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She agreed that that would be very nice, but she couldn’t help wondering why he had asked her. Whatever the reason, her spirits lifted dramatically at the thought of an evening in his company and Mrs. Vidler, who called in soon after, told her that she must be getting over her father’s death she was looking so much better.

She spent a long time dressing that evening. She had bought in Canterbury a long dress in a clinging man-made fibre that had a bright, bold pattern and an underskirt that swished against her legs with an agreeable crackling sound. Over it she wore a black velvet cape that fell straight from her shoulders to the ground in a dramatic sweep that appealed to the more extroverted side of her nature.

Robert had changed too. He wore his dinner jacket with an air and she thought he looked very fine as he took her cape and led her into the sitting room.

“Sherry?” he asked her.

She nodded, a little shy of him. Her hand trembled as she accepted the glass and she tried to hide it from him by half turning away from him and taking a hasty sip of the wine. She wished she were better at reading his expression, but his face was completely enigmatic as he stood in front of the fireplace, watching her closely through narrowed eyes.

“Have you decided what you’re going to do?” he asked.

She coloured a little. “N-not really. Robert, why did you ask me here?”

“I wanted to compare the original with your portrait. Also, I thought we ought to part on a civilised note—”

“Part?”

His smile was insolent. “Did you think I’d changed my mind and was going to let you have a second bite at the cherry?”

She had thought so, or to be more accurate she had hoped against hope that that had been his reason for asking her.

“I thought—” she began. She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know what I thought! So this is in the nature of revenge, is it, Robert? Somehow I thought you were a kinder person than that.”

“I’ve never felt kindly towards you, but I didn’t mean to hurt you. You’ve been hurt enough recently. I couldn’t think of any other way of telling you that I’m not going to renew the lease on the oast-house. It doesn’t give you much notice, but I think you must have been expecting to leave Chaddoxbourne anyway.”

“I see.”

He moved across the room and poured himself out another drink. “Where do you plan to go? Will you live with your stepmother in London?”

She shook her head. “I haven’t lived there since I left school.”

He looked surprised. “Why not?”

“I prefer my independence. I shall probably get a room, as I did before. I think I shall take some kind of training and then go abroad somewhere. I’ve never been anywhere much.”

“What makes you think Alec Farne will agree to that?”

“Alec has nothing to say to anything I choose to do!”

“Another passing fancy?”

She winced, but she knew that he was as badly hurt as she was and that took much of the sting out of his taunts. “I don’t see why I shouldn’t have friends,” she said.

“And lovers?”

She put her head on one side, her eyes challenging him. “Perhaps, one day, a long time hence. Will you?”

“I dare say. Neil doesn’t care for the place and I shouldn’t like it to leave the family.”

“Poor girl!” said Sarah.

“Why should you say that?” he asked sharply.

She twisted her hands together, wishing the comment unsaid. “I didn’t mean it. I expect I’m jealous of her, but you did make it sound as though she would be more mother than wife and—” She stopped helplessly, suddenly aware that she couldn’t bear to think of Robert living with anyone else, whatever role she had.

“And that wouldn’t be enough for you?”

She shook her head silently.

“It will have to be enough for me,” he said abruptly. “Would you like to see the portrait now?”

She consented with a quick incline of her head, blinking away the unshed tears in her eyes. She preceded him out of the door, her skirts swishing madly round her ankles in her hurry.

“Look out! ” he called out to her.

But he was too late. She caught her foot in the slip-mat in the doorway and fell headlong into the hall. In a second he was beside her, holding her hands tight in his. “Are you hurt?” he asked in a strained voice.

“I don’t think so,” she said, resigned. “I’m always clumsy when you’re anywhere in the area.”

His hands grasped hers more tightly still. “Why, Sarah? Why did you have to lie to me?”

She gulped. The temptation to rest her head against him and to beg his forgiveness was very strong. His defences against her were not as strong as he liked to pretend and she thought that if she accepted the role he had given her, he would give way. It was the lies that he thought she had told that had put her beyond the pale as far as he was concerned. But she had not lied! And she could not say that she had, no matter what the immediate reward.

