CHAPTER ELEVEN

A Ball

Once a year, on the night of the Midsummer Ball, Meriel was publicly elected to the Marquisate of Westmarch by the Members of the Grand Closet, the senior officers of the Western Guard, and the chief place-holders of Castle West. In theory, her office was not hereditary, though the last man to have voted against the reigning Longmaster had been executed for high treason, two hundred and fifty years before. She was certain of holding her own.

Every year since her father’s death, Meriel’s fantasy had been that at least one of the electors who called out her name would look at her, and see she had no right to hold an honourable position. Every single person at Castle West, watching from a gallery, would know at the same moment that she was not Elphinstone’s heir. Until now, election day had been the most detested of all days in the year to Meriel; while to Juxon, it had always been the year’s high point.

As Steward of Castle West, it fell to Juxon to orchestrate the Marquis’s re-election. Juxon’s office was an ancient one, which had declined sharply in importance over the past century; but though he was little more than the overlord of the castle servants in everyday life, he still had a ceremonial part to play. He had the casting vote at the annual re-election, took precedence directly after the Colonel of the Guard, escorted Meriel on all state occasions, and enjoyed odd rights and privileges which were relics of the time when Castle West had been a rude fenland citadel, and the Steward its absolute ruler. Juxon loved his office, and declared he would not abandon it for any modern one.

Auriol now had a place at Castle West, for Meriel had appointed him Keeper of the Muniment Room at a stipend of seven hundred crowns a year, but it was not sufficiently important to give him the right to vote for her. On the night of the ceremony, he watched from a balcony with the other ball-guests, and though he was wedged in at the back between two young women who chattered, his height gave him a good view of the proceedings down below.

The Moon Gallery in which both election and ball were held occupied one whole side of Marquis’s Court, and was considered to be the most beautiful room at Castle West. It was a high unfurnished chamber, floored with pale marble, painted white, and lined on each side with seven long windows. The spectators’ balcony where Auriol now sat ran round the whole hall, beneath a domed ceiling patterned with shining crescent moons. Illumination came only from chandeliers, hung so low that their candles were reflected in the windows’ naked glass: they were of silver, each wrought in the shape of eight branches of a rowan tree, with lights grouped to remind the admirer of flowers.

The greater number of the Marquis’s guests paid very little attention to the ceremony, which began with the assembling of the electors in a semi-circle opposite the main doors. They whispered and smiled and adjusted each other’s dresses, as in a loud high voice, Juxon read out a proclamation couched in archaic language. It contained many references to the Marquis’s duty of maintaining the glories of a revolutionary government under God which had passed away a long time ago, and had little of importance to say about the Marquises who had effectively abolished it. A few spectators, Auriol noticed, took a degree of pleasure in the spectacle down on the floor. No one mocked, but the occasion was not thought to be a grave one, like a Marquis’s funeral. Comparing Westmarch’s brief acknowledgement of its origins with the up-to-date formalities of the Island Palace, Auriol was impressed. He thought each elector bore himself with amiable dignity, Juxon in his daring pink hair excepted.

He knew that the officers of state intended to pay real homage to Meriel and all she was supposed to stand for in a few minutes’ time. Yet later in the evening they would be calling her ‘Westmarch’, and making ribald remarks when she sat down at the gaming-table or led Berinthia Winyard out to dance. This easy variety, which was her freedom, made her position tolerable to Meriel; but constantly treated at one moment as the liege-lord of all, and the next as something very little different from her fellows, she must, thought Auriol, have enough to confuse her in her life without a change of sex. He had not considered the matter in this way before, he had only been charmed by the effects of inconsistency on Castle West and on Meriel, effects which he saw for a moment as chaotic, threatening.

Juxon came to the end of his proclamation, and the talk on the balcony died down. It was not considered well-bred to chatter after this point in the proceedings.

“Gentlemen of Westmarch,” said the Lord Steward, “whom will you have?”

The forty-two called out, “Meriel Longmaster!” and Auriol was surprised at the leaping of his own heart at the sound of her name, at the sharp and marvellous reminder that he knew and loved her for what she was.

The Marquis, unaccompanied, threw open the great doors of the Moon Gallery and walked in. Her appearance caused a stir.

“My love, the oddest thing!” murmured a lady next to Auriol, who looked at her, though she was addressing her sister and not him.

