CHAPTER TWELVE

Longmaster Wood

Tall white and purple foxgloves curved upwards in the green gloom of the oak plantation. The earth beneath them was rich as a cake from yesterday’s rain, blotched in places with piercing light; and between the branches and the ground, the air was thick with growing, sweet decay. In a clump of young bracken, Meriel and Auriol dozed naked on their piled-up clothes, breathing heavily as they listened to the movement of insects and leaves. Their sweating bodies were pale, and looked exceedingly tender, thoroughly exposed, although they were so well hidden. Spent cartridges and guns for shooting wood-pigeons lay beside Meriel on her left.

“Little Marquis — my little Marquis, ah,” Auriol grunted, as he felt her hand touch the faint hollow in the side of his hip and then rise up, round and over, to finger a red line worn into his skin by a crushed fold of cloth. Meriel’s other hand twined in his hair, and she fixed her lips to his great damp shoulder.

Auriol opened his eyes and turned his head. Until today, he had never seen Meriel unclothed, for though she liked him to be nude whenever she thought it safe, she had always refused to be naked herself.

Auriol was not surprised that she had been nervous at first of showing what looked like the chastest, coldest and most private of bodies, with its bowl-like collar-bone, large ribcage, and white, hard-muscled arms and legs. He knew them all by touch and loved them, they were covered with the finest of skins. It had been a triumph even so to persuade Meriel to undress. She was afraid above all of disgusting him by the signs of her female sex, because these were disgusting to her.

The overgrown part between the Marquis’s legs, which had caused her to be taken for a boy twenty-three years ago, was still visible. But it was nowhere near large enough to be mistaken for a male organ now.

As Meriel touched his own rosy rising virile member, and tucked one of her legs round his, Auriol heard a loud noise of crackling in the bushes to his left.

“Dang me if it ain’t a trap!”

“His lordship don’t use no traps.” Pause. “Lily-livered you are, bit of old harness that is. Traps! You’ll be tripping in one of your own rabbit-snares if you ain’t careful, and screeching fit to bust, and then where’ll we be I’d like to know?”

Each hissing word rang in Meriel’s ears as though it had been shouted. Gazing up at her, terrified himself, Auriol smelt the fear on her. He had never seen her face so white. He tried to make his mouth form the words: “Put your head down! Down!”

More noise came from the bushes. Poachers out after rabbits, thought Auriol. Just poachers out after rabbits — Meriel flung herself down on top of him in a parody of love, gripped his hips with her knees and buried her face in his neck. Auriol could feel the faintest of little begging curses coming from her lips, once she was comparatively safe. Very slowly, he put his arms round her back and clutched her, as her nails dug into his shoulders.

Auriol saw that there was a gap in the bracken nearly a foot in width, next to Meriel’s thigh. Through it he could see dying flowers on a scrubby rhododendron and beyond, he was almost sure, the edge of a countryman’s green coat.

“Dunderhead!”

A minute passed, and they sweated motionless together while the poachers quarrelled. Then Meriel inched her legs along the outside edge of Auriol’s, causing both of them more pain, and pulled them quickly up on top, hoping that if she lay between his legs instead of astride them she would look more like a man. Auriol parted his in response to her pressure, and made the bracken rustle. He felt furious with her.

“That was a shot,” said one of the poachers.

“It was a dead branch. Come from over there!”

Oh, thought Auriol, yes, they are frightened too. Oh, no. No. Not from here.

“Dead branch? ‘His lordship’s out shooting pigeons today with his fine friend,’ says you. ‘Won’t be in this part of the wood, oh no, acos them young trees is too thick to allow of a shot. And no keepers neither,’ says you, ‘like there’ll be come night-time, acos my lord tells ’em to keep away, when he’s shooting!’”

“It weren’t a shot and you’ve got four conies already so shut your bone-box!”

“God damn you,” whispered Meriel.

“I’m off and if you’ve any sense you’ll come with me. S’pose it was a busybody keeper, with a nice big gun? Or his lordship? What’d we do? Hide in the nettles? Very pretty that’d be! If you’ve a mind to be flogged and set to road-mending I haven’t.”

