“I also happen to be your husband,”he retorted a little dryly, and her eyes slid away from his.

“Yes, well...”she said vaguely, and he began rubbing his chin with that unconscious gesture of

disturbance.

“What’s changed you? Is it Rory?”he asked suddenly.

“I haven’t changed. You’re just seeing me differently,”she said gently.

“Yes, I think I am. Do you feel I’ve cheated you?”

“Cheated me?”

“Cheated you out of a fulfilment of all those romantic dreams you had in the orphanage.”The

old raillery had crept back into his voice.

“Dreams can be a substitute for spending,”she replied evasively.“We hadn’t any money of our

own at Ogilvy’s and it costs nothing to dream.”

“Neither it does,”he agreed briskly.“However, all this is an unintentional digression. I brought

you here, actually, to give you my private Christmas present. You were disappointed with my

cheque, weren’t you?”

“Oh,no!”she exclaimed, distress at being found wanting in gratitude driving all the rest out of

her head.“You’ve been more than generous when I have a good allowance already. Please



don’t think I wasn’t grateful.”

“It was the sort of gratitude reserved for charity, all the same, wasn’t it? I should have

thought of that at the time, but I wanted my special gift to be given in private.”

While he was speaking he had unlocked the safe which stood with the filing cabinets against

one wall, and taken out a flat leather case which he now placed in her hands.

“Open it,”he said, as she stood there hesitating, and she fumbled with the snap which was a

little stiff, then stood gazing speechlessly at the string of pearls which lay coiled on a bed of

velvet, the clasp of diamonds and sapphires catching fire from the dismal morning light.

“Oh,”she said at last, and the eyes she raised to his were bright with tears.

“Here—let me put them on for you,”he said a little roughly, and snapped the pearls round her

neck.“Yes, they become you very well. They aren’t new, but they’re well matched, and you

have the right skin for pearls. Don’t look so startled, child! It’s a husband’s privilege and dutywhen funds permit to provide a few trinkets for his wife. You have no jewellery, have you?”

“Well, you could hardly expect the orphanage to stretch the funds to that,”she said quite

seriously, and he laughed.

“How endearing and solemn you are,”he told her, and her frozen moment of awkward

astonishment passed, and she flung her arms round his neck without thinking and kissed him,

her tears wet against his face.

“Thank you...thank you, dear Duff...”she said.“If they had only been a worthless string of

beads I would have treasured them because—a personal gift is precious.”

He seemed to return her kiss with a lover’s desire to linger and explore, brushing his lips along

the fine bones of cheek and brow, his hands cupping her face very lightly, very delicately.

“Are you happy, Harriet?”he asked on an odd little note of urgency, and she opened her eyes

and smiled at him with something very much more than happiness.

“Yes,”she said.“You’re forgetting, for once, I’m a child.”

“Was I forgetting? Well, those freckles should remind me, if nothing else,”he said, not readyyet to come to terms with himself, and saw her eyes cloud over.

“I’ve alwayshated those freckles!”she said, as if they alone were to blame for all life’s

disappointments, and he laughed.

“But why? Freckles are called fairy dust in these parts, and that should please your wool-

gathering heart, Besides, they’re considered lucky.”

“Are they? Lonnegan’s Luck...the old name for Clooney...”

“That was before the luck ran out—perhaps you and your fairy freckles will bring it back,”he

said.“Well, I’m glad you’re pleased with your pearls; we must see about some more trinkets for



you later on. I’m sure the regrettable absence of an engagement ring won’t pass unnoticed by

the ladies of the district if they come to call.”

“That wasn’t in the contract,”she pointed out, only wishing to be fair, but knew at once that

she had said the wrong thing again as she saw his ugly features harden in distaste.

“It’s not necessary to remind me, my dear. I had no intention of offering bribes as a preludeto breaking my own rules, I assure you,”he said, and sat down at his desk, pulling one of the

skewered piles of business papers towards him, and Harriet knew herself dismissed.

By the time luncheon was over, Harriet knew that her Christmas was a failure. The day was

out of kilter, and from the leaking hot water bottle to the half-hearted pulling of crackers which

had sent Uriah into screaming hysterics and banishment, one irritation had piled upon another.

Samantha’s presents had been ostentatious and too expensive, her efforts to keep the party

going too obvious, and it had been a great mistake to insist upon using the vast and icy dining-

room to mark the occasion.

It was a relief when they were able to return to the warmth of the snug for a post-prandial

spell of somnolent comfort before the children’s party was due to start, but even the thought

of the party, which for Harriet was to have been the crowning moment of the day, failed to

cheer her. Duff, as usual, had been right, the Castle should have been dealt with on the grand

scale or not at all, and she should have left well alone.

The two men had subsided into easy chairs at the end of the room and were smoking and

lazily discussing various matters to do with the estate, and Samantha joined Harriet on the long

fender stool for what she described as a cosy feminine natter.

“It’s quite a time since you and I got together,”she said, her husky voice warm and inviting

like the scent which every time she moved gave out tiny wafts of fragrance.“You’ve certainly

gone to town on Christmas, honey. Are those Kitty’s pearls you’re wearing?”The question was

casual enough, but Harriet felt a small sense of shock. Duff had told her the pearls were not

new, but she had not supposed that they had belonged to his first wife.

“Very likely,”she replied, with a good simulation of indifference.“They’re Duff’s Christmas

present.”

“Oh, really? They were his wedding present to Kitty. I hope they don’t bring bad luck. Pearls

mean tears, you know, and she wore them at another Christmas party when he found out she

wasn’t such a good little girl as he thought her.”

“That was sad for him—and for her,”said Harriet.

“Oh, Duff made excuses enough to himself, but his answer wasn’t a very happy one for either

of them. He got her with child, you see, very soon after, and thought that would settle things

for both of them. It was a little shattering, you can understand, to feel he was responsible for

her death. Now let’s leave my foolish little cousin’s mistakes and take a look at yours. Are you

going to be content to take a backseat, too, like poor Kitty’s child, grateful for the

crumbs?”Harriet resisted a strong temptation to scratch Samantha’s fine veneer with bluntorphanage retaliation, but succeeded in answering coolly enough:



“Poor Kitty’s child takes a back seat from her own choice. She prefers her own company, and I

must confess there are times when I sympathise with her.”

“Who’s being a pussy cat now?”Samantha mocked, her beautiful, spoilt mouth curving in a

pleasurable smile.“You’ve only learnt the first spittings of a kitten, though, honey, so don’t try

tangling with me.”

Harriet sent a quick look across the room, hoping to catch somebody’s eye, but the men were

still immersed in farming technicalities.”

“It’s you, I think, who want to tangle with me, Samantha,”she said wearily.“Why can’t you be

content with whatever you’ve got and leave me alone?”

“Certainly I’ll leave you alone if you’ll reciprocate, darling.”

“When have I ever interfered with you?”

“Well, you interfered quite seriously when you married into Clooney, presumably to shake off

the orphanage background, since you couldn’t have been in love with Duff, but that you

weren’t to know. I’m compromising too, you know. I wanted marriage, but I’ll settle for the

other thing since there’s not much choice.”

“Are you suggesting I should share my husband with you, by any chance?”asked Harriet

politely, and wondered with faint surprise why she should appear to find no difficulty in

meeting Samantha on equal terms where with Duff it was well-nigh impossible.

“Not your husband, darling—just your husband’s favours,”drawled Samantha.“After all, you

have the attentive Rory to supply the romance if that’s where Duff fails you.”

“You’re rather foolish to try to drag Rory in,”she said, trying not to sound as defeated as she

felt.“He’s been charming to me, yes, but he’s Duff’s cousin and that’s all there is to it.”

“But Duff, I rather fancy, has other ideas,”Samantha said, and Harriet, who knewtoher

mortification that she was blushing, saw the long eyes narrow.

“O-ho!”she chuckled.“That evidently went home. Well now, Harriet, let’s have an

understanding between us. You play along with me and I’ll play along with you. Turn a blind eye

to Duff’s affair, as most sensible wives have to do, but try getting me thrown out, and I’ll haveto corroborate what’s been going on under his nose. He won’t take the usual steps,

unfortunately, with this tiresome phobia about divorce, but he’ll make life pretty dismal for

you.”

The freckles were beginning to stand out as Harriet’s face lost colour.

“No!”she said, her voice pitched to a note of shrillness.“I’ve bargained once—I’m not

bargaining again with you.”

“Very well,”Samantha said softly,“then you must take what’s coming to you.”

It might have been that rising inflection in Harriet’s voice which made the men look up, but



they seemed to abandon their discussion with tacit consent, changing their chairs to ones

nearer the fire to make the conversation general, and at the same time Harriet felt a questing

nose pushed under her hand as if in comfort and assurance. It was not Uriah, however, but the

watchful Kurt, sensing perhaps from Harriet’s voice that his protection was needed, and she

dug her fingers into his soft ruff, grateful for the earthy, animal comfort which seemed to flow

from him.

“You look a bit pale, Harriet. Are you feeling all right?”Duff said, giving her a searching look,

and Nonie, who all this time had been lying on her stomach on the floor, apparently absorbed

in a jigsaw puzzle, observed:

“Cousin Samantha wants to give out the presents, so I might as well not bother to get dressed

up in my party clothes.”

“Oh, Nonie, what nonsense!”Harriet exclaimed. She might have known, she supposed, that

the child would have been at her old game of picking up what she could from the adult

conversation, and she began to wonder uneasily what else Nonie might have heard andconstrued to her own satisfaction.

“Tisn’t. I heard her say I was plain and wouldn’t know how.Yousaid I should take my place as

daughter of the house, Harriet, but you were just being kind.”Nonie sounded as ifshe was

nearer tears than trying deliberately to focus attention on herself, and Harriet thought it only

needed a scene to put a final seal on the day’s contrariness.

“And so you should. I wasn’t being kind, only sensible—ask your father,”she said, and prayed

that for once Duff would find the right words and the right approach.

He did both. He picked the little girl up off the floor and sat her on his knee, saying with grave

persuasion:

“You wouldn’t let me down, would you, Nonie? I was depending on you to do the

honours—and do me credit at the same time.”

The child looked at him with a shy expression of doubt and rather tentative hope which

wrung Harriet’s heart. Could he not understand, she thought, how simple the way to his

daughter’s heart would have been had he only convinced her that he needed her? Perhaps he,

too, realised in this moment that he had resigned himself too easily to the influence of the

child’s grandparents, that Nonie was too much a replica of himself to offer what was not

wanted, for he added gently:“You’re all I have, Nonie, to keep the Lonnegan flag flying. I could

be proud of you.”

“Could you?”

“Yes, I could, and I will if you’ll stand by your old father.”

“Then of courseI will!”Nonie gave him a quick, rather self-conscious hug, being unaccustomed

to demonstrations between them, and slipped off his knee.“Harriet, will you come and get me

ready?”

“In a minute,”Harriet answered, glad that the first step towards a better relationship had



been taken, but hurt by that careless assertion that his daughter was all he had. She saw a little

knowledgeable smile that replaced the look of boredom on Samantha’s face, and dug her

fingers so firmly into Kurt’s neck that he yelped, and in a moment there was pandemonium.

Uriah, waking belatedly to that fact that his mistress had been bestowing attentions on

another dog, thrust himself between them with false growls of aggression and Kurt snapped.

Uriah’s threats immediately changed to shrieks and howls of craven terror, and Harriet,convinced that he must have been badly bitten, was already on her knees beside him as the

bitch, Delsa, promptly reverting to pack instinct, bounded across the room to attack the

screaming animal.

“For God’s sake, get up off the floor! Do you want to get bitten?”Duff shouted, leaping to his

feet to haul the bitch off while he snapped a sharp command to Kurt.