Meriel was well known for her parsimonious attitude to dress, and since she reached her present height had worn the same old though beautiful black and silver coat at every re-election and first-rate ball. Now she was dressed in white, in the height of fashion. Her satin coat, strikingly embroidered with wreaths of black pineapples, fell from wide-padded shoulders in voluminous folds. It swept the ground at the back like a woman’s gown, and the heavy turned-back cuffs of its sleeves were over a yard in circumference. Underneath she wore a plain white tunic and knee breeches, a lace-edged cravat, and black silk boots. Auriol wanted to laugh and declare his love for her at the sight of the boots: he thought he might have guessed that if she tried to be modish, Meriel would calmly spoil the effect with one outlandish article. She ought to have bought a pair of white high-heeled shoes, but no doubt she would have thought such a discomfort an unforgivable extravagance.

He wished she had told him that she meant to change her lifetime’s habits at this ball; he thought he would have preferred her loving confidence to this agreeable surprise. But he was very pleased, and thought her impossibly noble and beautiful, and longed to be the first of those who would shortly kiss her hand. Under this desire there was a more disturbing wish: to go down and lead her out to dance, the Marchioness of Westmarch.

It had never occurred to Meriel that as a woman, she ought to have as much right to occupy her place in the Grand Closet as she now had as a man. In Auriol’s opinion, her tragedy had awakened an intelligence which might otherwise have remained undisturbed, but one thing which the revelation of her true sex had not led her to question even for a moment was the doctrine of the intrinsic unfitness of all women. It occurred to Auriol now that she should have that right, and the novelty and truth and thought of Meriel’s happiness in such a world made him blush. She ought not to accept that she was an impostor committing a sin. She ought not to believe that all females were poisonous, diseased. She ought to receive men’s homage in a ball dress and tiara, and he would tell her so.

“Meriel Longmaster,” said Juxon, speaking into her gently smiling face as she stood before him with her hand on the hilt of an ancient iron sword, “The Members of the Grand Closet, the Officers of the Guard, the Officers of the Household and the Prelate of Castle-town do beg that you will consent to serve this your twelfth year as Lord Marquis of Westmarch, Protector of the People.”

“I consent,” said Meriel, wondering what it would have been like to say she did not. “Gentlemen of Westmarch, I swear before the God of us all that I shall uphold the Revolution Constitution!” She looked up at the balcony, saw Auriol, and not thinking, did not even try to repress a radiant, teasing smile.

She went through the rest of the ceremony, the hand-kissings and bows and receiving back of her seal-ring from Juxon’s hands, with an appropriate expression of solemn boredom on her face.

An hour after Meriel had opened the ball, she and Auriol were seated on either side of a pretty little heiress, intoxicating each other by flirting with her.

“He is a monstrous deceiver, ma’am,” said Meriel. “He is no more able to perform creditably in a ballroom than an elephant. I beg you will not be wasting yourself on him.”

“An elephant, eh?” said Auriol to Meriel, and would have pressed her foot with his had the girl not been between them. “That, you see Maid Belvidera, is my reward for months of selfless devotion to my noble friend’s interest.”

“The fact is, ma’am, he is a toad-eater.”

“Oh, I am very sure he is not!” said the lady, quite indignantly.

Meriel laughed, delighted to see that Maid Belvidera preferred Auriol to herself.

“The next set is forming,” said Auriol, getting up and extending a masterful hand to the girl. “Now, Westmarch, use your superior consequence and insist on dancing with Maid Belvidera, and I shall have a mind to send you a message in the morning.”

Meriel made a large and graceful gesture. “I protest, I am by far too great a coward to risk such a shocking thing. He is the devil of a fellow with his pistols, ma’am. You see how he thinks nothing of forcing my hand.”

“A little more quickness, Westmarch, and you would have had the honour of leading Maid Belvidera out, not I.”

“He is an insufferably insolent creature,” sighed the Marquis.

“I do not see,” said the girl, “how a man may be both a toadeater and insufferably insolent, Marquis.” She blushed and looked innocent.

“Two sides of one coin, ma’am. I retire from the lists disconsolate, but I shall claim you later in the evening.” She rose, kissed Maid Belvidera’s hand, smiled up at Auriol, and watched him lead the girl away and take his place in the column of dancers.