They went, walking off in the opposite direction from the foxglove glade but so stealthily that it was hard for Meriel and Auriol to tell which path the men had taken. They did not dare to think for some time that the poachers had really gone.

After three minutes’ silence, Meriel relaxed enough to let herself sob with rage, and crawl slowly away from Auriol. Her whole front felt cold when she removed it from the sodden heat of his body, and the change in sensation, combined with her release from immediate terror, made her vomit violently.

Auriol scrambled up and held her head over a clump of forget-me-nots.

“They’re gone, Meriel,” he said. “They’re gone, don’t you see?”

She carried on retching, and his hands shook so much that he was of very little use to her. He remembered how angry he had been when very sensibly, she had forced his legs apart to make herself look more like a male: he supposed suddenly that she had been preparing to blast the poachers with some few words appropriate to a marquis discovered naked making love to another man. Oh, my God, thought Auriol.

She was so brave, and so weak now, that he could not be angry with her. He ought never to have been so.

“It’s all right.” He heard the laughter of relief trembling in his own voice.

Meriel finished being sick, and immediately broke away from Auriol and hunted for her clothes. Distressed, he watched her, without putting on his own.

“Dress,” she said, looking briefly at him.

“Yes, of course!”

They put their clothes on in silence, fumbling rather with their buttons and watch-chains. When he was dressed, Auriol took another look at Meriel, who was tying back her hair, and was disturbed to see no trace of the hysterical amusement which would be natural in the circumstances in her face. Having vomited, she seemed to be in quiet, untouchable agony.

Meriel spoke. “I shall have man-traps put down and they must both be apprehended and flogged,” she said in a low voice, and passed the back of her hand over her evil-tasting mouth. Auriol was relieved to hear her make such a worldly and understandable announcement.

“No Meriel, surely not! You are known for clemency in such cases, it would cause a deal of remark — and you are not cruel, are you?” he said, without thinking. It was as good a response as any other he could have made.

“I care nothing for that,” she said. “Oh, my God.”

“You were exceedingly brave, Meriel.”

“We never undress again, d’you hear?”

He did not reply to this, but touched her shoulder and said:

“It is a thousand pities this should have happened here, where you are generally known, I know. Forgive me, I am no very adequate comforter — but, but I love you so very much! And it’s all well again, now.”

“Generally known, ay, very true, sir!”

She had spent the first twelve years of her life almost exclusively at Longmaster Wood, and was still known to many ordinary people in the district as ‘Mr Meriel’. Her hair alone would be enough to reveal her identity anywhere within twenty miles of the hunting-lodge, whereas in the country round Castle West she was merely a name, the Marquis, and only those who had some connection with the castle knew what she looked like. It crossed Auriol’s mind that they would all be surprised to know that though she was red-headed the fine well-placed hair on her body was nearly as dark as her eyebrows.

Very calmly she said, “I am very sure one of those men was the under-keeper Glasbrook was obliged to turn off for pilfering last winter. I recognised his voice.”

“I’m sorry for that. Don’t distress yourself overmuch, Meriel!”

She turned to him. “You expect me to be wonderfully relieved — happy — even to find this diverting, now it’s over. Don’t you? Or at the very least to throw myself into your arms. Can you not see how extraordinarily horrifying it is, for me? I shall never recover, sir.”

He dropped his eyes. “Yes, I see. I understand.”

“It is very extraordinary, but never, never once, has anything of this nature happened to me since Juxon discovered. I have never had real cause to be frightened till now.”

A sudden, terrible sense of loneliness and shame possessed Auriol. When she saw the expression on his face, Meriel laid down the gun which she had been reloading with a deep frown between her brows, touched him tenderly though she was still looking grim, and led him away by the sleeve.

*

Auriol had always found Longmaster Wood a faintly sinister place. Set in a valley, between a brown-watered artificial lake and a meandering river, the house was surrounded by oaks, beeches and chestnuts of great size and strange growth. Long untrimmed branches dangled to the ground and creaked in any wind, and everywhere but under the grey beeches’ shade the undergrowth was rank. Fogs rose up from the river and the lake, delicate in summer, but often so blighting in winter that the valley was dark by early afternoon. Only the wide hawthorn-edged fields and gentle hills that made this good hunting country gave Auriol real pleasure, and he could not hunt in summer.

