Kate Morton - The House at Riverton aka The Shifting Fog

And so, she let him plan it. Their great escape. He’d stopped writing poetry; his notebook only ever pulled out now to sketch escape ideas. She even helped sometimes. It was a game, she told herself, just like the others they’d always played. It made him happy, and besides, she often got swept up in the planning herself. Which faraway places they could live in, what they might see, the adventures they might have. A game. Their own game in their own secret world.

She didn’t know, couldn’t know, where it would all lead.

If she had, she told me later, she’d have kissed him one last time, turned and run as fast and as far as she could.

I have said it before: sooner or later secrets have a way of making themselves known. Hannah and Robbie managed to keep theirs long enough: from the end of 1922, right through the following year, and into the beginning of 1924. But, as with all impossible love affairs, it was destined to end.

Downstairs, the servants had started to talk. It was the new housemaid, Caroline, who lit the match. She was a snoopy little miss, come from serving at the house of the infamous Lady Penthrop (rumoured to have tangled with half the eligible lords in London). She’d been let go with a glowing recommendation, extracted, alongside a pretty sum, after catching her mistress in one too many compromising positions. Ironically, she needn’t have bothered: she didn’t need the reference when she came to us. Her reputation preceded her and it was her snooping rather than her cleaning that inclined Deborah to employ her.

There are always signs if one knows where to look, and know where to look she did. Scraps of paper with strange addresses plucked from the fire before they burned, imprints of ardent notes left on writing blocks, shopping bags that contained little more than old ticket stubs. And it wasn’t difficult to get the other servants talking. Once she invoked the spectre of Divorce, reminded them that if scandal broke they’d likely find themselves without employment, they were pretty forthcoming.

She knew better than to ask me, but in the end she didn’t need to. She learned Hannah’s secret well enough. I blame myself for that: I should have been more alert. If I hadn’t had my mind on other things, I would have noticed what Caroline was up to, I could have warned Hannah. But I’m afraid at that time I was not a good lady’s maid, was sadly remiss in my responsibilities to Hannah. I was distracted, you see; I’d suffered a disappointment of my own. From Riverton had come news of Alfred.

Thus, the first either of us knew, was the evening of the opera, when Deborah came to Hannah’s bedroom. I’d dressed Hannah in a slip of pale French silk, neither white nor pink, and was just fixing her hair into curls about her face when there came the knock at the door.

‘Almost ready, Teddy,’ said Hannah, rolling her eyes at my reflection. Teddy was religiously punctual. I drove a hairpin into a particularly errant curl.

The door opened and Deborah swanned into the room, dramatic in a red dress with butterfly-wing sleeves. She sat on the end of Hannah’s bed and crossed one leg over the other, a flurry of red silk.

Hannah’s eyes met mine. A visit from Deborah was unusual. ‘Looking forward to Tosca ?’ said Hannah.

‘Immensely,’ said Deborah. ‘I adore Puccini.’ She withdrew a makeup compact from her purse and flicked it open, arranged her lips so they made a figure eight and stabbed at the corners for lipstick smears. ‘So sad, though, lovers torn apart like that.’

‘There aren’t many happy endings in opera,’ said Hannah.

‘No,’ said Deborah. ‘Nor in life, I fear.’

Hannah pressed her lips together. Waited.

‘You realise, don’t you,’ said Deborah, smoothing her brows in the little mirror, ‘that I don’t give a damn who you’re sleeping with when my fool of a brother has his back turned.’

Hannah’s eyes met mine. Shock made me fumble the hairpin, drop it on the floor.

‘It’s my father’s business I care about.’

‘I didn’t realise the business had anything to do with me,’ said Hannah. Despite her casual voice, I could hear her breaths grown shallow and quick.

‘Don’t play dumb,’ Deborah said, snapping her compact closed. ‘You know your part in all of this. People invest with us because we represent the best of both worlds. New technology and business approaches, with the old-fashioned assurance of your family heritage. Progress and tradition, side by side.’

‘Progressive tradition? I always suspected Teddy and I made rather an oxymoronic match,’ said Hannah.

‘Don’t be smart,’ Deborah said. ‘You and yours benefit from the union of our families just as much as we do. After the mess your father made of his inheritance-’

‘My father did his best.’ Hannah’s cheeks flushed hotly.

Deborah raised her brows. ‘Is that what you call it? Running his business into the ground?’

‘Pa lost his business because it burned down. It was an accident.’

‘Of course,’ Deborah said quickly, ‘an unfortunate accident. Left him with little choice though, didn’t it? Little choice but to sell his daughter to the highest bidder.’ She laughed lightly, came to stand behind Hannah, forcing me aside. She leaned over Hannah’s shoulder and addressed her reflection. ‘It’s no secret he didn’t want you to marry Teddy. Did you know he came to see my father one night? Oh, yes. Told him he knew what he was up to and he could forget about it, that you’d never consent.’ She straightened, smiled with subtle triumph as Hannah looked away. ‘But you did. Because you’re a smart girl. Broke your poor father’s heart, but you knew as well as he that you had little other choice. And you were right. Where would you be now if you hadn’t married my brother?’ She paused, cocked an overplucked brow. ‘With that poet of yours?’

Standing against the wardrobe, unable to cross to the door, I wished to be anywhere else. Hannah, I saw, had lost her flush. Her body had taken on the stiffness of one preparing to receive a blow but with little idea from where.

‘And what of your sister?’ said Deborah. ‘What of little Emmeline?’

‘Emmeline has nothing to do with this,’ said Hannah, voice catching.

‘I beg to differ,’ said Deborah. ‘Where would she be if it weren’t for my family? A little orphan whose daddy lost the family’s fortune. Whose sister is carrying on with one of her boyfriends. Why, it could only be worse if those nasty little films were to resurface!’

Hannah’s back stiffened.

‘Oh yes,’ said Deborah. ‘I know all about them. You didn’t think my brother kept secrets from me, did you?’ She smiled and her nostrils flared. ‘He knows better than that. We’re family. Not to mention he couldn’t make half the decisions he makes if it weren’t for my counsel.’

‘What do you want, Deborah?’

Deborah smiled thinly. ‘I just wanted you to see, to understand how much we all have to lose from even the whiff of scandal. Why it has to stop.’

‘And if it doesn’t?’

Deborah sighed, collected Hannah’s purse from the end of the bed. ‘If you won’t stop seeing him of your own accord, I’ll make certain that you can’t.’ She snapped the purse shut and handed it to Hannah. ‘Men like him-war-damaged, artistic-disappear all the time, poor things. No one thinks anything of it.’ She straightened her dress and started for the door. ‘You get rid of him. Or I will.’

Hannah met Robbie for the last time that winter in the Egyptian room at the British Museum. I was sent with the letter. He was taken aback to see me in Hannah’s stead, and none too pleased. He took it warily, peered into the hall to check I was alone, then leaned against the doorframe, reading. His hair was dishevelled and he hadn’t shaved. His cheeks were shadowed, as was the skin around his smooth lips, which were moving softly, speaking Hannah’s words. He smelled unwashed.