Eva Ibbotson - A Company of Swans

But there seemed to be no way now but forward. Leaning towards the mirror she undid, with fingers she could scarcely keep from trembling, the top button of the negligée where it rested against her throat.

‘I am ready,’ said Harriet.

If she had still hoped that she might be mistaken, that hope was instantly dashed as her gratified attendants pushed her forward through the double doors and closed them behind her. The room, panelled in blue damask and richly carpeted, was dominated by the largest bed that Harriet had ever seen — a four-poster billowing with snow-white netting and covered with an embroidered counterpane the corners of which were undoubtedly turned back. And now rising from an armchair by the window was her host, Rom Verney, wearing over his dress shirt and evening trousers a black silk dressing-gown tied loosely — extremely loosely — with a silken cord.

Strangely it was not the way he was dressed that made the trembling which assailed her almost uncontrollable. It was the disdain, the hard look in the grey eyes. Was it a trick played by the shaded lamps or did he suddenly hate her?

‘I hope you enjoyed your bath?’ The voice was cold, icily mocking.

‘Yes, thank you.’

Was that part of what was to happen next — that he should detest her?

She managed to take a few more steps forward, to reach the bedpost to which she put out a hand. At the same time her bare feet under the frothy hem arranged themselves instinctively in the first position dégagé , as though she was about to begin a long and taxing exercise.

‘I don’t want to… make excuses,’ she brought out. ‘I understand that ignorance is no defence… and that one is punished just the same.’ And not wishing to be rude even in this extremity of fear, she added, ‘I mean, I know that there are consequences of being ignorant… and that one must not try to escape them.’

He had moved towards her and seen how she trembled, and a hope as intense as it was absurd leapt in his breast.

‘I’m afraid I don’t entirely follow you,’ he said, but the mockery had left his voice and she was able to say:

‘I mean you have only to look at Ancient Greece to see… that not knowing what you were doing didn’t let you off. Oedipus didn’t know that Jocasta was his mother when he married her, yet the punishment was terrible — gouging out his eyes. Not that this is as bad as that, I expect…’ She made a small forlorn gesture towards the bed and her impending fate. ‘And poor Actaeon — he didn’t mean to spy on Diana bathing with her nymphs; he didn’t even know she was there, he just wanted a drink — yet look what happened to him! Turned into a stag and torn to pieces by his own dogs!’

‘Go on.’ He had moved still closer, but the moment of her doom was seemingly not yet upon her and she took a gulp of air and went on:

‘I only mean… that I’m not trying to… get out of anything. If what I did… staying behind to talk to you… telling Marie-Claude I was taking the other boat… thinking I could go back with Manuelo’s wife when she takes the baby to be christened…’ She broke off and tried again. ‘Only I think you are going to be very disappointed because I don’t know what to do.’ Her voice was rising dangerously. She was very close to tears. ‘For example, if you were Suleiman the Great it would be correct for me to creep from the foot of the bed into your presence. Only I can’t believe…’

‘I would prefer you not to creep,’ he said gently.

But the return of the kindness he had shown her in the garden made everything somehow worse, and it was with tears trembling on her lashes that she said desperately, ‘I only mean that at Scroope Terrace there was never any opportunity for being… ruined and ravished… and so on. And I don’t know how to behave.’ She could hold back no longer now and the tears ran steadily down her cheeks. ‘I didn’t even know that you had to go to bed with the top button of your nightdress undone,’ sobbed Harriet, ‘not until Marie-Claude told me.’

Rom made no attempt to comfort her. Instead he turned abruptly away from her and walked over to the window in the grip of a fierce and unremitting joy. She is good, he thought exultantly. I was right to feel what I felt. She is innocent and virtuous and good!

He went over to her then and, taking out his handkerchief, very gently wiped away her tears. And then his fingers moved slowly down, brushing her throat, until they found their object: the buttons on her negligée.

And in that moment, when rape and ruin was upon her… was inevitable… Harriet’s terror melted like snow in the sun and she knew with absolute certainty that no ruin was possible here; that what this man wished she would wish also, and would always wish — and she moved towards him with a little sigh and lifted her face with perfect trust to his.

Which made it difficult for Rom to do what he intended — more difficult than he would have believed. But he mastered himself, and smiled down at her and smoothed her rumpled hair. Then carefully, methodically, he did up the small round button at the top of her negligée and kissed her once briefly on the tip of her nose.

‘Now,’ he said, taking her hand as one would take the hand of a child, ‘I’m going to send you home. Tomorrow I shall come into Manaus and we’ll talk, but now you must go.’

‘Must I?’

‘Yes, my dear. At once.’ And his voice suddenly rough, ‘No breath of scandal shall touch you while I live.’

The letter which Stavely’s young bailiff had brought to Isobel Brandon’s room on the day that the Trumpington Tea Circle ladies were touring the house came from Hathersage and Climpton, the London accountants who had looked after the Brandons’ financial affairs for many years, and accompanied a detailed report, the results of which were unequivocal. As the result of the present owner’s extravagances and speculations, the estate was now encumbered to the point of no return. If bankruptcy and disgrace were to be avoided, Stavely must be sold and sold immediately.

This letter, which drew from Isobel the exclamation that Harriet overheard, was in fact only a copy of the original which reached Henry Brandon in the Toulouse lodgings to which he had retreated in order to avoid his creditors. After which, conventional to the last, he retired to his bedroom, took out his father’s army revolver and blew out his brains.

It was thus as a widow of ten days’ standing that Isobel Brandon sat in front of the mirror in her suite at the Hotel Astor in London, pinning up the rich red braids of her hair. Black suited her, thank heavens, for she would be in mourning for at least a year; the velvet jacket, bought in one of the few shops where her credit still held good, brought out the whiteness of her skin; she was one of those fortunate redheads untroubled by freckles.

But the sight of her reflection was the only thing of comfort in the bleak wilderness that her life had become, for it did not occur to her to find solace in the small, bespectacled child curled up in an arm-chair with his nose, as always, in a book. Henry, with his pale, pinched little face, his unmanly terrors, was not at all the kind of son she had hoped for — and suddenly exasperated by his concentration, his inability to see what she was enduring, she said, ‘Really, Henry, you don’t seem to realise at all what is at stake. It’s your heritage I’m trying to save. Do you want us to go and live in a sordid little hut somewhere?’

With a tremendous effort of will, Henry rose twenty thousand leagues from the bottom of the sea, abandoning brave Captain Nemo who had just sighted a frightful monster with bristling jaws, and considered her question.