Meriel had been so badly disturbed by their adventure in the oak plantation that she avoided Auriol for three days after, finding estate business to occupy her and knowing very well that she was wasting precious time. With each passing day Auriol felt less able to foist himself upon her and, needing to exhaust himself with exercise, though tiredness only caused thoughts to chase each other round in his brain, he rode over the fields alone. He did not go into the woods with his gun as Meriel once suggested he do. Auriol thought he never again wanted to smell the stuffy odours of a midsummer wood which had choked him in the glade when Meriel was on top of him, or see the tangled rushes and briars and ranks of nettles which flourished in that perpetual damp.

The weather continued hot. The third day of their nervous estrangement was particularly fine, beginning with a primrose mist, and ending with last shafts of sun that turned half the windows of the hunting-lodge to pale brass, and made its brick seem warm as a ripe tomato. Though they knew it to be foolish, Meriel and Auriol were affected by so much wasted sensual beauty which had nothing to do with them. It made them rebellious as well as sentimental.

They met that evening at table when the sun had gone down. Dinner was served late in summer at Longmaster Wood, because Meriel did not like to waste daylight on eating.

For two nights past Meriel and Auriol had made dull and friendly conversation at meals. Tonight, wanting to revert to the early days of their courtship and talk at length about themselves and each other, they were completely silent. Auriol watched Meriel eating too little and drinking too much, and longed to feed her himself. He wanted her to take pleasure in the excellent dishes provided by a cook who had tried to tempt her appetite for years. He understood that she could not afford to put on flesh and perhaps develop a bosom, but thought she ought to taste her food instead of swallowing it whole.

Meriel saw him look up with annoyance at the footman who was helping him to peas, and guessed he wished her to tell both servants to go. It occurred to her that perhaps Auriol did not like her habit of employing remarkably good-looking men to wait on her. She must tell him that they were no threat to him; but of course, he must know that they never could be. He must know that if she tried to realise her fantasies of sleeping with all of them turn and turn about, she would be killing herself. No, she thought rather desperately, do not exaggerate.

Eventually, Meriel did tell the footmen to bring in more candles and leave. When they were gone, she looked at Auriol, and said, “Wychwood, I am sorry for having neglected you these past few days. It was an absurd fear, nothing more, fear that after what happened someone or other would guess, merely seeing us together in the regular way.”

The words were obviously rehearsed. Auriol, trying to keep his hands steady as he peeled an apple, wondered what exactly had gone through her mind; and wondered why he was so much moved, when he had known all along that before they left Longmaster Wood Meriel, being Meriel, would say something of the kind out of the warmth of her heart.

“Why sir, you’re crying again! Oh, my love!” her voice went on as his hands continued shaking.

“What have you done to me?” said Auriol.

Just as instantly, Meriel replied, “I’m not a witch, sir. It is only that I have faults.” He cannot think me a witch, she thought, how should I think he could?

He was choking. He had cried only once in the past three days, and never so violently since he was a child.

“I can’t endure this, Meriel, this being entirely dependent upon you. I never was like this before. Give me something. If it is your wish — to make me happy, as you’ve said I know not how many times, come away with me, give this up, I beg you to trust me. Marry me and we’ll live at Wychwood.” He stopped as soon as he had said this.

When she thought she had understood him correctly, Meriel withdrew her hand from his knee. Then, deciding to be gentle with him, because it was her fault he was so much upset, she said, “You are beside yourself, my love. You know full well I can’t do that. There.” She raised her eyes to his face, and saw that he was now looking more thoughtful than wretched. In her brisk normal voice she added: “Let us go into the library. I don’t know why we are sitting over the remains of our dinner in this way.”

“Yes,” said Auriol.

Taking the candles with them, they left the dining room. The library, just across a narrow passage, was a small room with green-painted panels and a view of the lake, furnished with shabby chairs and birchwood bookcases. Meriel had done her lessons here when she was a child, when Marquis Elphinstone had insisted that until she reached puberty she should lead the quiet life of any country squire’s son.

