Ten days had passed since their meeting on top of the tower. Now they were standing outside Auriol’s bedchamber door, gripping each other’s arms, and laughing. They had wanted to laugh very often, since their quick kiss on the tower, both when they met in public, and on the three occasions when they had been alone.

“Damme, Meriel, I never saw you look so well before,” said Auriol shyly, putting his hands on her shoulders. Her beauty, in his eyes, was making him inarticulate. “But I sincerely trust that you don’t show yourself in your shirtsleeves in the general way. No one who saw you now would take you for a boy, let me tell you.”

Meriel glanced at her discarded coat, tunic and neckcloth, which lay over a nearby chair. Auriol’s clothes were underneath.

“No, I never dare take off more than my coat. But how so, sir? I have no hips or bosom to speak of, thank God.” She looked up at him, frowning slightly, but with happiness and teasing in her eyes.

“No, and you’ve no shoulders either,” he said, stroking them, but unable to look at her. “See your ankles, and your hands, and your neck, it’s scarcely thicker than my arm.”

“Well,” said Meriel calmly, “I could name you half a dozen men as tall as I am, with shoulders, who have far less strength at least in their hands than I have.”

“Yes, but it’s the look of the thing. Swear to me you’ll never let any man besides me see you like this!”

“Unnecessary, but yes, I swear!” She pulled down his head to kiss it.

Auriol was unable to resist the temptation to pick her up off the floor, swing her legs over one of his arms, and hold her like a child.

The reaction was, “Good God, what will you be at!”

He laughed, “Oh, Meriel.”

“No, put me down, I’m nervous enough in all conscience without that. I mean — I don’t care to be dangling four feet above the ground.”

“As you wish. I had meant to put you at your ease.”

But she kissed him again when he released her, and he could tell that in some way he had increased her excitement as well as his own, so all was as it should be.

Meriel opened the door of his little bedchamber, and they saw that it was as dark as a cave: they had been expecting to find it already lit, though neither had done anything about it. Auriol picked up a branch of three candles from the sofa-table and led the way inside. When he had set the candelabrum down on a chest of drawers, he turned round, and saw that Meriel was looking back into the other room, and had her arms folded tightly around her body. He took two strides towards her.

“Are you cold?”

“No, sir.” She closed the door, and smiled at him.

He took both her hands, and kissed first the left and then the right, which bore on its middle finger the great carnelian seal-ring of Westmarch. Drawing her close to him, he examined this. Meriel gave him a pat on the side of the face, then stood on tiptoe and bit him lightly on the jaw. He gave a grunt of laughter.

“Little vixen.”

“Elephant.”

Auriol, holding her by the waist, began to pull at her shirt.

“Oh, I adore you,” she said, struggling, laughing as he laughed. They took a step nearer to the bed in the alcove, and the candles flickered in a draught.

Yesterday, they had ridden out to a wood several miles away, and there they had chased each other, like children. Once, when they were rolling down a little slope in each other’s arms, Auriol had said: “Never fear that you’ll find yourself breeding, I’ll take care of that, Meriel.” She remembered the male smell of him, the strong peppery reek that must be so different from her own scent of dirty blood and corruption, which was imperceptible to herself, but about which she had heard men talk with reference to women.

“No!” she said now, as his palm cupped her white breast under her shirt. Her eyes had caught sight of Auriol’s shadow, looming on the attic ceiling. Her own was nearly as large, and quite as active, but she did not notice it.

“What? What do you mean?”

Meriel retreated. “I can’t. And don’t think to make me, sir I am not some wretched little game-pullet.”

“Meriel, what the devil —”

“I will not do it. I can’t.”

“No.” He lunged forward and tried to grab her wrist, then realised what a terrible mistake that was.

Nostrils savagely indented with anger, Meriel looked at him from the other side of the room.

“Never dare — do anything like that, sir.”

“I am sorry. Please, come back.”

“N-no.” The frightened sneer was gone.

“I tell you I’m sorry!”

Although it was the sudden memory of Auriol’s words in the wood that had jolted her into fending him off, it was not the fear of pregnancy but the fear of being swallowed, invaded, and abolished as Elphinstone’s daughter-son Marquis of Westmarch that possessed her now. She still loved him, but she was loyal to her old self. Reason told her that to make love was to lose pride, strength and purity. She knew all about the convention of virtue for women, and lived in disgust of it, but this was different. She knew that as a matter of honour, she must listen to reason at this last chance, before giving in, if she did give in, however unhappy it made her.

Auriol, though he was fighting his own anger, had some idea of her state of mind, and body.

“I’ll — I’ll be as gentle as I know how. And you mustn’t be afraid that —”

“I don’t want you to be gentle.”

“Then what? D’you wish to be ill-treated?” She said nothing, she seemed not to be listening at all. “Meriel, for God’s sake come here, I’ll die if you don’t!”

They stared at each other, and tears began to slop down Meriel’s cheeks as she edged forward into the middle of the room. “Can you not see?” she said. “It can’t be possible, not for me!”

“Meriel, if we don’t do this thing now, what will become of us, what will you do! Look at me!” Her sad, desirous eyes were on his breeches; he wanted her to take one look at his face.