It was all over in a moment, but Harriet still sat there trying to soothe the hysterical Uriah,

hardly aware of Duff’s angry alarm until he picked the dog up by the scruff of his neck, and

deposited him unceremoniously outside the door for the second time that day. They could hearthe piercing yelps fading into the distance as Uriah fled up the stairs to the sanctuary of

Harriet’s bedroom.

“They didn’t catch you anywhere, did they?”Duff asked, and his voice was harsh, either with

concern or anger, and she got to her feet.

“No, of course not,”she said, but added defensively, because she was still shaking;“You

needn’t have thrown him out so roughly. He was only jealous and badly frightened.”

“It was Kurt who was jealous, not your perishing cowardly tyke. You should learn to divide

your favours with a little more tact, my dear, if peace is to be kept in this house.”

Somewhere out in the storm a bell began to toll.

“Another gaol-break, I suppose,”Rory said, going to the window to inspect the weather.“What

a day to pick for a get-away! Sooner my nice dry cell and bite of Christmas fare than Clooney

Plain in this weather—do you suppose the prisoners get turkey and plum pudding?”

“More like bread and skilly! Tough on the warders being dragged out to search on Christmas

Day,”Duff said, seeming to welcome with relief a change of subject, and Harriet, whose wits by

now were too confused to do more than seize on the surface of conversation, contributed oneof her more childish remarks.

“That’s what you thought they gave us for supper in the orphanage, Duff—remember?”

“Yes, I remember,”he replied a little shortly.“Hadn’t we better be getting the tree lighted?

This infernal party’s due to start in less than half an hour.”



CHAPTER NINE

THE party, too, was a failure. A few children, coming in from a wild night, stood about

awkwardly, dripping puddles of muddy water on the floor, the absent guests evidently

preferring their own firesides to braving the weather for the doubtful hospitality of the Castle.

They gazed at the tree with polite respect, but it was clearly a symbol of extravagance for them

rather than of fairy-tale beauty.

All the children seemed interested in was stuffing themselves with food and resisting all

attempts to organise games, which was possibly less exhausting, but she was sorry that Nonie’s

little hour of importance should fall so flat. She had given out the presents with a natural sense

of occasion, and had even looked quite attractive with her long hair done up on the top of herhead in a fashionable twist. She seemed unconcerned, however, when Harriet commiserated

on the lack of appreciation in their guests.

“What did you expect?”she replied.“Their parents probably only think we’re trying to show

off. They know they have to badger and whine when repairs are needed because Father can’t

afford to pay proper workmen to do the jobs.”Nonie, thought Harriet with humility, had a

better understanding of her father and her father’s people than had she with her head filled

with the romantic twaddle of long- outdated fiction.

“Well...”yawned Samantha, when the last of the guests had been wrapped up and thankfullydispatched into the storm-tossed night,“I think we’ve all earned a stiff drink, don’t you, Duff?”

“I think so too. Let’s go back to the snug and get warm.”But Harriet, viewing the mess and

clutter in the hall, said she would rather start clearing up. She was tired, but she was also near

to tears and she did not feel she could face Samantha’s running commentary on the doubtless

amusing gaffes which had been made throughout the evening.

Rory, aware that she was nearer breaking point than she probably realised, stayed to help

her; so Duff and Samantha drank alone and Samantha was well content.

“We ought to give those two a hand, I suppose,”Duff said as he poured champagne.“Harriet

was looking very white. That bit of a scrap with the dogs shook her up more than I realised, I

think.”

“It was you who shook her up, darling, with your crack about the dispensing of

favours,”Samantha retorted with a certain enjoyment, and he gave her a glass, then sat down

in his favourite chair with his own.

“Whatever I may have said was in the heat of the moment and not intended to be taken

literally by anyone,”he replied.

“Oh, I think it was, and of course you were so right. Rory’s very attractive, but they’re both a

little indiscreet, aren’t they?”



She saw with satisfaction that she had at last got under his guard. The colour drained out of

his dark face, leaving it sallow, and the more familiar anger was rising in him.

“I’m afraid of nothing but your twisted motives for mischief,”he said harshly.“You came here

today on Harriet’s invitation, not mine, and after today, you’ll keep away—understand?”

“And what about that guarantee to your bank, darling? I’m so willing to forget it, if you’ll playball.”

“The money will be repaid as soon as I can raise the necessary capital, as I told you yesterday

at lunch.”

“I could call it in, you know. I could put you nicely inaspot.”

“You’re flogging a dead horse, Samantha,”he said a little wearily.“I don’t regret what was

once between us, but if I must speak plainly, I don’t care to barter my lands or my integrity in

return for services I no longer require.”

She went a little white and her face became pinched and sharp with spite. The last of that

whipped-up desire forhimwithered in a wave of malice, leaving only the dead desire to smash

and destroy.

She held out her empty glass with an automatic gesture for more champagne, but Duff was

already on his feet, filling two fresh glasses, and if he saw the proffered glass he chose to ignore

it.

“I’m taking a couple out to those two doing all the work of clearing up. They must need a

drink. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind opening the door for me as my hands are full?”he said, as if

nothing of moment had passed between them at all, and she got up with a little shrug of bored

dissatisfaction and opened the door.

The hall was nearly in darkness, for the candles on the tree had been extinguished. Here and

there an ornament or piece of tinsel caught a shimmer of light from one small lamp in the bend

of the stairs, and another tiny point of light sparkled for a moment at some movement on a

high settle and was gone.

Duff stood for an instant in the doorway, a glass in each hand, unaware of Samantha behind

him, peering over his shoulder. The little movement had been furtive, or so he had thought,and as his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he saw them quite clearly; Harriet curled

up on the settle where he remembered laying her the night he had brought her in out of the

fog, Rory’s arms round her and her face raised for his kiss. Her body seemed to be a mute,

confiding curve of surrender as she pressed against him, and the small movement brought

another flash of fire from the clasp of her pearls.

“Well, well...the gypsy warned you,”Samantha murmured softly behind him.“History is

certainly repeating itself...only Kitty was found in more compromising circumstances, I

understand. Still and all, one place is as good as another, I’ve always found, myself.”

“Shut up!”Duff snapped at her with bitter intensity, and at the sound of his voice the two on

the settle disengaged themselves.



“Did you want us?”Rory asked with blithe unconcern.“We haven’t done much clearing up yet,

I’m afraid, but Harriet was a bit upset.”

“I can see she was,”Duff replied with such unmistakable irony that Rory paused in his leisurely

passage across the hall.

“Hey, now!”he said, amusement and incredulity mingled in his voice.“You aren’t getting ideas,are you, Cousin Duff?”

“What ideas should I get?”Duff replied, still with that bite of controlled anger.“If I’ve

interrupted at an inconvenient moment it was merely to bring you both some champagne to

help on the domestic chores, but I can see you haven’t wasted your efforts in that direction.

Here, you’d better take your glass.”

Harriet was still huddled on the settle, only now aware of the fresh tension and Duff’s tall

figure. She had been indulging in such a bout of crying which, at a casual word from Rory, had

loosed the pent-up emotions of the day that she had been past noticing. She got up now,brushing away the tears, hoping that in the dim light he would not notice her swollen eyes or, if

he did, that he would refrain from commenting on that irritating habit of weeping. But as she

took the glass of champagne from him and saw the expression on his face, she hurriedly

swallowed too big a gulp of the wine which made her choke.

“I’m sorry,”she said, not yet understanding what had caused this icy displeasure.“I’m afraid

we haven’t made much progress with the tidying up. I—I was a little tired.”

“Excuses can wait till later, I think, when our guest has gone,”he said, and Samantha, whose

social sense seldom failed her when there was no more to be got from labouring a point

already nicely stressed, took the hint and strolled out with a nonchalant wave of the hand.

“Bitch or no bitch, darling, historydoeshave a habit of repeating itself, doesn’t it? Goodnight,

everyone, and thanks for the party.”

A gust of wind and rain drove in upon them as she opened the front door with difficulty.

Neither man offered to see her into her car and the door closed upon her, shutting out the

wildness of the night again.

“Samantha’s seen to it that none of us should forget, that other Christmas, hasn’t she?”Rory

remarked.

Duff’s fists clenched at his sides and for a moment it looked to Harriet as if he might strike his

cousin. She had said nothing all this time, aware that they had forgotten her, and she had the

curious feeling that she was encased in glass and had no part in their bitter exchanges.

“That,”said Duff, replying to Rory’s taunt and controlling himself with an effort,“was both

vulgar and uncalled for. Are you trying to excuse yourself by putting me in the wrong, or are

you just trailing your coat?”

“Trailing my coat is as good a way of putting it as any—I don’t have to make excuses.”

“Don’t you? Is it excusable to trade on our relationship, accept my hospitality and then steal



from me?”

“Is it stealing to accept the offer of something you have no use for yourself?”said Rory with

insolent bravado, and Duff suddenly turned on his heel and walked off to his study.

“Why did you say that?”Harriet asked in a small, lost voice.“Why did you lethimthink—”

“Because,”he replied still with a trace of bravado,“that’s what your king-of-the-castle husband

needs to think to stir him into some kind of action. Isn’t it what you wanted—to be recognised

as a woman and not treated like a child?”The bitter note in his voice was very reminiscent of

Duff and for a moment he seemed a stranger.

“Yes...”she said on a tired little sigh.“But not like this...not just to be a reminder of a failure in

himself...that would hurt him too much to be able to think of me kindly.”

He put a hand under her chin to turn her face to thelight coming from the snug and his eyes

were suddenly gentle.

“Why, Princess—I believe you’re in love with him, after all,”he said softly, and brushed a last

remaining teardrop from her swollen lids.

“I thought you knew,”she said simply.“I thought that was why you’ve been so nice to me.”

“Oh, Harriet, my poor innocent child!No wonder Cousin Duff sometimes finds it hard to see

what’s under his nose! Did youthinkmy small attentions were purely altruistic? I’ll admit I

thought it might be a good move to provide a little competition to shake him out of that self-

imposed avuncular forbearance, but don’t imagine that I haven’t enjoyed your lessons in the art

of flirtation. Had things been different I could have fallen for you very easily.”

“Could you, Rory?”she said with such surprise that he laughed.

“Yes—but don’t let it deflect you from your more serious ambitions. I’ll be going away soon, I

think. Cousin Duff won’t care for his style to be cramped much longer, I suspect, and I should

hate to have a real showdown with the old chap. Come on back to the snug and get warm. It’s

damn cold out here.”

She followed him into the snug and sat on the fender stool, too drained of emotion to do

more than marvel that asingle day could hold so many conflicting and catastrophic incidents.The scent Samantha used still hung on the air as a reminder, and Harriet said with ample

bluntness:

“Do you suppose she’s still his mistress?”

Rory replenished their glasses, bidding her drink the champagne slowly and let it do its work

of reviving a weary spirit, then sat down in Duff’s armchair and stretched his legs.

“Well, that I wouldn’t know since my proud cousin climbed on to his high horse the only time

it was mentioned, but I should doubt it, knowing Duff’s views,”he replied.“Is he a good lover,

Harriet? That’s not an impertinent question, merely one of concern.”



“My marriage has never been con—consummated, if that’s the right expression,”she said

simply, stumbling a little over the word.“That was the agreement between us, you see.”

“Well, for crying out loud!”Rory exclaimed.“Now I’ve heard everything! What on earth

possessed you both?”

“It sounds crazy now, I suppose, but at the time, I didn’tthink. It made it easier in a way tomarry a perfect stranger.”

“And did you imagine that any sane and healthy man would abide by that for long?”

“I didn’t know. I thought, you see, as long as there was Samantha he wouldn’t need me.”

“Lord preserve the pigs!”If you want him why don’t you try a bit of seduction yourself?”