“Why couldn’t you believe me?” she whispered.

"I wish to God I could!”

“Then why don’t you? Is it so very difficult to understand that my stepmother is Madge Dryden all the time, and hardly ever Mrs. Daniel Blaney?”

“No,” he said. “Bui there’s still Neil—”

Sarah sighed. She pulled her hands out of his and, rejecting his help, climbed stiffly to her feet.

“If you want to know I was
crying
because I’d missed the train! But you don’t want to believe that, do you, Robert? You made up your mind about me and found me wanting, and that was that! Well, all right, that’s your privilege, but don’t expect me to be cheering you on. I won’t apologise for something I haven’t done, but neither will I accept your estimation of me. I have to go on living too, you know!”

He put out his hand to her, but she ignored it, turning on her heel, and made a quick rush for the dining room before she disgraced herself by throwing herself at him on any terms he cared to think up.

In the doorway she came face to face with her father’s portrait of herself. It was beautifully lit and looked, to her startled eyes, alive and on the point of speech, the smile breaking across her face like a shaft of light in her eagerness to live life to the full.

“It looks different,” she exclaimed inadequately. “I’ve seen it often before, but I never knew it was like that!”

“It’s a very good likeness,” Robert told her.

“Then why do you want it?” she snapped.

“To remind me that even a smile that breaks across a face like a transformation scene at a pantomime is not always all it seems.”

She put her head on one side and looked at the painting of herself again, ignoring the cruelty in his words. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” she remarked.

“You have flashes of beauty. I’ve seen you blaze up like a furnace and thought you the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen.”

She was astonished.
“I've
never seen it!” she said.

He was amused. “I don’t suppose you have. You don’t stare at yourself in the looking glass immediately after you’ve been kissed ! In fact, you’re not a conceited person, are you?”

"Sometimes. Sometimes I’m as proud as the devil himself!”

“That isn’t quite the same thing,” he smiled. “You must have been told you’re an attractive person before now!”

She considered this soberly. “I don’t think so. Daddy used to think so, but then he was prejudiced. I can’t think of anyone else! ”

His face shut down and became completely expressionless. “Perhaps you’re too obtuse to recognise a compliment?” he suggested smoothly.

“Very likely!” she agreed, her eyes flashing with sheer temper. “One has to have practice to be good at that sort of thing. I shall stick to typing! At least you’ve never complained about the work I’ve done for you!”

“Why should I? You’re neat and accurate. It would be different if you had pretended you were a professional, but you didn’t, and it was very much better than having to type my own letters.”

She turned on him with an angry look. “You’re insufferable!”

To her surprise, he smiled. “I prefer you angry to looking like a hurt animal in search of comfort. I shall miss having my letters done for me.”

“Oh, but—”

“You can hardly come all the way from London to type a few letters for me,” he reminded her sardonically.

A cold wind of loneliness blew around her heart. “You don’t intend to see me again, do you?”

He shook his head. “I want you too much for that. It will be better when we don’t see each other. You must see it’s better, Sarah!”

“For whom?”

“For both of us! Neither of us could blind ourselves to the fact we would be building on sand—”

Sarah held her head very high. “I don’t want to hear any more!” she said grandly. "You asked me to dinner and I intend to enjoy it
—if
you don’t mind?”

He laughed. “I love you when you come the
grande dame
!”

“No, you don’t!”

His eyebrows lifted. “What made you want to be an actress?” he asked her. “Was it because your stepmother’s one?”

She thought about it. “I don’t know that I ever considered anything else,” she told him. “I never heard anything else except the joys and trials of the theatrical life. It was second nature to me. And I’m quite a good actress, that helped me to think that I had to go on doing it. It never occurred to me not to.”

“But you never acted with your stepmother?”

Sarah gurgled with laughter. “Heaven forbid! Can you imagine me kicking up my heels and singing pretty little songs as she does? I’d die, if I had to do that sort of thing in public!”