“Lie still for me,” she whispered, giving him one glance. She stopped crying as suddenly as she had begun. “Only that, for now.”

With a huge effort, for her behaviour had not deflated him, but quite the opposite, which made him feel he was going mad, Auriol said: “Very well. We’ll see — what happens, then, little Marquis. Come!”

Meriel came, sat down on the bed, and took possession of his hand. She was thinking of his words: ‘what will become of us? what will you do?’ if you cannot love.

*

“Westmarch!” said Auriol, with a tremor of laughter in his voice. “My dear Westmarch, do, pray, wake up!” He shook her as she lay there asleep in her crumpled coat on the sitting-room sofa, next to a table which the two of them had loaded with cards, bottles, dirty glasses, and slips of paper the night before. She had been there for three hours; they had stayed together in bed next door till dawn.

“There seems to be no waking him at all, Esmond,” he said to Meriel’s major domo, who was standing in his tiny hallway looking with cynical indulgence on the sunlit scene.

He had known the Marquis for many years, and had never yet seen him do anything so natural as fall asleep in a friend’s rooms after an evening’s drunken gaming. Juxon had kept him on too tight a rein for that, and Esmond had often wondered at such a spirited young man’s submission to his ex-Governor. Both Meriel and Auriol knew that everyone had wondered at it.

“So I perceive, my Knight,” said Esmond.

“Uh-h,” said Meriel.

“Well, he hasn’t cocked up his toes yet, at all events … Westmarch,” said Auriol loudly, “your major domo is without, he’s come to fetch you to a meeting of the Closet!”

“What?” She saw his soft face, and raised a hand, which he brushed away.

“You ought at this moment to be presiding over a meeting of the Grand Closet. Esmond is here.”

“That, my lord Marquis, is indeed the case!” said the major domo.

Meriel jumped. She remembered last night, the plan they had made for being discovered in an innocent misdemeanour, and woke up. “What? Oh, my God! It’s you, Esmond, is it? Damn it, could you not have sent one of the footmen? It would have looked a deal less particular! D’you want the whole of Castle West to know I was too much disguised to make my way back last night? My head’s fit to kill me. Go, tell ’em I’ll be there directly, Esmond — with my compliments and apologies, of course!”

Esmond sniffed. “Mr Juxon, my lord Marquis, took it upon himself to order me to fetch your lordship in person. He, being detained by Mr Lucy, was unable to come himself.”

“Did he so! Well, in that case I am fortunate.”

“I daresay he was desirous of knowing the extent of the Marquis’s losses,” said Auriol. “They’re not so very bad!”

The major domo gave him a look, smiled, bowed deeply to Meriel, and left, closing the door behind him.

“Marquis!” said Auriol. They both laughed, uneasily. “Did you think me too familiar with Esmond?”

“My losses, my gains, sir! Twenty crowns you owe me, because we did play at piquet for a short while, didn’t we? Gad, if Juxon had come himself it would have been the very devil, but — but diverting!”

She turned her eyes to him and waited for a response, and he gathered her up from the sofa and set her on her feet, kissing her forehead with profound respect as he did so. Meriel put her hands in his, and squeezed them. “Would it not?”

“It would. But it was an addle-brained thing to do, only to tease them, we never must again.”

“No, though I thought it was rather to put them off the scent than to tease them. What a pity I do have to go.”

“I know, love.”

“It was good, the last time?”

“It was damnably good.”

They parted.

Fifteen minutes later, the Marquis walked into her dining-room, where ten men, most of whom were far older than she was, were seated at a table made to accommodate forty. Light from the east window fell on the table, but did not illuminate the faded mural, painted on plaster and depicting a battle, which ran round the walls. I seem to notice everything today, thought Meriel, with her eyes on the blue wigs and gleaming bald heads. She sighed: she had not been happy to leave Auriol this time.

The members of the Grand Closet rose from their chairs and bowed to her as she entered. She apologised sincerely for being late, as she never had been before, and they forgave her with smiling murmurs, and sat down, shuffling.

Juxon, in his capacity of First Secretary, sat at the Marquis’s left hand, but was removed by six places from the nearest full member of the Closet. When Meriel took her high seat under the window, he gave her a long, slow look which she took to be compassionate. He must think she was ill. Meriel’s heart beat fast at the thought of what she had been doing, and, thinking how remarkably little and ugly he was, she smiled and murmured in a friendly way, “Too much devilish brandy! Don’t, pray, look at me as though I’d just had notice to quit. What’s this?” she added, as Juxon handed her a sheaf of papers.

“Do but look at it, my dear Marquis.”

Glancing down, she saw that the whole meeting was to be about a proposed extension of the great canal from Fenmarket to Laura Spa, on the Northmarch border. Some claimed that an extension was quite unnecessary, and there had been trouble about the method of financing it even from its supporters. Meriel, turning over pages of figures gathered together by Juxon, remembered that she was not a supporter, while Juxon was.