“I think I have been meaning to say what I said just now for a long time,” said Auriol, sitting down heavily in a chair that creaked, “without fully knowing it myself.”

Meriel blinked, composed her lips, and set her candlestick down on the mantelpiece. A secret marriage, I suppose, she thought, knowing it could not be anything so painless and pointless as that.

“Well sir, it is a very pretty notion, but nonsensical. Especially if you happened to mean I should come as near as makes no odds to eloping with you, like some bread-and-butter miss.” Looking across at the bookshelves, secretly she acknowledged that that same idea had occurred to her, then repressed the memory.

“Don’t talk gammon!” he said, startling her. “It is the most sensible notion I have ever had. Pray don’t try to humour me as though I were an idiot, Meriel.”

“Sensible!”

She went to stand in front of the grate with her legs apart and her hands clasped behind her back.

“Yes, I think I see what you are thinking,” said Auriol, with his eyes on the space between her legs. The candles were too ill-placed for her to see his face. “Let me explain!”

“Yes sir, pray do explain.” Meriel concentrated on remaining calm and dealing swiftly with this subject. “Now, you wish me to marry you, and take you back to Wychwood — take me there? Are you suggesting we should remain there forever?”

“Meriel, do but consider! Consider what happened three days ago. If we go on as we are, don’t you see what we shall have to endure, the intrigue and concealment and above all the danger? That was but the beginning. It’ll drive you out of your senses, in the end.”

“I think I am the best judge of that.”

“Own to me at least we must think of the future.” Auriol pulled out his little silver spectacles and bent the arms back and forth, as she watched him, and swallowed. He looked up. “How long do you expect to live — another thirty, forty years? Do you never think that you cannot, even if you wish, maintain this charade over such a period. Yes, you are a consummate actor, you are half a man, do not be thinking I am denying it. I know what a point it is with you, and very understandably. But any number of accidents may occur. Pray listen to me! Suppose that one day you were to take a rasper out hunting and come to grief, as you must have done already scores of times, God knows, but were to be picked up unconscious, Meriel, and examined by those with you?” Meriel made a movement, and he went on regardless. “Did you not tell me that once you had the devil of a time with a broken collarbone, insisting you would let no one but Juxon set it, and having to send to Castle West for him?”

“I contrived the business very tolerably. It would have been very well had he not chosen to enact me a tragedy.”

“I know it was thought very eccentric in you. But supposing you had sustained a blow to the head? Don’t you see what I am saying? I wonder Juxon ever let you ride at all, upon my word I do!”

“He let me ride, and hunt, and drive my curricle,” said Meriel through stiff lips, “because I told him that sooner than be entirely confined to sedentary pursuits, like a sickly girl, I would tell the whole world I was not a man. I rode to escape from him, what do you think! It was a choice between his utter domination and — I know the risk, sir, be sure!”

“Are you hating me for talking in this style, Meriel?”

“No,” she said.

Suddenly he asked her, “How old are you? I cannot precisely remember.”

“Three-and-twenty!”

“Yes, quite old, and you have no beard for all you try to shave. I want —”

“I rub my chin sometimes with powdered cinnamon,” said the Marquis, taking her clay pipe from the mantelpiece.

Auriol turned in his chair. “Meriel, it serves very well now, when you’re little more than a stripling, but when everyone knows you to be thirty, forty, how can you suppose it will? You can pass as a boy, but when you are a middle-aged woman you will never be able to pass as a man!” He paused, and saw her chest heave. “I must say these things to you. I ought to have done so weeks ago, but the truth is, your hold on me is such I never even thought of them till we came here.”

Meriel lit her pipe with a taper. “Thank you, Wychwood, you have succeeded in terrifying me, will you now play me at piquet and please hold your tongue?” Brandy-glasses, card-table and cards had all been set out in the library before they dined, just in case they should want them. They had not played cards once since coming to Longmaster Wood.

“No, I will not, and I wonder you should dare ask it of me when you must know how hard it is for me to say these things to you! I will be heard.”