Turning round, she caught sight of Maid Belvidera’s mother, Mistress Corinna, who was seated some feet away. The woman’s expression was of mixed hope and petulance: hope because the Marquis had flirted with her daughter, petulance because only Auriol had taken her into the set. Meriel thought she must have seen the fond look she had had on her face when watching the couple, and presumed it was intended for her daughter. Yes, thought Meriel, if I have to be at Castle West, I prefer to be the most important man in the place, because it’s an excellent game.

Mistress Corinna looked in the Marquis’s direction again; their eyes met, and she gave Meriel a carefully controlled smile of deep obligation. Meriel thought it her duty to walk over to her.

“I must congratulate you on your daughter, ma’am. She is a most charming girl, she’s taken very well, has she not?”

“Why, so I hope, Marquis.”

“To be sure she has, Mistress Corinna, and no one could wonder at it,” said Dianeme Sandeman Grindal, putting her head round Meriel’s outsize shoulder at that moment, and looking openly mischievous. “What a shocking flirt you are, my lord!”

The Marquis’s bland acceptance of this interruption forced Mistress Corinna to look delighted.

“So there you are, Dianeme, I haven’t been able to come within reach of you all evening, it’s you who are the shocking flirt,” said Meriel. “Impertinent, too. Devilish fetching, that comb in your hair.”

“Well, to own the truth I think it makes me look like a quiz, though it’s becoming to some, I don’t deny, but one must be in the mode, ain’t that so ma’am?”

“Indeed, Mistress Dianeme, in the proper mode.”

“And you look as fine as fivepence yourself, Westmarch.”

Mistress Corinna’s attention was distracted at that moment, and Dianeme and Meriel bowed and walked off arm in arm in search of wine and ratafia.

“Ain’t you vastly obliged to me for rescuing you, my lord? She’d have kept you by her side all evening if she could. Lord, I was fit to bust my stay-laces when I saw how she looked when I came up! How quickly she did put on a smiling face, to be sure.”

“You’re a minx, Dianeme.”

“Ay, very true, I wonder why you bear with me?”

This was a serious question, and it took Meriel aback, for Dianeme had never asked it before. Seeing that they were surrounded by people deep in their own conversations, trying to make themselves heard, Meriel said, “Well, you were a novelty, ma’am, singular, and you always will be, to me. I am not likely to meet anyone — who talks in your style, with just your candour, ever again.” For a second or two she felt depressed. “And if that was what attracted me to you when Philander brought you here, that and your being shunned by the ton, it was your good heart made me stay your friend. Surely you know all this? And the fact that you seemed to like me from the first and I had no need to pretend with you.”

Dianeme patted Meriel’s arm, and said, squinting across the crowded floor at the dancers, “What a fine figure of a man Knight Auriol is — but there’s no doubt he don’t look his best in a ballroom, not at all events when he’s got a little squab of a girl for his partner.”

“Very true, I’ve often told him he’s an elephant. Come, here’s your ratafia!”

“Mr Grindal says it’s low, a taste for ratafia.”

“Only outmoded. My mother will drink nothing else, as you know. D’you wish me to dance with you?”

“Well, of course I do! My reputation would be ruined if you didn’t give me one dance at least. They’d think you had tired of me, my lord, cast me off, out into the cold with you, hussy!”

“Dianeme, you’re incorrigible.”

Dianeme was amazed by the Marquis’s mildness, a good-humour which amounted to utter indifference. She had expected him to be either coldly unpleasant or, just possibly, vastly amused. She had had to summon up real courage to make her joke and see the result, and she wondered what, in Meriel’s opinion, constituted going beyond the line.

Before the next dance began, Dianeme asked after Berinthia. Meriel had confided in the Grindals about Berinthia’s marriage to Hugo, giving no reason but that she had arranged the business because she did not want to marry her cousin herself. Both Philander and Dianeme had thought Meriel chilly, changed for the worse, though they approved the plan. “Is your mother reconciled?”

“No. Well, yes, after a fashion, but she will never forgive me.”

“She’ll be finding another bride for you soon, I’ve no doubt,” said Dianeme, shrugging her shoulders as she closely watched Meriel’s face.

“I have forbidden it.”

“Oh.”

Meriel smiled. “I daresay that sounds hatefully pompous.”

“Masterful, my lord.”

The fiddles on the balcony struck up another tune, a quick, rustic but currently fashionable air which Meriel much preferred to the more formal music of before. “Come,” she said, for she was not engaged for this dance, and took Dianeme on to the floor.