“I don’t know how,”she said, so ashamedly that he had an impulse to sit her on his knee and

treat her like a little girl.

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t, you being you,”he said impatiently.“Well, it’s up to your

husband to teach you—I know I wouldn’t waste much time.”

“Dear Rory...” she said, and seemed half asleep.“It’s nearly supper time. I think I’ll take a tray

up to the nursery and have mine with Nonie, if you and Duff will look after yourselves. It’s only

cold left-overs.”

“Running away and leaving me to deal with the wrath to come?”

“No—just a respite to get my breath back again. Could you—could you explain a little, do youthink, if you get a chance at supper? You know Duff better than I do, and wouldn’t say the

wrong thing.”

“All right, all right—if tempers have cooled by then, although I have a suspicion that Cousin

Duff has just been biding his time and will prefer to work out his own curious pattern of

behaviour. Take yourself off now, Princess. I’ll clear up the party clutter.”

But Rory found himself eating alone. Whether Duff too had caught the prevailing habit and

taken a tray to his study he had no means of knowing, but he was relieved that he would not

have to face his cousin tonight when later he heard the front door slam and knew he had goneout.

Harriet was in bed when she heard Duff come up, trying to warm her feet on the sleeping

Uriah, since no one had thought the replace her leaking hot water bottle with another. She sat

up against her pillows wondering if she should call out to Duff, but even if he was still upset

surely he would not omit to say goodnight at Christmas. So she waited, listening for the familiar

sounds as he moved about in his room, so acquainted now with each unvaried stage of his

nightly routine that she could almost tell to the minute when he was ready for bed. Now he

was putting his shoes outside to be cleaned...now he was drawing the curtains and opening a

window...next he would turn down the lamp, but before that he would knock and put his headround the door to call goodnight to her, and she would invite him in make her peace with him...



His light went out. Harriet sat up, hugging her knees, incredulity and bitter disappointment

choking the small cry of protest in her throat. He could not, he would not, let the sun go down

upon his wrath, she thought childishly, the tears beginning to force their way behind lids

already tender with weeping, and even as she licked her lips to call out his name, the

intervening door opened and he came in without knocking.

“Oh!”I thought you’d forgotten!”she cried, and relief and gladness made her hold out herarms in unconscious welcome and invitation.

“Did you, Harriet?”he said, and she thought his voice sounded odd.

“Well, I saw your light go out, and that’s always the last thing you do before you get into bed.”

“I was merely following my usual practice.”

“Oh! But you generally look in to say goodnightbeforethe lamp goes out.”

“There’s a first time for everything,”he said, and walked unhurriedly to the bed, picked up

Uriah quite gently, carried him into his own room and shut the door on him.

“Why did you do that?”Harriet asked, more from surprise than anything else, and Duff came

back to the bed and stood there looking down at her, his hands thrust into the pockets of his

dark dressing-gown which made him look so tall, his shadow thrown in distortion on the wall as

she remembered it once before.

“As we shan’t need either the dog or the lamp for the rest of the night, they might as well

share my room,”he said quite pleasantly, and sat down on the bed.

Harriet, sitting bolt upright against the pillows, was so still and her face so expressionlessthat

he wondered if she had understood him.

“Do you—do you want something of me, Duff?”she asked, and knew even as she spoke how

naive the question must sound. What he had in mind was only too plain, she thought, but she

did not know how to show him she understood, how to meet him half-way by calling up those

feminine tricks and wiles which were said to be instinctive.

“How innocent you sound,”he replied quite softly but without tenderness, without even

humour, and she realised that he was still holding down a bitter anger which shut him off completely from her own stumbling efforts to reachhim.

He had been watching her face with a stranger’s dispassionate interest, and she remembered

that old habit he had of taking a lucky shot at her thoughts and scoring abull’s-eyewhen he said

suddenly:

“Yes, it was, wasn’t it? A ridiculous agreement that no one in their senses would have

expected to work. Well, the time has come for reviewing the contract, I think. Do I alarm you,

Harriet? Isn’t this the cue for tears and protestations?”

“What am I supposed to protest about?”she asked, left with only the weapon of provocation

which she knew to be rash, but she was tired out, both from the day’s disastrous chain of



events and the cat-and-mouse game he seemed to be enjoying.

“At the propositioning of your hitherto complaisant husband, I would imagine, but perhaps

you’re no longer so inexperienced as when you married me.”

“If by complaisance you mean a—a forgoing of m-marital rights, you, made the rules,”she

said, stumbling a little over the words, and he smiled without amusement.

“Rules are made to be broken,”he said.“It’s time I exercised these marital rights you talk of so

glibly, and it’s time you came down to earth, my dear, and stopped living in cloud-cuckoo-land.

Why should I be denied for the sake of a principle what you’re willing to give to another?”

She stared back at him incredulously, too astonished even to be alarmed. No one, surely,

could have interpreted that little scene with Rory in a sinister light once tempers had cooled!

“Oh,really ,Duff!”she exclaimed, feeling almost maternal towards him in the relief of having

got to the bottom of the trouble.“As if anybody would choose a draughty hall for illicit pleasurewith doors in every direction which could open at any minute! Didn’t Rory explain over supper

how that silly scene arose?”

“Rory would doubtless explain away anything to his satisfaction, if not to mine, but I don’t

happen to have seen him all the evening,”he replied, and she could hear the suppressed anger

beginning to rise in his voice as he went on:“You would seem to have grasped the

disadvantages of the hall, but there are other less public spots, and other uninterrupted

opportunities. Rory has been here for well over a week, and do you suppose I haven’t noticed

the change in you? Don’t think I blame you entirely, my dear. It was only natural, I suppose,

that seeing him again should revive those adolescent hopes of Prince Charming, but you

happen to be married to the Wicked Uncle, if we must stick to fairy-tales, so you’ll have to

adjust your romantic notions and take the consequences.”

She stared back at him mutely, looking suddenly very young and rather plain, and was left

with nothing to say. Had theirs been a normal marriage she could understand that her innocent

pleasure in the company of a younger man might well have aroused jealousy, but to imagine

Duff—her thoughts suddenly swivelled with frightening clarity to that other Christmas party so

long ago. Had she stirred up bitter memories by her foolish insistence on reviving old customs

which he had turned his back on, and was his answer to be the same—to demand his rights and

get his wife with child?

“I see you’re beginning to treat the matter a little more seriously,”he said.“The tears aren’t far

off, are they? I must confess you’ve surprised me by having refrained for so long, since weeping

comes so easily to you. Now, since we at last understand one another, let’s have done with all

this fencing and sparring.”

“No!”cried Harriet, pressing back against the pillows.“Not in anger and bitterness—can’t you

understand?”

“What should I understand? I told you long ago that a man has basic needs that have nothing

to do with love. Anger can spark off passion just as well.”

“The sleepingwolf...”she murmured, remembering the motto.



“Exactly. Wolves, after all, only have natural animal appetites, and if you rashly persist in

waking one, you must take what’s coming to you, mustn’t you?”

“It isn’t in me, unfortunately, to wake up wolves or any other living creature. Why don’t you

go back to Samantha if all you want is physical satisfaction?”she flung at him, and his long-

suppressed anger erupted with a violence that startled them both. He took her by the

shoulders, shaking her until her teeth chattered, then flung her back against the pillows andreached out a hand to turn down the lamp.

“Throwing up an old affair in my face won’t help you now, my dear,”he said.“I’ve learnt my

lesson, now you must learn yours. I see you’re shivering again—are you scared?”

“No, I’m cold. They forgot to give me a hot water bottle,”she replied, a truthful nature

compelling her to correct a misconception even in that moment, and he felt the savage

bitterness begin to drain out of him.

“Well, move over. I’ll soon warm you up,”he said harshly, and put out the light.

There was still a faint glow from the dying fire to lighten the darkness. Her face and thin bare

shoulders were pale blurs of stillness as if she had not heard him, then with a little sigh she

obediently moved over to the other side of the bed to make room for him.

“That would be kind. My own hot water bottle leaked, you see, and Uriah was warming my

feet,”she said, sounding like an overtired little girl who still feels a polite explanation is due, and

the last of the anger and bitterness which had sustained him all the evening seeped away,

leaving him drained and without desire.

“Oh, for God’ssake!”he exclaimed, his voice harsh with self-disgust.“Go to sleep, Harriet, and

forget, if you can, this rather undignified exhibition.”

“Duff?”She spoke his name on a soft note of enquiry, reaching up a hand to feel for his to

pullhimdown beside her. When he did not move, she turned over with a little sigh of

disappointment to face the wall. It was her first timid venture into those uncharted seas of

which Samantha knew so much and she so little, and he was giving her no help.

“I don’t know the way...”she said.“I don’t know how to show you that I—I wouldn’t have

denied you, because...”

“Because gratitude is all you have to give, and gratitude demands sacrifice?”His voice

sounded ragged and she could see his shadow on the wall, stiff and motionless.

“To give freely isn’t sacrifice.”

“But gratitude’s a lean substitute for love.”

“You didn’t really want me, did you? You were just punishing...”she said, and he moved then

and began tucking in the blankets with brisk finality.

“I should never have married you in the first place. Now, go to sleep and forget your unhappy

Christmas. Everything will be better in the morning,”he said, and went back to his own room



and let in the dog.

She slept the dreamless sleep of exhaustion and awoke heavy-eyed and unrefreshed. Her

impressions of the night before were confused and nightmarish, but one thing stood out

clearly; he didn’t want her, he regretted marrying her.Everything will be better in the morning,

he had said like a conscientious nanny regretting too harsh a punishment, but the morning

brought no solace to a heart which could no longer be comforted by the assurance given to achild.

The storm had blown itself out and the rain had stopped, but the skies were still leaden and

the cold was bitter.

“We’ll be gettin’snow yet, so you’ll likely have your wish, ma’am,”Molly said when she

brought the early tea and drew the curtains, but what use was snow now to crown her

Christmas with a false promise offelicity?thought Harriet.

“That felly’s still at large, they say,”Molly volunteered, disappointed by Harriet’sunaccustomed disinclination to chatter when she brought the morning tea.

“What fellow?”

“Why, the wan that broke out yesterday. Didn’t you hear the bell?”

“Oh? Yes, I suppose I did. Well, I hope he gets away,”Harriet said with such heartfelt emphasis

that the girl looked at her curiously.

“Ah, now, that’s no way to be feelin’for a felly that’s no better than a wild animal,

robbin’an’beatin’up an ould woman, for that’s what he’s in for,”she said, and Harriet had to

agree, but her sympathies at that moment lay with any imprisoned creature bound as she was

by one reckless unthinking action to an endless period of detention.

“Himself said to tell you Mr. Rory would be takin’you to Castle Slyne and himself would meet

you there, if he finds time to go at all,”Molly said before she left the room, with the firm

suspicion that the quality had been at odds with one another while the kitchen celebrated last

night, and Harriet remembered with difficulty that they had been bidden to a pre-luncheon

cocktail party which was an annual Boxing Day custom at Slyne when drinks were on the house

and as good a way as any, Duff had said, of introducing her informally to their scattered

neighbours.

Harriet dressed with care, anxious to do him credit, but it would seem that he was not very

concerned with makingita small social occasion for himself andhisnew bride.Shepinned a cheap

little brooch, the only trinket she had brought with her from England, to the lapel of her new

suit, but she left Kitty’s pearls on the dressing-table.

Rory took the north road to Slyne, and as they passed the prison, Harriet thought with

renewed sympathy of the man on the run. Was he hidden up in the mountains, she wondered,

or was he lying in some damp cleft in the rocks on the desolate Plain of Clooney as she had that

memorable foggy day which had led to such ill-considered impulses and sorry regrets?