Robert grinned. “I saw your stepmother’s show when I picked up the portrait,” he said, straight-faced.

“Oh.” She was disconcerted. “She’s better than that!” she said quickly, leaping to Madge’s defence.

His eyes twinkled. “I think I’d die if I had to watch you cavort your way through something like that!” he teased her.

“Oh, I’m strictly a straight actress.” She stirred uneasily, still hating the thought that he had seen her stepmother in such a bad vehicle. “You must see Madge Dryden in something more worthy one day,” she pressed him.

“I might. You’re a strange mixture, Sarah. Why don’t you want to live with your stepmother?”

She flushed. “I don’t think I want to tell you that.”

“Why ever not?”

“Because you won’t believe me. You see, as a child I never noticed anything except that she was the great Madge Dryden. I had my father to talk to and that was enough then. It was only later that I saw other things, things that I didn’t want to be a part of, and so I decided to find my own place. I think Daddy understood, though we never discussed it. I hope he did, because he was rather lonely these last few years.”

Robert studied her face as she ate. He saw the flicker of pain that came and went as she mentioned her father, and the coolness with which she referred to her stepmother.

“You can be pretty uncompromising yourself,” he commented. “What was it that drove you away from Madge?”

“She makes use of people,” Sarah said flatly. “It sounds a small thing, but it leads to all sorts of other things.”

“And you didn’t approve of that?”

“I tried not to disapprove,” she answered, “but I didn’t want to live like that myself. I do have some standards!” she added with a spurt of anger.

“Tell me about them,” he invited. “And tell me the truth.”

She shook her head. “Isn’t it enough that I understand why you don’t want to have anything more to do with me?”

“I don’t know. Almost you persuade me that I may have been mistaken about you.”

A flicker of hope rose within her. “Almost?”

“I won’t live with a lie under any circumstances!”

She sighed and changed the subject, finding that she couldn’t bear the hurt look in his grey eyes any longer. “Where’s Mrs. Vidler?”

Robert took his cue from her. “I told her we’d cope for ourselves. Do you mind a spot of washing up? You’re not really dressed for it.”

“I expect Mrs. Vidler has an apron. I’ll wear that.” She rather enjoyed her moment in the kitchen. The china they had used was particularly pretty and she was domesticated enough for the action of restoring it to its former pristine state to appeal to her. Robert stood by her side, drying the occasional article and remarking with smug satisfaction that it was really much more hygienic for most of the things to be left to dry on their own.

“Can you also make coffee?” he asked her, when they had done.

She laughed. “I think so. Why don’t you come back and have coffee with me?”

He hung up the cloth he had been using and looked at her over his shoulder. “I’d like to, but I don’t want to raise your hopes that there’ll be anything more.” Sarah blushed faintly. “I wasn’t expecting—anything.”

“But you can’t help hoping?”

“I think that’s my business,” she retorted.

“Perhaps it is, but I don’t like hurting you, Sarah.”

“I know you don’t,” she said immediately. “I don’t— don’t blame you, Robert!”

“Then you’re more generous than I am!”

She was in a position to be, she thought, as they walked across the Manor gardens and through the orchard to the oast-house. Because she understood why he wouldn’t give way, whereas he couldn’t understand why she had double-crossed him. The oast-house had become very dear to her and the thought of leaving it chilled her to the marrow. There was so little time left for him to find out that she hadn’t lied !

“Are you nervous of going into an empty house?” he asked as they reached the small garden that she now thought of as her own, she had worked so hard in it.

“No,” she answered.

“Then why do you leave all the lights on?”

She came to a full stop, staring at the lit-up house. “But I didn’t,” she said, her mouth dry. “Oh, Robert, could it be burglars?”

“I doubt it. Still, I’m glad I came back with you. Will you wait here while I go in and see?”

She put her hand in his, trembling slightly. It had to be burglars. There was no one else it could be!

“No, I want to come. They—they might come out by another door!”