From opposite sides of the hall, Auriol and Juxon watched tenderly over her as she spun round with her stout and unsuitable partner. She was the only dancer in white, and the only person in the room with bright red hair, hair which had always disturbed Juxon, because he thought it both ugly and too noticeable, Meriel’s only physical flaw.

Though Meriel was drawing attention to herself tonight, showing off her vigour and beauty under the chandeliers in a way which might be thought dangerous, Juxon and Auriol grew increasingly certain as they watched her that she was safe now, secure in her happiness, established for life in her masculine part. Both felt a twinge of regret that they did not understand: Auriol thought that perhaps his was a fear that she would not always need him, whereas he, poor as he was, would always need her. Hackneyed metaphors came alive when he looked at her. She had swept him off his feet and woken him from sleep, and how could he not be grateful? He did wish, with a strength that surprised him, that it were possible to dance with her.

The music came to an end and those on the floor parted, smiling, with flourishing bows or curtsies. Juxon had turned away to speak with an old man before the dance finished, but Auriol, still attentive, saw Meriel walking off in the direction of the bench reserved for Saccharissa’s Maids of Honour. On impulse, he followed her.

Meriel was a little put out to find that Maid Rosalba, with whom she had been wanting to dance all evening for the sake of past emotions, was not in her place. Auriol’s appearance at her side surprised her.

“I wished to ask Maid Rosalba to stand up with me,” she explained. “Did you observe her in the last set? I didn’t, and you know she is obliged to remain here if she is not dancing. Penalties of office.”

“Do you know, I had the same notion. I’d like to dance with her.”

“Would you? Oh, but you must yield to me! She is my —” Meriel stopped, knowing that Rosalba was nothing. With great difficulty, she refrained from touching Auriol’s hand.

He smiled and at that moment, Rosalba arrived on the arm of an ugly young man, who kissed her fingertips and murmured something complimentary before quitting her. Both Meriel and Auriol, seeing her, decided that her pink dress and chaplet of roses did not become her: simultaneously, they moved towards her. As soon as she set eyes on the Marquis, the smile on Rosalba’s face became fixed.

“Maid Rosalba, are you engaged for this dance? May I have the honour?” said Meriel.

Rosalba curtsied, and her expression did not change.

Auriol wished to partner Maid Rosalba now because a little while earlier, he had overheard her saying to one of her friends that for her part, though everyone was in transports over the Marquis’s new dress, she could not think white an eligible colour for a man. She had added that if he were not of such exalted rank, everyone would think that the Marquis had a good deal of self-consequence, despite his casual manners. Auriol had been very much shocked. He wished to save Meriel from the girl’s impertinence, and from possible hurt.

Rosalba’s adoration of an ideal Meriel had turned in the last few weeks to dislike and fear. Under the influence of Mr Marling’s rough affection, Meriel’s neglect, and the other Maids’ gossip, her fantasies of becoming a Marquis’s sophisticated mistress had first disappeared and then come back as evil memories of herself and of vanished horizons. Rosalba blamed Meriel for the disillusion and shame she felt, not herself, or Mr Marling, with whom her worldly interest lay. She had persuaded herself that the Marquis had gone some way at least towards deceiving her, and Auriol, guessing this, thought she was not the nice child Meriel imagined her. He thought her a spiteful little hypocrite.

How could I have thought red hair and those eyebrows fascinating? said Rosalba to herself. He is more like a woman than a man, and no one could say that of Mr Marling.

“But I too wish to beg you for the honour, ma’am,” said Auriol. He did not acknowledge to himself that one of his reasons for wishing to dance with her was causeless, frightening jealousy, a desire to separate her from Meriel. It was unmanly to be jealous of a girl like Rosalba Ludbrook simply because long ago, Meriel had pitied her.

“Oh,” Rosalba said. She had seen the two of them pretending to be rivals over Maid Belvidera Urquhart, and remembering that pretty scene, she tightly clutched her fan. “Do you, sir? How very k-kind you are.”

“Come, Maid Rosalba, will you not favour me above this great gaby here?” said Meriel, with a good deal of warmth in her eyes. She was delighted that the girl was obviously reconciled to her marriage: a week ago she had seen Rosalba voluntarily tuck her hand into the crook of Mr Marling’s arm, and smile up into his face. When she saw that, Meriel’s vague guilt about her former feelings had quite disappeared.

