Free Gwendolen by Diana Souhami Page B

you. A kennel of a place, don’t you think so?’
    ‘I can’t judge what it would be without myself,’ I said, relieved to be reacquainted with my sparring wit. ‘With myself I liked it well enough to have stayed longer if I could. But I was obliged to come home on account of family troubles.’
    He had no need to ask what those troubles were; he knew from his repulsive scout. ‘It was cruel of you to go to Homburg,’ he said, then told me I was ‘the heart and soul of things’ and must have known my going would spoil everything.
    ‘Are you quite reckless about me?’ he asked. The question made me blush.
    Was there another man who stood between us?
    I wanted to say, No but there is a woman. You were only half-formed in my mind as my guide and hope.
    He persisted: ‘Am I to understand that someone else is preferred?’
    ‘No,’ I said. We were both guilty of concealment, but a preference of mine for someone else was not the obstacle to this wooing.
    ‘The last thing I would do is to importune you,’ Grandcourt said. ‘I should not hope to win you by making myself a bore. If there were no hope for me I would ask you to tell me so at once, that I might just ride away to – no matter where.’
    I felt a rush of alarm at the thought of him riding away. Were he to do so nothing was left for me. His lack of reference to Mrs Glasher made it seem she did not exist. There was just him and me, the sunlight of the morning, the beautiful horses waiting outside the window, the coolness of his wooing to soothe my hurt and quieten my fear. I wanted no other reality to intrude and break this fragile spell of make-believe.
    I spoke briefly of mamma’s troubles and our dismal prospects. The money needed to spare her from Sawyer’s Cottage and me from Bishop Mompert was as nothing to Grandcourt but everything to us. He looked at me with his pale eyes. I thought I held him in my thrall. I did not know how much it mattered to him that I had not so much as held a man’s hand. I did not know he liked my insolence not because it amused him, but because he intended to subdue it.
    He was impassive, his timing perfect, his manners faultless. He said, ‘You will tell me now, I hope, that Mrs Davilow’s loss of fortune will not trouble you further. You will trust me to prevent it from weighing upon her. You will give me the claim to provide against that.’
    I felt I had quaffed wine. Momentarily I loved this man. He was my saviour and the woman at Cardell Chase no more than an unsettling hallucination. My fears were needless, my pain gone. I told Grandcourt he was very generous. I meant it.
    ‘You accept what will make such things a matter of course?’ he asked without urgency, eagerness, allusion or caveat that might frighten me away. ‘You consent to become my wife?’
    A word was needed but I could not utter it.
    *
    Was it shame at my moral recklessness that froze my voice, or did I again perceive the fly-fisher who entices with perfectly crafted bait, who knows the necessity for concealment and stillness if his prey is to be deceived?
    *
    I walked to the mantelpiece, folded my hands and turned to him. He too rose, held his hat but did not move towards me. My hesitation fired him. Here was the moment of my renunciation. ‘Do you command me to go?’ he asked. He let me believe, for oh so brief a time, my word was his command. I feared his going more than I feared the consequence of his staying. I could not steer; I could only yield to the tide I hoped might carry me to a safe shore.
    ‘You accept my devotion?’ The question was a command. It had all gone too far. There was to be no explanation, no straying from intention.
    ‘Yes,’ I said, as if answering to my name in a court of law. He savoured my fear, which his authority forbade me to express. My frozen voice and nervous posture made conquest the more thrilling. He let the silence linger, put down his hat, came towards me, took my hand lightly, pressed his lips to it