Her lips tightened. In that moment, with the smell of Auriol still fresh on her skin, she realised quite what a fool she was, and how entirely unfit to be Marquis of Westmarch. Juxon had never blackmailed her into giving way to him over such things as this; she had allowed him to rule her out of laziness. She had encouraged him to take most of her work on his shoulders, and because of that, though for years she had opposed him on principle, he would always win her round in the end. The clarity with which she saw the outer world now was not at all the same, pleasurable clarity with which she had viewed it on the day after her talk on the beach.

From the far end of the table, the Senior Member of the Court of Citizens pronounced his opinion of the canal.

“My lord Marquis, before you have driven yourself to distraction by trying to understand such a set of rubbishing, lying figures as Mr Juxon has just set before you —” There was no sound from Juxon, but there were stifled laughs from two others “— I must tell you that on no account will the Court countenance the raising of a forced loan to finance such a damned caper-witted scheme, upon my word they will not! A sixty foot canal, above a hundred miles in length, through damned difficult country as you will know for yourself, Marquis, and to what purpose? The lining of certain pockets, ay, there’s your purpose for you!”

“Senior Member!” said the Keeper of the Treasury.

“All I have to say is that my sympathies are with you,” said the Marquis, raising her voice to reach him. “Do not be putting yourself in a passion, Senior Member.”

“A very improper style he uses in speaking to you! Such unbecoming violence!” whispered Juxon on her left. His face was completely impassive, though his words were so petulant.

“Do not you either, Juxon,” said Meriel, turning briefly.

She longed to tell him, now, that Auriol Wychwood was her lover, only to see the expression on his face. Crazily she thought he might perhaps be pleased.

“I would remind the Closet of the difficulties in transporting supplies during the Northmarch War,” said Mr Lucy, the dandified, talented Warlord Chancellor, who was only ten years older than Meriel. “I trust that one day this canal will be proved to be a military necessity even to your satisfaction, Senior Member.”

“You hope for another war, sir?” said Meriel, leaning forward, and brushing away a memory of Auriol which made her insides ache. Mr Lucy, looking at her, thought how very fascinating the Marquis was, and how impossible it was to make advances to a man in his position. Recently, his looks seemed to have improved. “With whom?” said Meriel.

“You mistake my meaning, Marquis,” he said with a good deal of softness in his voice. “Perhaps you will allow me to explain myself on some other occasion. Grant me an audience, and I will do so.”

Meriel stared at him, recognised his interest in her for the first time, and put her handkerchief up to her mouth. She was both amused, and as shocked as a sheltered virgin. “No sir, I perceive your meaning,” she said a moment later, concentrating heavily. “And I can only say — I still think it would be the outside of enough to be building this canal at such shocking expense — in peacetime, at all events if it is indeed necessary to raise a forced loan to pay for it. I collect that might lead to civil war — Senior Member?”

“Very true, Marquis! I honour you, upon my word!”

At that moment, a footman came in through a side door, and tiptoed over to the Marquis with a sealed letter in his hand. She broke the seals when he was gone, and held the letter up to her eyes as though she were shortsighted, with a careful mixture of contempt and approval on her face.

It took her a few seconds to understand more than that the words addressed to her had been transcribed by his hand, but at last Meriel saw that Auriol had written:

Meriel tucked the letter casually into her tunic pocket, and yawned. She then estimated that Juxon, who was too vain to wear spectacles, and used a lorgnette which he could not raise without seeming inquisitive, was too far away to read anything she wrote. She picked up her quill, and dipped it and scribbled in her large, untidy, almost childish hand:

‘My Beloved Wychwood’. Then she stopped. She could not think what to say, but she must write something, for she could not appear to deliberate over some little, perhaps frivolous interruption to important proceedings. She carried on: ‘Yr. Billet I shall always Treasure. Yes, indeed, pray let us indulge in a Game or Two after Mistress Hymenea’s party. It will be as well, you are right, not to Meet before then.’ In spite of the distant danger of suspicion, she wished he had suggested an earlier meeting. But he was as wise as he was good. ‘I am, Sir, Yr. Loving, Little Marquis, Meriel Longmaster, Westmarch’.

Her lips formed the words ‘little love’. She knew that her full signature would touch him deeply. As his young friend of a month ago, she had simply signed herself ‘M.L.’ in a horror of pomposity.

Meriel sealed her note with two wafers, laid it aside, and looked down at the table, aware that Juxon’s gaze was lowered like her own. She felt a spasm of pity for him in his isolation and his dislike of everyone but herself, and she resolved never again to show her irritation with him, always to be patient, kind and gentle like Wychwood. If he should discover the truth about Wychwood, she would deal with him.

At the other end of the room, the plan for the canal’s extension was still being discussed. Meriel, seeing that everyone thought she had said her piece already, and forgetting that she had meant to take full part, drifted away into thoughts of the hot strong beauty under Auriol’s shirt, but she was soon disturbed by a brief dying-down of all conversation at the table.

“Well?” she said, looking up at the silent, attentive faces of her Closet; and the sight of them filled her with guilt. Her voice when she spoke was higher than usual. “Have we yet come to any conclusion on this head?”

“I think not, just as yet, Marquis,” smiled Juxon.

A gust of wind blew through the open window, and rattled the papers on the table, giving Meriel an unexpectedly dreadful sense of being entirely unprotected.