You think to impress me, sir, but you do not! thought Rosalba, looking at the Marquis. She said, “Yes, Marquis, for it would so add to my consequence to be seen standing up with you and not with Knight Auriol!” and looked flirtatiously at Auriol.

“Why ma’am, you are learning to be quite a woman of the world,” said Meriel, raising her eyebrows. “I should like very much to add to your consequence.”

The smiling glance she gave Auriol made it clear to him that she knew he did not want her to dance with Rosalba for some reason of his own, but that she intended to do so all the same. Auriol walked off and tried to think of some woman whom he would not find repulsive as a dancing partner; he did not mean to spend the whole evening watching Meriel and wanting her.

The next dance was slow and stately; Rosalba performed it gracefully, and the Marquis with competence. Their conversation was as efficient as their dancing; and so was that of Berinthia and Hugo, two places up in the column.

“What a vastly agreeable ball this is, Marquis,” said Rosalba.

“I confess I am enjoying myself vastly more than I’m in the habit of doing. You are my partner, after all.”

“Why Marquis, how absurd you are, to be sure!”

“No, indeed!”

They were separated then by the movement of the dance, and crossing over towards each other again, satin coat and dress skirts billowing behind them, they felt very far apart. What ought I to have done if I had been all she supposed? thought Meriel, touching Rosalba’s damp hand in passing. The qualm was brief but unpleasant. Looking at the formal little face in front of her, coming up again, she thought that profoundly believing herself to be a man at heart, she did indeed quite naturally find certain women attractive. The problem was merely that not being ostensibly a man, she could do nothing about her desire, could not do justice to women, which was a thousand pities. Never would she revel in the knowledge that she was of the same sex as her love if a pretty girl were actually to kiss her. In fact, she would be terrified of such a woman, and might even feel disgust. Meriel had not fully realised this till now, and she supposed her awareness was all due to Auriol.

At that moment, she passed within eavesdropping distance of Hugo and Berinthia.

“You quite put me to the blush, sir,” said Berinthia loudly, perfectly pale-faced, and Meriel wondered at the ability of women to lie and be cold just as and when it was demanded of them. It was demanded of them all their lives, and then men mocked or criticised them for it, just as they criticised them when they told the truth.

Berinthia was weary. She had danced twice with Hugo, and would do so a third time in order to cause satisfactory speculation. Meriel would be made to wait until the last quadrille to lead her out. In another two weeks the comedy would be over: Castle West would be persuaded that theirs was a case of passion, and the announcement of her betrothal to Hugo would be sent to the Westmarch Gazette.

She was wishing to herself that something very disagreeable would happen to Meriel when the music came to an end.

*

When the Moon Gallery grew so hot with candle-flames and overdressed bodies that the paint on several faces began to shine and smudge, Meriel had three of the long windows flung open despite her mother’s protests about dangerous night air. Saccharissa hinted at worse dangers to her Maids of Honour, but would not be precise, though Meriel understood her, and laughed. There were yew hedges in the unlit courtyards outside, tall and elaborate enough to seem as good as a maze to couples wishing to hide themselves; but for fear of being noticed, few chose to slip away. The Marquis did choose to leave her ball for a few minutes.

The moon was only just short of the full, but it was hidden by a drift of cloud, and glowed faintly in the blackness like a pallid streak in a painting. Together with the Gallery windows, it cast just enough light to show up the courtyard’s hedges as thick, impenetrable walls. At last alone, Meriel breathed deeply, enjoying the mixture of hot human scents and the smell of invisible lavender, dry lawns and yew. The air out here was soft and warm as fur.

She did not want to be observed, and remembering this, she quickly walked deeper into the garden. When she was out of sight behind a piece of topiary, she cast an affectionate and conscious glance over her shoulder at the building’s yellow-lit arches crowded with life. Meriel sighed, exuberantly hugged herself, and closing her eyes sat down on the grass.

The noise of the fiddles pulsed over her, and they sounded far more enchanting out here than they could ever do inside. So very much alive, and yet I could fall asleep and cause a scandal, she thought, preparing to lie down for a moment.

“Marquis — Meriel!”