“Marry in haste...”she thought, and did not realise she had spoken aloud until Rory gave her



an enquiring look and observed:

“And are you repenting at leisure, Princess? You’ve been very silent and distrait.”

“It’s too late for repentance,”she said, and he gave her another glance. He was filled with

curiosity to discover what if any repercussions there had been from last night’s unfortunate

little scene, but Duff, when they had metatbreakfast, had not encouraged either explanationsor apologies, and Harriet herself had an uncharacteristic air of withdrawal.

“Are you nervous?”he asked as he turned in at the Castle gates and parked the car among the

others in the forecourt, and she smoothed her hair down with a neatly gloved hand.

“Not really,”she said,“but I wish Duff could have come with us. Won’t it look odd?”

The thought had crossed Rory’s mind that his cousin should have made an effort to support

his bride on her first public appearance, but Duff had never found the small conventions

important and if, as seemed likely, he had quarrelled with Harriet, it was possible he was glad of an excuse to avoid the embarrassment of a joint appearance.

“He’ll be along later when he can get away from whatever contingency has kept him,”Rory

said reassuringly.“And no one will think it odd at a casual get-together, you silly coot— here’s

Judy coming out to welcome you, so put on your best bridal face and smile.”

Judy O’Rafferty allowed Harriet no time for embarrassment, rushing her into the house,

introducing her to a crowd of tweedy, rather dowdy people who asked innumerable questions

but never waited for the answers, and seemed both casual and kindly if rather at a loss for

conversation when they found she knew nothing about horses. She was a little shy at first; Rory

was hemmed in at the far end of the room, and Duff’s continued absence troubled her, for she

was sure now he did not intend to come. But her second Martini loosened her tongue and

thawed the ice round her heart and she suddenly began to enjoy herself, and even a glimpse of

Samantha, sitting on a stool at the bar and looking very smart, failed to cast a shadow. A

delightful glow of self-confidence lent her a most unfamiliar sensation of superiority and she

elbowed her way through the crowd to the bar.

“Hullo,”she said blithely.“Are you pleased with your dirty work?”

Samantha looked up and for a moment she seemed taken aback. Harriet, pink-flushed, and by

the look of her, quite ready to start a brawl, had stepped out of character.

“Hullo, yourself,”she drawled.“You sound indecently chirpy and unconcerned, considering all

things.”

“Why should I be concerned? Did you think you’d get Duff back by dropping nice little

poisoned darts? It worked with Kitty, didn’tit?”

“Keep your voice down. I think those Martinis are going to your head.”

“But why should I care who hears? You’re the one who people would look down their nosesat.”



“For Pete’s sake! If you want a brawl save it till we’re alone.”

“I should love a brawl!—I’m just in the mood, but not here, because my sort of brawl

wouldn’t be yours. Orphanage scraps aren’t confined to barbed remarks and civilised mud-

slinging, you know. We quarrel and bite on the floor and pull out hair and black each other’s

eyes. I would dearly like to do all those things to you, Samantha, and one day I will if you don’t

lay off Duff,”said Harriet, wondering even as she spoke what was inspiring her tongue to sucheffortless insults.

Samantha for once lost her aplomb.

“I don’t know what’s got into you, unless it’s the drink, honey, but do remember you’re not

back in the orphanage now,”she said uneasily, aware that one or two people were glancing at

them a little curiously.

“Drink is a great aid to clear thinking, I’ve discovered, though others mightn’t agree,”Harriet

went on.“You warned me yesterday, and now I’m warningyou.I’ve had enough of being pushedaround to make a Roman holiday for you and Duff, so make up your minds, both of

you.”Someone put another Martini into her hand, and she sipped it with evident pleasure. She

did not sound at all tipsy, Samantha had to admit, despite the extraordinarily uninhibited things

she was saying.

“And have you said all this to Duff, darling?”

“Not yet, but I will,”said Harriet cheerfully.

“Then you’d better say it at home, I think,”said Duff’s voice behind her, and she swung round

so quickly that she spilt her drink down her skirt.

“So you made it after all, darling,”Samantha drawled with something of relief.“Your neglected

bride was getting allready to tear a strip off you, as you may have heard.”

“My neglected bride should know by now that estate matters come before parties,”he said

with a hint of impatience, but when he looked up there was a faint twinkle in his eye which

Harriet failed to catch.

“Other matters, too,”she said menacingly, with a final snatch at her swiftly departing

bravado.

“Such as two strings to your bow, honey?”said Samantha, and Duff stood looking down at

them both with impartial consideration.

“I hear you’re leaving for Dublin shortly, Samantha, so we’ll not be seeing you at Clooney,”he

said conversationally, and Samantha’s eyes were suddenly wary.

“Where did you get that idea?”she asked sharply, and he shrugged.

“Oh, these rumours get around. I heard you’d fallen out with old Miss Docherty.”

“Well, the old girl says she wants her house to herself again, or she has another guest coming



or something, but that doesn’t mean I’m leaving the district. I shall come here. Raff isn’t booked

up at this time of the year.”

“Oh, but we are—we’ve no vacancies until after Easter,”said Judy O’Rafferty firmly, passing

by with a fresh tray of drinks, and Samantha flushed.

“Little liar! I know they’re not booked up, but that girl’s never liked me,”she said, and Harriet,whose spirits had begun to rise again at the unexpected news of Samantha’s departure, said

innocently:

“Perhaps she’s rather fond of her husband.”

But it was a rash bid for the last word.“You, I should judge, have had enough to drink, so we’ll

make our excuses,”Duff said, taking the half-empty glass from her and setting it down on the

bar counter.“I should think about Dublin, if I were you, Samantha. I’ll be going down myself for

a couple of nights on business very shortly. Goodbye.”Harriet followed him through the crowd

to find their host and hostess, then out to the car, leaving Rory to follow on later, her elationquenched. There had seemed to be a deliberate suggestion in Duff’s casual remark which

cancelled out his apparent indifference that Samantha’s visits to Clooney would cease.

“I wouldn’t,”said Duff as. they drove away from Slyne,“make the mistake of being too brash

with our friend Samantha.”

“She’s not my friend,”Harriet returned rather childishly, and he answered gravely:

“No, I don’t think she is. You have unexpected moments of rushing in where angels have

second thoughts, you know, and Ithinkthis was one of them. I’m only trying to warn you.”

“Everyonetries to warn me—I’m getting tired of it,”she said crossly.“Anyway, you can’t

possibly know what we were talking about unless you’re a mind-reader.”

“I can guess.”

“You couldn’t for a moment,”she contradicted him flatly, and saw the eyebrow nearest her

lift.

“Well, suppose you tell me,”he suggested mildly.

“Why should I? You don’t tell me what you and Samantha talk about,”she retorted, and he

smiled. She really was behaving like a contraryschoolgirl, he reflected.

“As a matter of fact,”she said when he made no answer,“I told her I’d like to roll her on the

floor and black her eye and pull out handfuls of hair like we did in the orphanage, and would

too, if—”

“If what?”

“Never mind!”she said, and he burst out laughing.

“Oh. Harriet! Will you never grow up?”he said.“How many of those Martinis did you have?”



“I wasn’ttight,was I?”

“No, you weren’t tight, just elated sufficiently to forget your inhibitions, I should say. Still, be

careful. You’re no match for Samantha.”

“Are you really going to Dublin on business?”she asked, feeling suddenly depressed.

“Yes, in a few days.”

“Why?”

“Really, Harriet, I can’t see that my business affairs could have much interest for you, but I’m

selling the pig-farm, if you must know, and that necessitates discussions and papers to sign in

Dublin.”

“Selling the farm!”she exclaimed.“But I thought you mainly depended on that to keep

Clooney going.”

“Yes, well—it’ll mean drawing in our horns a bit, but I need the capital. I thought you’d be

pleased, actually—you never did like all those little piggies going to market, did you?”

Although he was talking to her like a child, she thought that this time it was more as a cover-

up for himself.

“You wouldn’t sell Clooney, would you?”she asked.“The place must be a terrible drain on

you.”

“It’s entailed, so I can’t, even if I wanted to. We’ll just have to carry on as before until theplace falls down about our ears. Does the thought of a poverty-stricken future in a decaying

castle daunt you, Harriet?”

He had propped an arm along the back of the seat behind her and she rested her head

against his sleeve, feeling the roughness of the tweed against her neck. It was not, she thought,

the prospect of poverty and decay which daunted her, but the complexities of a relationship

with this stranger to whom she had committed her life, who had stolen her heart with such

little use for it, whose own heart, if he had one, was still concerned with a maturer and more

experienced passion. She was dumb with the agonising dumbness of youth and first love which

feared ridicule as much as rejection, for how could you make a man who kept you at arms’,length like an importunate child understand that being allowed to love would be sufficient

reward without the expectation of return?

“What a long, ominous silence, and what a big sigh! It would seem my question’s stirred up

doubts and possibly vain regrets. Perhaps it was better unasked,”he said, and although he

spoke lightly enough, she thought there was disappointment in his voice.

“I wasn’t thinking of that side of it. You wouldn’t understand,”she said, trying to speak as

lightly as he, but the old invisible shutter seemed to come down between them as if, she

thought, he had some mysterious power of pressinga switch at will as he answered:

“On the contrary, I understand very well. We’d better go in to lunch.”As he leaned across her



to open the car door, his cuff caught on her brooch and he stooped to examine it.

“Where did you get this?”he asked.“It’s rather ashoddypiece of costume jewellery.”

“I brought it with me,”she said.“One of the maids at Ogilvy’s gave it to me. It was all Ihad to

wear.”

He gave her rather a sceptical look.

“You had your pearls,”he said with a certain dryness.“But perhaps you prefer the skivvy’s

offering.”

She felt herself colouring.

“Of coursenot!”she exclaimed, ready to cry that her unexplained reluctance to wear the pearls

should have hurt him.“I—I just was afraid of losing them, I suppose,”she finished lamely, and he

pushed the door open for her to get out.

Rory returned in high spirits that evening to regale them amusingly with snippets of gossip

gleaned from the party which had gone on until all hours. Harriet had been voted a well-

mannered girl with simple charm, but much too young to know how to deal with a difficult

husband, and Samantha had been rude to Judy for refusing to accept a booking from her and

been told off by Raff in no uncertain terms.

“It was quite a thing to see her pulling out all the seduction stops for Raff only to be slapped

down very politely and practically called a trollop,”Rory laughed.“She sweptout breathing fire

and threatening to blacklist the hotel with all her friends in Dublin, and then we all settled

down to a very late lunch and pulled all the guests to pieces with pleasurable spite. What,

incidentally, hadyoubeen saying to the fair Samantha, Princess?”

“I told her a few home truths too, but I don’t suppose they cut much ice. I think I was flushed

with wine,”Harriet said.

“Flushed with wine—what an enchanting thought! Was she, Duff?”

“Very decorously flushed, I would say,”said Duff with a twinkle at Harriet.“She appears to

have threatened to black the lady’s eye and pull out her hair.”

“But what else did you say to Samantha, Harriet, that gave her to think?”asked Rory.“Because

think she undoubtedly did. She told me you were rude but were evidently seeing the light,

whatever that meant, and she’s coming to see you before she goes back to Dublin, so she

says.”Harriet was finding it a little difficult to remember exactly what she had said to Samantha,

apart from those rather adolescent bursts of spleen, but before she could answer, Duff looked

across at her and said with a complete change of voice:

“If she does come, I don’t wish you to see her, Harriet. Understand?”

“Why?”asked Harriet, blankly.

“Because I say so. You don’t, as is evident from today’s little bit of mud-slinging, get on



together, so it’s better you remain apart.”

And he rose to his feet and walked out of the room.

