Mr. Pitt's despatch, having relieved Roger of all responsibility in the Venetian business, had put him in a high good humour. With a laugh, he cried, 'It's not them I come to see, but you. Surely you must know that.' Then he threw an arm about her shoulders and gave her a resounding kiss on her apple-red cheek.
"For shame, Mr. Brook!' she exclaimed, torn between a desire to laugh with him and to preserve her dignity in front-of the grinning maids. 'One day you'll have to answer for such taradiddles; and to put wrong ideas into the heads of these lazy baggages is no way for a gentleman to behave. 'Forgive me, Nanny,' he smiled.' 'Twas no fault of mine that my visit was delayed. I'll do no more than wish them good appetite, then relieve you of my presence.'
'Be quick about it, then. What an outcry you would make did a clowning bear break in on you while sitting over your port of an evening; but for the babes 'tis every bit as bad a thing that you should peer and posture at them just before their meal.'
Roger went first to his daughter. She was just six months old, a fine healthy child, with his blue eyes and Amanda's auburn hair, which gave her a good prospect of beauty. But she was a solemn little thing, and when he chucked her gently under the chin she gave no more than the suggestion of a smile.
He turned to his godson. The ten month-old Earl of St. Ermins was a sturdy fellow, and with a tipsy rush of feet could already stagger a few paces unaided. Like Georgina and his father he was dark, and from them he had inherited both gipsy blood and that of King Charles II. The combination almost certainly predestined him to become a rake, but Roger felt that to be no great matter for concern, provided that the boy also inherited the good humour, generosity and sound common sense of his mother and his royal ancestor. He already gave signs of a merry nature, for when prodded in the stomach he uttered gurgles of delight and gamely strove to clutch at Roger's offending finger.
Clarissa laid a hand on Roger's arm. 'Please Roger! Desist, I beg. If you excite him so he'll not be able to keep down his supper.'
'Very well, then'; he turned to smile at her. 'But what are you doing in Nanny Bellows's domain?'
'I still count myself responsible for Susan,' she replied quickly, 'and about that I'd like speech with you, when you have the leisure.'
In his more cheerful mood, he now felt that he might as well get the interview over that he had been shirking; so he said, 'I am at your disposal now, M’am, if you wish.'
Tm mightily obliged, Sir'; she lowered her eyes, and added, 'In that case, let us leave the children to be fed and bedded.*'
After a word or two with Nanny Bellows, she led the way from the room and Roger, giving a gay little wave which included all the nurses, followed. Side by side they walked away from the nursery regions, then along a broad corridor, Suddenly Clarissa threw open a door and signed to him to pass her. Till then, he had had no idea whereabouts in the house she slept, but this was obviously her bedroom. Before he had time to turn she had given him a push and closed the door behind them.
'M'dear!' he protested lightly, as he turned to face her. 'Is it really necessary to compromise yourself like this? Strap me! Despite the fact that you are looked on much as though you were my niece, tongues would wag mightily did it become known that we'd chosen your bedroom as a place to talk, in.'
She was probably unconscious of it, but the dark mahogany of the door against which she stood made a perfect background for her. The pale gold hair fell in heavy ringlets on one side of her oval face. The purity of her milk and roses complexion was almost dazzling in the strong light thrown from the window opposite. Her arrogant little nose stood out imperiously above her tilted chin and long slender throat. Beneath the crossed fichus of her bodice, the corset that gave her an absurdly small waist, and the voluminous skirts of sprigged muslin, was a figure that Roger knew to be perfection; for less than six months earlier he had seen her naked.
' 'Tis the only place in which we can talk with certainty that we'll not be interrupted,' she said quickly.
'And what,' he enquired with a lift of the eyebrow, is there in a discussion about my little Susan that demands such privacy?'
'Susan is concerned in this deeply concerned. Her future well being may depend on it. But that is not all. Tell me honestly, Roger. Are you in love with Georgina?'
"No more and no less than I was when I first knew her, as a boy; no more and no less than I will be on the day I die.'
'That, then, is a thing apart. It proved no barrier to your marrying Amanda; so should prove none to your marrying again.'
'Not if I had the desire to do so. But I have not.'
Her mouth began to work, betraying her acute agitation. Suddenly she burst out, 'I know it to be unmaidenly! I am utterly ashamed! But, since you will not speak of this, I must. Amanda gave your child into my care. Only by invoking the law can you take her from me. It was Amanda's dying wish that we… that I… that you… Oh, Roger, can we not make a home for Susan together?'
'M'dear,' Roger said gently, 'Deeply honoured as I am by your continued attachment to me, I had hoped that our six months' separation would have caused you to feel differently. We went into all this shortly after poor Amanda's death. I told you then that I'd prove a most disappointing husband to you. For one thing, I am too old, and for another…'
'Too old!' she interrupted scornfully. 'What nonsense! You are but twenty-eight, and I'm near twenty.'
'I do not mean in years; but mentally. The life I've led this dozen years past, the deceits I have been forced to practise, the sometimes terrible decisions I've had to take, the cynicism engendered by a roving existence in which many women have played a part, all make me unfitted to take a young bride and bring lasting happiness to her.'
'Roger, I'd take you at your word, but for one thing. When I came to your room that night in Martinique, you at first spurned me; yet later, in the dawn, you declared me to be the loveliest thing you had ever looked upon, and vowed that when I'd been married for a while you'd seize on the first chance to seduce me.'
'I admit it; although I added that I'd attempt to only did your marriage prove an unhappy one. Yet I was a fool even to say so much, and did so mainly from an urge to restore your self-respect. I'd have done better to maintain that your beauty left me cold. Then you might by now be married. You were the toast of the Island, and could have taken your pick of the young 'officers in the garrison or a score of wealthy planters. That you should have thrown these chances away, and continue to be obsessed with a passion for anyone so unworthy as myself, fills me with acute distress.'
' 'Tis no fault of yours, and I have no regrets. Yet I resent it that you think me good enough only to become the wife of some young captain whose dearest wish was to get back to England so that he might once more enjoy his fox-hunting; or that I would demean myself to become a rich man's darling. I care not how many women you've slept with; or how often your secret work has forced you to lie and cheat. To me you are still worth all the other men I've ever met put together. Amanda did me a great kindness in rescuing me from a poverty-stricken existence with my Aunt; but, unwittingly, she also sealed my fate. Although I did my utmost to conceal it while she was alive, from the very day we met my heart became yours.'
'Clarissa! I beg you to say no more,' Roger protested unhappily. 'Did I intend to marry again, it would be you I'd ask; for you have much more than beauty. I'll never forget the high courage you displayed during those dark days when we were captives of the pirates, and later of the revolted negro slaves in San Domingo. But in due course I shall go abroad again, and in circumstances which would make it impossible for me to take a wife with me. I may be away from England, except for rare brief visits to report to Mr. Pitt, for years. What sort of a. life could that be for you?