She brought her fist down on the mantelpiece and shouted at him, “Do you think I have not thought of them? Do you think I have not tortured myself wellnigh into madness?” Afraid of her voice’s rising to a female pitch, Meriel had trained herself years ago never, ever to use all her lung-power when she shouted, no matter how angry she was. In fact, as Auriol noticed with slight selfish disappointment, her scream was a passable counter-tenor roar.

“Meriel,” said Auriol, to whom another argument had occurred, “I know you live in terror of the constraints of female existence, but only think how your life is circumscribed now. No female has to be forever on her guard as you have to be!”

“Oh, yes,” said the Marquis. She felt very weak, having let herself go, but would not sit down. “Yes, I am forever on my guard, Wychwood. That I think can scarcely be denied.”

“I can’t offer you power or rank, indeed I am asking you to sacrifice both, though you have an absolute right to them in my view,” said Auriol, “but — but, oh, damn it, I wish I could put it as I would like, so as not to offend your precious sensibilities, Meriel! All I can think to say is that we might live at Wychwood as we ought to be able to live here. This is your home, as you have so often said.” He swallowed. “Could you not be happy with me? With me as your only — subject?” He knew that the exaggerated word would touch something in her, because since she was twelve, she had never felt herself to be any kind of true prince or princess, but only a sneaking unjust tyrant. “Meriel, have you never thought of it?”

“Yes,” Meriel said slowly, drawing on her pipe. “I will own to you I have thought of it, as you must know, for I showed no true surprise when you first mentioned the matter, did I? Yes, it would mean giving up only what is valueless to me. In a sense, and yet —”

He ignored that. “Then would it not be brave, and right, to put an end to this charade?” Thank God we understand each other, thought Auriol, my little Marquis.

“You don’t understand! It is the Marquisate that is valueless to me —” No, it is not, said a voice in her head “— but I could not, could never allow the whole world to know I am a female, and it could never be done without that, if you’ve thought at all, you’ll know that. Have I not explained it to you? The shame, the disgrace, the dirt, sir!”

“Yes, you have indeed explained it.” Auriol poured himself some brandy. “Meriel, I have been meaning to say this to you. When I saw you at your election I thought for the first time that femaleness ought in justice to be no bar to office, public life. Indeed, I feel a fool and a brute for never having considered the matter in such a light before. For what evidence is there of female inferiority that cannot be traced to a stupid piddling upbringing? How can you feel yourself to be dirty, morally an impostor? Is your predicament not proof that it is the notions of society which are nonsensical?”

Meriel was amazed and delighted to know that he had had such thoughts, but she concealed it. “Yes, Wychwood, I am no such fool as you think, I have considered the whole matter. But you don’t understand, cannot understand, because you are not accursed yourself, I tell you that if the whole world were turned upside down and there were perfect equality, formal equality, between men and women, still it would be hell on earth to be a woman!”

“Why? Why?”

“Sir, imagine that your parts were cut off.” She made a gesture, and he hunched his shoulders, then quickly straightened himself and glowered at her. “Ay. How would that be? Imagine that you had no shoulders, and ugly little short bow legs, and fat hips — by God it is intolerable — and not only that, but that your body was filled with a great bleeding, stinking, cancerous wound — how could you feel yourself to be the equal of a man? That is how women feel, ay, though few of them know it themselves as I am forced to do! Oh, the mind is well enough, it’s the body, the slavish vileness of the body! Do not tell me women could ever be equal to men. Oh, the laws could be changed, and should be, but equal, no, never!” She drew breath.

Auriol wanted both to hold her and comfort her and to slap her face, because the knowledge that in all these months her mad views on the subject of woman’s filthiness had not really changed filled him with helpless disappointment and awareness of his own unseeing arrogance. He tried to speak, but Meriel swept on, trying to sweep him down on to the floor, because she loved him and wanted him to understand her only intellectual passion.

“You seem to forget I have lived all my life among men and I know as other females cannot quite how intensely they hate and despise them and long to make them wretched. No, they are not human, they do not exist, not females. And I tell you they never will be, never will exist in men’s eyes, whether legally free or no.”

“That is a great piece of nonsense,” he managed to say.