“Oh, dear!”murmured Harriet.“I had so hoped that everything was all right again. What have I

done now?”

“Nothing, I imagine, but being a little too blunt with Samantha,”Rory said. He had noted with

interest his cousin’s uncompromising reaction, and his eyes now resting on Harriet were a little

quizzical.

“So for that reason I’m out of favour again?”she said with uncharacteristic bitterness.

“You’re growing up fast, aren’t you, Princess, more’s the pity?”he said.“Well, I won’t bother

you any longer. I’ll be shaking thedust of Clooney off my shoes shortly, I think.”

“Oh, why, Rory? Are you bored here?”she asked.

“Not bored, but I get itchy feet after a period of the out-of-work actor’s polite definition of

resting,”he said evasively.“I must do a round of the agents and find me a job of work.”

“But you’ll come back?”

“Of course I’ll come back. I’ve made Clooney my headquarters ever since I started out on the

boards.”

“Dear Rory! You don’t take a livelihood very seriously, do you?”

“Dear Harriet, I try not to take anything very seriously, that’s why I think it’s time to go.”

She sat on the floor beside her dog, twisting the hair on his shaggy head into aimless little

spikes, and looked up at Rory with wide, enquiring eyes.

“Meaning?”she said.

“Meaning, my incorrigible innocent, if you must have your i’s dotted and your t’s crossed, that

I find myself in danger of getting a little too fond of you, so it’s better to take off before any

more damage is done,”he said.“You’ve been a sore temptation to me, Harriet.”

“Have I?”

“Yes, you have. Well, perhaps I’ve served my purpose in arousing a fine spark of jealousy in

your too-forebearing husband’s heart.”

“Jealous—Duff?”

He sighed, with a shade of impatience.

“For heaven’s sake! Surely even you can tell the signs!”he exclaimed, and she looked quicklydown at the dog, ruffling the hair back into place.



“Pride can be stung to anger—jealousy of a kind, perhaps —but if it was anything else, you’d

think—you’dthinkthat if one offered—”she had not meant to confide that last humiliation, but

the thought that Rory might so soon be gone betrayed her into weakness. His eyes were

amused, however, rather than compassionate as he replied:

“So you made your timid little overtures of submission to turn away wrath—last night, one

presumes—and think yourself rejected because you have a husband who wants somethingmore than the cold comfort of gratitude to charity.”

Harriet looked up, shaking the hair out of her eyes impatiently.

“That’s what he said—gratitude’s a lean substitute for love—but he’s never wanted love.”

“Who’s to know what anyone means by that? Love has so many forms—so many disguises if

it comes to that. I don’t pretend to understand my self-contained cousin because he’s

never-allowed that I’m mature enough to discuss such things as matter to him, but I’m

beginning to suspect the poor devil’s a romantic at heart—one of these out-of-date chivalrouscharacters who bide their time too long for a worn-out principle and get beaten at the post in

the end by a more enterprising nag. That’s what stirred up his bitterness yesterday—not the

dog-in-the-manger pride you attributed to him.”

She listened attentively, tornbetween a desire to believe what she wanted and the salutary

reminder that she too easily wove fantasies for herself without foundation.

“And Samantha?”she said at last.“Where does she come in?”

“Where she belongs. A high-class floozie of his bachelor days who came back to make trouble.

Sam’s always wanted what she couldn’t get, and if she can’t get it she just goes destructive for

spite.”

“Men like to keep their wives and mistresses apart. You heard him say he doesn’t want me to

see her again.”

“And that should show you, you silly coot. She’s had the run of the place up till now, hasn’t

she?”

“Yes, but I think he’s reached some sort of decision. He’s meeting her in Dublin.”

“So what? Oh, for God’s sake, Harriet, let’s drop the whole subject! Sometimes I think you

make surmises and difficulties where none exist, at others I simply shrug my shoulders and say

you’re both getting what you deserve from such a cockeyed bargain. Now, for the love of Mike,

let’s talk about something else! You’re getting my dim powers of reasoning in as bad a state as

your own!”

Therewas a slight fall of snow during the night, whichmovedDuffto say:

“You’ll be careful while I’m gone, won’t you, Harriet? Don’t go falling into bogs or anything

rash.”

“Are you going soon, then?”



“The day after tomorrow. Rory’s coming with me.”

“Oh!”She had a cold feeling of desertion, envisaging the Castle with only Nonie and her own

discouraging thoughts to keep her company, and watching those betraying freckles beginning

to powder her skin as she lost colour, he said a little roughly:

“Is it Rory you’re going to miss?”

“I’ll miss him, of course, Clooney will seem very quiet without him,”she answered truthfully,

then added, because she had to know before he went away, leaving her with that voiceless

question unanswered.“Duff—did you really think that—that Rory and I—”she broke off

awkwardly, and he finished the sentence for her quite gently.

“Were lovers? No, Harriet,if that brings you any comfort. One can sometimes whip oneself

into a state of belief—from various causes—bitterness, hurt pride, even a sense of failure in

oneself. Can you understand that?”

“Yes,”she said, and the colour began coming back into her face.“I’m glad, Duff. I wouldn’t

have liked you to think I’d repaid your generosity with—with a betrayal.”

She had tried to choose her words carefully, not wanting to burden him with a fresh sense of

failure by reminding him that in the end he had refused the only gift she had to offer, hoping

just the same for a crumb of solace even though it might only be an acknowledgement of good

faith, but he seemed to withdraw again.

“No, I don’t think you would. Your insistence on the obligations laid upon gratitude are

doubtless very worthy, but to be regarded as a charitable institution can become irksome,”he

replied with some dryness.

“Yes, I suppose so,”she said a little blankly, not very sure what he meant, but aware that she

had somehow said the wrong thing again.“Will you be back for New Year’s Eve?”

“Is that another of your hallowed occasions?”he asked, and she thought he was laughing at

her for a childish insistence on the importance of occasions which no longer mattered very

much to him.

“Not hallowed like Christmas,”she answered with grave consideration,“but the start of

another year is sort of clean and fresh and young. You can put away the mistakes anddisappointments of the old year and start again.”

“So you can,”he said, and his voice had softened.“And you think that you and I, by seeing in

the New Year together with faith in our hearts, could call down a blessing and start again?”

“We could at least call down a blessing,”she said, still not at all certain of his mood, and he

ran a hand over her smooth head, twisting and untwisting a strand of hair round his finger to

feel the texture.

“Very well,”he said,“I will be back on New Year’s Eve without fail, and that’s a promise. Areyou still expecting unlikely miracles, Harriet?”



“Miracles needn’t be unlikely if you believe enough,”she said gently.“Someone said—St.

Augustine, Ithink—what is faith unless it is to believe what you do not see?”

“Yes... yes ...Perhaps some of that faith of yours will rub off on me,”he said slowly, then the

twinkle was back in his eye.“Did they stuff you with lives of the saints as well as other things?”

“Oh, yes—martyrs, too, but I didn’t care much for them, all stuck with arrows and things andcarrying their eyes about on plates,”she said quite seriously, and he burst out laughing.

“What macabre reading! Who carried their eyes about on plates?”

“I don’t remember,”she replied vaguely.“I could never reallydowith martyrs—they so enjoyed

their misfortunes.”

“And you don’t enjoy yours?”

“My misfortunes aren’t at all the same,”she replied rather primly, and ducked under his armand ran out of the room.



CHAPTERTEN

ALL day the sullen skies threatened, sending down a few half-hearted flakes which melted into

fresh puddles before they froze, but by nightfall it was snowing in earnest and Harriet’s spiritsrose with happy visions of snowmen and toboggans, skating on the frozen lough and all the

merry, old-fashionedclichésshe had wanted for Christmas.

They all went out after breakfast to throw snowballs and laugh at the delirious antics of the

dogs, or rather Uriah, for the two Alsatians executing turns and arabesques in the snow were

patterns of grace and delight to watch, but poor Uriah on his short, bandy legs, soon became

submerged in the smallest of drifts, and sat with only his head above surface, gazing at them

reproachfully from under his shaggy brows.

“Never mind, my poor lamb!”Harriet said remorsefully as she dug him out yet again, but hewas offended and, his tail tucked down, trotted back to the house where she found him later

sitting on Kurt’s blanket in the snug. She knelt down to make a fuss of him, but he was staring

at her with such a curious expression that she sat back on her heels, hesitating for a moment to

touch him. Those soft, beseeching eyes had such a strange look of sad knowledge, of

acceptance, that she had an odd little frissonof fear. He sat so still and regarded her so steadily

that it almost seemed as though he was communicating some message, then she

gatheredhiminto her arms to comfort his hurt feelings and tears of relief and remorse pricked

her eyelids as she felt his warm eager tongue licking her face accompanied by the customary

little whines of pleasure with which he always rewarded her attentions.

“What’s the matter, Princess?”Rory said, coming into the room with Duff for the pre-luncheon

sherry.“Something upset you?”

She smiled up at him, brushing the tears from her lashes.“It’s nothing—I just got a funny

feeling about Uriah,”she said.

“What sort of funny feeling?”

“I don’t know. He had a queer kind of look.”

“Well, let’s face it, sweetie, he’s a queer kind of dog.”

“No, it wasn’t like that. It’s difficult to explain. I expect it was really only my own conscience

pricking for having made fun of him.”

“All dogs hate being laughed at,”Duff said, holding out a glass of sherry to her.“Stop nursing

the disreputable tyke and take your drink.”

But she did not want to let the dog go just yet and had failed for once to catch the little rasp

of irritation in Duff’s voice.

“Put it down somewhere, I’ll have it later,”she said, and he put the glass down on a table too

sharply, spilling a little of the wine.



“You’re making a fool of the animal,”he said as he mopped up the sherry with his

handkerchief.“Well, at least get up off the floor and let Kurt have his blanket.”

This time she heard the warning note and scrambled to her feet, chivvying Uriah off the

blanket and calling to Kurt, but Uriah sat where he was, then rolled on his back, grinning at

them. Kurt approached the blanket dignified and beautiful, the tip of his plumed tail moving in

gracious acknowledgement as he passed Harriet, then he stood stock still and the hairs rosealong his back. Harriet’s heartdropped. TheAlsatian had ignored Uriah since the day of his

arrival, but he had never attempted to start a scrap, and if he did so now, she thought, it would

put the finishing touch to Duff’s apparent ill-humour.

“Kurt...here, boy...”she said softly, but he took no notice of her, and stood there stiff and still,

his head thrust forward, his ruff fanned out, staring at Uriah, and she could see the quiver in his

throat which was the prelude to growling. It was not a growl he uttered, however, but that

small, piping whine peculiar to his breed which could mean distress, or affection or a plea for

attention, but never hostility. Kurt then did a thing he had never done before, he nuzzled the

wriggling Uriah, smelling him all over with delicate questing thrusts from his long muzzle, thenhe licked his face with one sweeping curl of the tongue and lay down beside him.

“Duff, did you see?”Harriet said, her eyes suddenly enormous in her anxious face.

“See what?”Duff, who had still been mopping up the spilt sherry, returned his handkerchief

tohis pocket and looked round.

“Kurt. He sort of spoke to Uriah, then kissed him and lay down beside him.He’s never done

that before.”

“Well, it shows a nice, unselfish nature, doesn’t it? You wouldn’t get many dogs willing to

share their recognised possessions with interlopers. Why make a sentimental fantasy out of it?

Kissing—really!”

Harriet went to the table to take up her glass, and stood with her back to him.

“Interlopers—intruders—words you’re rather too fond of, Duff,”she said, surprised by the

sudden bitterness which had welled upin her.“I’m getting a little tired of being slapped down

for sentimental fantasies whenever I come out with something that seems perfectly natural to

me.”

