The Lord's Inconvenient Vow

Yes, she wanted to say. Yes, we should leave and go into that tiny copse in the cold night air and you will pull up my skirt, your warm, rough and soft hands on my thighs. His hands pressed on her cheeks now, his fingers hard against her temples and cheekbone.

‘Sam. You can’t look at me like that and...’

‘And what?’

‘God, this isn’t the place. Outside in the square wasn’t the place, the blasted Pettifer hall of horrors wasn’t the place. What the devil is wrong with me?’

‘I am, evidently.’ She tried to make light of it, but though his grip slackened, his fingertips moving gently along the curve of her cheek, the heat in his eyes was still mostly angry. She licked her lips and with something between a growl and a groan he turned away, wandering from miniature to miniature as he moved safely behind his battlement again. Eventually he stopped, picking up a statue of a horse and balancing it in his palm.

‘Rafe gave Jacob a horse just like this. He told me it was in recompense for the one he took from my room after I was sent to Egypt with Poppy. Guilt is a strange beast.’

Sam reached for the opening he offered.

‘You and Rafe became close after your marriage?’

‘Very. He said we were very close before I was sent away, but I can’t remember. When he returned from school that year and was told I was gone he was furious with me, as if I’d left him behind on purpose. In his mind I was living his explorer’s dream while he remained trapped in a life of prohibitions and punishments. It took him years to realise I had had no say in the matter. We both presumed the other was the lucky one. When he paid a duty call at Chesham after Jacob was born we were both prepared to thoroughly dislike each other, but it was as if we’d never been apart. In the end he stayed most of the next two years with us.’

‘Does he know why you were sent away?’

He shook his head, still focused on the horse.

‘No. He said no one spoke of it, or of anything much at Greybourne for that matter. Absurd that we both envied the other, isn’t it?’

She slipped her hand into his. ‘I never would have given my child away, no matter what.’ She flushed a little at the childishness of her words, waiting for him to toss them out with the rest of her gestures, but after a moment of stillness his fingers threaded through hers, slowly rubbing the back of her hand. Then he raised her hand, brushing his mouth along the base of her palm.

‘I know you wouldn’t. You are like...’ He dropped her hand immediately as if he’d been stung and she glanced at the doorway, thinking he’d heard someone approach, but there was nothing.

‘What is it?’

‘Nothing. Nothing. Time to leave.’

* * *

The transition from the sparkling clutter of Mr Soane’s house to the dark silence of the square was disorienting. Sam held her cloak about her and shivered though it was not cold. Edge was a dark monolith moving by her side, his profile silvered by the gas lamps lining the road.

‘That went better than expected, no?’

He laughed, a warm sound in the darkness.

‘Is that your version of I told you so?’

‘No. I’m merely glad. Edge... I noticed you evaded their questions about whether you plan to write another book...’

Her own question trailed away and he stopped.

‘I evaded their questions because it was none of their concern. It is yours. If you wished to know, why didn’t you ask me?’

‘Of course I wish to know. How could I not?’

‘Then why not ask?’

‘I am scared.’ She tried to laugh, but it sounded like a crow’s croak. He touched her cheek.

‘Of what, Sam?’

‘I told you. There are three things that matter in my world and you are now at the centre of two of them. I’ve lived with uncertainty all my life, but somehow I hoped my mythical Mr Bunny would always need my little contributions to his world. But I can no longer play that game. I’ve lost a...a crutch and I’m afraid to reach for another because it may not be there.’

She rushed the words out before the gates of her good sense closed.

‘Sam. Even if I did not write another word—which I hope is not the case because I seem to need to write—your talent is undisputed. On the strength of those books alone you could secure enough commissions to keep you busy until you are a hundred. I kept expecting to hear from Durham you’d been tempted away by another author. As for me, I can no longer imagine my worlds without your images. I feed off them. From the first book you made Gabriel and Leila’s worlds more real to me than my own words. I wrote the second book imagining which parts would come to life for you, trying to see what you would, and if I didn’t feel there was anything there to give you, that part withered and died. I’m not certain I can enter Gabriel and Leila’s world without your drawings any longer.’