Meriel walked over to him, and did not touch him, but poured herself more brandy. “If I were indeed a man you would never dare say that to me. You would acknowledge the truth, not dismiss it.” Looking down at his face, she then said with sad quick gentleness, “God damn it, Wychwood, why could you not have accepted the Wardenship?”

“The Wardenship?” he said, bewildered.

“I offered it to you, do you remember? To remove the damnable temptation of your being at Castle West. I would to God you had taken it, that’s all. Yes, I do. Then none of this would have happened, none.”

Auriol got up from his chair at last, and brushed past her. “Do you? Are you in earnest, Meriel?”

“I don’t know!” she cried.

“It is infinitely horrible to me to think that you might indeed regret all that has passed between us. I hope you were not merely seeking to hurt me, I would find that unforgivable.”

“I was not, as you know. Regret it, how should I? So much — so — but it has been folly and if I did not love you to distraction I would not consider even for a moment continuing with you under any guise at all! Friend or mistress or wife, sir.” I would have to kill you, she thought for the first time; and that realisation made her think more favourably than before of giving up everything for his sake.

“It would have to be as wife unless we go as we are,” Auriol said quickly.

“I know it.”

Meriel was blushing. Auriol, thinking she was afraid, squeezed her shoulder.

“Then you have indeed thought of it.”

“Yes.”

Both smiled faintly, looking anywhere but at each other, to think of having had very similar but entirely separate, unmentionable visions of their secret wedding, flight into Southmarch, and dignified communication of their news to the world.

As Auriol’s wife, safe in Southmarch on a remote country estate, Meriel would be of little interest to the various Island powers after a year or so. Protected by her husband’s name, by being some man’s property, she would be merely the cause of the most colossal and fascinating scandal in Westmarch since her three-times great-grandfather had been murdered by a catamite of whom no one had heard before. It was the thought of being so unimportant as to be unworthy of the fate she most dreaded, incarceration in a Female College, which made the thought of attaching herself to Wychwood intolerable to Meriel.

She also delighted in the idea. But in such moods, when she was possessed by a picture of herself as ruler of a tiny but rightful kingdom, she was able mentally to abolish the rest of the world. Whenever, later, she remembered that she could not kill the world, could not prevent it knowing she was female, she felt hatred rise up in her like a choking tide.

The tide mounted up again now for the second time that evening. Her face became rigid.

Seeing it, understanding, Auriol touched her, drew back and said, “So I have been powerless to change you.” That attracted her attention, and he went on, using inspired words but clumsy haste. “You are still my lord Marquis, are you not, Meriel, and only that? You are not human in your own eyes, no, I have not made you know that you exist, that you are Meriel Longmaster, man or woman does not signify. And all I desired was to give you yourself. Because that is what you have never had, you were a void, before, and I would to God you could cease to be one.”

Her response was, “Either a void or a toad! Don’t shout at me! Good God, do you suppose I should not like to live with you, openly, for the rest of my life, without a pack of fools and coxcombs and place-seekers and toadies about me? Oh, you have indeed given me myself, sir.” She stared at him. “Wychwood, do you understand, if only it were not necessary to have them know I am not a man.”

“And yet that must come at some time and far more disastrously than if we were to marry and go. Oh, we go round in hopeless circles.”

Meriel turned away from him and sat down in the chair he had vacated. Knocking out her still-full pipe, she said resignedly, sounding far more feminine than usual, “We always will. I go round in circles as you say in my own head, sir.”

“Do you?”

“There are times I promise when I almost long to shout the truth about us, my condition, from the top of the Tower. Which I suppose is scarcely to be wondered at, though I’ve never had such a wish before. Oh, you must have guessed, how else could you have spoken as you have? I think, think sometimes it might be a most glorious rebellion, sir, to run away with you, and tell them all how I deceived them these past ten, eleven years. Vastly diverting it would be, too, only to see their faces, which to be sure I should not. Damn it!”

“Little Marquis,” he said. “I think it would be.” He went to sit beside her, cross-legged on the ground, and took hold of her booted ankle. “It would indeed be infinitely diverting, and a most glorious rebellion! Of course it would. My love, it is the only thing to do. Let us only be brave. I’ll die before I let them harm you, if it comes to that,” he finished, feeling inadequate.