“I’m sorry, Harriet. It was an unforgivable but unintentional lapse on my part,”Duff said, and

went out of the room.

Rory got up and put an arm round Harriet. He hoped she was crying because tears always

eased her, but he had never had occasion to raise that temper so rarely provoked, and the face

she turned tohimseemed for the moment the face of a stranger.

“Perhaps you can see now, Rory?”she said.“That’s all I’ve meant to him—a willing partner

whose sentimental fancies can pall if you’re not in the mood to indulge them—a care and an

acknowledged liability, yes, but an interloper just the same.”

He touched her wet lashes with a compassionate finger, resisting a temptation to take her in



his arms and kiss away the bitterness and hurt.

“Harriet—dearest—don’t let bitterness spoil everything for you,”he said.“Duff was

impossible, I know, but he’s worried stiff. A lot depends on the success of this Dublin trip

tomorrow, you know.”

“So I would imagine. I told Samantha at the party that I was tired of being pushed around tomake a Roman holiday for them both. Well, if he wants her, he can have her. It’s nothing to do

with me, and never has been, really.”

“You told Samantha she could have him?”

“No, I said they’d better make up their minds.”

“I see. Well, that explains the lady’s intention of coming here to see you before she goes back

to Dublin, I suppose.”

“Does it? Well, she hasn’t been, and I couldn’t care less either way,”said Harriet.“My only

regret is that you have to go tomorrow, too. Must you, Rory?”

“Yes, Princess, I must,”he said.“Apart from anything else, I’ve an appointment with a manager

I must keep—or word will get around in the theatre that I’m unreliable, and it’s time, too, for

you to take stock on your own.”

She smiled at him a little tearfully. She did not believe that his appointment with a manager

was much more than a polite excuse, but she understood that for both of them the moment

had come to take stock.

“I’ll miss you,”she said.

“I hope you will—but I’ll be back, and when I am, I shall expect to find your dreams have

come true for you.”

“My dreams have come true, but nobody wants them,”she said, and he gave her a sharp little

slap on her behind.

“Don’t start being sorry for yourself. You’ve a long way to go before you can sink comfortably

into the role of the neglected wife sitting at home by the fire with only your husband’s socks todarn!”he said, and Jimsychose that moment to announce the hour of luncheon with his usual

unrestrained assault on the gong.

The meal was not prolonged, for they were stillfinishingthe cold remains of turkey and

gammon and sausages which, Nonie observed with distaste, seemed to go on for ever, but

Harriet was glad there was no need to linger. Duff made an effort to make amends for his

rudeness by being more talkative than he generally was at mealtimes, but the fact that he was

making an effort at all merely embarrassed Harriet and she was glad when he said that business

matters would keep him in his study for most of the afternoon. Nonie, dispirited by the fact of

her Uncle Rory’s departure the next day, claimed him for herself, and Harriet decided to takeUriah for a special walk tomake up for his misadventures of the morning.



As she went out into the sparkling brilliance of the afternoon and felt the snow crisp and firm

under her feet, a returning pleasure in the remembered delight of childhood eased her sore

spirit. Even the desolate waste of the Plain of Clooney was turned into smiling beauty by its

covering of snow, and Harriet spared a thought for the hunted man perhaps lying up in those

frozen hills, and hoped, with an illogical disregard for justice, that he would get away.

She kept to the rough farm track which bounded the demesne because there the snow didnot lie deep and Uriah’s short legs could manage without being caught in the drifts. He was wild

with excitement, jumping and sliding, throwing up the snow with his blunt little muzzle, rolling

over and over and barking wildly. Harriet watched him and her heart filled with love for all the

faults of his unknown breeding that made him an object of ridicule, the plebeian tail,thenautical

roll, the coat like a moth-eaten hearthrug; he was everything he should not be, but trust and

love and honesty shone out of his eyes, and her own unwanted heart went out to him.

She had lingered so long playing with the dog that the sun was setting as they made

homeward tracks.

She climbed the fence into the road, calling to the lagging Uriah, and as she crossed to go in at

the gates, a car swept from the forecourt, its engine wildly revving, and Samantha’s gay little

scarlet sports model shot through the gates, narrowly missing her. She had a glimpse of

Samantha’s white, furious face behind the wheel as she breaked for an instant and skidded; in

the same instant, she saw Uriah, having made a detour lower down in the boolly easier on his

short legs, scurrying up the road with lolling tongue and a frenzied propulsion of all his limbs to

catch up.

“Samantha! Wait!”Harriet shouted, but her shout only spurred the dog on to greater effort.

He came ploughing his way through the snow straight across the path of the car, and in a splitsecond of time, she caught the expression on Samantha’s face as she, too, saw the dog. She

trod on the accelerator, driving straight at him, as a wheel went over him, slewed the car round

with some skill and shot off down the road.

Uriah lay in the snow, very still, very quiet, a little trickle of blood seeping slowly from his

nostrils, making a small brilliant pattern in the snow. His eyes were still bright with the desire to

please and obey as Harriet knelt beside him, and his ill-favoured tail moved feebly in greeting.

She tried to gather him into her arms, but he gave a little moan of pain, and she laid him back

on the snow, thinking with the strange detachment of shock how queer it was that Uriah, who

went into paroxysms of craven terror at the pulling of crackers or the hint of a scrap, should

when mortally hurt make no sound.

She was unaware of voices shouting and feet hurrying and slipping on the icy paving stones;

she was unaware which of the two men she resisted when someone tried to lift her up, but it

was Duff kneeling beside the dog, probing and examining with skilled hands, and Duff’s voice

that said:“Take her inside, Rory. I’ll fetch a gun.”

“No!”she cried.“No, you can’t kill him...he’ll get well ... he must getwell...”But she could see

for herself now that the bright look was dimming, the eyes which only a moment ago had been

filled with loving recognition for her held only one bewildered question, and she remembered

that strange look of the morning and Kurt’s puzzling behaviour.

“It’s kinder, my love—he’s nearly gone, and there’s no need to prolong his suffering,”she



heard Duff say, but it was not until long afterwards that she remembered and wondered at that

unfamiliar endearment.

“Yes,’she said, and Rory helped her up gently and took her into the house.

She heard the shot distinctly as she sat by the fire in the snug, and she said to Rory with a

total absence of emotion or even resentment:

“Perhaps it’s a good thing. Duff never liked him.”

“Now, Princess—don’t go building up fresh misunderstandings,”Rory said, thinking this final

episode was quite enough to effect an estrangement that could have permanent results.“I

would have done it myself to save Duff the necessity for being the one to give you pain, but

he’s a dead shot and I’m not.”

“I’m not building up anything that wasn’t already there,”she said quite calmly.“Duff

couldn’thelp his aversion any more than he can help having nothing more than a fondness forme, because one can’t love to order.”

“I think, you know, that we’ve all been very much mistaken in Duff’s feelings,”he said, but she

only smiled at him, replying gently:

“It doesn’t matter any more. Nothing matters any more. I wish, though, I hadn’t laughed at

Uriah. One should never ridicule anybody in case it’s the last thing you have to offer them.”

Rory was relieved when his cousin returned to the house and made an excuse to leave them

together. If Duff handled the situation cleverly, it could be the moment, he thought, to resolve

emotional difficulties and arrive at a better understanding.

But when he had gone, Duff made no move to touch her. He knew, with weary acceptance,

that his act of mercy must drive her further from him and only implement that revealing

bitterness of the morning. He could do no more for the present, he thought, than express

sympathy and leave open his willingness to meet her more than half-way should she need

anything else of him, but he looked at her a little curiously as she sat by the fire listening

politely to his rather stilted condolences. Harriet, who wept so easily and often so foolishly, had

shed no tears at all for Uriah.

“I’m sorry it had to be me, my dear, to destroy the one thing you loved,”he said, hoping,perhaps, for a word of understanding to ease his own pain, even for tears and an excuse to

gather her close and take the simple way of nursery comfort to break down this new resistance

in her.

“It didn’t matter who, so long as it was quick and painless, and you weren’t fond of Uriah, so

you wouldn’t have minded,”she said, and he turned away to look out of the window, observing

how the white-clad countryside seemed to hold off the gathering darkness, remembering the

bright drops of blood in the snow.

“I minded very much, as it happens. I often teased you about the poor old boy, but I was quitefond of him,”he replied, but he spoke with a careful avoidance of any plea for tolerance, and

when she said nothing, he came back and sat down in hischair.



“How did it happen?”he asked in the brisk impersonal tones he used when dealing with

matters among his employees which required explanation, and it seemed to be the right way,

for she began to lose that unnatural calm, and anger at least made her vulnerable again.

“She did it deliberately. She drove straight at him,”she said, and a little colour came into her

cheeks.

“Are you sure she didn’t skid? We heard her revving the engine and shooting off much too

fast for safety in this weather, but as she didn’t stop it’s possible she hadn’t realised that she’d

hithim.”

She turned her head slowly to look at him, and now her anger was for him.

“If you like to excuse your mistress, it’s only to be expected, I suppose,”she said very clearly,

and his own anger was sparked off so suddenly that he had no time to control himself.

“Good God, Harriet! How dare you suggest such a thing!’he exclaimed furiously.“Do yousuppose, even if it were true, that I would make excuses if you’re telling the truth?”

“I always tell the truth,”she said.

“Yes, you do. And were you telling the truth, or was she lying, when she said you were tired of

your marriage and wished she would take me off your hands?”

“I said I was tired of being pushed around and I wished you’d both make up your minds,

which isn’t quite the same thing, but perhaps it’s had the same result.”

“What in hell do you mean by that?”

“That you’ve decided to continue as you were knowing that at least I won’t make trouble.”

He took a pull at his temper, remembering that afterasudden shock one can hardly be

expected to act completely rationally.

“Continuing as we were amounted to no more than an armed truce, a preservation of

civilised social relationship when it became necessary to meet,”he said.“But Samantha is not

civilised under all that glossy finish and elegance, and I’d forbidden her this house even before

today. Does that satisfy you?”

“But she came just the same, didn’t she?”

“She came to see you, as it happens—said you had a date. If you remember, I told you I didn’t

wish you to see her. It was her bad luck that you were out and I was in. Now let’s go back, if you

don’t mind. She left here in a flaming temper, I’ll admit, and when Samantha’s really roused

she’s capable of anything, so please be very explicit.”

She told him in detail, but as she relived that dreadful moment, the hardness began to go out

of her and she seemed to crumple.

“Why would she?”she asked him in bewilderment, and her eyes began to fill.“Why would



anyone deliberately run a dog down like that? The car was practically stationary because she’d

already had to brake, and I shouted to her to wait ... but I saw a sort of perverted pleasure on

her face as she trod on the accelerator and drove right over Uriah...”

He half rose from his chair to go to her, but she drew back quickly, whether unconsciously or

with deliberation he could not tell, but he sat down again and thrust his suddenly unsteady

hands in his pockets.

“Yes ... yes ... I see,”he said in flat, unemotional tones.“Samantha’s reasons, I’m afraid, are

perfectly clear to me. If her own desires are denied, she satisfies them by smashing the desires

of others. She’s successfully poisoned my own hopes, and, just for good measure because you

were in her way, she destroyed your most precious possession. Well, that’s the end, I hope, for

she knows she’s shot her bolt. The tragedy is, though, that some things can be broken beyond

repair, so the day’s mischief lives on.”

Harriet barely took in what he was saying, for reaction was setting in and she felt numbed.

Although her eyes had filled with tears as she spoke of her dog she still did not cry, but began toshiver, and Duff, after a sharp look at her, got up and poured her a stiff brandy.

“You’d better have an early night and I’ll bring you up a sedative,”he said.“I won’t disturb you

in the morning as Rory and I are starting early in case the roads are tricky. Will you try to think

of me more kindly while I’m gone, Harriet?”

