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By Root 1101 0

do we say it?—panaches, French …” She looked up over the edge of the book at Revel, who was a dark column against the low light, perhaps a little impatient with her performance. He was a man of the theatre, after all; it was just that reading aloud brought out how much you’d had to drink. “ ‘ “I shall return before dusk on Sunday!” said Lord Pettifer. “Pray tell Miranda, my ward, to prepare … herself.” ’ ” She wasn’t sure how much feeling to put into the speeches; and in fact at that moment there was a snort from Corinna’s bed, and Daphne saw that her mouth had opened, and she was already asleep. She peered hopefully at Wilfrid, who was gazing at her clearly, though he couldn’t have had the least idea what was going on. “Well, I’ll just read a little bit more, shall I?” she said. And lowering her voice she read on, skipping a fair bit, through the wonderful description of Lord Pettifer’s journey to Dover through the falling snow, which she hadn’t read since she was a girl. How quaint it looked—part of her didn’t want to read it like this, distracted by Revel, stumbling over the words; but partly she kept it up out of simple disquiet about stopping. “ ‘In the distance they saw the lights of a lonely house—that she could never return,’ ” read Daphne, turning over two pages at once, and taking a moment to realize. She glanced at Wilfrid, then carried on, quite at a loss as to what was happening herself. He smiled distantly, as if to say now it made sense, and to thank her politely, and turned away from the light and pulled up his knees under the covers, which she felt she could take as a sign to stop.

When they were outside in the passage again, things were both more urgent and more awkward. She felt it might go wrong if it wasn’t acted on quickly, it would wither on the stem in a horrible embarrassment of delay and indecision. But then Revel put his arms round her lightly. “No,” she whispered, “Nanny …!”

“Oh …”

“Let’s go down.”

“Really?” said Revel. “If you like.” For the first time she had a sense that she could wound him, she could add to his other hurts; though he pressed his little flinching frown into a look of concern for her.

“No, you’ll see,” she said, and kissed him quickly on the cheek. She led him round, through the L-shaped top passage and out on to the top of the main stairs, with their sudden drama, the gryphons or whatever they were with their shields and raised glass globes of light descending beneath them. She thought, the glare of publicity.

“They’re wyverns,” she said, “I think,” as they went down.

“Ah,” said Revel, as if he had indeed asked.

In the enormous mirror on the first-floor landing there they went, figures in a story, out of the light into the shadow. She thought she was calmer now but then she started gossiping under her breath, “My dear, I simply have to tell you what Tilda Strange-Paget said”—she peered round—“about Stinker!”

“Oh, yes,” said Revel, half-listening, like someone driving.

“I’m not at all sure I should. But apparently he’s got another woman, tucked away.”

Revel chuckled. “Mm, I wonder where he, um, tucks her.” He slowed and turned outside the door of his room. “Are you sure?”

“Well, how can one be sure …”

“No, I mean …” He looked from her to the door. What she wanted was so simple and she felt suddenly lost. She had an odd, quite superhuman sensation of hearing her mother’s breathing in her room, and then an image of Clara in hers, miles away, and Dudley of course, but she couldn’t think of that.

“No, not here,” she said; and taking him on she went round the corner. A single lamp burnt on a table for the guests, and when she opened the linen-room door it flung a great shadow up like a wing across the ceiling. “Will you come in here?” She was solemn but she giggled too.

It was dark, which was the beauty of it, and then the skylight was seen to glimmer—the moon, of course, throwing other shadows down into the well of the room. Again there was no colour, just the white gleam of the high-piled sheets on the shelves among realms of grey. “You can climb out at the top on