Her shoulders jerked. “Oh, is it you sir?” she said, turning her face up and smiling as she recognised Auriol. The sharp line of his falling hair as he bent over her would have been enough to tell her who it was, if she had not known his voice or noticed his size. “Did you come upon me by accident? I thought you might, indeed, somehow.”

“No, I saw you step out. I’m exceedingly glad you had the windows opened, Meriel, we may dance together out here with impunity,” he whispered, looking over the hedge at the ballroom windows. “There’s no one about just now.”

“Yes, perhaps. You wish to dance with me?” She admired his dim profile, the short nose and heavy chin she remembered once thinking underbred.

“Come!” Auriol helped her up, and she stumbled, then yawned and straightened herself, still a little puzzled by his evident need to dance with her.

“But I do not know the woman’s part, her steps,” she said. “And neither do you, so that won’t answer.”

“It’s a minuet, the parts are as similar as makes no odds. I hope you may not have ruined your coat sitting on the grass like that, Meriel. Such a pretty coat!” He rubbed her arms and nuzzled her neck, and she gripped him by the thigh, running one hand up, over his buttocks and tensed back.

“Fustian. Ah,” she whispered, kissing him on the mouth.

“Let’s dance, come,” said Auriol, laughing and breaking free.

“Do you think we might not better employ ourselves? Such an opportunity as this maze affords!” Her face looked blue-grey in the night, but her eyes could be seen to sparkle and her lip curled with desire.

“No, I do not.”

“Why, I have never had to deplore a want of spirit in you before, sir.”

“Oh, have you not?”

She decided to indulge him.

Trying not to make a noise, yet provoking each other to giggles, they trod a few inaccurate measures. And then they froze, ducked, and fled from each other at the sound of some other lover’s voice beyond the hedge. One minute after it was over, their brief minuet became an odd and frightening experience in memory. Panting at opposite ends of the garden, both longed for the security of the day after tomorrow, when they would be a hundred miles away at Longmaster Wood.

In the Moon Gallery, Hugo Longmaster went over to the Marchioness’s sofa to report that he had overheard two men say that he and Berinthia made a very handsome couple, and would likely make a match of it. This was a toned-down version of their remarks on Meriel’s incompetence.

“I beg of you, do not be telling all the world! Lower your voice. Well, I am obliged to be pleased — what fools some persons can be, to be sure!” said Saccharissa. An important ball usually had a tonic effect on her, and this evening she was feeling well enough to sit upright, and even to move about a little.

Heavy-set diamonds frosted her hair and her bare wrinkled arms, her neck and her thin bosom. They took away her usual puppet-look and turned her into a hard little idol, an impression of which she was aware. Only a sense of what was right kept her from using her diamonds all the time.

“Mr Juxon, I thought, looked on our last little display with complaisance. I thought it as well to kiss Berinthia’s hand in the supper-room, aunt.”

“Mr Juxon, my dear Hugo, fears a wife’s influence over Meriel above all else in the world. One has merely to look at him to guess that. Ignorant jackanapes.” She was not concentrating on Juxon: her mind was on the amusing fact that both Hugo, whom Meriel detested, and Wychwood, whom she now privately accepted as her son’s true love, had chosen to wear exactly the same shade of gold-braided dark olive silk.

“I wonder where he can be? In general, at these affairs, he seems to be forever hovering where he is least wanted,” said Hugo.

“I have no notion. He will be insufferable for weeks hereafter, he does so enjoy this wretched election-nonsense! Where is Meriel? It is too bad, he cannot have absented himself from his own ball?” Saccharissa had been impressed by Meriel’s appearance and behaviour tonight, and felt quite loving towards her son, despite Berinthia.

“Of course he has not, ma’am! Mistress Amarantha, how do you go on? You look delightfully,” Hugo said to an approaching lady who was famous for her easy morals. He flirted with her, longing to go out and enjoy the night air, but coping with the noise and heat and demands of his position by drinking plenty of wine.

Juxon had retired into the garden, and there Meriel found him behind one of the hedges, looking into the faint glitter on the surface of a black rectangular pond, trying perhaps to see his face. She was still a little breathless after her escape from Auriol, and she stopped, and swallowed.

“Why, Juxon!” she announced, coming up behind him. Her voice was casual, even condescending. She thought it best to speak, because she was still afraid of Juxon, and thought he might be able to discern her presence and her guilt by witchcraft if she tried to go away.