“Yes, Duff,”she said with the old compliance, and Rory came back into the room, followed by

the two Alsatians. He raised an enquiring eyebrow at his cousin, who gave an imperceptible

shake of the head, and Kurt walked stiffly round Harriet, sniffing at her skirt, then sat on his

haunches making that plaintive little cry in his throat and offered a paw.

The two men exchanged glances and Rory said very softly:“I think Kurt did know. Animals do

sometimes have a prerecognition of death—in themselves, and others of their kind. Was that

what you sensed in Uriah this morning, Harriet, when you said you had a funny feeling about

him?”

“Yes...”said Harriet slowly.“He must have had that queer moment of knowing ... he looked at

meso strangely ... sucha wise look of knowledge and acceptance...and I’d beenlaughingat

him—I’d hurt his feelings horribly and he was going tod-die...”

All at once she was weeping, covering her face and choking on great tearing sobs, and Duff

was by her side in a moment holding her, comforting her, while Rory looked on with a wry little

smile of something that might have been regret. She turned to Duff instinctively, then, as if she

had suddenly become aware of him as a person, she pushed him away and got up.

“No ... I don’t want you...”she said, and ran out of the room.

They had gone long before she had awakened from her drugged sleep in the morning, and

her first conscious feeling was one of emptiness and abandonment. They had all gone, Uriah,

Rory, Duff, for somehow she thought of them in that order. Rory had said his farewells last

night at the foot of the stairs, refusing her tentative plea to stop on until Duff returned, andlater, Duff had come upstairs with hot milk and the promised sedative, and talked prosaically

on a number of dull topics, made up the fire for the night, and gone away. Just when she was



dropping off to sleep a strange thing had happened. She thought she heard something

scratching at the door, and told herself it was only her imagination trying to persuade her that

Uriah was waiting to be let in, but it came again, more impatiently, accompanied by a little

whine, and she sprang out of bed and opened the door. Kurt stood there, ears pricked, tail

slowly waving, eyes shining green in the lamplight. He had walked gravely into the room, smelt

everything with deliberation, gave her a stately nod in passing, then lay down by the bed with

his nose between his paws, heaved a deep sigh and went to sleep.

“Kurt is avery extraordinary animal,”she said to Nonie in the morning.“He seems to know

things in a most uncanny fashion. If I’d been a little younger I’d have thought he was

enchanted.”

“Alsatians have a very highI.Q.” Nonietold her with the kindly tolerance of the already

initiated.“They’re more sensitive than ordinary dogs and of course they’re a working breed, so

when you think of how they track and guard and lead the blind and find dead bodies—in the

war, that was—it’s not surprising that Kurt should show a little intelligence over poor Uriah.”

“No, I suppose not, if you put it like that,”Harriet said meekly, accepting rebuke for her lack of

knowledge of the canine world and Alsatians in particular.

“Besides, he was jealous. He’s been wanting to make friends for ages, but you rather spurned

him. Now Uriah’s out of the way, he knows he can have a clear field,”Nonie went on with that

candid heartlessness of childhood, then catching Harriet’s rather sad little smile, added

hastily:“I didn’t mean that nastily, Harriet. I was very sorry Cousin Samantha ran over him, but

he wasn’t a terrible loss to the fancy, was he?”

“The fancy?”

“The dog-breeding world. It’s a name they have.”

“Oh, I see. No, I suppose he wouldn’t be, but he was a loss to me.”

“Oh, yes, I know, and I’m sorry, but you’ll have Kurt. He’s adopted you, you see.”

Indeed, it seemed that he had. He followed Harriet everywhere, never very demonstrative as

if he was still weighing her up before deciding to present her with his heart, but always there.

At first she thought he had merely attached himself to her because he was missing his master,

but Delsa, though she plainly felt bereft and friendless, curled up on her blanket all day andcouldn’t even be enticed out for a walk.

“What shall we do?”asked Nonie, feeling, evidently, as aimless as Harriet now her father’s

familiar authority was removed, and indeed, thought Harriet, there was little to do that would

occupy them for a whole day without the focal point at mealtimes and the masculine comings

and goings which lent a pattern and a kind of solidity to the day.

“Let’s build that snowman,”Harriet suggested, but although the morning was as bright and

invigorating as yesterday, the sparkle had gone out of things for her, and Nonie soon tired of

shovelling up snow, and kicked the half-finished effigy to pieces with ominous petulance.Nonie, Harriet thought, no less than she, was troubled by undigested facts and fancies, and she

returned more than once to the curious plea for assurance that Harriet was not going away.



She made several attempts during the day to acquaint Harriet with details of what she

described as a terrible row between her father and her Cousin Samantha, but since her

information must have been arrived at by listening at doors, Harriet felt obliged to discourage

her.

So the day wore on to a close and for Harriet the evening brought the thoughts which she had

pushed aside all day into sharper focus. She could no longer ignore Duff’s absence when she atealone in the breakfast-room, and afterwards faced his empty chair in the snug. The huge house

seemed more silent than ever, Rory’s gay laughter a ghost that mocked her, and the pain in

Duff’s face as she had accusedhimof not minding that it was he who had to end poor Uriah’s

sufferings became a nagging pain in her own heart.

She tried to remember those things he had said when she flung her accusations at him, but

she could scarcely remember her own bitter words, or that she had made it impossible for him

to afford the comfort she had so much needed. Tired out in mind and body, she could only cling

childishly to a growing sense of outrage that he should have left her summarily in her moment

of distress. That business trip could surely have been postponed. Any husband who loved hiswife would have put off his affairs for a day or so to cherish and comfort, but she had to remind

herself at this point that there had never been any question of love between them, and that the

trip to Dublin had been connected with Samantha however true it might have been that he had

forbidden her his house.

Well, she had asked for it, Harriet supposed, eyeing the dying fire but not disposed to

replenish it and prolong an unrewarding evening. She had known when she married him that

Duff had no more to offer than tolerance and the protection of his name; it was not his fault if

she had so far forgotten her own role as to fall in love with him.

There was a fresh fall of snow in the night, and Molly, when she brought up the morning tea,

observed:“I don’t envy that felly on the run if he’s still hidin’up in the hills.”

“He must have got away from here, besides, it’s five days now—how would he get food in the

hills?”Harriet said, and Molly shrugged, no longer very interested now the first excitement of an

escape had worn off.

“They say he had a gurrl hereabouts who’d maybe bringhimfood an’get him away when

things are quiet again, but meself, I’d say you were right an’he’s away an’out of the country by

now. Isn’t it the foine thing the way Kurt has taken to you, ma’am?‘Tis as if he knows you have

the sore heart, the craythur.”

“Yes, I have the sore heart, Molly,”Harriet said, and the girllooked at her with a hint of

mischief.

“You’d be missm’himself more than, the poor little dog, I’m thinkin’. A house without a

master’s like an egg without salt, Agnes says, an’the same goes for a woman without her man.

Well, he’ll be home tomorrow, so you’ll not need to mope much longer,”she said, and went

cheerfully away with the tray, spilling the milk as usual.

Rory had said it was time to take stock. Harriet took stock, examining her emotions carefully,retaining some, discarding others, remembering that a new year was upon them, and

resolutions were expected. Molly had been right. She had been moping as much for Duff as for



poor Uriah, but her bitterness and sense of rejection had stood in the way of acceptance.

Agnes, too, was right with her curious analogy; Clooney without a master was indeed like an

egg without salt, and she, without the familiar if sometimes intimidating pattern of Duff’s

protection, was anchorless and lost. She saw now that Rory had been right to go, that her

innocent pleasure in his company might well have hurt a man who, although unable to offer

love himself, had even without that shown fondness and moments of tenderness.

He had said;Perhaps some of your faith in miracles will rub off on me...Was it too much of a

miracle to expect that in time a little of her love might rub off on him, too? It was then that she

remembered his words as she had knelt by Uriah in the snow ... he hadcalled her his love, like

any other concerned lover, and afterwards she had said bitter things, pushed him away and

thrown his comfort in his face...

Nonie came into the room as she finished dressing and stood fingering the things on the

dressing-table, aimlessly opening and shutting drawers, clearly still in yesterday’s mood of

petulance.

“What can we do today?”she kept asking, and Harriet, who had just brought herself to a more

sensible state of mind, felt irritated at the prospect of having to cope with Nonie’s indecisions.

“What do you do when you go off on your own and only appear at mealtimes?”she asked

briskly.“Today’s no different from any other.”

“Father’s not here.”

“Well, when he is, you don’t see much of him—neither do I when he’s busy about the estate.

Are you missing your Uncle Rory?”

“Yes, of course. You miss him, too, don’t you, Harriet? You don’t like Uncle Rory better than

Father, do you? I used to, you know.”

“And you don’t now?”

“No.”

“That’s good. Now, if you’ll just move out of my way, I’ll turn down my bed and then we’ll go

down to breakfast.”

Harriet had successfully dodged the child’s question, but she suspected, as she had before,

thatNonie’s methods of gleaning information of what went on in the house might have resulted

in uncomfortable conclusions.

She turned down the bed, apologising politely to Kurt for disturbing him, then glanced round

the room for anything forgotten. The mirror threw back their many familiar reflections of the

sombre furniture and her own and Nonie’s figures looking out of place in such stiff, stylised

surroundings, and she exclaimed with an echo of the child’s dissatisfaction:

“I hate this room! I can’t imagine how anyone could have thought up such drearyappointments for a bridal suite.”



“Thisisn’t the bridal suite,”Nonie said, looking surprised.“That’s in the other wing and hasn’t

been used since my mother died. This is the mirror suite which was specially decorated for

some important English visitors in Queen Victoria’s reign.”

“And that’s what it looks like!”laughed Harriet, but her dislike of the ugly room vanished. No

one had really told her, she remembered. She had known that a bridal suite existed somewhere

in the Castle, and had taken it for granted that Duff would naturally have chosen to use thetraditional rooms to which the brides of Clooney had been brought. It gave her an odd feeling

of release to know that she had not shared Kitty’s bed or Kitty’s bridal hopes.

The day passed uneventfully, but by the end of it, Harriet was thankful to go to bed. Nonie

had been given to tantrums and even tears, Agnes was in one of her contrary moods, the

weight of the snow had brought down a ceiling in one of the attics and Delsa refused, her

dinner.

The following morning she busied herself with the small chores which had accumulated over

Christmas, washing and darning stockings, turning out drawers—anything which would occupyher while she waited for Duff’s return. Finally she washed her hair, and as she dried it by the

bedroom fire, she wasreminded of her wedding day when she had got up early to perform the

same office as a boost to her morale because she had nothing to wear. How terrible she must

have looked, she thought, in her cheap, badly made dress, with Molly’s scarf tied round her

head because she had thrown her only hat away; how gauche she must have appeared to

Samantha who had so carelessly handed over her mink jacket and bade her keep it, how

annoyingly childish to Duff, being more concerned with the rough and tumble of Knockferry’s

market day than the more solemn reason that had brought her there.

She would not make quite the same mistakes now, she reflected, as she sat at the dressing-table brushing out her hair, but neither perhaps would she have plunged with such little

concern into such a momentous undertaking with a perfect stranger. Oh, well, she thought at

eighteen one can’t be expected to have much sense, neither did an orphanage prepare one for

the sort of environment in which she had found herself at Clooney. She was still only eighteen,

of course, but life, surely, had begun to teach her something? She gave her despised freckles a

final dusting of powder, put on Kitty’s pearls as a complimentary gesture to the donor, and

went downstairs for luncheon.

“What shall we do after lunch?”Nonie asked with the disgruntled repetition that was

becoming monotonous.

