“What are you doing here … in this house?”
“Staying here for a while until we leave. We shall be going soon and then there will be that belated ceremony.”
“She knows you are here … in this house?”
“Yes, in her house. It will be our house soon.”
“As you hope her fortune will be.”
“It is customary for a man to take charge of his wife’s affairs, you know.”
“Please, please go away. She is young and you are old … old.”
“Experienced,” he corrected. “That is what she likes. She wants no green boys, that one.”
“Have you no shame?”
“No,” he answered, “none.”
“What are you proposing to do?”
“Ha! You come here trying to probe our secrets. I am mad with love for Carlotta.”
“And her fortune.”
“It is part of her charm. I am mad with love for all that but otherwise perfectly sane.”
I felt limp with helplessness. What could I do? One thing I could not do was bear to stand there any longer and bandy words with him while I looked at his mocking face.
I turned and went out to my horse.
I rode back in a kind of daze. I had to do something. What?
Whichever way I looked I saw only one thing. Nothing could save Carlotta but the death of Beaumont Granville. Whatever else happened he would always be there. He would never give up. And he had bewitched her. He would have to die.
When the idea came to me, oddly enough, I felt better. I went along to the gun room. I used to watch Carl and Benjie at shooting practice and I had now and then joined them.
“Not a bad shot for a girl,” Leigh had once said.
It’s the only way, I told myself. I took a small pistol. It was one I had used before. It seemed like an old friend.
I took it up to my bedroom and hid it in a drawer.
Could I possibly do this? Could I commit murder? I suppose in certain circumstances anyone could, if it was the only way out of an intolerable situation.
It would be over in a few minutes. I would go into the house. I would call him. He would stand on the stairs. All I had to do was raise the gun and fire straight at him.
It would be the end … and it was the only way if Carlotta was not going to be launched into a life of misery.
I owed this to her. I had not owned her when she was born. I had let another woman take her. I must save her from this sadistic brute, for I could clearly imagine what he would do to her.
What he had done to me had scarred me, I believed forever. I had done that for my father and I would do this for Carlotta. I would choose my moment as he stood there on the stairs mocking me.
I felt better now.
There was the day to be lived through. It seemed so long. In the early afternoon I passed my father on the stairs. He looked at me intently.
He said: “You don’t look well.”
“I’m surprised that you noticed,” I answered.
“I noticed. You’re fretting about that girl of yours, I suppose?”
I did not answer.
He took me by the arm and drew me into the room which was called his private study because he did his estate work there.
He looked at me quite kindly.
“She’s a girl who can look after herself,” he said. “She has a will of her own. If she wants to marry this man, she will, you know. There’s nothing you can do about it.”
“There is something I can do.”
“What?”
“I can stop the marriage and I will.”
“We can keep them apart for a while but that may not work. She’s a determined young woman.”
“And he is determined to get her fortune.”
“He’s got something of a reputation. But it could work. Sometimes a man gives up his old ways and settles down.”
I knew he was thinking of himself.
I said: “Not this man.”
“How do you know?”
“I do know something of him.”
“Reputations get exaggerated.”
“You said we had parted them. We haven’t. He’s at Enderby Hall.”
“At Enderby Hall!”
“Yes. I saw him there this morning.”
My father laughed. “Her house, of course. Well, I suppose if she says he can be there he has a right to be. You’ve led a sheltered life. You’ve heard tales of him and you’re upsetting yourself and everyone else because of it. If she’s set her mind on him and he on her … well, let them marry. It’s experience for her. It’ll be a taste of life.”
“You don’t know the sort of man he is.”
“Look, daughter, all men have certain experiences in their youth. You don’t expect them to behave like monks, do you?”
Then suddenly I was shouting at him. “I know this man. Do you remember lying in a filthy prison in Dorchester? Do you remember being taken to a room of your own and the next morning being released?”
He looked at me in surprise. “Of course I remember. It’s something I shall never forget. What has it to do with …”
“Everything!” I cried. “How do you think your freedom was bought? I paid for it … with that man. I … the daughter you have always despised.”
“What are you saying … ?”
“I am saying this: I went to plead for you. He was there … a great friend of Jeffreys. He would release you at a price …” I covered my face with my hands. “You have no conception what it was like. That man … How can I tell you? You see him as a normal, lusty man. I tell you he is capable of the greatest cruelty.”
He had taken my hands from my face. He said: “You … you submitted to that for me? Oh, my God! That was why … I looked for my benefactor and all the time it was my own daughter.”
“Yes,” I said, “the daughter who was of no account … the daughter who was not a son.”
He did not speak. I saw the terrible emotion in his face. It was hatred for that man. It was remorse … yes, remorse for years of neglect.
“Priscilla …” He spoke my name softly.
I did not answer. I felt I had had enough. I was exhausted with emotion and the only thought that sustained me was that of the pistol lying in the drawer in my room.
That was a day of events. During the afternoon Leigh came home. I was in his arms and he was kissing me, studying me. “It’s been a long time,” I said.
“I came as soon as I could. I’m giving it all up now. I’ve arranged it. I’m going to be home from henceforth.”
“That’s good, Leigh.”
“But, my dearest, you have grown thin … and so pale. You have been ill.”
“I think I shall be all right … soon.”
My mother was excited. “This is wonderful, Leigh,” she cried. “I have been so longing for you to come. Priscilla talks a great deal about your plans for the Dower House.”
She was running to the kitchens. A special feast must be prepared. She seemed to think that now Leigh was home everything would be all right.
I felt bemused. I kept thinking of the pistol in the drawer in my room. What could I do now? I had betrayed my secret at last. My father knew. I had not seen him since I had burst out of that room. He had gone out and had not returned.
It was clear that Leigh guessed there was something wrong. I was not listening to what he was saying. I could not think of anything but Beaumont Granville. Talking to my father as I had had brought it all back.
The secret was no longer shut away. It was out in the open.
When I was alone with Leigh, when he took me in his arms, when he was reminding me of how long we had been apart, how he had thought of nothing but me, I was only half listening.