A Dangerous Fortune - Ken Follett [107]
The table had suddenly gone quiet, and his last sentence was heard by several people nearby. There was general laughter, and someone said: “Who was this fat lady?” Hugh just grinned and made no reply.
After that they stayed off dangerous topics, but Maisie felt subdued and somewhat fragile, as if she had suffered a fall and bruised herself.
When dinner was over and the men had smoked their cigars Kingo announced that he wanted to dance. The drawing room carpet was rolled up and a footman who could play polkas on the piano was summoned and set to work.
Maisie danced with everyone except Hugh, then it was obvious she was avoiding him, so she danced with him; and it was as if six years had rolled back and they were in Cremorne Gardens again. He hardly led her: they seemed instinctively to do the same thing. Maisie could not suppress the disloyal thought that Solly was a clumsy dancer.
After Hugh she took another partner; but then the other men stopped asking her. As ten o’clock turned to eleven and the brandy appeared, convention was abandoned: white ties were loosened, some of the women kicked off their shoes, and Maisie danced every dance with Hugh. She knew she ought to feel guilty, but she had never been much good at guilt: she was enjoying herself and she was not going to stop.
When the piano-playing footman was exhausted, the duchess demanded a breath of air, and maids were sent scurrying for coats so they could all take a turn around the garden. Out in the darkness, Maisie took Hugh’s arm. “The whole world knows what I’ve been doing for the last six years, but what about you?”
“I like America,” he said. “There’s no class system. There are rich and poor, but no aristocracy, no nonsense about rank and protocol. What you’ve done, in marrying Solly and becoming a friend of the highest in the land, is pretty unusual here, and even now I bet you never actually tell the truth about your origins—”
“They have their suspicions, I think—but you’re right, I don’t own up.”
“In America you’d boast about your humble beginnings the way Kingo boasts about his ancestors fighting at the battle of Agincourt.”
She was interested in Hugh, not America. “You haven’t married.”
“No.”
“In Boston … was there a girl you liked?”
“I tried, Maisie,” he said.
Suddenly she wished she had not asked him about this, for she had a premonition that his answer would destroy her happiness; but it was too late, the question had been raised and he was already speaking.
“There were pretty girls in Boston, and pleasant girls, and intelligent girls, and girls who would make wonderful wives and mothers. I paid attention to some of them, and they seemed to like me. But when it came to the point where I had to make a proposal or back off I realized, each time, that what I felt was not enough. It was not what I felt for you. It wasn’t love.”
Now he had said it. “Stop,” Maisie whispered.
“Two or three mothers got rather cross with me, then my reputation spread around, and the girls became wary. They were nice enough to me, but they knew there was something wrong with me, I wasn’t serious, not the marrying kind. Hugh Pilaster, the English banker and breaker of hearts. And if a girl did seem to fall for me, despite my record, I would discourage her. I don’t like to break people’s hearts. I know too well what it feels like.”
Her face was wet with tears, and she was glad of the tactful dark. “I’m sorry,” she said, but she whispered so softly that she could hardly hear her own voice.
“Anyway, I know what’s wrong with me now. I guess I always knew, but the last two days have removed any doubts.”
They had fallen behind the others, and now he stopped and faced her.
She said: “Don’t say it, Hugh, please.”
“I still love you. That’s all.”
It was out, and everything was ruined.
“I think you love me too,” he went on mercilessly. “Don’t you?”
She looked up at him. She could see, reflected in his eyes, the lights of the house across the lawn, but his face was in shadow. He inclined his head and kissed her lips, and she