To her great surprise he turned quickly, seized her hand, and gazed up at her eyes. “Oh, Marquis. I had been hoping you were here, out here, but had not thought it possible!”

After a moment’s pause she said, “Well, one must take the air, you know, the heat was becoming insufferable.”

“Yes, yes, but that is not what I want to say. Marquis, I so wanted to tell you, now we have a moment alone together, how — how very beautiful you are tonight. White does indeed become you!”

“You are too good, sir.” The expression of mixed rapture and pain on his bleached face could only just be discerned, but it disturbed her very much. For years, she had not thought Juxon capable of serious emotion; she wished now she could say something adequate, and calm him.

He hurried on, clasping both her hands. “I love you so. My dear. My dear, you are leaving me tomorrow and I wanted to tell you now. So often as I have lain awake at nights, tormenting myself as to whether I did what was right, for you, in enabling you to preserve your secret! Did you know that? Did you? Whether you would not have been happier had we done as the world would have said we ought, and not concealed the truth. You seemed so often so unhappy, so lonely and afraid, I feared for your reason, never could I reach you, give you the companionship, the comforts of domestic affection even which might have been yours — but now I know that I was in the right of it. I saw you tonight, so happy, so beautiful, so glad to be Westmarch, for the very first time, and it quite compensates me for everything, my dear, dear Marquis.” He said all this in her ear, which she had bent down to his lips to encourage him to murmur, for there might be people about.

“Juxon,” Meriel stammered, “this is not like you.”

“Oh, there are tears in your eyes. Yes, I can see them. I cannot have distressed you! I would not for the world, Marquis.”

She then wiped them away with one hand, but did not remove the other from his grip. Instead, she patted his shoulder.

“I had not thought you cared for my true happiness, sir,” she told him simply. “I’m touched. I’m glad you do. Yes, I am happy. You quite took me aback, that’s all.”

“I told you often and often, my dear, that it was your true interests I cared for, but full well I knew you did not believe me, thought only that I was self-seeking in some most devious way.”

“Yes. But I see things now as they are,” said Meriel.

“You were cutting my heart to pieces, you know, for you are all in all to me, and I know, I know I am nothing to you. May I tell you this? Will you forgive me so unbecoming a display of sensibility, Marquis?”

“There, Juxon. All will be well, you’ll see. And don’t I owe you everything?” she said, still leaning over his face in a way she knew must look very odd.

“To see you in the flower of your glory — oh, you are not a woman in any vile sense, you have the mind of a man, a glorious man, as I thought, and I hope you will always do as you will, as you like, with me, with everyone, Marquis.”

Her heart bulged out towards him, and everyone. “I shall,” she said, very low. “Juxon —”

“I feared Knight Auriol, because he wrote that shocking pamphlet,” said Juxon, “but though most amiable he is not a very intelligent man, and I see now I need not. Five months he has been living now almost in your pocket, and not a sign he guesses, you conceal it so very very well!”

He felt the twitch of her hand in his, and Meriel explained it by saying: “You insult my intelligence, Juxon. Of course you need not fear him. He is an excellent fellow merely — and you know, I do need youthful companionship. I hate to be beset — do you bear with my odd humours, sir, when I ask you not to meddle.”

Meriel pulled herself upright. At present, she was too much moved by Juxon’s eager, modest words to feel contempt for his obtuse self-deception with regard to her lover, or any desire to laugh.

“Oh yes, I shall,” said Juxon. “I hope you enjoy your repairing lease, and shoot many, many rabbits, Marquis — and come back to me most thoroughly repaired.”

“It is a pity he is such a plain-looking man,” said Meriel, knowing this to be a typically feminine piece of adroitness, and feeling dirty. “Juxon, I am very glad — vastly glad to know you do in fact hold me in affection. How odd that you should tell me, now.” She gave a tearful laugh. “I shall — take care of you, see you don’t suffer, never fear.” She meant that she would never distress him by telling him the truth about Auriol: as it had briefly occurred to her to do when he revealed that he hoped she would do whatever she liked, implying that he would never prevent her.

“My little Marquis.”

This time Juxon was too carried away by his feelings to notice the start Meriel gave. Passionately he kissed her hands, and he closed his eyes as a particularly lovely strain of music reached them from the ballroom. He knew that life would bring him no greater satisfaction than had been his tonight, and when the Marquis left him to dance with Berinthia Winyard, he saluted the one star out in the sky.