“Well, I’m going for a walk. Why don’t you read some of those books you had for Christmas,

or help Agnes make cakes for tea?”Harriet said.

“Can’t I come with you?”

“No.”She had not meant to sound unkind, but she felt nervous and wanted to be alone. The

time of Duff’sarrival was uncertain, but he could hardly be expected before tea, Jimsy had said.

Nonie thrust out her lower lip and looked sullen.

“You don’t want me,”she said.



“Oh, Nonie dear, it isn’t that, but sometimes one wants to be alone to think. You should

understand that because when you first came home for the holidays you didn’t want anybody.”

“It was different then—nobody wanted me. I’ll be going back to school soon, so I do think you

might take me with you today.”Nonie had begun to whine, and Harriet felt exasperated.

“You’ll get lost like you did before,”complained Nonie.

“Of course I won’t get lost. I’ll take Kurt, and I’ll be back for tea.”

“You’re not running away, are you? Father wouldn’t be very pleased if he came home and

found you’d gone,”Nonie said, the whine more pronounced than ever, and Harriet’s patience

snapped.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake! If you go on like this you’ll make me feel like doing just that!”she

exclaimed, getting up from the table, thankful that the meal was over.

“This very afternoon?”

“Yes, this very afternoon—now do go and find yourself something to do,”Harriet said, and

went upstairs to fetch a warm coat and her wellingtons.

When she was ready to set out, however, she could not find Kurt. She called, but neither the

dog nor the bitch answered, so she went alone. It was very probable, she reflected, that Kurt

with that uncanny instinct he seemed to have had pre-knowledge of his master’s return and

was waiting.

It was thawing fast as she ploughed her way through small drifts, and under her feet all

around her she could hear the small brittle sounds of melting snow and ice. How long ago it

seemed, she thought, since she had lain here in a bog-soaked declivity, listening to those other

sounds, the moorland night sounds which were then so new to her and had filled her with

superstitious dread. Presently she realised that the light was beginning to weaken as the sun

dipped behind Slieve Rury and she had a long walk back to the Castle. Duffmight even have

arrived by now, and she was suddenly as anxious to get back to him as she had unconsciously

been to postpone their meeting. Shyness ofhimhad driven her out with the first excuse she

could think of to discourage Nonie, but it was New Year’s Eve, a time for promises and fresh

beginnings, a time, even, for new hope. Duff had pledged himself to return that day because

she had specially asked him, and whatever news he should bring back from Dublin, she mustlearnacceptance.

She had dropped a glove somewhere, one of a knitted scarlet pair she had bought from a

cheap-jack stall on market day, but it would waste time going back to look for it. The shortest

way to the road now was to follow the jagged line of the foothills which, if she kept close in,

would also afford some shelter from the wind, which was becoming bitter.

It was rough going over the shale and broken stones brought down from the hills over the

years, and her wellingtons slipped on icy patches, but the snow had not drifted here and she

was safe from the bog which she knew lay away from the mountains. She stumbled again,aware that the rough tracks which served as a road was farther away than she had supposed,

and nearly fell down altogether when a voice spoke suddenly out of nowhere.



“Norah?”What the hell do’you mean comin’here in the light of day? Are you thinkin’to turn

me in, you bitch?”the voice said, and a hand shot out of nowhere and yanked Harriet off her

feet and seemingly straight into the mountain’s side.

She found herself in a dark, damp little cave, sprawling on the ground with an unshaven, wild-

looking man standing over her.

“Did Nora send you?”he asked, jerking her to her feet.

“No one sent me,”she replied when she could get her breath back.“I was taking a harmless

walk and I shall be late for tea.”

She had only said what was uppermost in her mind at the moment, but the answer seemed

to confuse him.

“Who are you then? Are the Guards wid you?”

“The Guards?”For a moment she could only think of smartly marching regiments trooping the

colour, then she said,“Oh! Are you the man who broke out on Christmas Day?”

“I am thatman, an’if you’ve a mind to let out a screech an’warn the Guards, I’ll do you

first,”he said. Harriet looked at him dubiously, remembering Cassidy’s bloodthirsty account of

this man’s crime, but he seemed to her a thin, miserable little specimen with shifty, rather

frightened eyes and a very bad cough.

“There’s no one with me. I’m Mrs. Lonnegan of Castle Clooney and I was taking a walk, as I

told you,’‘she replied.

“Castle Clooney, is it? You talk very calm, ma’am. Wouldn’t you be afraid?”

“No,”said Harriet, as surprised as he to find she was not, but who, she thought, could be

afraid of this weedy, shaking creature who, whatever he had done, seemed to be as afraid of

her as he had expected her to be of him?

After that, conversation had lapsed between them. He told her uncertainly she would have to

remain where she was until his girl came after dark to get him away, as she had promised, but

he seemed to have doubts even of that. Norah, he said, would like as not turn him in for the

reward, and she with her mind set on bettering herself. She’d had it all fixed for tonight, hesaid, the money, the car, but you never knew with wimmin. Had she any money on her, he had

asked, and when she answered no had seen the pearls and snatched them off.

“These will buy me me freedom if they’re real,”he said, and from then on only his painful

cough had broken the silence.

It had seemed like hours to Harriet, sitting on a wetflat stone, listening to the man coughing,

and watching the daylight fade, and she had leisure to reflect on her own’foolishness. She

should have kept away from the Plain of Clooney which from the first, had boded her no good;

Duff would be annoyed by yet another tax on his indulgence, and it looked as if she would seethe New Year in with an escaped convict in a very cold and unromantic cave.



She could not have been there as long as she had supposed, she thought later, for there was

still a modicum of pale sky showing through the opening to the cave which threw a faint splash

of daylight on the ground. Quite suddenly a shadow seemed to cross it, and Harriet looked up.

Kurt was standing in the entrance, his head with its pricked ears silhouetted against the grey of

the sky, his muzzle lifted, questing, his strong chest and forelegs magnificent and motionless as

he stood there like a statue.

“Kurt?”she said softly. His ears flicked like sensitive antennae, then with a deep-throated cry

he bounded into the cave. As the startled man got up with an oath, the dog wheeled and

sprang straight at him.

After that things seemed very confused. There were voices and shouts, the cave seemed to

fill with people and strange men giving orders, and the little man with the terrible cough was

released from Kurt’s hold and led away.

“So you had the Guards widout all the while, an’you sittin’there like an innocent child and

blackenin’your sowl wid lies!”he shouted at Harriet as he passed.“Tay, she says—I’ll be late forme tay!”

“‘Twas your gurrl tipped us off, Mulligan, so rest aisy with your curses,”someone called

back.“Never trust a woman when there’s a price on your head, me fine boyo!”The cave seemed

very quiet after they had all gone. Harriet became aware that some stranger had been holding

her in an unnecessary close embrace for some time, and was even kissing the top of her

head.“My love—are you all right?”a voice kept saying, and looking up she saw Duff’s dark face

above her.

“I’m—I’m quite all right, thank you. He—he was far more scared than I was,”she said, a little

unsteadily.“How did you know about him? How did you manage to collect the Guards?”

“They’d been tipped off and were on their way when Cassidy and I found your glove. We’d

been trailing your footprints in the snow and guessed what had happened, so we let Kurt scent

your glove and sent him on to reconnoitre. I was so very afraid for you, Harriet. Were you

frightened?”

“No—he was such a scared, scruffy little man, and he has a terrible cough.”

“You are always surprising me,”he said.“You weep so easily over trifles, but never at real

moments of stress, and you dismiss convicts and other alarming incidents with charming

inconsequence.”

“Yes,well...”she said vaguely, and returned to matters she could grasp more easily.“Wasn’t

Kurtwonderful,Duff? That’s the second time he’s rescued me from the Plain of Clooney.”

“Well, you mightn’t be so lucky a third time, so keep away in future. What induced you to

give us all such a fright?”he said a little roughly. “If it hadn’t been for Cassidy meeting you,

andNonie’s fixed conviction that you’d run away, we wouldn’t have known where to

look.Wereyou running away, Harriet?”

“Of course not. I only said I might if she kept on pestering me because I wanted to be quiet

and—and prepare.”



“Prepare for what?”

“For you.”

“And what, I wonder, do you mean by that?”

It was so dim, now, in the cave that she could not read his expression, and she reached up ahand to touch his face, tracing the lines of those harsh, ugly features, and finally his mouth. He

imprisoned her hand then, holding it against his lips, and she felt them move, brushing

backwards and forwards on her flesh.

“I mean,”she said,“that I’ll be content with what you can give me, if you’ll help me—teach me

a little ... I mean that I can accept whatever you choose to do with—with the other part of your

life so long as there’s something left for me.”

She could just see the warmth of tenderness in his eyes as he replied:“Did you think you were

going to have to be content with crumbs?”

“Crumbs are better than nothing,”she said.“I—I—well, I might as well say it, even if it does

embarrass you—you see, I love you, so as long as you will allow me to go on loving you, the

crumbs will satisfy me.”

He caught her to him, kissing her eyes, and her cold, startled lips with sudden passion.

“Oh, Harriet, my sweet, generous love...sometimes you make me feel like weeping,”he

said.“How could I be embarrassed when I’d hoped so much that in the end you would feel more

than gratitude for me?”

“You hoped that? But you treated me always like achild. How was I to know?”

“I treated you like a child because it was the only way to curb my own impatience. I felt I had

rushed you into ameaningless marriage and cheated you out of the normal expectations of any

young girl ... I was giving you time to grow up, to get used to me as a person before asking you

to get used to me as a husband ... and then I had to go and fall in love with you, which made my

problem doubly hard.”

“You fell in love with me!”

“You needn’t sound so amazed, young woman,”he retorted with a certain severity.“If you

hadn’t been so taken up with Cousin Rory’s charming attentions, you might have spotted things

for yourself.”

“Oh, Duff! And I thought you wanted Samantha.”

“You did nothing of the kind! You knew very well that I married you in the first place to be rid

of her.”

“Yes, but—you’d told me so many times that a man had basic animal instincts and passion

had nothing to do with love that I thought—well, I suppose I thought the old attraction was too

strong for you. I even thought you were going to meet her in Dublin.”



“I did meet her in Dublin—for the last time, in a lawyer’s office. The sale of the farm is more

than enough to settle that guarantee she thought such a trump card, and give us a little over

for a few home repairs, so let’s forget Samantha, who won’t trouble either of us again. I must

confess that, regrettable though it may be, my daughter’s habit of eavesdropping has had very

illuminating results. Nonie came clean with all her bits and pieces of undigested gossip and

overhead conversations in her anxiety over your imagined runaway departure, so much is

already explained.Now, can you forgive me for allowing a malicious woman to cause you so

much unhappiness?”

“Can you forgive me for the things I said after poor Uriah had died?”

He took her face between his hands and kissed her very gently.

“It’s easy to forgive when one loves, sweetheart,”he told her.“I heard about Kurt’s change of

affections, too. Would you like me to give him to you for your own, and make up, perhaps, for

having to take Uriah’s life?”

“Oh, Duff, you don’t need to reproach yourself. You did what you had to, and in a queer kind

of way I would rather it had been you than anyone else ... ButKurt !That would be a most

wonderful present—Oh!—Presents remind me—that mean little man took Kitty’s pearls. You

must get them back.”

“Kitty’s pearls?”He frowned for a moment, then a twinkle came into his eye.“So that’s why

you were so reluctant to wear them! They were my mother’s. Kitty’s little string, of far less

value, lies in my safe waiting for Nonie to be old enough to wear than.”

“Oh, Duff...”she said again. Such another silly misconception, she thought, like the bridal suite

which, in the end, had held no memories except those of a long-forgotten visitation of stiff

personage from England in Queen Victoria’s reign.“I’ve been so stupid—so often—can you

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