“You’d best kill me,” she said, but he could see he had moved her, because her lips were softly working. Snail-trails of tears were shining on her cheeks. She was not looking her best tonight, for drink, distress, doubt and fear so easily spoilt her changeable face. He had noticed before that brown candlelight suited her less well than the hard light of day.

“Is it yes?” he said.

She imagined it. She thought of the ruin of Juxon who, it seemed to her at that moment, had done her a terrible disservice in making her live in disguise. At twelve, she might have become accustomed to being a girl, or would at least have wholesomely killed herself if he had tried to make her live as one: now, unless she ran away with Auriol, she would never be able to abandon her Marquisate. If she were deprived of it, suicide would be beyond her strength. She was too corrupt and had not enough rage left. She hated her present life, she decided, without reservation; only Auriol made it tolerable, of course.

Her thoughts changed direction, and turning, she told him, “Wychwood, I have seen enough of the world to know how very fortunate we are, how very rare it is for two people to love each other with equal strength and to be suited besides.” She had realised a moment before that whatever happened, she would not be able to kill herself not only because she was too weak as she had thought, but because she liked the earth too much now, and thus, was also too strong. “It is almost an impossibility, as I don’t doubt you know.” She hesitated, and took in the reality of his kind dark blue eyes, fixed on her as they ought to be. “I remember, remember how you held me, that night at the Green Garter, after all I had told you, sir. No, we cannot throw it away. I cannot.

“Yes. I think the answer is yes, I’ll marry you — but I shall never breed, sir.”

Breed. For the first time, the word struck him as ugly: as meaning to do with maggots, rottenness, rats, and poisonous miasmas. Briefly, Auriol saw Meriel’s womb through Meriel’s eyes, but the vision faded instantly when he looked at her. No, she would never breed.

She went on, “I shall continue to live and dress as a man in private, and so I tell you, that is if I don’t die of the scandal before I’ve had my chance!”

Meriel’s legs were tightly crossed, but her right was swinging in circles over her left. Auriol laid his head on its foot.

“Dear one,” he said. “Dear love. Of course you will, how could I think otherwise? We’ll go tomorrow, shall we then?”

“No. Look at me.” Removing her legs, Meriel spoke with gentle earnestness, still quietly crying. One look at his surprised face made her say, “Ah, don’t say I’ve put you out of humour only because I ask you for a little time, which you must see I must have. Give me a fortnight, sir. I can’t go from here. I must have two more weeks as what I am, of the masquerade if you will, in order to think, at Castle West. I cannot decide absolutely as yet! If I go, sir, remember, I’ll never see it again. A fortnight.”

He did not argue, but waited until she began to fidget with her pipe again. “A fortnight,” she repeated.

He said, “I think it would rather be best to make a clean cut, but I cannot force you to it and I should never wish to.” He touched her foot again, lightly. “I collect you will be trying to enjoy being Marquis to the full, for a last two weeks. I don’t suppose you will enjoy it in the least, but it’s of little consequence, indeed I had liefer you detested it! Do I have your word that you will do it in the end? Marry me and come? Meriel?”

“No,” said Meriel. “Not my word of honour, sir, I can’t give you that, not yet. I say ‘perhaps’ — which is a vast deal better than ‘never’, surely,” she added quite tartly.

Of course, he thought, she is a woman of spirit. “Very true,” he said. “Very well, we’ll go back to Castle West. I can always abduct you, after all, and it will be easier to do so from Castle West, so much closer to Wychwood as it is.”

“Oh, indeed?” said Meriel.

Suddenly he laughed, and watched her face with a gleam in his eyes, stroking his chin all the while.

“Well sir, what’s so diverting?”

“Oh, I was but just thinking to myself that I ought to tell you — one reason for my pressing you in this way now. It is merely a thought which came to me only very lately, a most tedious complication, ma’am — well, unless we go off in this foolish fashion we shall have nowhere to make love to each other when winter comes. We’d never be able to make use of a bed, you know, and you know well enough it was cold enough in all conscience outdoors even in Flowers! Am I not in the right of it, Meriel?”

The Marquis felt momentarily insulted; then she laughed too.